conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled Regiment of Women about Dystopian with the genre: Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: First edition. About fine in DJ. Just a touch of shelf wear at the spine tips. Dystopian SF novel.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book titled Regiment of Women?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Regiment of Women: Set in a small town in Edwardian England, Regiment of Women is about the relationship between two teachers at a private (and elitist) girls' school.\nOne of them, Clare Hartill, is in her mid-thirties and runs the school in all but name, the ageing and sickly headmistress depending on her whenever a decision has to be taken concerning the school or any of its pupils.\nMost of the girls are devoted to Hartill and gladly suffer under her strict but charismatic rule and the loads of homework she sets them, mainly to prove to her and to themselves that they are more academically advanced than she told them they were.\nHartill lives alone near the school in a small, old-fashioned flat full of books but without gas or electricity.\nThe other teacher is Alwynne Durand, an attractive nineteen-year-old woman without any formal training who lives with Elsbeth Loveday, her unmarried aunt and guardian.\nWhen Durand starts teaching at the school she is immediately popular with her students but also excites Hartill's attention — not just because the young mistress is as enthusiastic about teaching as herself, but also because Hartill is always on the lookout for companionship.\nThe two women become close friends, and Durand spends more and more of her spare time in Hartill's flat, occasionally not returning to her aunt's for days.\nThe couple also travel abroad together during the summer holidays.\nAlthough Loveday and Hartill hardly ever meet, a strange kind of antagonism develops between them, each woman fighting to spend more time than they do with Alwynne Durand and to be the dominant person in Alwynne's life.\nIn the course of the schoolyear one of Hartill's protégées, an unfortunate fourteen-year-old called Louise who has disappointed Hartill by failing an important exam, commits suicide by jumping from an upper floor window of the school building.\nThe suicide is successfully hushed up, pronounced a case of accidental death, and quickly forgotten.\nWhat Hartill deliberately fails to mention, however, is that Louise's death, which happened on the night of the school play, was apparently triggered by her harsh criticism of Louise's excellent performance in the play.\nIn the months that follow, Hartill even manages to shift the burden of guilt onto Durand's shoulders, persuading the young mistress that she ought to have detected any suicidal tendencies in Louise while giving her extra lessons.\nHartill's increasingly bizarre and offensive behaviour and her naive niece's growing dependence on her older friend call Elsbeth Loveday to action.\nWhen, on top of her shattered nerves, Alwynne Durand comes down with the flu, Loveday insists on her not returning to school for the rest of the term and on recuperating from her illness in the country instead.\nAlwynne agrees, if reluctantly at first, to spend some time with distant relatives she has never met before.\nThe idyllic spring landscape she encounters after leaving town actually soothes her nerves, and Alwynne grows more and more fond of country life and the people she meets in her new surroundings.\nBut Elsbeth Loveday's scheme includes more than her niece's mere convalescence.\nAs planned by her aunt, Alwynne Durand finds a confidant, and secret admirer, in thirty-year-old Roger Lumsden, a good-hearted, intelligent and handsome man who runs his own gardening business.\nCompletely inexperienced with men except for what she has read in novels, Alwynne does not recognise her feelings for Lumsden as love, and she still looks forward to her reunion with Hartill.\nWhen she eventually returns to her home town, Lumsden follows her, proposes to her, and, naturally, is rejected.\nOnly when Hartill, too sure of her seemingly inseparable bond with Alwynne, continues treating her badly does Alwynne wake up to reality.\nShe sends Hartill a telegram telling her she has taken the train to the country in order to get married.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Regiment of Women
  The motive for Charlie's furtiveness was soon apparent. Cornell should have known better. A stern voice spoke to the back of his head.
  Ida was cleanshaven, skull as well as face, and the latter was naked even of eyebrows. Sometimes while dictating, Ida gave Cornell the treat of watching her apply the electric razor. If he had had to localize his hatred for Ida, he might have done it in her ears, which projected obscenely from her head at 85-degree angles.
  Ida now reached down inside the collar of her turtleneck sweater and relieved an itch in the area of the clavicle.
  Cornell crossed his legs the other way, and Ida did not fail to mark the movement. She was a notoriously horny devil, but too much of a pro to bed any secretary of hers. However, Cornell had no other defense except weeping, and it was too early to use that.
  That was good news. Perhaps now the roller-towel in the men's lounge would be changed more frequently. Stanley was supposed to be an old boy friend of Eloise Huff's. He had got the sinecure when she was done with him. That must have been years ago. Now Stanley was an ancient harridan, slumped over his mop.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He spat it into a refuse container, found another zinc in his shoulder bag, and used the third phone booth after trying in vain the first two dead instruments. There was a weird whistle on the line, but he got through.
  It was extraordinary that one could call the headquarters of a revolutionary underground organization, and perhaps as odd that, having so done, one must wait for a response through many rings. Could they have been raided? It suddenly occurred to Cornell that in such a case his troubles would be over—or at any rate, different.
  This exchange was to identify Cornell, "Patent Leather" being his code name. The disintegration of his mythical shoes referred to his having run into trouble.
  The booth was nice and clean, in this all-male facility, with no phone numbers or filthy epithets scribbled on its walls. Booths to which women had habitual access were invariably defaced. Cornell wondered why females tended to be dirty. He remembered that when he was a child little girls were always saying "peepee" and "doodoo." And once two of them locked him in a school closet and wouldn't let him out until he pulled up his dress and took down his panties. And then they laughed, pointing at the thing that dangled between his legs. And then the teacher caught them—Mr. Roberts, gray hair piled high with the eternal pencil stuck in it, and his sneezy odor of dusting powder—and blamed Georgie: "You led them on." Which wasn't true! Just because he had winked and stuck out his tongue!
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Cornell's hands had slid onto the halves of her wonderful behind. "I guess that's what I did," he said. "Raped you."
  She lowered herself and snuggled in. "You have a tendency both to blame yourself for disasters and boast about accomplishments that you are not wholly responsible for."
  He shrugged with her on him. His chest was strong enough for that. He decided not to argue. She really had a more attractive image of him than he had ever been able to conjure up.
  As if to prove this theory, she said: "But there's nothing that you can't do. Once you were shown how to light a lantern, you could do it every time. And you can build a cabin too, and kill animals."