Product Description

Griffin asks why our society still treats marital infidelity as an unfathomable aberration, studying various arenas including the political mistress, the writer's mistress and the artist's mistress. She examines how the roles of wife and mistress come about, how each may threaten the other, or how they may co-exist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195981 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"My primary reason for writing this book", explains Victoria Griffin at the beginning of her fascinating study of 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 which, 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--amongst others, George Eliot, Rebecca West, Jean Rhys--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 for this book which 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

Customer Reviews

Interesting and challenging
'The Mistress' begins with an honest and transparent confession by the author as to her motivations and inspirations for writing the book. In doing so, Ms. Griffin establishes her credibility as an informed, experienced practitioner of what she preaches. While such a confession may offend readers who are already pre-disposed against her subject and stance, it certainly acquits her of bias by stealth or deceit.

Before leading the reader through interesting and varied historical case studies, Ms. Griffin provides a fascinating and well-documented account of sexual politics and the "woman as temptress" theme so prevalent through mythological and factual history. This is, in my opinion, the most interesting part of the book. While the individual case studies that followed lend evidence (or at least non-imaginary examples) to her theories, it was the general that most interested me.

Towards the end of 'The Mistress' I felt my interest, or at least my admiration, wane a little. 'A Conversation' will confuse those not already familiar with the stories and the characters to which it refers and I felt the same material could have been covered by Ms. Griffin in a more accessible and coherent way, especially given her obvious and pre-demonstrated ability in formal argument.

Likewise, 'A Balancing Act', the final chapter, is presented in a type of notebook style. While I appreciate Ms. Griffin's admitted desire to avoid reaching or asserting any 'conclusions' in such an indefinite subject, I once again felt she could have presented her thoughts in a more disciplined way. Given the immense thought and research the 'The Mistress' apparently required, it seems a shame to leave an unrepresentative impression of her writing skills in the reader's mind.

Notwithstanding these relatively minor criticisms of style, I found 'The Mistress' to be informative, impassioned and intelligent. I recommend it to anyone with an enquiring and open mind.