Seductress (59 page)

214
Like the divine . . . :
Quoted in Meador,
Inanna,
153, and quoted in Kelly,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
51.

214
“Why do I . . .”:
Quoted in Kelly,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
79.

214
After their return . . . :
Weir,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
1.

214
Although ten years . . . :
Curtis Howe Walker,
Eleanor of Aquitaine
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950), 102.

214
The two had . . . :
Marion Meade,
Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography
(New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 140.

214
Flourishing her learning . . . :
Quoted in Kelly,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
114.

215
When he took her queen . . . :
Quoted in Walker,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
103.

215
Henry never learned . . . :
Quoted in Seward,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
147.

215
Eleanor, by contrast, . . . :
Ibid., 151. Into her seventies she vigorously protected and governed her domains, traveling throughout the Continent to keep her barons in check. She reconciled her feuding sons, made advantageous marriages for her grandchildren, and, at seventy-seven, after Richard’s death, retook Anjou and Maine and arranged the truce in which the French king acknowledged John king of England.

215
Besieged in a . . . :
Quoted in Walker,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
234.

216
If the church fathers . . . :
Quoted in Weir,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
354. For more on the myths she inspired, see D. D. R. Owen,
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend
(Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1993).

216
According to the smears . . . :
Quoted in Pernoud,
Eleanor of Aquitaine,
266.

216
The Evita anomaly . . . :
Pamela Druckerman, “Eva Perón Clone: Cecilia Bolocco Has Argentina Clucking,”
Wall Street Journal,
August 3, 2001, A8. J. M. Taylor includes a survey of the theories and an explanation of his own for her anomalous rise to power in this male supremacist country in
Eva Perón: The Myths of a Woman
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).

217
She escaped into . . . :
There’s no record of Augustin Magaldi’s visiting her hometown at the time, and he always traveled with his wife.

217
In a piece . . . :
Quoted in Alma Guillermoprieto, “Little Eva,”
New Yorker
(December 2, 1996), 98, and Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro,
Eva Perón
(New York: Norton, 1980), 25.

217
While Perón looked . . . :
The extent of her participation in this is a matter of dispute. Three union leaders claim none, while another populist spokesman insists a great deal. See Alicia Dujovne Ortíz,
Eva Perón,
trans. Shawn Fields (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 125. Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Naverro, on the other hand, argue that she masterminded the October 17 march.

217
He ended his . . . :
Quoted in John Barnes,
Evita First Lady
(New York: Grove Press, 1978), 100.

218
“The poor,” she . . . :
Quoted in Guillermoprieto, “Little Eva,” 102.

218
Touring the country . . . :
Quoted in Fraser and Navarro,
Eva Perón,
111.

218
In the purple prose . . . :
Quoted in Guillermoprieto, “Little Eva,” 103, and quoted in Barnes,
Evita First Lady,
110.

218
She chanted the . . . :
Quoted in Barnes,
First Lady,
110. Barnes translates this: “I have dedicated myself fantastically to Perón,” 110.

218
She had a sting . . . :
Quoted in Meador,
Inanna,
123.

219
“Women have the . . .”:
Quoted in Barnes,
First Lady,
88.

219
Diagnosed with cervical . . . :
Certain strains of genital human papilloma virus are associated with carcinoma of the cervix. It’s highly likely that she contacted it sexually from him especially since his first wife died of the same disease.

219
But the transplant . . . :
Quoted in Barnes,
First Lady,
179. This term of endearment means something like “dark, oriental one.” My thanks to Dr. Gabriela Shaw, New York City psychologist and Argentinean, for this insight.

219
In the end . . . :
Quoted ibid., 137.

220
These hellcat
Machtweiber . . . :
Allen,
Femme Fatale,
196.

220
With an entrenched . . . :
Quoted in Patai,
Hebrew Goddess,
242.

220
The leading ladies . . . :
Quoted in Barbara Goldsmith,
Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), 294, and Lois Beachy Underhill,
The Woman Who Ran for President
(Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Bridgeworks Publishing, 1995), 201 and 241.

221
As Henry James . . . :
Henry James,
The Siege of London: The Novels and Tales of Henry James
(New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1936 [1908]), 148.

222
She was fifteen . . . :
Underhill,
Woman Who Ran for President,
15.

222
Laying her hands . . . :
Ishbel Ross,
Charmers and Cranks
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 117, and Underhill,
Woman Who Ran for President,
34.

222
Unfazed by the . . . :
Victoria Woodhull, “Tried as by Fire,”
The Victoria Woodhull Reader,
ed. Madeleine B. Stern (Weston, Mass.: M & S Press, 1974), 25.

222
He gave them . . . :
Quoted in Mary Gabriel,
Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull Uncensored
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1998), 42. In 1870 women were not permitted on the trading floor, another prohibition Victoria gleefully broke, striding “officially and very publicly” onto this male preserve on Wall Street, 41.

223
A reporter spotted . . . :
Quoted in Underhill,
Woman Who Ran for President,
56.

223
With Lilith’s “smooth” . . . :
Quoted in Patai,
Hebrew Goddess,
222.

223
Feminists and small-town . . . :
Woodhull, “Tried as by Fire,” 37 and 39.

223
If that led women . . . :
Victoria Woodhull, “A Speech on the Principles of Social Freedom,”
Victoria Woodhull Reader,
23.

223
On a typical evening . . . :
Quoted in Underhill,
Woman Who Ran for President,
256.

224
Victoria divorced Blood . . . :
Quoted ibid., 273.

224
She caught the eye . . . :
Quoted ibid., 280.

224
“The truth is” . . . :
Quoted ibid., 294.

224
“Those weeds have . . . :
Quoted ibid., 306.

224
“Woman,” she said . . . :
Quoted in “Which Is to Blame,”
Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings,
ed. Miriam Schneir (New York: Vintage, 1972), 149.

224
She was her . . . :
Patai,
Hebrew Goddess,
222.

225
While Victoria identified . . . :
Gloria Steinem, foreword, Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.,
Goddesses in Everywoman
(New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1984), xi.

225
Of the two . . . :
Carolyn G. Heilbrun,
The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem
(New York: Dial Press, 1995), xix. As Margaret Hennig and Anne Jardim demonstrate in their study of female superachievers and leaders, this daughter-father bond is unusually common and formative. See
The Managerial Woman
(New York: Pocket Books, 1976), 99-117.

225
Thanks to this . . . :
Quoted in “Gloria Steinem: Ms. America,” A&E Biography, ABC News Production, 1995.

226
Her mother, too deranged . . . :
Quoted ibid.

226
Hell-bent on “not . . .”:
Quoted in Heilbrun,
Education,
27.

226
In her senior year . . . :
Quoted in Sydney Ladensohn Stern,
Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique
(Secaucus, N.J.: Birch Lane Press Book, 1997), 81.

226
Model pretty with . . . :
Quoted in A&E Biography.

226
Benton said she . . . :
Quoted in Heilbrun,
Education of a Woman,
94, 115, and 116; Stern,
Gloria,
325; and Heilbrun, 111.

227
By her own . . . :
Quoted in Cynthia Gorney, “Gloria: At 61, Steinem Wants Straight Talk, More Fun, and a New Congress,”
Motherjones.com/motherjones
, 1995.

227
One New Yorker . . . :
Quoted in Heilbrun,
Education of a Woman,
121.

227
She wrote exposés . . . :
Quoted ibid., 170.

227
The barbed sound bites . . . :
Quoted, A&E Biography.

227
Throughout the round-the-clock . . . :
Stern,
Gloria Steinem,
181.

228
She pooh-poohed her . . . :
Quoted in Leslie Bennetts, “Deconstructing Gloria,”
Vanity Fair
(January 1992), 138.

228
As one critic observed . . . :
Quoted ibid., 140.

228
She’s still in battle . . . :
Robin Finn, “Single No More and Still Wedded to the Cause,”
New York Times,
May 23, 2001, B2.

229
She may wind up . . . :
Gloria Steinem, “Doing Sixty,”
Moving Beyond Words
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 281.

229
“Dear Goddess,” she . . . :
Ibid., 280.

229
As Jacqueline Kennedy . . . :
Quoted in Stern,
Gloria Steinem,
184.

229
Most women who . . . :
See Millan’s summary and evaluation,
Monstrous Regiment,
257-60.

231
In her comprehensive . . . :
Ibid., 259.

231
Stateswomen, said the . . . :
See Brantôme,
Fair and Gallant Ladies,
268-305. Courtier and connoisseur, Brantôme wrote his Fifth Discourse in erotic praise of female leaders, rulers, and warriors. One of the interlocutors of Castiglione’s
Book of the Courtier
also speaks well of them. “Don’t you believe,” he says, “that many women would be found who would now how to govern cities and armies as well as men do?,” 212.

231
Under the czarina’s . . . :
Bly and Woodman,
Maiden King.

231
Freud thought great . . . :
Becker,
Denial of Death,
135.

234
The mythic first . . . :
Baring and Cashford,
The Myth of the Goddess,
66.

234
The gods “ben[t] . . . :
Meador,
Inanna,
17.

234
As recent studies . . . :
See David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton,
The Myth of Monogamy
(New York: W. H. Freeman & Co., 2001); Hrdy,
Woman that Never Evolved;
Fisher,
First Sex;
and Angier,
Woman,
68, for a summary of this revised view of female sexuality.

235
When she cruised . . . :
Quoted in Frymer-Kensky,
Wake of the Goddesses,
28.

236
The scarlet wretches . . . :
Carla Casagrande, “The Protected Woman,”
The Silence of the Middle Ages: A History of Women in the West,
ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 85.

236
At the height . . . :
This saint was “eyed with disapproval and suspicion” in Agnès’s day. “Because she was free and her own mistress (
sui domina et libera
),” she exerted a “bad influence over other women.” See Casagrande’s discussion, “Protected Woman,” 90-91.

236
At this lively . . . :
Jehanne d’Orliac,
The Lady of Beauty: Agnès Sorel,
trans. M. C. Darnton (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1931), 23.

236
“Her speech,” said . . . :
Quoted ibid., 61.

236
With her “laughing moods” . . . :
M. Capefigue,
A King’s Mistress or Charles VII and Agnès Sorel and Chivalry in the XV Century,
trans. Edmund Goldsmid (Edinburgh: privately printed, 1887), 94 and 44.

237
When Charles VII . . . :
D’Orliac,
Lady of Beauty,
34.

237
He suffered fits . . . :
Ibid., 43.

237
Agnès, though, saw . . . :
Ibid., 47.

237
She forbade him . . . :
Wismes,
Great Royal Favorites,
1.

237
She told him . . . :
Brantôme,
Fair and Gallant Ladies,
256.

237
As soon as she became . . . :
Casagrande, “Protected Woman,” 100 and 101.

237
At her insistence . . . :
Quoted in Wismes,
Great Royal Favorites,
2.

237
Two other brilliant . . . :
Quoted in d’Orliac,
Lady of Beauty,
125.

237
With Étienne, Agnès . . . :
Ibid., 164.

237
Agnes created the . . . :
Quoted in Wismes, 1.