Four Georgette Heyer books.
Nov. 11th, 2010 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpGeorgette Heyer wrote a lot of romance novels about rich Regency-era people solving each others' problems and falling in love. Compared to some historical romances, where the conflicts might involve rape, kidnapping, murder, and abused illegitimate children - possibly all smushed in together - the problems that Heyer's characters face tend to be more mundane. Charles is nice, but he's engaged to a mean girl! Kitty's grandfather is miserly, and she wants to buy pretty dresses!
That's not to say that the books are realistic - with one exception I've found so far, Heyer's fiction is intended as an accurate psychological depiction of human beings in exactly the same way that Winnie the Pooh is intended as an accurate depiction of ursine behavior. Her characters are one-dimensional, charming, funny, and, once you've read enough of the books, impossible to distinguish from one another. You could glue labels on them: "The Self-Possessed Girl With Practical Skills And No Sense of Romance," "The Girl Who Is Easily Distracted By Hats And Poetry," "The Serious And Responsible Young Man Who's Kind Of A Bigot," and "The Foppish Dandy, Who I'm Guessing Is Supposed To Be Gay."
(I'm not knowledgeable about the history of the Regency romance genre, but I assume that Heyer is at least partly at fault for the frequent occurrence of these character types elsewhere in the genre. The only regency trope I haven't yet been able to pin on her is the emotionally wounded former spy. He would be tricky to pair up with any of her stock female characters. "He's too melodramatic for the Sensible girl to bother with, and not responsible enough to take care of the Flighty one. I may have to set him up with one of the horses.")
The Grand Sophy seems to be the top contender for The Internet's Favorite Georgette Heyer Book, with good reason. Its conflict is probably the most minor of any of her books: a family is beset with children who make bad romantic choices (but not too bad) and get in money trouble (but not too much). Their cousin Sophy arrives with a monkey, a gun, and no shame, and sets about fixing all of it, to the resentment of the stiff young patriarch Charles.
It's not a short book, but there are no wasted scenes - all of them push the plot forward somehow, and all of them, with one exception, are adorable and funny. The scene that is the exception is the source of the other Internet Discussion Constant about this book: it turns out that Heyer was really anti-Semitic. After the general pleasantness of the rest of the book, it's a little shocking.
Cotillion's heroine Kitty wants her moody, handsome, romance-novel-hero-like cousin Jack to propose to her; when he doesn't, she convinces her well-dressed, silly, apparently-asexual-or-gay cousin Freddy to do it instead. Her aim is to make Jack jealous, and failing that, to make Freddy take her sight-seeing in London for a month. Freddy, whose primary interest in life is clothing and who declares himself "not the marrying kind!," agrees to the plan reluctantly. They go off to London and immediately set off solving other people's problems - all of them, as with their own, partly Jack's fault.
Characters similar to Kitty and Freddy show up in most of Heyer's books, but I think this is the only time she makes them the heroes. Understandable, since it's such a difficult task, but she does it well. I'm not sure that the book's actually a romance - we're given no real reason to think that Freddy's interest in Kitty extends beyond picking out clothes for her, or that Kitty actually understands what marriage entails - but it's extremely entertaining regardless. Like Sophy, Kitty matchmakes, but her connection to reality is so thin that her successes are pure accident. Fortunately, her victims have even less common sense than she does.
The books where Heyer does go in for something more complicated, plot-wise, tend to be the weaker one. Like any normal person, I would ordinarily be overjoyed by the idea of an English historical romance novel using the plot of the Torikaebaya Monogatari - but compared to many of Heyer's other works, The Masqueraders is very weak.
For reasons that may make sense in some alternate universe, a brother and sister come to London disguised as members of the opposite gender, in order to help their father, a grifter, run a new con that he refuses to entirely explain. Heyer does not seem to have been comfortable with this sort of story - there are long sequences that drag, the father is not as funny as he needed to be to carry the book, and the siblings feel undeveloped as characters, like Heyer couldn't quite pin down why they were doing this stuff. I understand the feeling.
A Civil Contract is a book about actual human beings. If you were to read it immediately after the other three books, you might even question whether it was written by the same person. In the three afore-mentioned books, despite the hovering threat of unpleasant arranged marriages, all of the characters - even all the villains, I think - married for love. In this one, the protagonists enter into an actual marriage of convenience.
Adam and Jenny barely know one another, and Adam wants to marry someone else, but he needs her money to care for his family. Jenny admires Adam and wants to please her father - he wants her to have a title, which Adam has - but hasn't got much self-confidence, and goes into the marriage knowing that she'll be judged harshly for marrying above her station. They live together, learn to get along, get over some of their problems - sometimes together and sometimes alone - and eventually come to a deeper understanding of one another than I think any of Heyer's other characters ever could.
Her stock characters are here, too, but they're treated with a thoughtfulness that's unusual, as if they're being infected by the protagonists' humanity. The heroine's father is Heyer's Vulgar Bourgeois Businessman - whom she usually treats only slightly better than she does the Wicked Jew - but because she wants to make us understand the heroine, who loves him, she has to make us understand him a little, too. The same is true of the hero's first love, the Flighty Girl. Ordinarily, she would be a comedic figure or a villain, and she is here, too. But it's not impossible to believe that there's something going on in her head.
Most of Heyer's books are not particularly ambitious, but within the limits she's created for them, she does them perfectly. There are very few writers for whom you can say that.
That's not to say that the books are realistic - with one exception I've found so far, Heyer's fiction is intended as an accurate psychological depiction of human beings in exactly the same way that Winnie the Pooh is intended as an accurate depiction of ursine behavior. Her characters are one-dimensional, charming, funny, and, once you've read enough of the books, impossible to distinguish from one another. You could glue labels on them: "The Self-Possessed Girl With Practical Skills And No Sense of Romance," "The Girl Who Is Easily Distracted By Hats And Poetry," "The Serious And Responsible Young Man Who's Kind Of A Bigot," and "The Foppish Dandy, Who I'm Guessing Is Supposed To Be Gay."
(I'm not knowledgeable about the history of the Regency romance genre, but I assume that Heyer is at least partly at fault for the frequent occurrence of these character types elsewhere in the genre. The only regency trope I haven't yet been able to pin on her is the emotionally wounded former spy. He would be tricky to pair up with any of her stock female characters. "He's too melodramatic for the Sensible girl to bother with, and not responsible enough to take care of the Flighty one. I may have to set him up with one of the horses.")
The Grand Sophy seems to be the top contender for The Internet's Favorite Georgette Heyer Book, with good reason. Its conflict is probably the most minor of any of her books: a family is beset with children who make bad romantic choices (but not too bad) and get in money trouble (but not too much). Their cousin Sophy arrives with a monkey, a gun, and no shame, and sets about fixing all of it, to the resentment of the stiff young patriarch Charles.
It's not a short book, but there are no wasted scenes - all of them push the plot forward somehow, and all of them, with one exception, are adorable and funny. The scene that is the exception is the source of the other Internet Discussion Constant about this book: it turns out that Heyer was really anti-Semitic. After the general pleasantness of the rest of the book, it's a little shocking.
Cotillion's heroine Kitty wants her moody, handsome, romance-novel-hero-like cousin Jack to propose to her; when he doesn't, she convinces her well-dressed, silly, apparently-asexual-or-gay cousin Freddy to do it instead. Her aim is to make Jack jealous, and failing that, to make Freddy take her sight-seeing in London for a month. Freddy, whose primary interest in life is clothing and who declares himself "not the marrying kind!," agrees to the plan reluctantly. They go off to London and immediately set off solving other people's problems - all of them, as with their own, partly Jack's fault.
Characters similar to Kitty and Freddy show up in most of Heyer's books, but I think this is the only time she makes them the heroes. Understandable, since it's such a difficult task, but she does it well. I'm not sure that the book's actually a romance - we're given no real reason to think that Freddy's interest in Kitty extends beyond picking out clothes for her, or that Kitty actually understands what marriage entails - but it's extremely entertaining regardless. Like Sophy, Kitty matchmakes, but her connection to reality is so thin that her successes are pure accident. Fortunately, her victims have even less common sense than she does.
The books where Heyer does go in for something more complicated, plot-wise, tend to be the weaker one. Like any normal person, I would ordinarily be overjoyed by the idea of an English historical romance novel using the plot of the Torikaebaya Monogatari - but compared to many of Heyer's other works, The Masqueraders is very weak.
For reasons that may make sense in some alternate universe, a brother and sister come to London disguised as members of the opposite gender, in order to help their father, a grifter, run a new con that he refuses to entirely explain. Heyer does not seem to have been comfortable with this sort of story - there are long sequences that drag, the father is not as funny as he needed to be to carry the book, and the siblings feel undeveloped as characters, like Heyer couldn't quite pin down why they were doing this stuff. I understand the feeling.
A Civil Contract is a book about actual human beings. If you were to read it immediately after the other three books, you might even question whether it was written by the same person. In the three afore-mentioned books, despite the hovering threat of unpleasant arranged marriages, all of the characters - even all the villains, I think - married for love. In this one, the protagonists enter into an actual marriage of convenience.
Adam and Jenny barely know one another, and Adam wants to marry someone else, but he needs her money to care for his family. Jenny admires Adam and wants to please her father - he wants her to have a title, which Adam has - but hasn't got much self-confidence, and goes into the marriage knowing that she'll be judged harshly for marrying above her station. They live together, learn to get along, get over some of their problems - sometimes together and sometimes alone - and eventually come to a deeper understanding of one another than I think any of Heyer's other characters ever could.
Her stock characters are here, too, but they're treated with a thoughtfulness that's unusual, as if they're being infected by the protagonists' humanity. The heroine's father is Heyer's Vulgar Bourgeois Businessman - whom she usually treats only slightly better than she does the Wicked Jew - but because she wants to make us understand the heroine, who loves him, she has to make us understand him a little, too. The same is true of the hero's first love, the Flighty Girl. Ordinarily, she would be a comedic figure or a villain, and she is here, too. But it's not impossible to believe that there's something going on in her head.
Most of Heyer's books are not particularly ambitious, but within the limits she's created for them, she does them perfectly. There are very few writers for whom you can say that.
*nod nod*
Date: 2010-11-12 12:56 pm (UTC)You're missing "the stoic hero whom everyone underestimates and who saves the day" - my favourite of those is The Unknown Ajax, because it's the guy basically having a great tolerance and sense of humour and deciding to play the role his family means him to play to the utmost. Since it doesn't end in schadenfreude, it's a fun bit. Also a great dramatic con-scheme at the end. Another one in that vein, a bit more sedate, is The Toll-Gate.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 05:09 pm (UTC)This is the best sum-up of Heyer I've seen yet! I find myself both charmed and annoyed by her work, and have to read it in small doses otherwise I get tetchy.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-13 06:58 pm (UTC)I think of Heyer the same way I think of Stout--most of their work is unashamedly genre formula, without much depth. What makes them worth reading is the excellence with which they execute their own personal formulas; they both have style and flair and an ear for dialogue and prose. (And, as I've commented before, I appreciate the variety of character types in Heyer's protagonists. She uses tropes across a reasonably broad spectrum--it's not all cookie-cutter characters in every book. How often do you see a romance novel male protagonist like Freddie? In most books--and in most of Heyer's books, too, I should add--he'd never be more than a supporting character.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 02:22 am (UTC)I think of Heyer and Stout that way, too, with the caveat that Stout comes across as being just essentially a lot nicer than Heyer. That rule of comedy where you always punch up? Stout almost always adhered to it, but Heyer very rarely did, if ever. In particular, she usually comes off as very judgmental of middle- and working-class characters compared to rich ones, with the exception of a few heroines who happened to have aristocratic blood to offset their evidently-regrettable backgrounds.
Maybe this is weird given their prevailing genres; or maybe it's not, given the whole "mysteries are fantasies of justice" theory. The Wolfe books definitely are.