Quantum of Solace

In the actual short story, 'Quantum of Solace' by Ian Fleming, James Bond finds himself listening to a tale of desparate hope and lost love as told to him by a retired colonial official from Jamaica. The story involves a civil servant and his airline hostess wife. She goes off and has various affairs with other men while they are married and living in the Bahamas. He finally comes to his senses and puts her through a long period of suffering to make her pay for her disregard for him and his feelings.

The story points out that the true fault for the tragedy lies with the parents of the husband. In Ian Fleming's opinion, it is their fault that they failed to educate their son successfully in the ways of the world so that when he found someone who paid the least attention to him he mistook this for romance and acted on it with a marriage proposal. As the marriage degenerated, he was unable to salvage anything from the wreck which, in turn prompted severe and crippling revenge upon the wife who considered herself "just being naughty."

The quantum of solace is the phrase given to the resulting interplay of negative emotion when one partner snubs, disrespects and ignores the other. It is an expression which describes the consequences of distain.

As we see in the story, the wife initially imparts this to her husband who, in turn reciprocates the unkindness...in kind.