'Your secret? Yes, I knew it all the time, I just felt pity for you.'

 

That is the enigma of knowledge: how is it possible that the whole psychic economy of a situation changes radically not when the hero directly learns something (some long-repressed secret),but when he gets to know that the other(whom he mistook for ignorant) also knew it all the time,

and just pretended not to know in order to keep up appearances—is there anything more humiliating than the situation of a husband who,after a long

 secret love aff air, learns all of a sudden that his wife knew about it all the time, but kept silent about it out of politeness or, even worse, out of love for him, or even worse out of pity.

The underlying premise here of the good wife, is the notion that the ultimate ethical duty is that of protecting the Other from pain, of keeping him or her in protective ignorance