Word: mistress
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Roaming the Pyrenees in 1922. he arrived at the village of Montespan. ruled for centuries by the Lords of Montespan one of whose ladies achieved fame as the mistress of Louis XIV. Near the ancient castle was a cavern leading into the mountain which the natives assured him was impenetrable after a short distance. Casteret undressed, slipped through a crack not much bigger than his body, waded into a grotto through which an underground stream flowed...
City College's student publications thereupon published belated reviews of this book. Chapter titles: "A Platonic Kiss," "A Siren's Boudoir," "A Mistress Dissatisfied." Its big scene: a nude woman, lying on a couch of black velvet, seducing the hero: " 'You hold yourself in control like a bloodhound in leash,' she said with a provocative movement of her lips. . . . Flushed, panting, in a frenzy of passion, she clung to him, kissing him with avid lips, aroused to wild lubricity. 'Beat me if you like,' she cried, 'strike me, crush me. I crave violence...
...sister, who protested against this affair, he wrote the most impassioned letters in the book, demanding that she receive his mistress and condemning artificial moral standards: "Do you think I have been insincere in what I have written all my life? Do you think that my contempt for law, society and conformity are not genuine? Well, I can tell you I am no faker. I shall always try to appear to conform, but I shall not do so to,-well, to avoid the disapproval of others...
Rachel Field's fictionized biography centres on Henriette's six years in the Praslin household, emphasizes her genius with children, her unimpeachable tact in dealing with her violently jealous mistress, her innocence of the scandals that linked her name with the handsome Duc, the injustice of contemporaries (among them Victor Hugo) who characterized her as "a rare woman...at once wicked and charming...
Rebecca is the story of a gawky young girl who marries an attractive man 20 years her elder, becoming the mistress of a great English country house and a victim of the tragedy that overhangs it. A sense of doom built up in the first few pages strikes a reader as a tour de force, brilliant but false. As the story unfolds, the sense of doom is gradually justified...