The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Interpretation: Let us look at the many transformations that envy
causes in the mind, as we can clearly see in the example of Jane
Williams. When Jane first met Mary, she had conflicting emotions. On
the one hand, there was much to like and admire about Mary. She had
pleasant manners, was clearly brilliant, and felt deeply attached to her
son. She could be quite generous. On the other hand, she made Jane
feel deeply inferior; Jane lacked so many of the things that Mary had,
but which she felt she deserved—attention for her own talents, for her
willingness to sacrifice for love, for her charming nature. Inevitably,
along with the attraction to Mary came envy—the desire to have the
same things as Mary, the sense of being entitled to have them, but the
apparent inability to get them easily or legitimately. With envy comes
the secret desire to hurt, wound, or steal from the envied person, to
right the unfairness that comes with his or her supposed superiority.
There were many reasons for Jane to conceal and even repress the
envy stirring within her. First, it is socially toxic to display envy. It

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reveals deep insecurity along with hostility, a very ugly brew, which is
certain to push people away. Second, she and her husband depended
on the Shelleys for their future livelihood, since Jane was determined
to get Edward attached to Shelley as a friend, assistant, and sailing
expert. Shelley was notoriously generous with money. Acting in a
hostile manner toward Mary would have put that all in jeopardy.
Finally, envy is a painful emotion, an admission of our own inferiority,
something rather unbearable for us humans. It is not an emotion we
want to sit with and brood over. We like to conceal it from ourselves
and not be aware that it motivates our actions.
Considering all this, Jane took the natural next step: she befriended
Mary, returning Mary’s friendly advances and then some. A part of her
liked the woman and felt flattered at the attention shown to her by
someone so famous. Jane was avid for attention. How could she now
imagine herself as feeling envy toward Mary, if she had chosen to
become her friend? But the more time she spent around Mary, the
more the imbalance between them became apparent. It was Mary who
had the illustrious, handsome husband, the possible large inheritance,
the deep friendship with Lord Byron, and the rich imagination that
made her so talented. And so the more time she spent with Mary, the
stronger her envious feelings became.
To conceal this envy from herself and others now required the next
logical step: she had to mentally convert Mary into an unsympathetic
character. Mary was not so talented; she was merely lucky; if it weren’t
for her famous parents and the men around her, she never would have
gotten to her fortunate position; she did not deserve her fame; she was
an irritating person to be around, moody, depressive, clinging, no fun;
she was not nice or loving toward her husband and was not much of a
woman. As Jane went through this process, hostility began to
overwhelm friendly feelings. She felt more than justified in actively
seducing Percy Shelley and concealing her true feelings from Mary.
Most devastating to Mary’s marital relationship, every time her
husband complained to Jane about Mary, Jane would reinforce this
with some new story or observation, deepening the rift between them.
Of course, in turning Mary into someone so unlikable, Jane had to
willfully ignore the context—the recent loss of two beloved children to
illness, Shelley’s own coldness toward his wife, and his pursuit of other
women. But in order for enviers to feel entitled to take harmful action,
they must create a narrative: everything the other person does reveals

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some negative trait; they do not deserve their superior position. Now
Jane had what she had wanted—the adoring attention of Percy Shelley
along with the complete alienation of him from his wife. Once Shelley
died, she could vent her envy by spreading the malicious story that
Mary did not seem particularly sad at the loss, something so troubling
to those who heard this, including Leigh Hunt, that they distanced
themselves from Mary.
Once Jane was back in London and Mary joined her there, the
pattern repeated. A part of Jane was still drawn to Mary; over the years
they had shared much. But the more time she spent around her, the
more she had to see Mary’s growing fame, her circle of illustrious
friends, her generous nature toward other women who had been
mistreated, her total devotion to her son and to the memory of her
husband. None of this jibed with the narrative, and so Jane had to take
yet another step in her mind: “Mary is false, still living off the legacy of
her husband and others, motivated by her neediness, not by her
generosity. If only other people could see this.” So she stole Mary’s
friend Hogg, a weaker imitation of the original sin of stealing her
husband. And she continued to spread stories about Mary, but this
time with the added vicious twist that Jane was the last great love of
Shelley’s life, that he had never loved his wife, and that Mary had
driven him to suicide. Telling such lurid stories in London would do
maximum damage to Mary’s reputation.
It is hard to calculate the pain she inflicted over the years on Mary—
the quarrels with Mary’s husband exacerbated by Jane, the sudden
mysterious coldness of Mary’s closest friends, the push and pull Jane
played on Mary, always stepping back when Mary wanted more
closeness, and finally the revelation of the ultimate betrayal, and the
thought, which would haunt Mary for years, that so many had believed
Jane’s story. Such can be the hidden pain inflicted by one great envier.