I've been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately, and the
notion of young heroines using their beguiling manners to make a "conquest"
which in those days simply meant a young, eligible bachelor falling madly and deeply, head over heels in
love has been around since the Victorian era. Proust makes
use of the term as well.
The "marriage plot" made popular by
Ms Austin's novels was something that the women's movement was supposed to have
retired long ago (hat tip to Jeffrey Eugenides). That the whole purpose of a woman's existence was to marry well was supplanted by feminism. Unfortunately, it's not the women who seem hooked on that notion in today's world,
but the men.
