Based on a book I did not read by author Amanda Foreman, the film is stated to be historically correct. It features actor Ralph Fiennes, as a difficult and demanding Duke who is entitled and sexist and not much interested in his wife, other than her reproductive ability and his need for an heir, and Keira Knightley as Georgiana Spencer, a young noble woman whose mother insists she marry for prestige and money while still a teenager. She did and became the wife of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire and mothered the 6th Duke. The real Georgiana lived from 1757 to 1806 and while her marriage was hell, she made a mark on society due to her beauty and personality, her social acumen, and her gambling habit. Blessed with charisma that just about everyone but her husband got, the Duchess decided to allow a young woman, Bess Foster, who her husband could love, into their home and so this marital arrangement sufficed, while reportedly she also had some love affairs herself. It is suggested that the young woman, a penniless mother who had left her own marriage, may have been bisexual or at least given Georgiana some lessons in how to enjoy pleasure but more likely the two women man shared.
It was a relief for Georgianna, who comes from a different branch of the Spencer family that Lady Diana Spencer came from and seems to have been brutalized emotionally by her husband. The scene in which the married couple come to terms with their mutual unhappiness is the only one in which the Duke seems to have some empathy. As a result, I cannot call the relationship these three people had a Love Triangle for there was no love lost for Georgiana. It's the kind of film that reinforces a woman's feminism, knowing that no one should be forced into a marriage or forced to stay in one that is this horrible.
Link to a lecture by author Amanda Forman about Georgiana on YouTube. Awfully good. Georgiana had affairs with women after realizing that her husband didn't like or love her.
Bess Foster was, according to Forman, a fake - a person who would make herself pleasing to one person at a time by studying them. Bess had an affair with both of them for about a year and during that year Georgiana finally became pregnant - as did Bess - both with the Duke's child.
C 2021 Mistress Manifesto Film Review
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