Capturing the 1960’s generation free love and womanhood, The Gorgeous Mr. Zane is known to be an expose’ of intrigue. It creates a statement on current societal attitudes, challenging social norms, and the question of the status quo. It also presents the conflicts and harsh reality of being a mistress. Despite the issues involved, what is more interesting in the book is how women are empowered to have the liberty to make choices and not being a societal puppet controlled by strings.
Romance and Finance are two essential elements that govern its theme. The story unravels the pink and green shades of the main character’s life by showing how money and love inflect one another. The main character is an unnamed woman in modern England. Material security weighs more and pleasurable than her sexual affairs. Mr. Zane came into her life, and her sexual adventures with him are brief and ordinary, as described in a commoner’s language. There is not enough satisfaction, security, and excitement between them with the art-making love per se.
“Diamonds really are a girl’s best friend; it makes the separation a little more bearable.” Mr. Zane
The woman, the protagonist in the story, derives more pleasure with the presence of wealth than her lovers. Her description on her grocery list, the cost of meat, how many pounds are given to charity and the contents of her tin cupboard were described more lavishly and explicitly above all. Her fitness, such as weight gain and loss, is also meticulously documented.
The usual impression upon the release of the book is something linked to a romantic damsel in distress meets a prince kind of story, but it’s not at all. In fact, the severe attachment to materialism suggests that The Gorgeous Mr. Zane is actually a woman’s relationship to the economy. Love is valued in the connection of the main character to the symbol of status. Having sex only links her to upward mobility being an infantile, simple, and middle-class woman.
The book has less than fifty pages, which is short and rips through a few years since 2013. Although the narrator gives a brief nod to current events and her own mortality, The Gorgeous Mr. Zane has a strange charm of timelessness. It is relatable in Modern England’s lifestyle based on penny-pinching, middle fixation on the economy, upholstery, and niceties. As a character, Mr. Zane is only a ticket to luxury for the woman, such as a trip to spa paid by the wealthy lover. The gets the extra special attention of the woman. Upon delving to the thematic ground of the story, there’s more question sprouted, such as; if Mr. Zane is an account-taking of a life eked out through sexual attachment and why womanhood such a desirable career.
The Gorgeous Mr. Zane perfectly encapsulated a particular mood, time, place, and character. The only thing missing is a moment of introspection. The story is written in a bit of a disturbing way, yet it resulted in compelling work about the deep love between a woman and her bank account. Indeed, this woman will go beyond lengths to secure her own comfort.
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