Georgette Heyer Fans discussion
Heyer in General
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Things we have problems with in GH Novels
Anne wrote: "Thanks for pointing that out Pat and Andrea! I too tend to forget Mary's youth because she was so sensible! Vidal definitely was extremely hot, and I understand that it helped him gain favour with ..."I forgot Mary and Vidal were in an Infamous Army! I've just re-read These Old Shades and The Devil's Cub back to back, and now I have to rush off and re-read Infamous Army to get my dose of the 'Avon' family.
As for Babs, can't say I warmed to her, although I admired her spirit. I hate missish types of heroines!
D.G. wrote: "Anne wrote: "Thanks for pointing that out Pat and Andrea! I too tend to forget Mary's youth because she was so sensible! Vidal definitely was extremely hot, and I understand that it helped him gain..."It really is too bad that Mary and Dominic were only there in the end in An Infamous Army, because they were so priceless!
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Jenny wrote: "Yes, I was delighted to see Mary & Dominic again - but as for 'Things We have Problems With', it's mathematically impossible for them to have a 25-year-old granddaughter in 1815."Yes - Devil's Cub is 1780 (24 years after These Old Shades), and An Infamous Army is 1815 (Waterloo).
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Jenny wrote: "And yes, as someone said earlier, I do think that sometimes the slang is only there to show off that she knows it! Particularly the boxing terminology, which people sometimes launch into at the sli..."Slang certainly creates the atmosphere, and the boxing cant conveys an impression of young men together. But I've never read the (way too long) fight in Regency Buck which Peregrine attends, and which is described round by round in exhaustive and exhausting detail. A modern editor would cut most of it - after all, anyone interested in the rest of the book would find it tedious, and vice versa.
I suppose the modern equivalent would be one of those romances about racing drivers or football players, but at least usually one of the protagonists is taking part in the race or game! The only aspects of Peregrine's character revealed by the detailed description of the fight are his making a new friend, and we could have seen that without all the gory detail. I always think: Heyer found a good contemporaneous record of a fist-fight and couldn't bear not to use it.
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Hj wrote: "Jenny wrote: "Yes, I was delighted to see Mary & Dominic again - but as for 'Things We have Problems With', it's mathematically impossible for them to have a 25-year-old granddaughter in 1815."Ye..."
She knew that but did it anyway.
Qnpoohbear wrote: "Hj wrote: "Jenny wrote: "Yes, I was delighted to see Mary & Dominic again - but as for 'Things We have Problems With', it's mathematically impossible for them to have a 25-year-old granddaughter in..."The creator always has the license!
Regarding rakes: I've been reading a lot of (non-Heyer) Regency romances lately, and I've gotten to the point where I want to slap the next character who takes it for granted that young men of wealth and rank are going to keep a string of mistresses. Realistic or not, it's just become ... annoying. I find I prefer heroes like Freddy who aren't "in the petticoat line." Or Kit in "False Colours" who probably hasn't been a saint, but at least we're spared hearing about his sex life.
I like redemption of rakes. So I guess I like rakes. Perhaps there are romances without rakes? I often wonder what the romances are like in the "clean " romance group here in GR. I mean, can you have a rake in a clean romance? Perhaps authors who write these type of romances avoid writing about rakes since rakes are sexual libertines?
Heyer has written a few with rakes, like "Devil 's Cub" and "These Old Shades" and her books are always clean ;) She lets the reader know that her rakes lead sinful lives and have mistresses, but she doesnt include specific sex scenes and such.
Perhaps these writers of "clean" HR follow GHs model for writing about rakes as she She did with ToS and DC and tBM also to some degree. I guess before Kathleen E Woodiwiss opened the bedroom door in HR in the early 1970s, HR writers emulated GH and perhaps some still do?
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That's very true Jenny, lots of heroes who weren't considered rakes still had mistresses. Generally though, most rakes had their fair share of love affairs ;)
I always thought of rakes as men who had affairs with society women rather than opera dancers - that a gentleman might 'keep' an opera dancer (or two or scores) but didn't get entangled with women of a higher social class. This was one reason that Avon was upset with Dominic in the beginning of Devil's Cub: he was playing around with a woman in the middle-class who wouldn't necessarily know the "rules of the game".
Anne wrote: "That's very true Jenny, lots of heroes who weren't considered rakes still had mistresses. Generally though, most rakes had their fair share of love affairs ;)"This is explained nicely in Venetia and I think in Friday's Child.
I personally like rakish heroes in the Regency novels as long as they fall in love with the heroine either after they've left their mistress or they break up with the mistress after meeting the heroine. I also need there to be some kind of friendship and relationship between the rakish hero and heroine and for him to realize he truly loves her and wants to be with her. Dameral is considered a rake but he doesn't do anything bad when he's with Venetia and then he comes to love her and I expect he will be faithful to her, despite what her family thinks. Read The Unflappable Miss Fairchild by Regina Scott for a good example of how it's done correctly.
Jenny wrote: " Remember, Venetia is surprised to hear that 'even such a a kind and correct husband as Sir John Denny had not always been faithful to his wife"I can understand that in a marriage founded on something other than love -- money, land, arranged marriage -- where the most that the husband and wife can hope for his friendship (perhaps the case with the Dennys) but that men who supposedly loved their wives had affairs too is hard to justify. Maybe without reliable birth control (and it's likely that respectable married women used none at all) a husband might look elsewhere for sex rather than wear his wife out with one pregnancy after another?
Of course if women can survive without regular sex for a while so can men! But nobody expected the men to go without.
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I also suspect a rake is one who might be capable of corrupting up-till-now virtuous ladies - the sort of chap you don't let your daughter dance with; but perhaps that's rather a libertine or a loose-screw, which I think is something worse.
You have to remember that at that time they had little to no actual medical knowledge. They believed men had "needs" and they needed an outlet for those needs. One of my classmates hinted at Thomas Jefferson's health issues and concerns about that sort of thing. He didn't elaborate and I didn't have time to look it up. Ladies were not supposed to feel passion. Sex in marriage was about procreation. End of story. One heir, one or two spares and that should be it. Daughters were superfluous or to marry off to higher titles or wealth. Unmarried ladies weren't allowed to have sex because they might get pregnant and end up with an illegitimate child or a son who isn't actually the heir. It complicated legal inheritance matters.Rakes don't bother me as long as nothing happens on page and it's all in his past. I don't like heroes who go on a binge when they're angry at the heroine and I don't like heroes who continue with their chere amies after meeting the heroine or worse, marrying her. Most rakes end up with a worse reputation than they actually deserve. I think Damarel is one of those rakes. I agree with Jenny that libertines are much worse and not likeable at all.
How do rakes and rakehell's differ? Does the term "rake" have to do with sex, and. "Rakehell" means a wild dude in HR?
Qnpoohbear wrote: "You have to remember that at that time they had little to no actual medical knowledge. They believed men had "needs" and they needed an outlet for those needs. One of my classmates hinted at Thomas..."I'm not entirely sure the idea that women had no desire, nor ought to have any was as early as the Regency/Georgian eras and before. More a Victorian thing I thought ?
However I take your point entirely about double standard of course!
I'm not entirely sure the idea that women had no desire, nor ought to have any was as early as the Regency/Georgian eras and before. More a Victorian thing I thought?I think you may be right about that. Certainly in the Middle Ages the "insatiable woman" was a perennial source of humor.
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As for Damerel having a worse reputation than he deserves ... we do know that he originally stayed on in Yorkshire with a view to seducing Venetia, don't we? Though the fact that he couldn't actually bring himself to do it once he got to know her counts for something, of course. I think he may have deserved his reputation in the past, but has learnt better now.
I'm pretty sure that "rake" was just a shortened form of "rakehell".
I think you're probably right. "Rake" as a descriptive word doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise.
I'm sure promiscuity was one of the things that made a man a rake -- not just that he had affairs and was indiscreet, but the numbers of women he slept with, and not limiting himself to the professionals. Also a man who flirted indiscriminately, making a game of attaching young women's hearts, whether or not sex was involved.Didn't Damerel have a bad reputation before he deserved one and then decide that he would deserve it, as an act of rebellion? I wish I could remember the details of his fall from grace.
Damerel originally ran off with a married woman (who the admittedly partial Venetia thinks must have had "the soul of a courtesan"), who then dumped him in favor of another man. This, along with the bad reactions of his family, seems to have made him a touch cynical, to say the least.
Barbara wrote: "I'm not entirely sure the idea that women had no desire, nor ought to have any was as early as the Regency/Georgian eras and before. More a Victorian thing I thought ? "
The pure lady idea started around the Second Great Awakening in America c. 1790. I have read some of the advice to women from that time and it sounds pretty wacky by our standards.
Damarel wanted to teach Venetia a lesson. She thought she was so worldly wise and he knew she was just a green girl, far more innocent than she realized. He thought he would be doing her a favor to protect her from rakes like himself in the future. He changed his mind pretty quickly. I think most of his bad behavior was in the past and he was tired of it.
Miles, in Black Sheep, ran away with a young lady in his youth too. He also has a bad reputation and a good heart.
You have to remember, too, that even today a single mother has more responsibility than a single father. A "good" man might support his child today and in times past, but although today a single father might actually have the child in his home and take care of him day in and day out, that would have been pretty unheard of even a few years ago. Unless there was money for childcare or she had a supportive family, the single mother had very few options. It was in her best interests to stay "pure" and therefore childless. The Sexual Revolution (should I put quotation marks around that, I wonder?!) for the first time made sex a thing apart from childbearing. Oh, there was still risk, but it took the almost certainty of having children out of the equation! Sex no longer equalled children, and that changed everything.
Karlyne wrote: "You have to remember, too, that even today a single mother has more responsibility than a single father. A "good" man might support his child today and in times past, but although today a single fa..."Yes and isn't it entirely strange ( well it is to me) that now contraception is freely available and not nearly as dangerous as it used to be, there are still great numbers of babies conceived by accident . You have only to watch one of those "16 and pregnant " programmes to know that it is contraception and talk of it that they find embarrassing and 'off', not sex or hooking up with almost-strangers.
I wonder why it is that now that we have an "educated" populace with readily available contraception we do have such high rates of accidental pregnancies. It almost seems as though contraception changed our perception of those archaic terms "unwed mother" and "illegitimacy", but didn't do much about childbirth itself! (I have no idea what the statistics are; this just seems to be the way it is!)
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And there are also unrealistic expectations of what having a dear little baby to love might entail!
True! The more things change, the more they remain the same?
I do think that the best contraception is to have teenagers of both sexes spend several hours with a dear little baby, especially one who is a little colicky and doesn't sleep well. After that experience they'll want to use contraception!
Even better is if they're segregated until... oh, say, 30! But, oh, what life they'll miss!I just had a thought here: I think you've hit on something important, Hj. Teenagers and young adults have often not spent anytime with babies other than the occasional "kootchiekoo" to a passerby. I had a friend who was in her 20s when she got pregnant and had never changed a diaper! or fed, or burped or bathed a baby in her life. Shocking awakening? Oh, it was!
I've heard of some lifelike dolls which cry and need feeding and changing and are given to teenagers to look after for a couple of days. (I've only heard of them being given to girls, but I think that boys should have them too.) I've heard that it really wakes them up, to realise just how all-consuming and exhausting it can be to look after a baby.They should be mandatory for all at the age of 14 or 15!
Baby-sitting has become a lost art, and with smaller families kids just don't get the training in reality that they used to. I don't know too many teens that I'd trust with a baby. Gosh, that's sad!
But to get back to the Regency era, and things that bother us in books, and related to the idea of rakes: the idea that a rake is going to suddenly become completely faithful just because he finds the right woman is something I find increasingly difficult to believe. (Maybe I've just grown more cynical with the years.) Why would he reform completely when his wife is supposed to pretend that she doesn't see, doesn't know, and he thinks that he's being so discreet that she doesn't know, and what she doesn't know can't hurt her? People don't miraculously change when they fall in love. They change because they are ready for a change, and love may prove the catalyst. If we were to see the rakish hero becoming weary of his life style, if he realizes how empty and unsatisfying it is for him, before he falls in love with the heroine, that would be easier to believe. Instead, they seem to go merrily along until they fall in love and then PRESTO the transformation.
Teresa wrote: "But to get back to the Regency era, and things that bother us in books, and related to the idea of rakes: the idea that a rake is going to suddenly become completely faithful just because he finds..."But some of the rakes (Damerel springs to mind in Venetia) were jaded and cynical and tired of their rakehell lives, so when the "right woman" came along they were ripe for reformation. Their behavior might not always be pure as the driven snow (Damerel's boskiness when he's going to give Venetia up is a good example), but they are aware that their lives haven't been exemplary and are willing to change - for a reason.
Karlyne wrote: "But some of the rakes (Damerel springs to mind in Venetia) were jaded and cynical and tired of their rakehell lives, so when the "right woman" came along they were ripe for reformation. ..."I think that was Teresa's point. If an author shows that this is how the hero is feeling then his reformation and falling in love is credible. But if the author has him as happy being rakish right up until he meets the heroine, then it is less easy to believe.
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He's not settling down - she's getting stirred up!
I really liked Fridays Child, it's one of my favourite GH.I never felt like Sherry had been abusive to Hero, the term 'box her ears' is often used in regard to reprimanding a child. I don't think Georgie meant to give the impression of abuse, she wanted to show that, in many ways, Sherry was still a little boy. He felt like a brother to Hero, vaguely affectionate but rough and ready.
Sherry is thoughtless, he's very childish and exuberant, but he's not a bully. He does care for Hero, even before he comes to love her, it's just that he doesn't know how to be responsible, how to look after another person.
I also think that George, Ferdy and Gil care for Hero too much to see her mistreated. I'm pretty sure that if Sherry had been hitting Hero they'd have taken it in turns to set him straight, probably using their own fists!!!
I don't like to see heroes behaving violently towards heroines. I certainly don't like an abusive element in the romances I read. I never 'felt' that Sherry was being violent, just childish, to me that signifies something too innocent to want to hurt another person. I can't imagine him being cruel enough to hurt her, he hated seeing her cry.
D.D. wrote: "I really liked Fridays Child, it's one of my favourite GH.I never felt like Sherry had been abusive to Hero, the term 'box her ears' is often used in regard to reprimanding a child. I don't think..."
I agree, D.D.. I was taken aback when people read the book as showing that Sherry was abusive to Hero. I agree that all GH meant was the type of reprimand which, at the time, was considered acceptable in reprimanding a child. We do have to be wary of reading through a modern lens in interpreting books which are at two removes from us - firstly, this book was written in the 1040s and secondly it was written about the 1800s.
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"... No it was not my opera dancer, and you may take that with my compliments!"
Tears started to Hero's eyes. Released, she pressed a hand to one tingling cheek...
And afterwards he says
"...No, really, Kitten, I'm devilish sorry I hurt you!"
So it's clear that it's not just a 'reprimand'.
It's not the first time, either. There was the incident they recall when they glued up the Bassenthwaites' pew as children and Hero spilt the glue on Sherry:
Hero gave a little chuckle. "Oh, how you did slap my cheek! It was red for hours and hours, and I had to make up such a tale to account for it!"
"No, did I really?" said the Viscount, rather conscience-stricken, and giving the cheek a friendly rub. "What a deuced young brute I was!..."
I think the recalling of that episode makes it clear, though, that Sherry's later slapping of Hero is to be seen as evidence of his immaturity rather than any deliberate brutality. In fact, it's stated that, having planned a 'dignified speech' it was only because Hero looked so much 'like the tiresome little girl the Viscount had bullied in his schooldays' that he forgot himself.
Yes, he does box her ears- also in the beginning of the book when she does something crazy on a horse. But as Jenny says, its meant to be evidence of him behaving like an idiotic schoolboy rather than an abusive husband. His idea of 'husbandly' behaviour is to be properly dignified.
Karlyne wrote: "People don't miraculously change when they fall in love. They change because they are ready for a change, and love may prove the catalyst. If we were to see the rakish hero becoming weary of his life style, if he realizes how empty and unsatisfying it is for him, before he falls in love with the heroine, that would be easier to believe. Instead, they seem to go merrily along until they fall in love and then PRESTO the transformation.
That's the mark of a good author who can make the hero become tired of his ways.
re: the heroes hitting and shaking the heroines. It's not tasteful but it was done and accepted. You have to keep in mind the time period that GH was writing in and the time period she was writing about. Things we find shocking and distasteful in the 21st century were not so bad in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was legal for a husband to beat his wife with a stick the with of his thumb, I believe was the rule, in Victorian England.
Just because a thing was allowed at the time doesn't make it any less reprehensible. Some people also beat their servants and got away with it, if they didn't actually kill and maim them. Would any of us be happy with a hero who beat up his valet or a heroine who made a habit of slapping her maid, even though no one would have been shocked at the time -- although they might have considered the person who did it ill-natured and of poor character -- and the law would have turned a blind eye to the assault? (I was recently reading something -- not by Heyer -- where the hero said that he had thrashed the bad behavior out of a young guttersnipe he adopted as his tiger. I know I've read something similar in other books and it didn't bother me. This time it suddenly hit me in such a way that I was horrified. Then I remembered that the same thing would have been done by a father to a child of his own, and I was able to accept it. Not because I believe in parents "thrashing" their children, but because I could see it then as something he considered he was doing for the boy's own good, rather than as punishment.)Within my lifetime -- and I can remember quite well when a case came up that changed the law -- marital rape was legal in this country. In fact, even when the law was changed, there were still many people who contended that there was no such thing as marital rape, because the husband had a right to have sex with his wife even when she said she wasn't willing ... by marrying him she gave up her right to say no. Would any of us forgive a hero who actually, violently, raped his wife? There are a lot of scenes in romances that are not by Heyer where the husband is rather forceful in seducing his wife, but she yields well before the end, and always if she continues to protest the hero stops. If he still overpowered her and raped her would we be able to stomach him as the hero after that?
So, to return to Sherry, I don't think it matters if it would have been acceptable for him to hit Hero back then. If he was an abusive husband I would hate the book instead of loving it as much as I do. But I agree with those who believe that Heyer meant it as a sign of Sherry's immaturity, not of a husband who feels he has the right to regularly chastise his wife by hitting or beating her. (Which I don't think Heyer would have allowed one of her heroes to do.) And he doesn't make a habit of hitting her. There is the one incident when they were children and the one incident while they are married.
Still, I can see why some readers would find those two times two times too much and that particular scene distasteful, and I can't say that they shouldn't.
I love HR ( don't we all. ;) and HF. I don't have any problem accepting what was done in the past in a book of fiction, even if it is unacceptable in the 20th cen. I just go with the flow most of the time. What I do get offended by, is when the auth gives the h in HR 20/21st cen behavior and attitudes. This drives me crazy. I read a book late last year where the heroine used phrases like "exploitation of women" when talking about brothels, "being in control of her own life," and being "an equal partner in marriage." I don't want these concepts in HR or HF. I was furious with the auth and hated the h with a passion that would rival the fires of hell. I don't want modern, feminist concepts in HR. I've gone off topic, but I'll go back to my point: I'm not bothered by what people did in the past if it is portrayed in fiction. I appreciate an effort by the auth to make the characters behave to some degree as they would have for the time and it is not always pretty, but I accept it.
Georgette Heyer Fans
Books mentioned in this topic
The Unflappable Miss Fairchild (other topics)Devil's Cub (other topics)
Venetia (other topics)
Devil's Cub (other topics)
The Black Moth (other topics)
More...
Yes :)