Seductress (53 page)

97
“She knows how . . .”:
Quoted in Haldane,
Madame de Maintenon,
78.

97
Nicknamed the Thaw . . . :
Quoted in Cruttwell,
Madame de Maintenon,
76 and 382; Haldane,
Madame de Maintenon,
165; and quoted in Vincent Cronin,
Louis XIV,
(London, Harville, 1964), 232.

97
She called him . . . :
Quoted in Haldane,
Madame de Maintenon,
79.

97
By 1680 the . . . :
Quoted in Cruttwell,
Madame de Maintenon,
113.

97
Françoise now passed . . . :
Quoted in Nancy Mitford,
The Sun King
(New York: Penguin, 1966), 45.

97
As with so many senior . . . :
Quoted in Cronin,
Louis XIV,
343.

97
“However much you . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 301.

97-8
She put up with . . . :
Quoted in Cruttwell,
Madame de Maintenon,
93.

98
But her reign . . . :
Quoted ibid., 234.

98
She outlived Louis . . . :
Quoted ibid., 203.

98
She died at . . . :
Quoted in Cohen,
Mademoiselle Libertine,
194.

98
She always credited . . . :
Quoted in Cruttwell,
Madame de Maintenon,
369.

99
The misogynistic Greeks . . . :
See Athenaeus, for examples of this vituperative view of old women,
The Deipnosophists,
Books XIII-XIV, trans. C. B. Gulick (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937), passim. Also see Simone de Beauvoir’s summary in
The Coming of Age,
trans. Patrick O’Brian (New York: Warner, 1972), 146-84.

99
Of the twelve senior . . . :
Friedrich,
Meaning of Aphrodite,
143. Learned speech was considered suprapotent by the Greeks. Virtuous women consequently were permitted to say “as little as possible.” Quoted in Susan Groag Bell,
Women from the Greeks to the French Revolution
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973), 25. The culture was vociferous against female literacy and conversational skill. Two examples are Menander’s “A man who teaches a woman to write . . . is providing poison to an asp” and Xenophon’s “Is there anyone with whom you hold fewer discussions than your wife?” Quoted in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant,
Women’s Life in Greece and Rome
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 31, and Bell,
Women from the Greeks,
27.

99
Gnathaena and Glycera . . . :
Athenaeus,
Deiphosophists,
149.

99
Until she died . . . :
Ibid., 149.

99
She visited George . . . :
Quoted in Curtis Cate,
George Sand: A Biography
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), xxi.

100
Surrounding the “priestess” . . . :
Quoted in Joseph Barry,
Infamous Woman: The Life of George Sand
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 316, 317, and 318.

100
A “female Don Juan” . . . :
Quoted ibid., 101.

100
“Old women,” she . . . :
Quoted in Belinda Jack,
George Sand: A Woman’s Life Writ Large
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 313.

100
By the third year . . . :
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
84.

100
Her first novel, . . . :
Cate,
George Sand,
198.

101
Although praised for . . . :
Quoted ibid., 602.

101
Never beautiful—even . . . :
Quoted in Dan Hofstadter,
The Love Affair as a Work of Art
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 140.

101
With an “odalisque’s . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 120.

101
While he caressed . . . :
Quoted ibid., 132.

101
When she threw . . . :
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
191.

101
Under cover of . . . :
André Maurois,
Lelia: The Life of George Sand,
trans. Gerard Hopkins (New York: Penguin, 1953), 290.

101
“This complicated being . . .”:
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
209.

101
“Is she indeed . . .”:
Quoted ibid., 241.

101
Afterward she slid . . . :
Quoted ibid., 244.

101
In addition to . . . :
Felizia Seyd,
Romantic Rebel: The Life and Times of George Sand
(New York: Viking, 1940), 156.

102
“There are some . . .”:
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
273.

102
She went on . . . :
Maurois,
Lelia,
540

102
Like Morgan le Fay, . . . :
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
351. In her view, she aged backward. “It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope,” she wrote. “On the contrary, one climbs higher and higher with the advancing years and that too with surprising strides.” Quoted in Maurois,
Lelia,
542.

102
“To preserve my . . .”:
Quoted in Hofstadter,
Love Affair,
143.

102
Alexandre Manceau sweetened . . . :
Quoted in Cate,
George Sand,
622.

102
“I have laughed . . . :
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
338.

102
“Brainwork,” she said . . . :
Quoted in Maurois,
Lelia,
542.

102
Still “not exclusively . . . :
Barry,
Infamous Woman,
166.

102
After Manceau’s death . . . :
Quoted ibid., 345.

102
Her final words . . . :
Quoted ibid., 381.

102
Although women never . . . :
Quoted ibid., 226. Like so many seductresses, George Sand never got on with other women. Her own daughter despised her, village housewives execrated her, and her best friend, Lizst’s mistress, directed a crazed vendetta against her. Simone de Beauvoir assails her for her lack of solidarity with other women, and some female biographers, such as Renee Winegarten, gloat over her tragic unhappiness. In return George had a low opinion of her sex. Although she abhorred their enslaved position, she refused to support the feminist revolutionaries, arguing that women had been rendered too dependent to act responsibly. See “She Had It All,”
New York Review of Books
(October 11, 1979), 11, and Renee Winegarten,
The Double Life of George Sand, Woman and Writer
(New York: Basic Books, 1979).

102-3
“To know how . . .”:
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
376.

103
With age, George . . . :
Quoted ibid., xiv.

103
Crowned with supraconfidence . . . :
Quoted in Donna Dickerson,
George Sand
(New York: Berg Publishers, 1988), 165.

103
For a century . . . :
Quoted in Barry,
Infamous Woman,
268, and quoted in Seyd,
Romantic Rebel,
33.

103
As Sainte-Beuve told . . . :
Quoted in Hofstadter,
Love Affair,
157.

103
Colette, the celebrated . . . :
Quoted in Lois W. Banner,
In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power and Sexuality
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 23, and Colette,
Ripening Seed,
trans. Roger Senhouse (New York: Penguin, 1959 [1923]), 71.

103
After squandering her . . . :
Colette,
Ripening Seed,
71.

103
Ensuring that her . . . :
Margaret Crosland,
Colette: The Difficulty of Loving
(New York: Dell, 1973), 45.

104
The entire time . . . :
Judith Thurman,
Secrets of the Flesh
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 296.

104
Seated beside him . . . :
Quoted ibid., 336.

104
She “saved” him . . . :
Ibid., 356.

104
To Colette, the . . . :
Colette,
Julie de Carneilhan,
trans. Roger Senhouse (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1952), 164.

104
But she had something . . . :
Husain,
Goddess,
135, and Yarnall,
Transformations of Circe,
10.

105
When she was elected . . . :
Robert Phelps,
Belles Saisons: A Colette Scrap-book
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978), 248.

105
This “impudent woman” . . . :
Quoted in George Eells and Stanley Musgrove,
Mae West
(New York: William Morrow, 1982), 148.

105
The crone goddess . . . :
Husain,
Goddess,
111.

105
She roamed the night . . . :
Ibid., A sampling of these divine she-leches includes the Empusae, Mormolyceia, and Lamiae of Greek mythology, the Irish Morrigan, the Baltic raganas, and such fairy-tale descendants as Desart Fairy of “The Yellow Dwarf.” All lured youths to their beds by turning themselves into beautiful young women.

105
But Mae West . . . :
“
Playboy
Interview: Mae West,”
Playboy
(January 1971), 74.

105
She seemed endowed . . . :
Quoted in Richard Meryman, “Mae West: A Cherished, Bemusing Masterpiece of Self-Preservation,”
Life
(April 18, 1969), 69.

106
A Bavarian corset . . . :
This was turn-of-the-century working-class Brooklyn, where girls miss-prissed and walked the purity chalk line; one slip and the plunge into “female depravity” began. Ronald G. Walters,
Primers for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian America
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 69.

106
Terrified, as seductresses . . . :
She discoursed on these preferences often. “I never wanted motherhood,” she said, “because you have to think about the child and I only had time for me. Just the way I didn’t want no husband because he’d of interfered with my hobby and my career.” Or again: “I never wanted children . . . motherhood’s a career in itself.” Quoted in Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
14, and
Playboy,
80. The homemaker-phobic Mae also loathed domestica. “I was never the cottage-apron type,” she told
Playboy,
80.

106
“There’s nobody in . . .”:
Playboy,
80.

106
Sex,
the story . . . :
Quoted in Lillian Schlissel, intro.,
Three Plays by Mae West: Sex, The Drag, and The Pleasure Queen
(New York: Routledge, 1997), 10. DEPRAVED, NASTY, VICIOUS! screamed headlines. Quoted in Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
98.

106
While Mae was . . . :
Playboy,
74.

107
Convinced that a “thrill . . .”:
Go West Young Man,
Paramount, directed by Henry Hathaway, 1936.

107
A matinee idol . . . :
Quoted in Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
76.

107
Rich, famous, and . . . :
Mae West,
Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It
(New York: Avon, 1959), 50.

108
“Let ’um
wonder
” . . . :
Quoted in
Playboy,
76, and West,
Goodness,
219.

108
On the verge . . . :
Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
56, and
Playboy,
74.

108
Thirty-three, blue-eyed, and . . . :
Quoted in Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
293.

108
At “seventy-sex,” her . . . :
Playboy,
74.

108
She rewrote the . . . :
Quoted in Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
295.

108
She died at . . . :
Quoted in
Playboy,
78.

108
Unlike Marilyn, Mae . . . :
“The Strong Woman: What Was Mae West Really Fighting For,”
New Yorker
(November 11, 1996), 105.

109
“I was the first . . .”:
Quoted in Emily Wortis Leider,
Becoming Mae West
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 339, and West,
Goodness,
213.

109
One critic associated . . . :
Quoted in Eells and Musgrove,
Mae West,
128.

109
“I’m the woman’s . . .”:
Quoted in
Life,
62C;
Playboy,
73 and 78.

109
Or as her
Diamond Lil . . . :
Mae West,
Diamond Lil
(New York: Dell, 1932), book jacket.

109
Wealth, she loved . . . :
West,
Goodness,
221.

109
“No loadstone so . . .”:
Burton,
Anatomy of Melancholy,
624.

110
When women her age . . . :
Quoted in Madeleine B. Stern,
Purple Passage: The Life of Mrs. Frank Leslie
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), 79.

110
Only older women, . . . :
Mrs. Frank Leslie,
Are Men Gay Deceivers?
(Chicago: Neely, 1893), 227.

110
At the apex . . . :
Quoted ibid., 114.

110
No modest matron . . . :
Ibid., 3.

110
In a crackpot scheme . . . :
Ibid., 13.

110
Her mother forced . . . :
Quoted ibid., 7.

111
The mistress was . . . :
Quoted in Ross,
Uncrowned Queen,
202.