A reader points out that the Book of Common Prayer is obviously not medieval in origin. I apologize for the error.

Betrayal is the stuff of Shakespeare, humiliation the stuff of the New York Post. Silda Wall Spitzer, wife of the disgraced and soon-to-be-ex governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, clearly knows both. She stood in sorrowful, dignified silence by the side of her husband during his two wrenchingly painful press conferences in which he first acknowledged his truck with prostitutes and then, a few days later, resigned from his position as governor, bearing her pain with the stoicism of a Roman widow.

I’m a New Yorker, and New Yorkers pride themselves on their worldliness and smarts. We know how to detach ourselves from even the most gut-wrenching events of history by cracking jokes. Yet everyone I know — men and women alike — feels utter sadness at the Spitzer story. Stupid jokes about the governor and prostitutes, by now popping up like dandelions on a sunny summer day, can only be heard on late-night television and Wall Street. The rest of us can’t forget the face of Silda Wall Spitzer, standing nobly by her husband’s side.

The blogosphere is crackling with talk about Silda’s behavior. How could she have stood by that man? Why didn’t she tell Eliot to shove it? Matos McGreevey, who’s currently going through a contentious divorce from the former governor of New Jersey (who resigned after admitting he was a gay philanderer), opined that political wives stand by their husbands “for personal reasons.” She added that she stood by McGreevey’s side when he resigned, just like Spitzer’s wife stood by Spitzer’s side, “because he was my husband. I had always supported him. I loved him. I had a daughter … I wanted her to know I was there for her father.”

Silda Wall Spitzer is a smart, Harvard-educated lawyer who, if she so chooses, will be able to divorce Spitzer in such a manner as to grind him, financially speaking, into a pathetic lump of pulp. And if any woman has the right to a huge settlement, and to tell her man to get lost, it’s Silda Wall Spitzer.

Rights are the stuff of modern philosophy, however, whereas duties of the kind we saw in Silda Wall Spitzer’s behavior are the forgotten stuff of a pre-modern era. The only admirable part of this whole sorry affair lies in the way Silda Wall Spitzer chose — publicly, at least — to behave is if she were woman of ancient Rome.

As a lawyer, Silda Wall Spitzer must know all there is to know about rights. In standing by her husband, even if only temporarily, she chose to put those modern rights to the side and behave not just like a Roman woman, but to stand by the duties of both a husband and a wife as expressed in the Book of Common Prayer that emerged in the Middle Ages. These tie a wife to her husband, and a husband to his wife, even in mutual sorrow.

Seen in a modern light, Silda Wall Spitzer lent her husband a comfort and help he doesn’t deserve. Seen from a different perspective, however, she did her duty and gave him what she owed him.