Guest Post: Women Scorned

A guest post kindly contributed by my truckbuddy Tim:

Hi, my name is Tim, and as you will see from my spelling, I started out life in the UK. However, I now reside in Spain, so my stiff upper lip has been given an anarchistic slant from too much Sun and Sangria! I have been asked by our Head Trucker to write a guest post here at Blue Truck, Red State, so here’s hoping I’m equal to the task.

Russ and I have been discussing offline the subject of Universal Truths. Now your Head Trucker was approaching this subject with lofty ideals and good intent. These were going to be the fundamental truths, not limited by time or geography, that come with age and wisdom and would explain the mysteries of life. Well, we might achieve that eventually, but I hope it can be an amusing, if slightly less reverent, journey we take in getting there.

The idea is to propose a Universal Truth, illustrated with examples, on Thursday’s blog, that you take into the long weekend, to test and discuss with your family and friends, the results of which you then comment back to us. So, the first Universal Truth, and it’s a good one, is: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”

Where did that come from? Well now the science part: The full quotation is, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” It comes from William Congreve’s tragic drama The Mourning Bride, Act III Scene 2, written in 1697. It means a woman will make someone suffer if they reject or deride her.

And our first example is Herodias who famously used her dancing daughter Salome to obtain the head of John the Baptist after he publicly criticised her marriage to King Herod. After that everyone thought the wedding was a great idea!

Next we have Queen Elizabeth the First, working out her frustration at her unconsummated love affair with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and his secret marriage to one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, Lettice Knollys, who was banned from ever appearing before the Queen again; and Robert got at least one stupendous tongue-lashing from his offended monarch. As she said, “Who’s Queen?”

Moving on in time, the life-long bitter feud between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later HM the Queen Mother), and Wallis Simpson, over who was to blame for the abdication of the Duke of Windsor (briefly Edward VIII), which lasted for years.

Crossing the pond to America, we find Elin Nordegren getting her own back husband, Tiger Woods, who had been potting other holes in one. Whether she really hit him and his car with a nine iron we may never know, but the divorce settlement cost him $100 million, and shareholders billions in lost sponsorship franchise.

There are many more stories, some painful, some funny, and some quite tragic: Lorena vs. Wayne, Hillary vs. Bill, Di vs. Chas, Carol and Stacey vs. Tim (sorry, sorry, sorry....). And it’s not just a man vs. woman thing. From my own experience, if my mother thought she had been slighted by another woman, they would thereafter be referred to as “That woman” or “That female”! Men somehow seem to get over these things more easily and without bearing long lasting grudges, so is it a feminine trait, what do you think?

Blue Truck readers are invited to respond in the comments section.