Mar 03 2008
Danielle Steel’s a concubine!
I struck up a conversation with a fellow swimmer who was holding His Bright Light by Danielle Steel in the locker room. She went on passionately briefing me about the book, then adding that ..“I’m not sure how but he died.. .. bipolar..” (Checking on the Amazon review, he committed suicide.)
“Oh .. .. so young? .. Is this her only child?” thought her daughter was attending a private school in Manhattan.
“Oh, no, she has eight.”
“Eight children?”
“Oh yes, she married four times.”
A lanky white lady not far from us shouted, “concubine!”
I looked at her, thinking concubine is an foreign vocabulary for the average Americans.
“She’s a concubine .. having endless children ..”
Ha, is this the American rendition of concubine? So it’s somewhat an alien lexis after all.Concubine in my perception is a well-kept woman with lower social status and financially dependent. Producing heirs yes, but concubine conjures up alluring and docile more than the daily grind and mundanes. Steel is pretty, but she’s a prolific author and extremely successful, the labeling couldn’t be further from the truth. American brand feminist has a hand here?