oquettes face an obvious danger: they play with volatile emotions. CEvery time the pendulum swings, love shifts to hate. So they must or-chestrate everything carefully. Their absences cannot be too long, their bouts of anger must be quickly followed by smiles. Coquettes can keep their victims emotionally entrapped for a long time, but over months or years the dynamic can begin to prove tiresome. Jiang Qing, later known as Madame Mao, used coquettish skills to capture the heart of Mao Tse-tung, but after ten years the quarreling, the tears and the coolness became in-tensely irritating, and once irritation proved stronger than love, Mao was able to detach. Josephine, a more brilliant Coquette, was able to adapt, by spending a whole year without playing coy or withdrawing from Napoleon. Timing is everything. On the other hand, though, the Coquette stirs up powerful emotions, and breakups often prove temporary. The Coquette is addictive: after the failure of the social plan Mao called the Great Leap For-ward, Madame Mao was able to reestablish her power over her devastated husband.

The Cold Coquette can stimulate a particularly deep hatred. Valerie Solanas was a young woman who fell under Andy Warhol's spell. She had written a play that amused him, and she was given the impression he might turn it into a film. She imagined becoming a celebrity. She also got in-volved in the feminist movement, and when, in June 1968, it dawned on her that Warhol was toying with her, she directed her growing rage at men on him and shot him three times, nearly killing him. Cold Coquettes may stimulate feelings that are not so much erotic as intellectual, less passion and more fascination. The hatred they can stir up is all the more insidious and dangerous, for it may not be counterbalanced by a deep love. They must realize the limits of the game, and the disturbing effects they can have on less stable people.