"For example, consider the decline of that once popular character: the adventuress, such as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, or the real-life Lola Montez."
Wallis Simpson or Pamela Harriman are best forgotten."
If you are wondering, an “adventuress” would be the main female character of a story primarily aimed at women"
Steve.
In 2025 (actually for most of 21st century) the Adventuress is very much around in entertainment. Perhaps downmarket but it is there.
KIM KARDASHIAN. (and by extension, her one time good friend Paris Hilton)
The woman more than amply qualifies: Came from a major moneyed family, and via her exploits (adventures) in the mass media, has successfully become a billionaire (as well as her younger sisters, Kylie and Kendal). And throughout the (Western) World, her exploits for several years have attracted great interest. Oh, perhaps not so much in the high end NYT, WaPo, NY Magazine, New Yorker, but in the mass market (where quite a bit of the real money is made these days) there remains a growing interest in her as well as her family. A billionaire with over or close to a billion total social media followers? One of THE most followed adventuresses of this century? If these count as base level followings, then Kim K most definitely qualifies as an adventuress.
I see no difference to "sanitized" historical adventuresses who also thotted and whored their way along life (e.g. having adventures, since sex is one of the main prerequisites to being an adventuress. After all is there really such a thing as a chaste, virginal adventuress?)
Kim Kardashian would be the Jay Gatzby adventuress who went mainstream pop culture to achieve riches, success, and fame. Like it or not, decades from now, Kim K will be remembered and recalled, and ultimately, considered an adventuress in the 21st sense of the world, as she appealed to the masses at large.
And unlike entertainment attempting to tell her story, she and her family has controlled access to them...by turning the tables and bearing it (most of it) all out there for the public to view in the mass market.
In the coming years, when people define the word "Reality" TV, one of the names that people will point to is adventuress Kim K.
In point of fact, one can state that the aptly, yet ironically named, Keeping up with the Kardashians remains one of the most successful TV shows of the 21st century, world wide, or at least in the Western World. And all based on her and her families exploits, or adventures.
Kim K. The 21st century's pop culture's relatable to the masses adventuresses (and she has the billions to qualify on that level as well).
The point of Steve's post was the decline of the adventuress, which no one ever claimed was pure as snow, chaste in morals, upstanding in character, and above all else, came from a fortune that was made 100% ethically and virtuous.
Maybe, but I think part of the point of the adventuress is that she doesn't have money or power but wants them both very badly. Like Scarlett O'Hara, she may come from an upper-class background, so that she knows her way around the top drawer; but any money her family had is now gone [with the the wind], and she has to make her way in the world with her wits, beauty and body, but mostly her wits.
It's that last point - being smart and exceptionally skilled at using her assets - that sets the adventuress apart from a mere gold-digger.
"but any money her family had is now gone [with the the wind],"
Kim's father divorced Kim when she was quite young, he moved on. Growing up with stepfather Bruce Jenner wasn't the mega millions that lie in the future, so in that sense it's the same thing.
"and she has to make her way in the world with her wits, beauty and body, but mostly her wits."
Life imitating art. Only with wits could someone like Kim have started with a little bit and turned it into a vast billion dollar fortune where her fame is worldwide.
"It's that last point - being smart and exceptionally skilled at using her assets"
And once again, Kim has proven that she's exceptionally skilled to have done both.
The thing is, when an actual real life flesh and blood breathing example, and not the stuff of romance novels or classic hollywood (or a somewhat sanitized version of adventuresses decades past), when an actual example is produced in 2025, perhaps some don't like what they see, because the truth is too difficult to deal with.
Kim is more honest about what she is, and how she made her money. She is explicit, in your face. And in her case, it has worked and paid off big time. She is what the lower classes idolize; with her clannish brood having achieved fame as well as fortune, one could aptly make comparisons to a family that also was considered royalty during the 20th century--the Kennedys. Unlike the Kennedy's, the Kardashians do appear to have more economic staying power. It remains to be seen whether or not Kim (or another of her relatives) will express a desire to go into politics.
Money earned via her assets, check. Brains to have built an empire where she's known worldwide, check. Has traveled to the four corners of the world, having had her life chronicled over the past decades going on a full generation now, check.
Ergo...
Kim Kardashian = 21st century's premier adventuress.
Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton married Frank Kennedy, her younger sister's suitor, just to get her part of the money he was making in the post-Civil War lumbering trade. Kennedy died on a KKK raid and Scarlett married wealthy Rhett Butler.
I've always been interested in the fabulous career of Doctor Faust, the former president of Harvard. She launched her titanic academic career by divorcing her husband when a grad student and marrying her department chairman. But nobody seemed too interested in finding out more about that.
I suspect so as well (without evidence! as the NYT would add). Joe always lied and said the truck driver was drunk, which was a scurrilous calumny against an innocent man. Neilia Biden barreled past a stop sign and into an intersection and was killed. What was on her mind?
From Neil's Wikipedia entry: At the intersection with Delaware Route 7 (Limestone Road), their vehicle pulled out in front of a tractor-trailer truck traveling north along Route 7 and was struck by it. Police determined that Neilia had driven into the path of the tractor-trailer.
Susan Hayward woudda made a much better Scarlett. She was American. And she loved the South. Susan Hayward is buried in Carrollton, Georgia, the old heart of southern plantation aristocracy. https://yandex.com/images/search?text=susan%20hayward
Haywood was a good actress and was certainly very attractive, but she wasn't as spectacularly beautiful as Leigh, one of the most beautiful women who ever graced the screen.
Come to think of it, that may be a point in Hayward's favor since the first line of the novel is, if memory serves, "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms, as the Tarleton twins were."
And Melanie Wilkes on the page is presented as rather homely, but Olivia de Havilland was beautiful. Leslie Howard was decades too old for the role of Ashley Wilkes. Clark Gable did somewhat resemble the book's description of Rhett Butler.
Still, despite the casting, it's hard to imagine any of these characters played by anyone else, so completely did they make the roles their own.
In 100% of novel to film transitions, the heroine is getting much more beautiful. The reason is - if you are reading the novel, you don't need declaration of beauty to desire the heroine. However, if you see a film and the heroine is NOT strikingly beautiful, you will ask, why on earth did the hero fall in love with her?
Case in point: Hermione Granger in JK Rowling's Harry Potter. In the book she is not described as beautiful, what with her huge frontal teeth. In film, she's beauty.
> males lose interest in reading stories about other guys, when they could be the hero of their own shoot-em-up video games.
I don't think this is the reason. Warhammer slop novels still sell. I had video games growing up but would take a break to read about slaying dragons, with occasional dips into Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy
They just don't give guys publishing contracts and promote the books. The bookish man still exists, he just reads classics instead of modern novels.
True. Publishing is a world of women at the lower levels. Imagine your manly manuscript getting past the recently graduated women's-studies major in charge of sifting through the slush pile.
Going way, way, way back, you might say that Eleanor of Aquitaine was adventuress. Married King Louis VII of France, had the marriage annulled, and married Henry Plantagenet of Anjou who became King Henry II of England shortly thereafter.
Remember the incident where Wendi jumped up in a courtroom to protect poor feeble Rupert?
It’s curious how the same woman calculated the plusses and minuses of standing by her man and said “so long” after two children and more than a decade. Perhaps she’s surprised at how long Rupert has remained vertical. Maybe the pre-nup had an expiration date?
Does Karen Read qualify? That’s the Boston girl who got blind drunk and ran over and killed her cop boyfriend. Of course, she became a folk hero and was acquitted because we live in a low IQ country where people are desperately believe conspiracies.
Congratulations to Robert De Niro for managing to find the plainest Chinese adventuress in the whole world. There's a Gayle King interview of Tiffany Chen where she has to explain her grim, stony face. Gayle helpfully takes the baby from Chen's awkward hold at one point and the next cut they've had to call in the nanny.
Al Pacino did a lot better in the adventuress department but apparently just signs the child support checks at this point. A 54-year age gap is pretty challenging.
Anthony Bourdain really got tangled up with the wrong adventuress.
Edward Norton has to feel bad occasionally about being the bottom rung on Salma Hayek's ascent. On the other hand he gets to reminisce about having sex with Salma Hayek.
Come to think of it, the preceding three would not be classical adventuresses as they came from high socio-economic status.
Meghan Markle is final boss-tier adventuress.
Princess Kate might be accused of being an adventures; she's as bourgie as bourgie can be but has a truly regal bearing. I pray to God she truly beat her cancer and survives to monarchy.
When you're saying that Ed Norton was the bottom rung of Selma Hayek's ascent, you're saying that he had her at her youngest and hottest. Nothing to pity him for!
Seems to me I encounter adventuresses all the time.
Are you a hopelessly naive bachelor of independent means?
There was a time when I might have been described that way, and oddly enough I did encounter Wendi Deng back then.
"For example, consider the decline of that once popular character: the adventuress, such as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, or the real-life Lola Montez."
Wallis Simpson or Pamela Harriman are best forgotten."
If you are wondering, an “adventuress” would be the main female character of a story primarily aimed at women"
Steve.
In 2025 (actually for most of 21st century) the Adventuress is very much around in entertainment. Perhaps downmarket but it is there.
KIM KARDASHIAN. (and by extension, her one time good friend Paris Hilton)
The woman more than amply qualifies: Came from a major moneyed family, and via her exploits (adventures) in the mass media, has successfully become a billionaire (as well as her younger sisters, Kylie and Kendal). And throughout the (Western) World, her exploits for several years have attracted great interest. Oh, perhaps not so much in the high end NYT, WaPo, NY Magazine, New Yorker, but in the mass market (where quite a bit of the real money is made these days) there remains a growing interest in her as well as her family. A billionaire with over or close to a billion total social media followers? One of THE most followed adventuresses of this century? If these count as base level followings, then Kim K most definitely qualifies as an adventuress.
I see no difference to "sanitized" historical adventuresses who also thotted and whored their way along life (e.g. having adventures, since sex is one of the main prerequisites to being an adventuress. After all is there really such a thing as a chaste, virginal adventuress?)
Kim Kardashian would be the Jay Gatzby adventuress who went mainstream pop culture to achieve riches, success, and fame. Like it or not, decades from now, Kim K will be remembered and recalled, and ultimately, considered an adventuress in the 21st sense of the world, as she appealed to the masses at large.
And unlike entertainment attempting to tell her story, she and her family has controlled access to them...by turning the tables and bearing it (most of it) all out there for the public to view in the mass market.
In the coming years, when people define the word "Reality" TV, one of the names that people will point to is adventuress Kim K.
In point of fact, one can state that the aptly, yet ironically named, Keeping up with the Kardashians remains one of the most successful TV shows of the 21st century, world wide, or at least in the Western World. And all based on her and her families exploits, or adventures.
Kim K. The 21st century's pop culture's relatable to the masses adventuresses (and she has the billions to qualify on that level as well).
Where exactly does the legendary Kartrashian money come from? Cable TV shows aren't that lucrative. Nor is endorsing products.
The point of Steve's post was the decline of the adventuress, which no one ever claimed was pure as snow, chaste in morals, upstanding in character, and above all else, came from a fortune that was made 100% ethically and virtuous.
Kardashian = 21st Century Adventuress.
Maybe, but I think part of the point of the adventuress is that she doesn't have money or power but wants them both very badly. Like Scarlett O'Hara, she may come from an upper-class background, so that she knows her way around the top drawer; but any money her family had is now gone [with the the wind], and she has to make her way in the world with her wits, beauty and body, but mostly her wits.
It's that last point - being smart and exceptionally skilled at using her assets - that sets the adventuress apart from a mere gold-digger.
"but any money her family had is now gone [with the the wind],"
Kim's father divorced Kim when she was quite young, he moved on. Growing up with stepfather Bruce Jenner wasn't the mega millions that lie in the future, so in that sense it's the same thing.
"and she has to make her way in the world with her wits, beauty and body, but mostly her wits."
Life imitating art. Only with wits could someone like Kim have started with a little bit and turned it into a vast billion dollar fortune where her fame is worldwide.
"It's that last point - being smart and exceptionally skilled at using her assets"
And once again, Kim has proven that she's exceptionally skilled to have done both.
The thing is, when an actual real life flesh and blood breathing example, and not the stuff of romance novels or classic hollywood (or a somewhat sanitized version of adventuresses decades past), when an actual example is produced in 2025, perhaps some don't like what they see, because the truth is too difficult to deal with.
Kim is more honest about what she is, and how she made her money. She is explicit, in your face. And in her case, it has worked and paid off big time. She is what the lower classes idolize; with her clannish brood having achieved fame as well as fortune, one could aptly make comparisons to a family that also was considered royalty during the 20th century--the Kennedys. Unlike the Kennedy's, the Kardashians do appear to have more economic staying power. It remains to be seen whether or not Kim (or another of her relatives) will express a desire to go into politics.
Money earned via her assets, check. Brains to have built an empire where she's known worldwide, check. Has traveled to the four corners of the world, having had her life chronicled over the past decades going on a full generation now, check.
Ergo...
Kim Kardashian = 21st century's premier adventuress.
Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton married Frank Kennedy, her younger sister's suitor, just to get her part of the money he was making in the post-Civil War lumbering trade. Kennedy died on a KKK raid and Scarlett married wealthy Rhett Butler.
If you go by the account of her ex-husband, Bill Stevenson, Jill Biden was a bit of an adventuress.
I've always been interested in the fabulous career of Doctor Faust, the former president of Harvard. She launched her titanic academic career by divorcing her husband when a grad student and marrying her department chairman. But nobody seemed too interested in finding out more about that.
That's a nice bit of gossip <3
Doctor Faust will tell you in Necessary Trouble that she was rebelling against gender expectations.
I am pretty sure that she is the reason Biden's first wife drove into an oncoming truck, killing herself and one of her children.
I suspect so as well (without evidence! as the NYT would add). Joe always lied and said the truck driver was drunk, which was a scurrilous calumny against an innocent man. Neilia Biden barreled past a stop sign and into an intersection and was killed. What was on her mind?
I think she may have hit a piece of black ice. I've had that happen twice to me in my life. You're completely powerless.
From Neil's Wikipedia entry: At the intersection with Delaware Route 7 (Limestone Road), their vehicle pulled out in front of a tractor-trailer truck traveling north along Route 7 and was struck by it. Police determined that Neilia had driven into the path of the tractor-trailer.
Poor driving. Very sad. I feel saddest for the baby daughter.
An aside related to the photo of Vivian Leigh.
Susan Hayward woudda made a much better Scarlett. She was American. And she loved the South. Susan Hayward is buried in Carrollton, Georgia, the old heart of southern plantation aristocracy. https://yandex.com/images/search?text=susan%20hayward
Vivien Leigh was born in British India, and might have been a little bit exotic, such as Parsi or Armenian.
Haywood was a good actress and was certainly very attractive, but she wasn't as spectacularly beautiful as Leigh, one of the most beautiful women who ever graced the screen.
Come to think of it, that may be a point in Hayward's favor since the first line of the novel is, if memory serves, "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms, as the Tarleton twins were."
And Melanie Wilkes on the page is presented as rather homely, but Olivia de Havilland was beautiful. Leslie Howard was decades too old for the role of Ashley Wilkes. Clark Gable did somewhat resemble the book's description of Rhett Butler.
Still, despite the casting, it's hard to imagine any of these characters played by anyone else, so completely did they make the roles their own.
Jean Arthur screened for Scarlett. She would have been a fiasco.
In 100% of novel to film transitions, the heroine is getting much more beautiful. The reason is - if you are reading the novel, you don't need declaration of beauty to desire the heroine. However, if you see a film and the heroine is NOT strikingly beautiful, you will ask, why on earth did the hero fall in love with her?
Case in point: Hermione Granger in JK Rowling's Harry Potter. In the book she is not described as beautiful, what with her huge frontal teeth. In film, she's beauty.
Narcissists aren't terribly interesting people, but they do provide lots of things to talk about, as we discovered about our late step-monster.
Adventuress has been replaced by girlboss.
Agreed, but girlbosses are desperately boring in comparison to true adventuresses.
Unless one is into BDSM, males are not particularly desirous of girlbosses.
I'm just waiting for "Hillary and Vince: A Love Story." Kathy Bates could play Hillary.
Ava Gardner as Lady Bret Ashley in "The Sun Also Rises" is quite an adventuress.
Perhaps Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian would qualify?
> males lose interest in reading stories about other guys, when they could be the hero of their own shoot-em-up video games.
I don't think this is the reason. Warhammer slop novels still sell. I had video games growing up but would take a break to read about slaying dragons, with occasional dips into Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy
They just don't give guys publishing contracts and promote the books. The bookish man still exists, he just reads classics instead of modern novels.
True. Publishing is a world of women at the lower levels. Imagine your manly manuscript getting past the recently graduated women's-studies major in charge of sifting through the slush pile.
David Wolf's mom was
There at Murdoch Wendi Wedding
Bezos wife to be.
Going way, way, way back, you might say that Eleanor of Aquitaine was adventuress. Married King Louis VII of France, had the marriage annulled, and married Henry Plantagenet of Anjou who became King Henry II of England shortly thereafter.
Remember the incident where Wendi jumped up in a courtroom to protect poor feeble Rupert?
It’s curious how the same woman calculated the plusses and minuses of standing by her man and said “so long” after two children and more than a decade. Perhaps she’s surprised at how long Rupert has remained vertical. Maybe the pre-nup had an expiration date?
Does Karen Read qualify? That’s the Boston girl who got blind drunk and ran over and killed her cop boyfriend. Of course, she became a folk hero and was acquitted because we live in a low IQ country where people are desperately believe conspiracies.
Congratulations to Robert De Niro for managing to find the plainest Chinese adventuress in the whole world. There's a Gayle King interview of Tiffany Chen where she has to explain her grim, stony face. Gayle helpfully takes the baby from Chen's awkward hold at one point and the next cut they've had to call in the nanny.
Al Pacino did a lot better in the adventuress department but apparently just signs the child support checks at this point. A 54-year age gap is pretty challenging.
Anthony Bourdain really got tangled up with the wrong adventuress.
Edward Norton has to feel bad occasionally about being the bottom rung on Salma Hayek's ascent. On the other hand he gets to reminisce about having sex with Salma Hayek.
Come to think of it, the preceding three would not be classical adventuresses as they came from high socio-economic status.
Meghan Markle is final boss-tier adventuress.
Princess Kate might be accused of being an adventures; she's as bourgie as bourgie can be but has a truly regal bearing. I pray to God she truly beat her cancer and survives to monarchy.
When you're saying that Ed Norton was the bottom rung of Selma Hayek's ascent, you're saying that he had her at her youngest and hottest. Nothing to pity him for!
Ed rocks and will die with a grin on his face.