Got Purity?

Today's Oxford DNB entry is on Dame Barbara Cartland. When I was twelve or so I read a couple of her romances, and decided they were a little over the top. Aside from the tiny short paragraphs, all her heroines seemed pure to the point of inanity--purity, by the way, also appeared to impede their ability to complete a sentence without the help of elipses. Not my cuppa, at least since the age of 12. Cartland appears to have been a busy, hardworking, cheery sort, with a bawdy sense of humor (according to the article, "more than one interviewer was surprised by her interest in the rumoured penis size of the duke of Windsor"). You certainly never saw that in her books. There, she appeared to believe that "Every woman wants instinctively to tame a devil through the purity of her love."

I got into a couple of relationships where I was obviously trying to help the guy, but I don't think I imagined that purity was what was going to do it.