Word: mistress
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...French royal dangling farcically for nearly 10 years. Always she concluded that the perils of matrimony exceeded the benefits. She courted English suitors too, for both pleasure and politics. Yet when favorite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, pressed too hard, she retorted, "I will have here but one mistress and no master." She did not wed because she refused to give up any power. "Beggarwoman and single far rather than Queen and married," she once said...
...insoluble puzzle. The contradictions in his character and his ideas could be breathtaking. That the author of the Declaration of Independence ("All men are created equal") not only owned and worked slaves at Monticello but also may have kept one of them, Sally Hemings, as a mistress--allegedly fathering children with her but never freeing her or them--was merely the most dramatic of his inconsistencies...
...French vocals. (She's possibly the only person in music today who can make a complaint about faulty sound systems sexy: "Does anyone else hear that rumble?") Her look-but-don't-touch attitude makes her akin to the too-hip aunt of Bjork and Winona Ryder, a coy mistress of equally playful music...
...land as a kind of indirect punishment for the historical wrongs committed by her race. To Lurie, this is at first incomprehensible. He still needs to have recourse to avenues of escape from realityphysical pleasure; a fantasy about writing an opera on the poet Byron and his mistress Teresa; a longing for a former, more heroic self; anger and outrage. But the novel traces the process whereby he is able to find his own way of expiating his abuse of power and his guilt at being useless to his daughter and thereby is able to confront reality...
...conflated the author and her creation, Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor). The Fanny of the novel, a mousy poor relative come to live in the eponymous great house, is here, like the author, a witty observer of the swells at romantic play. She's also the patient, strong-willed mistress of her own romantic destiny who finally achieves her long-desired true love. The movie may not entirely please Austen purists, but it is well acted, and it achieves a strong, smart, engaging life...