The Golden Bed

In 1850s Louisiana, the willfulness of a tempestuous Southern belle threatens to destroy all who care for her.

The coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge is stranded at a bootleggers’ hide-out, subjected to an act of nightmarish sexual violence, and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely.

Paris, 1857. While on trial for moral outrage, French writer G. Flaubert tells the court and the audience the true story of the heroine of his novel Madame Bovary, a sensitive but capricious woman whose desperate efforts to overcome the bourgeois conventions of a dull, provincial life led her family first to ruin and disrepute and finally to the abyss of tragedy.

John Schuyler, a happily married lawyer, is appointed diplomat and sent to England. Due to an unfortunate accident, his wife and child can not come along with him. On the ship to England, Schuyler meets the notorious Vampire - a relentless gold digger who causes the moral degradation of those she seduces, first fascinating and then draining the very life from her victims.

Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.

An aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all.

At the end of the Civil War, Belle Gatlin Barlowe, a widowed mother of three, faces uncertainty as she attempts to defend her family's land by any means necessary. When the corrupt local bank pushes Belle into becoming an outlaw, the stakes become personal, setting off a chain of events that force her to question whether it's better to be lawful or to survive.

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

An aging Southern Belle makes life horrible for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her dreams of what life should be.

An aging Southern Belle makes life horrible for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her dreams of what life should be.

A Southern belle's flirtation with a working man leads to tragedy.