The Bold and the Beautiful
History can be a harsh judge. This is particularly so when it is considering — or rather, ignoring — the effects of privilege, and rarely more than when examining the lives of famous women. The phrase ‘behind every great man is a great woman’ exists only because, for centuries, that great woman was forced to the back. Some, however, were bold enough to push their way forward.
Most would deny this, conscious of the judgment of the present, let alone history. But if their avenue to wealth and status was restricted to little more than a ‘good marriage’, who is to say that a woman’s attraction to wealth and influence is any more shallow than a man’s to beauty or sexual allure? It would be easy, for example, to dismiss Nina Dyer, married to two of the richest men of her time, as a ‘gold-digger’, the female equivalent of the great playboy Porfirio Rubirosa. Many did, too, but she denied it with conviction. “People have called me a schemer,” she said, “but nothing is further from the truth. Luck just comes my way without my doing anything about it. It has been like that during most of my grown-up life.”
Luck, for Nina, just so happened
