The Little Lady of the Big House

The Little Lady of the Big House (1915) is a novel by American writer Jack London. The story concerns a love triangle. The protagonist, Dick Forrest, is a rancher with a poetic streak (his "acorn song" recalls London's play, "The Acorn Planters."). His wife, Paula, is a vivacious, athletic, and sexually self-aware woman (in one scene, she rides a stallion into a "swimming tank," emerging in "a white silken slip of a bathing suit that molded to her form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery.") Paula, like Charmian, is subject to insomnia; and Paula, like Charmian, is unable to bear children. London said of this novel: "It is all sex from start to finish — in which no sexual adventure is actually achieved or comes within a million miles of being achieved, and in which, nevertheless, is all the guts of sex, coupled with strength." One reviewer disparaged the novel's "erotomania."