The Mistress: Histories, Myths and Interpretations of the "Other Woman" - Hardcover

"My primary reason for writing this book," explains Victoria Griffin at the beginning of her fascinating study The Mistress, "is self-examination." Writing as a "mistress", Griffin is keen to focus on the personal, cultural, and historical dimensions of her role: "As long as there is Marriage," she concludes, "there will also be the Mistress." Conjuring up the quasi-mythical dimensions of an arrangement between men and women that, in one form or another, has existed for centuries, Griffin tracks her subject back through the figures of Hera (the wife) and the followers of Aphrodite (the women claimed by love and passion) in order to reconsider the changing role of the mistress in late-20th-century culture. Drawing on the lives of a number of creative, often unconventional, women--George Eliot, Rebecca West, and Jean Rhys amongst others--Griffin complicates the emotional scripts allotted to those who play out the drama of a ménage-à-trois. As such, she offers a cogent challenge to the conventional image of the mistress as a wife-in-waiting, a woman hoping to displace her lover's family in the name of her own. Passion--and relationships--are more complex than that. This book explores the act of being a mistress in terms of a different way of living: a refusal, or inability, to conform to social demands, certainly, but also a commitment to a love that resists possession. --Vicky Lebeau, Amazon.co.uk