Most of them are female, as befits a novel about "a certain young woman affronting her destiny," in James's phrase — not merely "confronting" but squaring up to what was expected of her and, if the mood stirred her, doing the opposite.
I'm sure that there are many public relations professionals right now trying to pretend that this is not the case, that this film is not an affront to certain senators from Wyoming and Texas and Utah and Colorado and Montana and Idaho, and perhaps an affront to the president of the United States himself, who comes from the state often burlesqued in Ang Lee's film.
The lavish banquet was certain to be an affront to those suffering in a time of severe austerity, but it was reported in the L'Ami du peuple and other firebrand newspapers as nothing short of a gluttonous orgy.
If carrying certain publications is an insuperable affront to your values, the honorable course is resignation.
The prohibition of certain psychoactive substances is an affront to the basic right of bodily autonomy: the right to do whatever we want with our own bodies.
However minuscule the perceived affront, he was certain to go ballistic, using his money and position to bully any 'opponent' — great or small — into submission..
However minuscule the perceived affront, he was certain to go ballistic, using his money and position to bully any 'opponent' — great or small — into submission...
Judge Johnson acknowledges that his sealing order requiring Congress to get his permission for access to certain case documents represents an unprecedented affront to the Feeney amendment, but asserts that he is entirely within his judicial rights.
To adherents of a certain storyline, the performance was as much an affront as the result, a refutation of faith.
There are certain books — sardonic and acutely pessimistic — that systematically affront all our current habits of living, and treat our presumptions of mind as the delusions of the cretinous.
