cliterature

The more I think about it the more I see it.  It is often said of women that they fancy the bad boy, but they marry a good man.  But isn’t the same story told just as often about men?  Even Puss in Boots, the “cat” is willing to doing anything for the miller’s son, even thought see is set aside for the princess.  And most recently I have been reading an old adventure/romance called, robustly, The Pirate and the Lady, by Leslie Turner White (Ace, 1961).

The blurb and inside synopsis is very focused on the relationship between the pirate and his “insatiable” lady.  The lady, Genevieve, is a gorgeous 40-year-old who married to avoid the unfortunate fate of a cavalier family on the losing side, and found the respectable husband she never loved to be unpleasant and impotent,  and proceeded to cuckold him–repeatedly.  By the end of chapter two she has been surprised in bed with a sea captain by her outraged husband, shot him dead, protected and cunningly implicated her lover, and made a break for America with him to escape justice.

My kind of woman.

The sad-but-true aspect of the story is that this is not the woman the pirate marries in the final chapter.  That is, as usual, a juvenile daughter of an influential father whom the pirate has greatly impressed–the father being an earl who will get the pirate a knighthood as well as a wife (So sue me, the pirate and the father seem more in love than any other couple in the book).  And Genevieve?  Said father of the groom brushes her off in the closing scene:  ”Faint heart n’er won fair lady … As for your affair with the Lady Genevieve, that can be chalked off to experience.”

Overall it is a rather interesting book, being an adventure romance not clearly aimed at only men or only women. But it does seem that if there is an exciting older, femme fatale in the bed during act one, there with be a wedding to a princess in the epilogue. Just like the gay stories that end with some kind of suicide, or career woman old movies where she proves to the man that she is his equal… then marries him and quits work to raise the kids.  (Eat the cake too?  I don’t think so!)

Just like a woman might date James Dean, but marry Pat Boone –it seems men are meant to fantasize about fooling around with Lilith before they settle down with Eve. And when it comes right down to it, it looks like double standards right across the board. Of course, I am still reading this book (you caught me, I skipped over and read the last chapter ahead of time) and haven’t yet discovered the ultimate fate of fiesty Genevieve–keep your fingers crossed for her.  Maybe she settles down with a hot Jamaican and lives lustily ever after (however I suspect not).

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