“How stupid some women must be … to let themselves be dictate to, and denied, and bullied, and worried by their husbands. Nothing is so easy to manage as a man, if you only begin in the right way with him. All depends on how you begin; it is just like a horse; if you do not make him feel that you are his superior at once, he will take advantage of you for ever.” (Princess Nadine Napraxine in Princess Napraxine, p.334)
“Princess Napraxine is the story of a tragic erotic triangle, indebted to Choderlos De Laclos’s Les Liasons Dangereuses” (Talia Schaffer, ‘The Dandy in the House: Princess Napraxine’, in The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late Victorian England, p.140).
In Princess Napraxine Otho Othmar, the vastly wealthy male protagonist, is obsessed with Princess Napraxine, erudite and cynical aesthete who fascinates and inspires strong emotions in those around her, while scorning such emotion herself. “When she laughs at Othar’s passion, Othmar marries a penniless, convent-educated girl named Yseulte de Valogne, for whom he feels a paternal affection… But Princess Napraxine is stung by his marriage. She realizes that she has miscalculated Othmar’s emotions; what was supposed to be a salutary check had the effect of a deep wound. Her desire to regain control of Othmar’s unpredictable emotions is the closest she can come to love - and so, ironically, Othmar wins Princess Napraxine by marrying Yseulte. At this point Yseulte becomes the Gothic victim of an incomprehensible marital nightmare. Sensing Othmar’s ill-concealed indifference to her, she retreats into speechless melancholia.” (ibid) Yseulte ends up committing suicide, although she organises it to look like an accident. “Othmar marries Princess Napraxine, a marriage built on mutually wilful ignorance of Yseulte’s martyrdom. The marriage seems doomed to failure. Like any Gothic novel, Princess Napraxine has a cruel, seductive villain who tries to capture a passive, attractive, wealthy victim already affianced to a blameless beloved. But the villain is female, and the victim is male.” (ibid).
First published by Chatto & Windus in 3 volumes in 1884.
Some scuffing to boards, spine rather darkened. Extremities, joints, and head and tail of spine worn, with small loss at tale of spine. Internally in good order.
