Death by Woman Scorned/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Murdering an adulterous spouse is presented as justified.

  • Straight: Alice kills Bob for cheating on her with Carol. The story treats Alice as a hero, or as Chaotic Good at worst.
  • Exaggerated: Alice kills Bob slowly and painfully for just glancing at Carol, and is canonised a hundred years later.
  • Justified: Bob was consistently abusive and they live in a country in which Alice has no legal remedies. When Alice found out about Bob and Carol, Bob threatened her and she killed him in self-defence.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice is presented as a shrew and a harpy and Bob as a Doomed Moral Victor for ~* ~following his heart~* ~.
    • Alternatively, Bob is justified in killing Alice because she slept with Fred.
  • Subverted: Alice is portrayed as a Complete Monster or as being Ax Crazy for taking the life of another human being, regardless of her reasons.
    • It turns out that it is Not What It Looks Like, and Bob was never cheating with Carol. Alice killed Bob for essentially no reason, and she is sent up the river.
  • Double Subverted: Bob was never cheating with Carol. However he was cheating with Dorothy, and also planning to embezzle his wife's money to support his mistress.
  • Parodied: Killing Bob makes Alice a national hero, and she's made Grand Marshal of the St Patrick's Day Parade.
  • Deconstructed: Alice is lionised in the press and public consciousness, but our Sympathetic POV prosecutor character is digusted by this.
  • Reconstructed: Said prosecutor later turns out to be a venal Jerkass He-Man Woman Hater.
  • Zig Zagged: Was Alice justified? Will she be convicted? Did Bob even die at all? It is a mystery.
  • Averted: Alice committed murder. Her reasons may be mitigating factors, but are only relevant in sentencing, not in questions of law and fact.
  • Enforced: Five words: Lifetime Movie of the Week.
  • Lampshaded: "Why is it that murder is okay when it's cuckoldess-on-adulterer?"
  • Invoked: Alice only killed Bob because she thought her motives would be sympathetic and she'd get away with it.
  • Defied:
    • Alice is Ax Crazy. Bob had already tried to do the honourable thing and file for divorce, but Alice wouldn't be told.
    • "You killed your husband, and you figure you should get away with it, because you're a Woman Scorned? Guess what? Murder. Is. Murder. Regardless of motive or gender. Hanging in the town square, one week from today." * bam!*
  • Played For Laughs: Alice is an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist or Heroic Sociopath.
  • Played For Drama: Alice gets away with it, but goes mad from killing someone she loved. Eventually, she ends up like Gollum, hovering over Bob's wedding band and trying to justify her actions to herself.


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