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By association with gentleman, the word can refer to: A woman of gentle birth or high social position; A woman attending a great lady (as, for example, the character in William Shakespeare's Macbeth called only 'Gentlewoman', who attends Lady Macbeth). This might be a court appointment as the female equivalent to a valet de chambre.
A lady's companion was a woman of genteel birth who lived with a woman of rank or wealth as retainer.The term was in use in the United Kingdom from at least the 18th century to the mid-20th century but it is now archaic.
The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels. [2]
A gentleman in a blue coat, with powdered hair, [N 5] and wearing a Wellington tie (around 1800). The concept of gentleman in England is more flexible than that of nobleman in France. A gentleman is distinguished by his personal qualities as much as by his status as a member of the landed gentry.
The word comes from Old English hlǣfdige; the first part of the word is a mutated form of hlāf, "loaf, bread", also seen in the corresponding hlāford, "lord".The second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, "to knead", seen also in dough; the sense development from bread-kneader, or bread-maker, or bread-shaper, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically ...
The reform of the ordinary rakish gentleman is the common pattern for the ending of the play. Similarly, extravagant rakes enter into marriage. However, as soon as the persistence of the rakes remains almost unquestioned, it is difficult to decide whether libertines, no matter of what "colour", play a major part in their authors' satiric ...
In fiction, the gentleman thief is typically superb at stealing while maintaining a gentleman's manners and a code of honour. For example, A. J. Raffles steals only from other gentlemen (and occasionally gives the object away to a good cause); Arsène Lupin steals from the rich who do not appreciate their art or treasures and redistributes it; Saint Tail steals back what was stolen or taken ...
The academic discipline of women's writing is a discrete area of literary studies which is based on the notion that the experience of women, historically, has been shaped by their sex, and so women writers by definition are a group worthy of separate study: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions usually very different from those which produced most writing by men."