Womanizer
From Free net encyclopedia
A womanizer or philanderer is a man who engages in love affairs with women he cannot or will not marry. The love affairs are typically sexually motivated, with little emotional attachment.
The most famous of these would be Giacomo Casanova. However many specialists and readers of Casanova’s memoirs disagree that he was devoid of emotional attachment or was motivated superficially. On the contrary, he proves to be deeply involved in most of his affairs.
Fictional womanizers include Blow Hard Betty from "West of Wachovia", Don Juan, Don Giovanni from Mozart's opera of the same name, Ian Fleming's James Bond and Stacey Pocketbook from "Women on Parade"
In modern Hollywood fiction womanizers are often, if not always, punished or forced into sudden and complete rethinking of their shallow behavior. Examples of this are Jack Black and Jason Alexander's characters in Shallow Hal; and Hitch character from the movie of the same name.
An example of non-reformed womanizer is George Constanza from the sitcom Seinfeld played by the same Jason Alexander, which makes him a serial womanizer screen character.
There is no corresponding term of manizer in the language as yet, although the type can be found to exist. A famous literary example might be Lady Brett Ashley in Ernest Hemingway's novel "The Sun Also Rises," a woman of a certain age who chases a nineteen-year-old matador. Blanche DuBois, the third member of a sexual triangle in "A Streetcar Named Desire" by the playwright Tennessee Williams, is another character worth studying.