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Are sex scandals simply trivial distractions from serious issues or can they help democratize politics? In 1820, George IV's \"royal gambols\" with his mistresses endangered the Old Oak of the constitution. When he tried to divorce Queen Caroline for adultery, the resulting scandal enabled activists to overcome state censorship and revitalize reform. Looking at six major British scandals between 1763 and 1820, this book demonstrates that scandals brought people into politics because they evoked familiar stories of sex and betrayal. In vibrant prose woven with vivid character sketches and illustrations, Anna Clark explains that activists used these stories to illustrate constitutional issues concerning the Crown, Parliament, and public opinion. Clark argues that sex scandals grew out of the tension between aristocratic patronage and efficiency in government. For instance, in 1809 Mary Ann Clarke testified that she took bribes to persuade her royal lover, the army's commander-in-chief, to promote officers, buy government offices, and sway votes. Could women overcome scandals to participate in politics? This book also explains the real reason why the glamorous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, became so controversial for campaigning in a 1784 election. Sex scandal also discredited Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first feminists, after her death. Why do some scandals change politics while others fizzle? Edmund Burke tried to stir up scandal about the British empire in India, but his lurid, sexual language led many to think he was insane. A unique blend of the history of sexuality and women's history with political and constitutional history,Scandalopens a revealing new window onto some of the greatest sex scandals of the past. In doing so, it allows us to more fully appreciate the sometimes shocking ways democracy has become what it is today.

Beijing and New Delhi, as new world emerging powers, despite border skirmishes, have not considered themselves arch-rivals. Still, the necessities of real politics have forced India to take counter-measures towards China’s grand connectivity strategy in the framework of BRI and the Maritime Silk Road. This article assumes that China’s grand connectivity strategy has not targeted India in particular, but unavoidably it has affected India’s strategic interests in the Indian Ocean and Eurasia. In a qualitative and case study methodology, this research explains China’s grand connectivity strategy and how it affects Indian strategic interests. It also elaborates on India’s counter-measures vis-à-vis China policy. It concluded that the Chinese connectivity strategy has affected Indian strategic interests in the Indian Ocean and Eurasia. Therefore, Chabahar, Gwadar ports, and Malacca Strait are centers of gravity in these great connectivity rivalries.

You can't chop an onion the way you used to, or ride a bike without becoming a candidate for traction, but, Nora Ephron says, consider the alternative.

As Charlize Theron handles life after Oscar, Jonathan Van Meter catches up with her in Berlin and finds her in the best shape of her life.

How to plan the perfect big day when the world—and the aisle—is your oyster.

They didn't get their rebel reputations by following the pack. Fashion's favorite bad boys, John Galliano and Jean Paul Gaultier, continue to use cultural references and eclectic inspirations to create collections that defy the trends and, in doing so inevitably start their own.

In an 1867 treatise on diamonds and precious stones, Harry Emanuel writes the following: [I]n the process of cutting, flaws and imperfections are often laid bare, which go much deeper than the appearance of the rough diamond would predict; and, on the other hand, the colour, apparent in the rough stone, is sometimes found to arise from the presence of flaws or specks, which are removed in cutting, thus leaving the stone white. (70) From such a description, it is easy to see the parallel to the female condition, and particularly the female condition, as it is popularly portrayed in the mid-nineteenth century. With the emphasis on purity and hidden flaws, it is not difficult to understand why the diamond could hold such symbolic significance for the female wearer, by functioning as an indicator not only of personal wealth, but of moral worth. Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds (1871), a novel which can be said to revolve around this metaphor, is essentially a novel about worth: absolute vs. transitory worth, actual vs. symbolic worth, and especially monetary vs. moral worth. Lizzie's character, the legal issues surrounding the diamonds, and the convoluted marriage arrangements which are perpetuated by or affected by the presence of the diamonds are all, in one way or another, concerned with the different types of value – moral, symbolic, monetary, etc. – placed upon commodity objects: objects which, by their very nature, can never be permanently owned, as their value lies in their exchangeability. I will return later to a discussion of the diamonds themselves. There has been considerable recent commentary on the role of commodities – whatever their worth – and of commodity culture within Trollope's novel; such readings, however, concentrate on the purely symbolic role played by commodity objects – and primarily the diamonds – in the novel; it is worth, by contrast, examining how Trollope utilizes the discourses and associations of actual commodity objects as he deploys them within his fictional world. This paper will examine the ways in which Trollope uses four commodity objects in particular – books of poetry, hunting horses, the safe box, and finally, the Eustace diamonds themselves – and the contemporary discourses surrounding them to defend the essentially mercenary character of Lizzie as a woman shaped by the demands that a commodity-driven society places upon her.

Katherine Dunagan Osborne, \"Inherited Emotions: George Eliot and the Politics of Heirlooms\" (pp. 465–493) This essay removes George Eliot's heroines from heterosexual dyads to focus on the roles that things play in women's autonomous moral and sexual development. Because Eliot's female protagonists can adapt heirlooms for their own private and emotional purposes, they can replace traditional inheritance based on bloodlines with a non-familial, emotional inheritance, thus illustrating the subtlety of Eliot's family and gender politics. This reading of Eliot contextualizes specific heirlooms inMiddlemarch(1871–72) andDaniel Deronda(1876)—including miniature portraits, emeralds, turquoises, and diamonds—to reveal the surprising politics embedded in Eliot's heirlooms that her nineteenth-century readers would certainly have recognized.