The data breach at the Ashley Madison website for people pursuing extramarital affairs is just a new twist on a very old tale. Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley’s Lover may be among the most famous modern works which turn on a character’s adultery but the conflict between individual desire and social responsibility, sexual urges and emotional loyalty, is age-old, a recurring subject in both the Bible and the Classics. Interestingly, the guilty protagonists are all too often women, even though statistically husbands are much more likely to stray. Adultery has been a fact of life and a recurring theme since Clytemnestra made hay with Aegisthus, while her husband Agamemnon was...
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