I’m reading Women at Work in Medieval Europe by Madeleine Pelner Cosman. It’s about the various jobs and work women performed throughout the middles ages. Unsurprisingly, they did it all. Some of them famous for their skill and intellience.
The book is a good, distilled insight into a world we may think of as different from our own, but isn’t. Each occupation summary and examples show just how much we share with our ancestors, from what we read to what ails us to our culinary excesses.
And then I come across this plate:
This is a depiction illustrating the medieval adage: “The woman who loves her own mirror loves only the vile devil’s ass.”
Can ya see it?
The naked devil is showing off his anus and it’s reflected in the mirror, front and center for the vain woman to admire in all its glory.
Damn, I just found my novel’s cover pic.
For those of you who haven’t read the wreak I call my first novel, Devil’s Blood, the ultimate antagonist is a vain noblewoman who’s in cahoots with a serial killer with the aim to extend her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins. Not an original idea, by far, but I did think that the depraved sexual relationship that developed between them was…well, if not original, I had thought a little “organic” and, maybe, a little surprising.
Sadly, it must have been an idea I read either explicitly or between the lines in the many fiction and non-fiction tomes I have read in my lifetime.
So much for originality… 😦
N. E. White 
That would make an interesting book cover, indeed.
I know! I wouldn’t do it, but I am tempted – drat that devil! 😉
It is shocking, though, to see how explicit so many of the cautionary tales of yore are with the graphics. Hell, even the terms they use. (shudder)
Totally perfecto.
Ha! I knew some folks would be intrigued by it. 😀
You could always have a similarly styled picture of a woman staring in a mirror….
WE would know what you meant.
Hey. That’s a good idea! I knew there was a reason I was stalking you… 😉
Oops… meant to ask… what happened to the other post? Did you not mean to post it yet, or did it come down for some other reason? That was the real reason I came here to comment. Hadn’t even read this one yet…
Oh yeah, didn’t mean to post. I write things and act like I’m gonna post it. Makes me feel like I’m an important writer or something. But, usually, I just hit the Save button. My latent tourette-like affliction made me hit the Publish button. 😮
Real Stalkers RSS… and I can still see it.
You should accidentally do that more.
Was that from the sequel novel, or a different project entirely?
Sequel novel.
RSS feeds? Oh yeah! I forget about those. Dang it. 😳