Lust is a psychological force producing intense desire for something, or circumstance while already having a significant amount of the desired object. Lust can take any form such as the lust for sexuality, money, or power. It can take such mundane forms as the lust for food as distinct from the need for food or lust for redolence, when one is lusting for a particular smell that brings back memories. It is similar to but distinguished from passion, in that passion propels individuals to achieve benevolent goals whilst lust does not.
Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and she is one of the more frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage. She is best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening.
Rati is the Hindu goddess of love, carnal desire, lust, passion, and sexual pleasure. Usually described as the daughter of Prajapati Daksha, Rati is the female counterpart, the chief consort and the assistant of Kama (Kamadeva), the god of love. A constant companion of Kama, she is often depicted with him in legend and temple sculpture. She also enjoys worship along with Kama.
Romance or romantic love is a feeling of love for, or a strong attraction towards another person, and the courtship behaviors undertaken by an individual to express those overall feelings and resultant emotions.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her in his General Prologue. She holds her own among the bickering pilgrims, and evidence in the manuscripts suggests that although she was first assigned a different, plainer tale—perhaps the one told by the Shipman—she received her present tale as her significance increased. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but to confuse matters these are also the names of her 'gossib', whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.
The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. It is one of the earlier American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, generating a mixed reaction from contemporary readers and critics.
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by the British writer Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I, and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham and his seemingly perfect marriage, along with that of his two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique that formed part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. Ford employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect, as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life, specifically “the agonies Ford went through with his wife and his mistress in the six preceding years."
Fatimah Rifaat, better known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat, was an Egyptian author whose controversial short stories are renowned for their depictions of the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and loss in rural Egyptian culture. While taking on such controversial subjects, Fatimah Rifaat's protagonists remained religiously faithful with passive feelings towards their fate. Her stories did not attempt to undermine the patriarchal system; rather they were used to depict the problems inherent in a patriarchal society when men do not adhere to their religious teachings that advocate for the kind treatment of women. Fatimah Rifaat used the pseudonym Alifa to prevent embarrassment on the part of her family due to the themes of her stories and her writing career.
Unfaithful is a 2002 erotic thriller film directed and produced by Adrian Lyne and starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Olivier Martinez, Erik Per Sullivan, Chad Lowe, and Dominic Chianese. It was adapted by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr. from the 1969 French film The Unfaithful Wife by Claude Chabrol. It tells the story of a couple living in the suburbs of New York City whose marriage goes dangerously awry when the wife indulges in an affair with a stranger she encounters by chance.
Interpreter of Maladies is a book collection of nine short stories by American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri published in 1999. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award in the year 2000 and has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. It was also chosen as The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year and is on Oprah Winfrey's Top Ten Book List.
"The Story of an Hour" is a short story written by Kate Chopin on April 19, 1894. It was originally published in Vogue on December 6, 1894, as "The Dream of an Hour". It was later reprinted in St. Louis Life on January 5, 1895, as "The Story of an Hour".
"The Chrysanthemums" is a short story by American writer John Steinbeck. It was first published in 1937 before being included as part of his collection The Long Valley the following year.
Kay Thorpe is a British author of more than 75 romance novels. She published her novels in Mills & Boon since 1968. All her novels have also been published under Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Over a period of four decades, she has produced a body of sensuous work that investigates heritage, family, class and love. Her forte is to encode the opposing reading within the classic Harlequin plot. A synopsis of the author that accompanies her publications notes that she researched the market for romance fiction before electing to write in this category. Her first book published in North America established her reputation as a gifted storyteller. She has a strong vital writing style.
"The Gilded Six-Bits" is a 1933 short story by Zora Neale Hurston, who is considered one of the pre-eminent writers of 20th-century African-American literature and a leading prose writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was a relative newcomer on the literary scene when this short story was published, but eventually had greater success with her highly acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. "The Gilded Six-Bits" is now published in Hurston's compilation of short stories entitled Spunk in which it is now considered one of her best stories. "The Gilded Six-Bits" is a story full of love, betrayal, and forgiveness. It portrays the life of two happy newlyweds who both test their relationship and their love for one another when a charismatic outsider comes into their community and into their home. The story embodies Hurston's typical writing style in which it focuses on the common African-American lifestyle, represented by regional dialect and metaphors, and is set in her native town Eatonville, FL where it reflects the traditions of the community. "The Gilded Six-Bits" symbolizes the meaning of a true marriage and the truth that lies underneath its meaning.
"At the 'Cadian Ball" is an 1892 short story written by American author Kate Chopin. Chopin's later story, "The Storm", is a sequel to this story. A distinctive feature of the short story is the use of local color.
"A Girl's Story" is a short story within Toni Cade Bambara's short story collection, The Seabirds are Still Alive. This collection was originally published in 1977 by Random House. Bambara writes about strong female girls in this particular collection because "in her vision, in her politics, little girls matter". The story centers on a young, African American girl named Rae Ann who is experiencing menstruation for the first time.
"Sweat" is a short story by the American writer Zora Neale Hurston, first published in 1926, in the first and only issue of the African-American literary magazine Fire!!. The story revolves around a washerwoman and her unemployed husband.
"A Pair of Silk Stockings" is an 1897 short story written by Kate Chopin. The story follows Mrs. Sommers who prefers spending a windfall on herself, rather than on her children.
Edythe Mae Gordon was an African-American writer of short stories and poetry during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Gordon primarily published her work in the Quill Club, a Boston-based publication founded by her husband Eugene Gordon and other figures of the Harlem Renaissance such as Helene Johnson and Dorothy West. The most well known example of her work was published after her death, Selected Works of Edythe Mae Gordon, as part of a project to support and reintroduce African-American women writers between 1910 and 1940, written by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jennifer Burton, and Lorraine Elena Roses.
"An Egyptian Cigarette" is a short story written by Kate Chopin, first published in April 1900 in Vogue 15. It is about how the power of a cigarette can lead the narrator to have a disturbing dream in which her lover abandons her.
