![]() ![]() ![]() Where do all their loyalties lie? Olivia can only see her own desire, and this does become a bit tiresome after a while. ![]() There are a few embraces and kissing of hands, but it is more about the emotional state of young Olivia's teenage obsession, and Mademoiselle Julie's comfortable playing off of her students against one another and against Madame Cara, the other headmistress. While this is known as an early lesbian novel, the love is more charged emotionally than physically. Her love for Julie is much stronger and uninhibited than that of her friend Laura, another student who is generous and kind to all, but not at all as histrionic about her loyalties as Olivia. Olivia herself falls hard for one of the headmistresses, Mademoiselle Julie. A shy English girl, she's overwhelmed by the passion and freedom of her new life there.īut she soon begins to understand that it's a hothouse, with emotional connections forming and unforming, jealous taking of sides going on, and multiple loyalties to negotiate. Told as a reminiscence, in the immediate first person, it takes place in a girl's boarding school in France the year that Olivia is 16. This slim novel was the only one that Dorothy Strachey, sister of Lytton Strachey, ever wrote. ![]()
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