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hrjTo celebrate reaching 100 Twitter followers, I offered a choice of blog topic to the 99th and 100th. One of the winners, Ursula W., noting that another friend of hers, Rose Lerner, also wrote Regency-era romances, requested a blog trade on that topic. (ETA: My post is now up at Rose's site here.) Class is a recurring theme in Rose Lerner's romances. Her March release from Samhain, Sweet Disorder, is about an earl's son canvassing an impoverished middle-class widow during a local election. Her debut In for a Penny, about a marriage of convenience between a penniless peer and a Cit heiress, will be rereleased in June. A Lily Among Thorns, about a tailor and an innkeeper whose aristocratic family connections create endless complications for them, will be rereleased in September, and True Pretenses, about a Jewish con artist who grew up on the streets and a Tory philanthropist heiress, comes out in early 2015. Her website can be found at roselerner.com.
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When I was asked by Ursula W. to do a blog exchange with Heather Rose Jones, and she identified the common strands in our writing as "research (esp. social class), decent humans as protagonists, [and] conversations w/ Heyer" I was immediately intrigued. And when Heather was inspired by that to choose the topic of "conversations with Heyer and roadblocks to romance covering class/gender/etc. issues"...I couldn't stop thinking about it.
My relationship with Heyer is complicated. In some ways, I relate to her like a critical mother. Her work has influenced my genre and my writing so heavily, she's written some of my very favorite romances, and yet...I know she wouldn't approve of me (apart from anything else, I'm Jewish!). I'm unable to simply set aside the places we disagree. Instead, they inspire in me frustrated stomach churnings if I think too much about it.
Because here's the thing about Georgette Heyer and class issues as a roadblock to romance:
In Georgette Heyer, real class difference is an insuperable barrier to romance.
It's not a conflict which is overcome in the third act. It actually makes genuine love between two people impossible. Deborah in Faro's Daughter plays at vulgarity because she's angry at the hero's snobbery, but the implication is that if she really were as inelegant as she pretends to be, the hero couldn't possibly find her attractive. Leonie in These Old Shades grew up in a working class family but she's the daughter of a count...and not only that, the legitimate daughter of a count (nothing worse than flaunting your baseborn kids in society as if they're actual human beings worthy of your love, as we are aggressively instructed in both These Old Shades and Regency Buck!). Meanwhile, the count's "heir," with whom Leonie was switched at birth, is a stolid, plain fellow who secretly yearns for farming and low company.
The only Heyer heroine who is genuinely, genetically not a gentlewoman is Jenny in A Civil Contract, and she's also the only Heyer heroine whose hero never comes to feel passionate adoration for her. According to the text, it's because she's "too commonplace and matter-of-fact to inspire" it. But actually, the heroine of The Quiet Gentleman is fairly similar in personality, and she gets the real deal. What sets Jenny finally, definitely apart is her middle class genes (which, not to mention, are subtextually heavily linked to her "unattractive" plumpness).
To Georgette Heyer, class differences were in the blood, and blue blood was better, full stop. Rich people are smarter, sexier, more complicated, more sensitive, and they were that way naturally. Cultural differences in how middle- and lower-class people express emotion were, to Heyer, deficiencies rooted in non-aristocrats' physical bodies. (There's a reason for this, of course, and it's that over the course of the eighteenth century, concepts of "restraint" and "elegance" became more and more central to policing class difference and justifying the privileges of the wealthy, since feudalism and the divine right of kings were going out of fashion. Which is itself fascinating to play with in historical fiction!)
When I wrote In for a Penny, I was pretty transparently writing a manifesto about why I hated A Civil Contract. I wanted to write a book about a Cit heroine married for her money by an overbred lord...who feels inadequate next to her. Who is jealous of her ex who's a closer social match for her. Who worries that she regrets their marriage.
The advantages to "marrying up" are obvious (especially if, like Phoebe in my recent release Sweet Disorder, a heroine is not only middle-class but poor). But the disadvantages are real. Cecilia Grant said recently that, "Part of the action of most romances, I think, is the realization of the wish to be truly understood." And marrying someone from a different cultural context, especially someone who comes from a group that has social privilege your group doesn't--that is choosing to spend your life with someone who will have a hard time understanding a fundamental part of your life and who may never understand a part of your life. If you "marry up," your spouse may behave in ways that trigger resentment and anger in you. And if their family and friends are preprogrammed to look down on you, that's a major threat to the fantasy of the HEA, which is not just about a wonderful relationship but about a wonderful life and a wonderful future and, often, a wonderful community.
There's a moment in Penny where Nev and Penelope are visiting a snobbish neighbor for dinner:
People who liked her: that's what Penelope gave up to be with Nev, and it's nothing to sneeze at.
That doesn't mean, though, that class differences are an insuperable obstacle. It means they're a great source of conflict. After all, what is more romantic than knowing that someone could not be more different than you, that they really should not be able to understand you, to get you down to your bones...and yet, somehow, they're the only person in the world who does?
* * *
When I was asked by Ursula W. to do a blog exchange with Heather Rose Jones, and she identified the common strands in our writing as "research (esp. social class), decent humans as protagonists, [and] conversations w/ Heyer" I was immediately intrigued. And when Heather was inspired by that to choose the topic of "conversations with Heyer and roadblocks to romance covering class/gender/etc. issues"...I couldn't stop thinking about it.
My relationship with Heyer is complicated. In some ways, I relate to her like a critical mother. Her work has influenced my genre and my writing so heavily, she's written some of my very favorite romances, and yet...I know she wouldn't approve of me (apart from anything else, I'm Jewish!). I'm unable to simply set aside the places we disagree. Instead, they inspire in me frustrated stomach churnings if I think too much about it.
Because here's the thing about Georgette Heyer and class issues as a roadblock to romance:
In Georgette Heyer, real class difference is an insuperable barrier to romance.
It's not a conflict which is overcome in the third act. It actually makes genuine love between two people impossible. Deborah in Faro's Daughter plays at vulgarity because she's angry at the hero's snobbery, but the implication is that if she really were as inelegant as she pretends to be, the hero couldn't possibly find her attractive. Leonie in These Old Shades grew up in a working class family but she's the daughter of a count...and not only that, the legitimate daughter of a count (nothing worse than flaunting your baseborn kids in society as if they're actual human beings worthy of your love, as we are aggressively instructed in both These Old Shades and Regency Buck!). Meanwhile, the count's "heir," with whom Leonie was switched at birth, is a stolid, plain fellow who secretly yearns for farming and low company.
The only Heyer heroine who is genuinely, genetically not a gentlewoman is Jenny in A Civil Contract, and she's also the only Heyer heroine whose hero never comes to feel passionate adoration for her. According to the text, it's because she's "too commonplace and matter-of-fact to inspire" it. But actually, the heroine of The Quiet Gentleman is fairly similar in personality, and she gets the real deal. What sets Jenny finally, definitely apart is her middle class genes (which, not to mention, are subtextually heavily linked to her "unattractive" plumpness).
To Georgette Heyer, class differences were in the blood, and blue blood was better, full stop. Rich people are smarter, sexier, more complicated, more sensitive, and they were that way naturally. Cultural differences in how middle- and lower-class people express emotion were, to Heyer, deficiencies rooted in non-aristocrats' physical bodies. (There's a reason for this, of course, and it's that over the course of the eighteenth century, concepts of "restraint" and "elegance" became more and more central to policing class difference and justifying the privileges of the wealthy, since feudalism and the divine right of kings were going out of fashion. Which is itself fascinating to play with in historical fiction!)
When I wrote In for a Penny, I was pretty transparently writing a manifesto about why I hated A Civil Contract. I wanted to write a book about a Cit heroine married for her money by an overbred lord...who feels inadequate next to her. Who is jealous of her ex who's a closer social match for her. Who worries that she regrets their marriage.
The advantages to "marrying up" are obvious (especially if, like Phoebe in my recent release Sweet Disorder, a heroine is not only middle-class but poor). But the disadvantages are real. Cecilia Grant said recently that, "Part of the action of most romances, I think, is the realization of the wish to be truly understood." And marrying someone from a different cultural context, especially someone who comes from a group that has social privilege your group doesn't--that is choosing to spend your life with someone who will have a hard time understanding a fundamental part of your life and who may never understand a part of your life. If you "marry up," your spouse may behave in ways that trigger resentment and anger in you. And if their family and friends are preprogrammed to look down on you, that's a major threat to the fantasy of the HEA, which is not just about a wonderful relationship but about a wonderful life and a wonderful future and, often, a wonderful community.
There's a moment in Penny where Nev and Penelope are visiting a snobbish neighbor for dinner:
The food laid out for them was aggressively English, not a cream sauce or ragout in sight. “Forgive the simplicity of my table,” Sir Jasper said. “I find English cooking more healthful than French, but it must appear sadly plain compared with the efforts of your splendid chef.”
Penelope was unpleasantly reminded of one of her father’s friends, a Methodist who had given up all forms of meat. His elaborate explanation that no, he didn’t judge those who dined on animal flesh, only he found the mind was so much less clouded by carnality when fed on purely vegetable sustenance, had been delivered in precisely the same tone. “Not at all,” she said, smiling. “My father dislikes French cooking. It will be quite like home to have some plain beef again.”
Until Sir Jasper’s face went blank, it did not even occur to her that he might not like to hear that Greygloss was quite like home to Penelope Bedlow, née Brown. She wasn’t usually so tactless. And she hadn’t even meant it. Greygloss was far too elegant to be anything like home. God, she wanted to be home. She wanted her mother’s horrible purple tablecloth and people who liked her.
People who liked her: that's what Penelope gave up to be with Nev, and it's nothing to sneeze at.
That doesn't mean, though, that class differences are an insuperable obstacle. It means they're a great source of conflict. After all, what is more romantic than knowing that someone could not be more different than you, that they really should not be able to understand you, to get you down to your bones...and yet, somehow, they're the only person in the world who does?
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Date: 2014-05-14 10:15 pm (UTC)