Word: eliza
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...splendour of her breasts," wrote an early biographer, "made madmen everywhere." He might also have mentioned her energy, ambition, courage, cunning, charm, wit and wardrobe. It took all those things, and plenty of gall besides, to turn Eliza Gilbert into Lola Montez, famous dancer, mistress of Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas père, intimate of kings and prime ministers, de facto ruler of Bavaria during Ludwig I's declining years, and belle of the California gold rush...
Inside the theater, on boards once trod by such creations as Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, a white-robed, rock-age Jesus Christ now strides barefoot. He arrives onstage most phallically, rising like a glittering crocus out of a chalice that somewhat resembles those silvered bowls in which hotels serve grapefruit. He departs crucified on a Daliesque golden triangle that is slowly projected toward the audience by a hidden cherrypicker lift. In Jesus' company come a sweetly sensuous, cheek-kissing Mary Magdalene, a quintet of Jewish high priests who call for a "final solution" to their Jesus problem, and King...
Outlet for Energy. Hermia's altruism is untypical of Compton-Burnett's predatory female dictators. Eliza is more in character: "Autocratic by nature, she had become impossibly so, and had come to find criticism a duty, an outlet for energy." When Hamilton's first letter of proposal to Hermia arrives, Eliza wants to answer it herself. When a second comes, she opens it and attempts to hide it. Like her predecessors in earlier books, Eliza is not only shameless, but awash with grandly rhetorical self-pity: "Years of care, of asking little for myself and accepting less...
...outside. There is absolutely no small talk or incidental detail in Dame Ivy's novels. There are, however, plenty of conversational bromides: the author delighted in characterizing her villains by making them overly fond of banal phrases. "The yoke is not always easy, or the burden light," sighs Eliza...
...Last and the First departs from the author's past works, it is in its relative compassion. Not that Dame Ivy went soft. But she endowed Hermia, a powerful woman, with both a healthy outlook and a promising future. In a way, like Eliza, she was surrendering some of her sovereignty over her people, and a little welcome warmth came...