concept
Grandes-dames
grandes-dames
also: grandes-dames
French for 'noble ladies' -- the princess's own term (via the narrator) for the class of women whose dignity, in her view, forbids anything so undignified as smiling.
Reading notes
- The Green Braid §5 grandes-dames
French for 'great ladies' -- the class of dignified society women the princess holds herself to, whose supposed decorum she uses to justify never smiling.