Historical perspectives and studies of "the Mistress" as an institution

Here is an interesting (for me) excerpt of a book on "the other woman" . Loved to read it, does anyone else know it?

http://www.amazon.de/Mistress-Histories-Interpretations-Bloomsbury-Paperbacks/dp/0747545847/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306594 658&sr=8-1

"My primary reason for writing this book", explains Victoria Griffin at the beginning of her fascinating study of The Mistress, "is self- examination". Writing as a "mistress", Griffin is keen to focus on the personal, cultural, and historical dimensions of her role: "as long as there is Marriage", she concludes, "there will also be the Mistress". Conjuring up the quasi-mythical dimensions of an arrangement between men and women which, in one form or another, has existed for centuries, Griffin tracks her subject back through the figures of Hera (the wife) and the followers of Aphrodite (the women claimed by love and passion) in order to reconsider the changing role of the mistress in late 20th-century culture. Drawing on the lives of a number of creative, often unconventional, women--amongst others, George Eliot, Rebecca West, Jean Rhys--Griffin complicates the emotional scripts allotted to those who play out the drama of a ménage à trois. As such, she offers a cogent challenge to the conventional image of the mistress as a wife-in-waiting, a woman hoping to displace her lover's family in the name of her own. Passion, and relationships, are more complex than that for this book which explores the act of being a mistress in terms of a different way of living: a refusal, or inability, to conform to social demands, certainly, but also a commitment to a love that resists possession. --Vicky Lebeau -