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Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 8:58:51 AM

Tantriqu

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Does anyone have any good lit. to recommend with a strong, smart, dommely heroine as the main character, with a happyish ending and great sex, i.e., no rape or suicide? Vanilla or non-, just well-written and not a sexuall ysubmissive heroine [bad taste from all the 50 Shades press: eurgh]. Received no suggestions on the 'Mistress' threads.

Think Ripley from Aliens or Elizabeth Bennett, or Scarlett O'Hara or Anna Karenina if they got great jobs, or Lady de Winter or Nurse Ratchet if they were on the side of good, or Betsy Trotwood or Miss Haversham if they got laid.
There's Lady Sibyl by Pratchett and Murphy in the Dresden books, but they're minor characters.

PS: For extra points, whose adventures don't end when they marry, like Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables, Jo March, etc.

Thanks!

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 9:03:53 AM

OsideGirl

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I have to tell ya that I don't view Scarlett O'Hara or Lady de Winter as dominant. They were conniving, manipulative and exceedingly self centered. They are the definition of domineering, not dominant.

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 9:47:46 AM

IncredibleHulk

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Ahoy book nerds!

This is my first forum post, so I hope I'm not committing any faux pas here.

Alas, Tantriqu, I can only think of a few in which sexual slavery are featured at all.

Anne Rice wrote the "Sleeping Beauty" series under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaire. Beauty is the main character, and a sub through-and-through, but there are dominant women and male slaves in the series.

I hope this was helpful at all, I'm kind of new to the scene.

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 12:04:33 PM

Winterapple

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FR
I'll put on my thinking cap and try to come
up with something.

Scarlett for all her flaws including selfishness
was a alpha female. She delivered Melly's
baby, saved Tara and built a successful
business in the Reconstruction era south.
The strong can't always be completely
virtuous when stuff needs to get done.
Melanie the Saintly appreciated Scarlett's
efforts and loved admired her.

Lady de Winter was apparently psychotic
but she probably is the dream Domme
of some people. She certainly had the
lesbian housekeeper in her thrall.

There's always that nasty piece of work
Rebecca Sharpe from Vanity Fair.
Thackery turned her into a villianess
for the most part but modern female
readers often have some sympathy for
her plight.

_____________________________

A thousand dreams within me softly burn.
Rimbaud

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 12:12:12 PM

Moonhead

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How about Ayesha in H Rider Haggard's She?
There's also Fu Manchu's daughter and Sumuru in Sax Rohmer's work.
I'd also suggest Hans Christian Andersson's Snow Queen and the witch in The Little Mermaid, but everybody knows those two stories already, I'd hope.

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 12:47:01 PM

OsideGirl

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Winterapple

FR
I'll put on my thinking cap and try to come
up with something.

Scarlett for all her flaws including selfishness
was a alpha female. She delivered Melly's
baby, saved Tara and built a successful
business in the Reconstruction era south.
The strong can't always be completely
virtuous when stuff needs to get done.

She was un-virtuous before things needed to get done.

_____________________________

Give a girl the right shoes and she will conquer the world. ~ Marilyn Monroe

The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 1:13:59 PM

Winterapple

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Absolutely. The book follows Scarlett from a sixteen year old
to a woman in her thirties. She's a spoiled selfish little
bitch. But her life up to that point has been
pretty cushy. As the story progresses she's
still pretty much a bitch to varying degrees.
But she's also brave, strong and clever.
At the books end she has only begun to show
anything resembling self knowledge.
As a heroine of a novel I think she's
pretty interesting character study.
A good example of how a person with
many flaws and shortcomings can still
have admirable qualities and do good
things.
Scarlett is a survivor and her resolve
and determination to keep going gives
her a inspirational aspect for me.
She's a bad girl in many ways but not
entirely. Strong in some ways, weak in
others.

_____________________________

A thousand dreams within me softly burn.
Rimbaud

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 3:16:05 PM

Tantriqu

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Wow, as we can see, strong women are most frequently portrayed in the negative or minor roles.
Just imagine if the characters I named were written from a positive perspective, like Scarlett as an adventure heroine instead of a spoilt narcissist, de Winter as a spy for the revolution, Anna Karenina or Mme Bovary if they had civilised divorces and good jobs. And I can't get through books with sub [hah!] plots like the Rice books or 50 Shades to get to any 'good' parts; it's the antithesis of aphrodisiac. And I thought 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' [of my personal favourite job title ;-)] was the anti-heroine of a jealous powerful women who has to die to quell Victorian male fears.

Looks like it's tough to find a dommely heroine in the age before women could be employed without witchburnings, scandals, whoring, rapes or lez jokes; you know, the year 2000 ;-)

Thanks! Keep 'em comin'.

_____________________________

"Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open." - Agnes de Mille

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 4:04:27 PM

TheBanshee

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Scarlett I feel is often judged harshly -

Case in point. After the war, in the lumber business Scarlett and Ashley were reminiscing about the way things used to be and for a moment embraced each other (and that is all they did). The two biddies who walked in on them made sure everyone found out. Later we see everyone singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" and Scarlett is the tramp - the "Scarlett woman". Why wasn't Ashley judged?

Although, what she really saw in Ashley is beyond me. I'd take Clark Gable any day.

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 5:43:05 PM

MercTech

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Now if you want a true switch with dominant leanings... Anita Blake. Kick ass heroine.

If you want some more mainstream scifi stories written by a dominant, look for John Ringo books.

Scarlett O'Hara and Milady DeWinter rather epitomize "passive aggressive manipulative" don't they?

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 6:00:06 PM

CRYPTICLXVI

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Andrew Vachss "Burke" series... a lot of strong female characters. The topics and writing is quite graphic, not "erotic" in the least, much more sexually gritty. Still they dealt with "family", strength, et al and I found them quite entertaining. Met the author a couple of times, a very intense man.

The series by Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth is definitely a dark, powerful and interesting character.

George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" series has several very powerful female characters, some "good", some "bad" mostly grey in moral tone... my favorite is the young girl Arya.

There is also Karrin Murphy in Jim Butcher's series "The Dresden Files", light reading but she is definitely also a strong female lead.

This is all I thought of just sitting at the puter...

Cryptic

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 6:04:16 PM

Winterapple

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You meant Lady de Winter from The Three Muskateers.
I thought you meant Rebecca de Winter
Max's dead wife in Rebecca.
And The Three Muskateers is one of my
favorite books. I think Lady de Winter is
a fascinating character. When you go back
to early novels especially one written by
men you're going to get black and white
female characters. The bad girls are
usually more interesting and modern
readers seem them as more complex
than early readers did. Personally I
don't like to good to be true heroines
who never think a bad thought or do
a bad deed. Dicken's heroines for the
most part are treacly Victorian nightmares.
His friend Wilkie Collins wrote far more
interesting women characters. They were
villains for the most part to Victorian
readers because they weren't angels.
They had pasts and did some wicked
things. But when read them now we have
sympathy for them because they were
living in a very repressed society.

Scarlett wasn't wholly selfish, she
saved the day more than once and
had a lot of people on her tit that
depended on her.

_____________________________

A thousand dreams within me softly burn.
Rimbaud

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 6:12:33 PM

Winterapple

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Scarlett and Lady DeWinter were women of their eras.
Women didn't run around kickboxing in those days
and neither of them encountered vampires.

Another controversial heroine is Amber
in the historical novel Forever Amber
a huge bestseller in it's day that's had
a bit of a revival. She works her way to
the top on her back and becomes one
of Charles II's mistresses. A girls gotta
a do what a girls gotta do sometimes.

_____________________________

A thousand dreams within me softly burn.
Rimbaud

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 6:23:50 PM

Tantriqu

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Thanks, Cryptic, I hadn't heard of Burke before.

I didn't like Larsson's style at all, and the Tattoo series is a 'HELL no' 'cuz of the rape factor. Ditto with GRRMartin. I'd tried Gabaldson who is supposed to be good, but couldn't finish 'Voyager'. And don't get me started on Atwood

.

I'd mentioned Murphy, but she's relatively minor, and would LOVE to find a series with someone like her or Lady Sibyl as unraped dommely heroines; seems I have to find them in sci-fi or fantasy, rather than contemporary fiction. Le sigh!

Thanks, folks!

_____________________________

"Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open." - Agnes de Mille

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 6:26:30 PM

LadyHibiscus

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Smilla, in Smilla's Sense of Snow, though there's not lots of sex in it... Elliza in the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. Nell from Diamond Age, too, same author.

This is a tough question considering the parameters! Most stories have to end somewhere, right?

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 6:55:02 PM

cloudboy

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I'm a big fan of Miss Kenton from Remains of the Day, but this would not qualify as happy ending book.

In science fiction, there is always Lady Jessica from Dune, but she's not the most central character to the book.

I always like Sabina from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but she was a liberated, artistic, non possessive Mistress type.

Karen Blixon, the narrator of Out of Africa, is a liberated woman who lived a life of adventure, risk, principle, and hardship.

In pop fiction, Lisbeth Salander captured the world's imagination.

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/6/2012 7:02:15 PM

CRYPTICLXVI

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Tantriqu

Thanks, Cryptic, I hadn't heard of Burke before.

I didn't like Larsson's style at all, and the Tattoo series is a 'HELL no' 'cuz of the rape factor. Ditto with GRRMartin. I'd tried Gabaldson who is supposed to be good, but couldn't finish 'Voyager'. And don't get me started on Atwood .

I'd mentioned Murphy, but she's relatively minor, and would LOVE to find a series with someone like her or Lady Sibyl as unraped dommely heroines; seems I have to find them in sci-fi or fantasy, rather than contemporary fiction. Le sigh!

Thanks, folks!

Okay, if you didn't like the rape factor, then approach Vachhs' books with caution, he is a child advocacy attorney and his novels are very hardcore as far as topic matter. He doesn't have any graphic sex that I recall but it deals with shit that most people would rather not look at. Still, his female characters are some of the strongest that I have ever read. Also, the main character's (Burke) hatred for any form of sexual predator is pretty intense and the novels get extremely violent. Though again not particularly graphic. Also, he has the best representation of a dog as a secondary character that I have ever seen...

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/7/2012 11:06:06 AM

Moonhead

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Has anybody even heard of Haggard's novel (Ursula Andress was in the film ersion Hammer did in the '60s) or am I wasting my time in this thread?

Vacch's is great but his strongest female character (in Hard Candy) actually deserves what happens to her at the end, so I'm a bit dubious of applying domliness to her, even if she is somebody who does terrible things to men who (mostly) deserve it...

_____________________________

I like to think he was eaten by rats, in the dark, during a fog. It's what he would have wanted...
(Simon R Green on the late James Herbert)

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/7/2012 1:51:19 PM

angelikaJ

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How about Isadora Zelda White Stollerman Wing and the "zipless fuck" that The Fear of Flying introduced us to?

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RE: Great Dommely book recommendation? - 8/7/2012 1:55:38 PM

Moonhead

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I much prefer Louisa Alther's Kinflick's to Erica "bury me in a Y shaped coffin" Jong's schmutter of the same vintage, if I'm honest. I didn't want to punch any of her characters, unlike Isadora Too Many Names...

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I like to think he was eaten by rats, in the dark, during a fog. It's what he would have wanted...
(Simon R Green on the late James Herbert)

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