“She was doing precisely that,” Professor Harvey said. “She said, ‘This is our marriage and our business,’ and he bounced back and he didn’t win New Hampshire but he won the nomination. In that case, there were no allegations of laws being broken. It was simple marital infidelity. I think that’s not what we’re dealing with here.”

Some political consultants and scholars said Ms. Wall Spitzer’s appearance hit such a nerve not only because of the tawdriness of the accusations but because of her obvious devastation. Unlike the blank demeanors of other aggrieved political spouses, Ms. Wall Spitzer, her eyes alternately downcast or glancing at her husband, had the drained, dazed look of someone in mourning.

In search of expert commentary, television news stations naturally zoomed in on one such spouse, Dina Matos McGreevey. Ms. Matos McGreevey, author of “Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage,” stood next to her husband, Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey, at a news conference in 2004 in which he disclosed that he was gay and announced his resignation.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Ms. Matos McGreevey said that two hours before that news conference, Governor McGreevey asked her to consider joining him at the lectern. She told him she would think about it, she said, and then quickly consulted her therapist.

“It was an instinct to be there,” she said. “Despite the fact that he’s humiliated you and caused you excruciating pain, this was a man I married, a man I loved, and your feelings don’t evaporate overnight. And then I thought about my daughter, and I didn’t want her 10 or 15 years down the line to ask me, ‘Mommy, this was the most difficult point in Daddy’s life, and why weren’t you there to support him?’ ”

Ms. Matos McGreevey said she did not regret her decision to appear with her husband as he proclaimed himself “a gay American,” even though she was later faulted. “I have been criticized for going out there, and people have said: ‘Why did you do it? How could you stand there with a smile?’ ” she said. “But people who know me know that that was not a smile. That was my attempt to keep my composure.”

Some of the Internet chatter on Tuesday suggested that Ms. Wall Spitzer’s silent presence at her husband’s side represented a dark day for feminism, with one writer railing, “Someone needs to tell his wife that ‘stand by your man’ does not apply here!!! ... She needs to have some pride.”