A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree.. by Leslie Wilson

This advertisement appeared in 1903, and I hope that to all my readers it will seem as shocking as to myself. What is equally shocking is that in fact it contains the essence of the abuser's mind-set; the attempt to clear his (less often) her conscience (it won't stop the abuse recurring), and that Pat's equivalent is alive and well and maybe living just down the road from any of us, or even next door.
But here, it's a joke. It's even considered a good way to sell butter.

 What has often struck me, in reading the fiction of the quite recent past, is the extent to which domestic violence is normalised or trivialised. 'Your tantrums may do very well at home,' says the Earl of Worth to Judith Taverner in Georgette Heyer's 'Regency Buck,' 'but they arouse in me nothing more than a desire to beat you soundly. And that, Miss Taverner, if ever I do marry you, is precisely what I shall do.' And how can we believe that he won't? Since he starts his acquaintance with the heroine by forcing a kiss on her, it's quite clear that he hasn't much sense of her boundaries.
Of course, domestic violence wasn't frowned on in the Regency period, but Heyer wrote the novel in 1935, when one would like to think it was regarded with more loathing. But maybe not. And it's odd how the examples I'm thinking of all come in 'feel-good' novels, that one would read for amusement, possibly while eating chocolates.
Take 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,' Winifred Watson's charming mille-feuille of a novel. Here Miss La Fosse's Michael appears on the scene and begins by shaking his adored soundly. Oh, yes, Miss Pettigrew persuades herself that Michael 'would never really hurt Miss La Fosse,' and that 'Miss La Fosse had done to the young man something meriting anger, for which she had no excuse..The punishment then was only just.' Miss Pettigrew then goes on to justify the assault by comparing it to smacking children. Clearly in those days attitudes to smacking children were very different, but: an adult woman is not a child. 'Do I look like a wife-beater?' Michael later demands of Miss Pettigrew, who, already infatuated, gasps: 'Certainly not.' And of course, she's right. Wife-beaters don't have it tattooed round their foreheads. It'd make it easier for the rest of us if they did.

Martin van Maele: Histoire comique de Francion

Just to drive the point home, Michael later says of his love: 'obviously she needs a little physical correction, but I'm the only right man to do it.' It makes me think of Max Frisch's fire-raisers, stacking up paraffin and kindling round the house while the householder refuses to believe there's anything dangerous going on.
Later, he wins her love by punching another lover down, which is what not a few Georgette Heyer heroines do, too. A violent man is good husband material, is the nasty message.
Then there's the attitude to rape. 'A nice rape,' is what Albert Campion once suggests would be therapeutic for a woman. At least his wife protests, but almost casually; one wonders if it's really rape he's talking about, but I do think of Freud's belief that 'penis normalis' was the cure for all ills.
In 'The Pursuit of Love,' when Fanny bids Linda farewell on her journey to the South of France, Linda says: 'I do feel so terrified - think of sleeping in the train, all alone.'
'Perhaps you won't be alone,' I said. 'Foreigners are greatly given, I believe, to rape.'
To which Linda replies: 'Yes, that would be nice.'
And thus rape, like Worth's desire to beat Judith, is presented to us as something exotic, something a woman really wants, and really enjoys.
This is not to say that all authors of the past trivialise abuse.In 'The Making of a Marchioness', Frances Hodgson Burnett has one of her characters say of Mrs Osborne: 'That little woman.. lives every day through twenty-four hours of hell. One can see it in her eyes even when she professes to smile at the brute for decency's sake. The awfulness of a woman's forced smile at the devil she is tied to, loathing him..'
And then, of course, there's Morel's beating of his wife in 'Sons and Lovers,' where Lawrence eloquently describes the mother's psychological processes. Or are they hers? In the end, the story is about the effect on Paul of his father's violence. Paul is later described as incapable of violence towards his own women, and yet he himself does a nice job of emotional abuse on his first love, Miriam. And oddly, Lawrence seems to feel that Morel and his wife had a vital, nourishing relationship in spite of the violence, and blames Mrs Morel for it. As the abuser always does.
It's estimated that one in four women will experience violence in a relationship in her life. That's not the same as saying that one in four men is violent, but it's a terrifying statistic. The police receive about two calls a minute about domestic violence. Most of these will never lead to prosecution, still less successful prosecution, because the crime is committed far away from witnesses, and even if there's injury, it's only one person's word against another's.
It's now thought that abusers are not men who themselves have been abused, but who have seen their mothers abused in childhood, have had it role-modelled for them, in fact (though some people will decide that abuse ends with them). But there is a direct line between the people who in 1903 thought two black eyes was a good way to sell butter, and the man who assaults his wife 114 years later. Like the anti-Semitism which also lurks in 'Miss Pettigrew', we need to be aware of these things, though. They are past a joke.

Food in fiction, from fantasy stew to johnny cakes, by Gillian Polack

This last fortnight I’ve been indulging in comfort reading and comfort cooking. I need a couple of hours safety in my day in order to cope with our current interesting times. My reading time has been spent about equally in fantasy worlds and in the world of Georgette Heyer. All of this convinces me that it’s time to talk about food again.

Medlars, picture by Gillian Polack

One of the ways in which I judge the success of the invention in a novel (any novel) is how well the writer handles food. Georgette Heyer is comfort reading partly because she understands that food and the social habits that surround food are essential to her stories. She skips over many things, but seldom food. 

She doesn’t describe it rapturously or gluttonously: she uses it as an essential part of the lives of the characters. Her female characters can go whole days without ever needing to use a toilet, but when Elinor Rochdale rocks up to a strange house in The Reluctant Widow and no-one is prepared for her coming, there are only cold meats and maybe bread and butter on offer. In a well-run household there would be more choices, but the house Elinor discovers is not well run in any way. People must eat, even in poorly-run households, but people may not eat safely or may not have much in the way of choices but starvation is just that and only applies to those living in appalling circumstances. Heyer’s Regency is imaginary and so a lot of the ugly side of society is missing: no-one starves, although people may skip meals or have sadly restricted choices. Food is at the service of story.

Food in a good novel is always at the service of the novel. Even if the author doesn’t mean it to say something, it is part of the story. When an author doesn’t consider food properly and just shoves it in willy-nilly, it’s the reader who pays.

Dried barberries, picture by Trudi Canavan

Until Diana Wynne Jones mocked the ever-present stew in adventure fantasy travel in her The Tough Guide to Fantasyland travellers eating stew appeared far too often in a certain kind of fantasy novel. It was important to feed people felling tyrants or achieving noble quests, and ‘stew’ was a simple concept that worked for those who had never made a decent stew from scratch. By ‘from scratch’ I mean ‘first trap your hare and wild-harvest your carrots’. Decent stew is not a recipe suitable for exhausted people who need nourishment instantly and who are on the run or on a quest.

The writers who used stew in this way had a particular need in their writing. It wasn’t just to feed travellers. Others have used random nuts discovered (in or out of season) or stale bread to serve the same function in the story. They might be depicting a sense of camaraderie around a campfire, a feeling of solidarity or a moment of hope. A hot meal in the midst of panic gives that moment of comfort and equates in reading terms to my choice of novels right now.

Food isn’t just for keeping people alive. Not in fiction and not anywhere. It tells us what level of luxury we live in, what friends we have, how far we’re social beings and far solitary, how much we as individuals luxuriate in or ignore our senses. So if stew can’t be used in quite the way it has been in fantasy novels, what can?

Dried white mulberries, picture by Trudi Canavan

There are many choices, and they all relate to the function the food serves at that precise moment and also to the culture drawn on for the novel. When I was a child, damper was our stew-equivalent for a moment of camaraderie around a fire. Or, if we had a pan, johnny cakes. Johnny cakes are ‘journey cakes’, I suspect (though have never actually demonstrated). 

I and my friends took our sense of mood form the folklore and folksongs we were taught. This is how that bonding can be developed, even if there’s no time or capacity to cook a stew. The song that pushed me to think about journey food was called “Four little Johnny cakes” and a version of it can be found here. http://folkstream.com/042.html It’s all about comfort. All about a pause in travel for refreshment, physical and emotional. The food can be cooked quite quickly, on a single pan, or has been pre-cooked. It has associations with wandering the roads and carrying a swag: the food of swaggies or stockmen.

I’m using Australian terms quite intentionally here, for another thing that writers do when they haven’t thought through things properly is to use the language of their youth or of the fiction they write. How many US readers however, know what a squatter is or care about swaggies? The rules were different. The history is different. The words we write with are not culturally neutral. 

Picture by Gillian Polack

It’s easier to remember that these terms are not culturally neutral if I use less-familiar ones. Saying “johnny cake” in my fiction would have to be backed by some suggestion as to what a johnny cake is, for my readers might not have grown up with (probably didn’t grow up with) that song. I could use the song, or I could joke about the griddle cake Alfred burned (if it was historical fiction) or I could describe the delectable aroma, or... there are many techniques open to writers. The trick is to remember to use them. A good historical fiction novel will use a dozen in a chapter, for they are what bring the detail to life for the reader when one is talking about a distant time.

Flour and water and a bit of salt and a bit of raising agent and maybe a few currants and you have a johnny cake. It takes a very few minutes over a hot pan. If you don’t have a hot pan then you find a stick and make damper. A somewhat wetter dough, wound around the stick and then cooked over a hot fire. These are the travel foods of my childhood. We drizzled honey over our lightly burned damper and made a wonderfully sticky mess. Damper can be savoury and it can be cooked in a dying fire or a dutch oven. 

Flour and water are the traditional cooking ingredients of many travellers, because flour could be carried in a small flour bag and water is a survival necessity. Much more real than stew, in that way.

Alas, for flour and water, the writer has to work that much harder to get the sense of camaraderie around a campfire, or eating a hot meal together I a time of difficulty. Not all foodstuffs serve the same narrative goals with the same ease.

Stew is not impossible while travelling. Soup is even more possible. But they need planning, time and cooking equipment. This is where it’s really handy to look at what travellers actually ate at various times in various places in history. How far from village to village, farm to farm was it? Was it customary for stray travellers to be fed if they arrived when a meal was being served or (for whatever reason) were travellers left unwelcomed? Did voyagers steal chickens from farmers or buy them or forgo fresh meat? Did they walk into a shop and buy equipment and did that equipment include special bags to carry flour and salt and ground coffee and travel soup? Did they travel with a cart, a mule, a horse, a boat? The reader doesn’t have to know all this – if a writer develops the right model for their tale, it will make the story a lot more evocative and mean that food can be used in all the various ways: it’s not just a matter of making sure that characters don’t starve.

Research doesn’t have to be theoretical. Right now, I know a bit more about portable soup than I ought. This is because I’ve been making it. A lot. I know that chicken doesn’t work so well (the bones are too brittle) but that duck is splendid and beef bones with a little meat on are best of all. Of all the beef I tried, Belted Galloway farmed in an old-fashioned way made the best portable soup. I know the exact mount to cook it down to in order to make ‘soup glue’ which has so little moisture that it can be packed in paper and taken on board ship. One smallish cube of my portable soup makes 2-3 mugs of real soup. And I can make quite tasty soup this way. In fact, I have duck soup in my freezer right now and am using it instead of stock cubes in my stews. It makes the best stews ever. My version, however, takes three to five days to make, over low heat. There’s no way of speeding it up and still having a safe and tasty end-product. I’ve tried. It’s wonderful travel food, but it takes planning or resources.

I cook things like this on writing days. This is the wonder of the modern kitchen. I have to keep an eye on my big saucepan, but I don’t have to tend a fire. Before iron stoves were invented quite recently, it wasn’t so easy to make.

 

This explains the bread and the mutton and the johnny cakes and the fish. It also makes a kind of travel stew possible if you have a pan and a fire and some meat and some vegies. If travellers carry enough baggage and have a good cook in the company, it’s possible to have the comfort food.

It takes a lot of set-up, however. A slice off a piece of mutton bought from a farmer and a piece of bread or damper to eat it with, or a johnny cake (or four) – these are more likely for that Western European based fantasy world than a travel stew. Georgette Heyer, of course, simply finds an inn for her travellers and, if they arrive at an odd hour, someone has to argue with the innkeeper until food is produced. Food is at the service of story in a good novel, always.

September Competition

To win a copy of Snowdrift, short stories by Georgette Heyer, just answer the following question in the Comments below:

What is your favourite Georgette Heyer novel and why?

Then send your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk so that I can contact you if you have won.

Closing date 7th October

We regret that our competitions are open only to UK Followers

New Georgette Heyer stories!

We could almost say that our September guest is posthumous! The late Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) is very popular with many History Girls and our Followers but we are aware that she is sometimes considered a bit of a Marmite author.  So if you are not a fan, look away now. If you are we have a real treat for you.

Snowdrift has just been published, a collection of short stories, including three previously unpublished tales. These were found by our actual guest Jennifer Kloester, who has written an introduction. We asked Jennifer to tell us about her researches.

Jennifer Kloester, photo by Greg Noakes

Tell us about the re-discovery of the three new short stories.  What were your feelings on realising that they hadn’t been read since 1939?

It was an incredible research experience finding new Heyer short stories, most of which had not been seen since their publication in the 1920s and 1930s. I will never forget being in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room at the British Library and turning the page of Sovereign magazine and seeing Georgette Heyer's beneath a new short story title. I literally had to stop myself from jumping up and down with excitement. I spent weeks searching over three thousand individual magazines at the Newspaper Library at Colindale. Of the nine stories I eventually found several were contemporary romances but the four were historical. Two of those historical shorts: 'Runaway Match' and 'Incident on the Bath Road' have now been included in the new anthology, Snowdrift and Other Stories and the third one, 'Pursuit' I found in a delightful publication, The Queen's Book of the Red Cross. Every new story was like discovering gold. I love research and gain a tremendous sense of satisfaction from searching archives and finding new details about the past. Researching Georgette Heyer's life and writing had been hugely rewarding and I feel immensely privileged to have spent so many years (since 1999) pursuing the reclusive Miss Heyer.

How do you think that they add to her existing body of work?

These short stories were written in the 1930s - 1936 and 1939 to be exact - when Heyer had only written her first couple of Regency novels. In 'Runaway Match, 'Incident on the Bath Road' and 'Pursuit', Heyer readers will find hints of books to come. Heyer often used her short stories as starting points for her later novels and I think that's really interesting in terms of her development as a writer. Heyer has iconic status as a historical novelist and created the hugely popular Regency genre and these short stories are part of that early evolution. By considering them in their context I think they add a few more pieces to our growing understanding of an intensely private author.

Do you have a favourite?

I like them all but 'Incident on the Bath Road' is my favourite of this group. Heyer draws her characters so well and there are some lovely lines in it.

What do you think keeps people coming back to her books after all this time?

 She is the consummate storyteller and, as we see time and time again in books, movies and on television, a good story always sells. Heyer is also masterful in depicting character. Her characters are so memorable and not only her primary but her secondary characters are three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood creations. Her plots are brilliantly crafted and no one does imbroglio endings like Heyer. Best of all she makes you laugh out loud with her wonderful dialogue and memorable scenes. You only have to think of moments from her novels like Freddy and Nemesis or Claude and Polyphant or Lord Dolphington (Heyer fans will know what I mean) and you'll be smiling. It has often been said that Georgette Heyer is one of the great re-reads and I think that's absolutely true. She is the author you turn to when life is hard, or sickness prevails or you just want to escape. A.S. Byatt called Heyer's novels 'Honourable Escape' and I think that's a very apt description.


You've written two non-fiction books (a biog of GH and one about the regency world in which many of her books are set) and two novels. Has your view of GH's writing changed since you started writing/ writing novels?

Writing my own novels has made me appreciate Heyer's achievements even more. She wrote with such extraordinary facility - sometimes penning an entire book in a couple of months. She wrote Faro's Daughter in eight weeks, straight to the typewriter and single-spaced on account of the wartime paper shortage. I envy her the ease with which she devised her plots and created her characters though she always said the writing was hard! I have also gained a deeper understanding of her inner struggles - her yearning for recognition and for wanting to be told that her novels were good. She was so often self-deprecating about her work even though she loved writing books and deep down believed they were worthwhile. Recently, I've been re-reading her novels from the 1950s and have been struck anew by the brilliance of their structure. I don't think I'd ever fully appreciated the cleverness of her plots until I'd written my own novels. I'd love to write as well as Heyer.

Your favourite GH heroine?

Such a hard question because I love so many of her female characters. Hester Theale from Sprig Muslin always springs to mind because she is so well-drawn and has real depth. I adore Mary Challoner from Devil's Cub because she is Heyer's first anti-heroine and I adore the scene she's on the ship and tells Vidal she's about to throw up. Jenny Chawleigh from A Civil Contract is superbly written and she evokes great sympathy. Then there's Venetia who is undoubtedly one of Heyer's finest creations. But perhaps my top pick is Sarah Thane from The Talisman Ring because I just love her scenes with Sir Tristram and she's so feisty and cool-headed.


What’s next for you?

I'm about to finish writing my latest novel. This one's contemporary fiction but with a strong Regency element. I've had great fun writing it and I'm quite excited by the story. The Regency bits have been a joy to write - there's something about the period that I just love. I suspect that's because of my Jane Austen/Georgette Heyer addiction! The novel also has a supernatural theme which I've really enjoyed writing. I'm hoping it will be out next year. I'll keep you posted!

Thanks, Jennifer! Mary Challoner is my favourite heroine too.

You can win a copy of this gorgeously-produced book in our competition tomorrow and enter the world of Nonesuches and Nonpareils, Bucks and Corinthians with Roman profiles, impossibly complicated neckcloths and multi-caped riding cloaks.  Your destination will be Bath, London or Gretna Green and the ride is bound to be enjoyable.

(Many thanks to Charlotte Wightwick for her help with this guest post)

Sex and morality in the novels of Georgette Heyer, by Leslie Wilson

Two strings to her bow, by John Pettie

To those who dread spoilers: there are some in here, because one can hardly discuss books without giving away some of the plot. However, with Georgette Heyer it's clear that the heroine will get her man at the end of each and every one. The fascination is in how this is achieved. So I'm not apologising!

To start with: I love Georgette Heyer's work. She's given me hours of pleasure, and I return to her over and over again. I love her wit, her elegant style, and respect the depth of her research.

On the other hand, I'm interested in history and the ways in which history is represented, and also interested in the Georgian era, and this makes me, in my leisure hours, inclined to cast an analytical eye on the way in which she has processed the knowledge she has; and today I want to talk about the sexual world of her novels.

Much though I like and admire Heyer's work, I would never class her with Jane Austen; she could never lay claim to having made significant breakthroughs in narrative technique, as Austen did. On the other hand, she does seem to inhabit the same moral world as Austen does; the end of her novels is a happy marriage, and her heroines are always virtuous.

Vittorio Reggiani: The Unconditional Lover

Indeed, they're almost all virgins, the only exceptions being the few whose marital trials are the subject of the novel, the heroines of 'April Lady', 'The Convenient Marriage', and 'A Civil Contract'. You could say of Horry ('The Convenient Marriage) and Nell (April Lady) that they are characterised by a kind of emotional virginity; but this is not the case with Jenny in 'A Civil Contract', and it's significant that only in this novel does Heyer, just briefly, speak of what goes on in the bedroom. 'Jenny was sometimes shy, but never shrinking.' Jenny is rather different, and far less of a commedia-del-arte character, than most of Heyer's heroines. She is down to earth and determined, and I've always felt that, if her husband is more experienced in bed, she is the one who makes the whole thing possible.

Oh - I've forgotten Juana in 'The Spanish Bride', probably because though I have read the book I didn't like it much. Heyer thought her novels were best when she gave way to her passion for military history. I don't. Here Heyer does say: 'She never denied him the comfort of her body.' Poor Juana, being woken up from deep sleep after the end of an exhausting day, and having to make love whether she felt like it or not!  If I've forgotten anyone else, do tell me.

Then there's Hero in 'Friday's Child.' I think she is definitely a virgin all the way through, and then there's Elinor in 'The Reluctant Widow', a novel I adore because of the humour. Her marriage is unconsummated, and just as well for her.

Regency Proposal; eighteenth-century woodcut

Leonie, who is brought up dressed as a boy (presumably to avoid rape) in 'These Old Shades', says 'Me, I am not very innocent,' but of course this refers to the things she has seen, not what she has experienced. Likewise, Prudence in 'The Masqueraders' has often dressed as a boy but has also retained her virtue - somewhat nauseatingly, (to me, at least) this is equated with never having been kissed. These heroines know, of course, about 'the muslin company,' meaning everything from prostitutes to courtesans, and they're almost all relaxed about these ladies' existence (Hero, of course, earns herself a box on the ear by referring to Opera dancers in public) - but they inhabit a different world.

But the men, on the other hand - and this is a major difference between Heyer and Austen. Of course we don't know if Austen's heroes are virgins when they take her heroines to bed. I can't believe it of Colonel Brandon, because of his advanced years, and I do wonder particularly about Frederick Wentworth, but this may be unfair, since it's only because he's a sailor. Austen was fairly relaxed about the existence of courtesans and adulterers in private life, though they and their male partners get slammed in her books. Frank Churchill probably has had mistresses in keeping. I'm sure Austen thought so. But she generally indicates that her heroes are men of good reputation. I do sometimes wonder though, what exactly that signifies. At least they don't have expensive mistresses and flaunt them.

Heyer's men frequently have mistresses in keeping at the start of the novel, and they're often flaunted big-time; sometimes they have just dismissed them, like Beaumaris in 'Arabella.' Or they have pasts, in which tarts with a heart of gold sometimes figure, faded 'cosy armfuls' who do them a favour and acknowledge that they've now turned virtuous. Then there's the Duke of Avon in 'These Old Shades. 'Behind me lies scandal upon sordid scandal,' he says, and in the early pages of the novel, he takes Leonie (who he knows is a girl) to a brothel, though he does suddenly realise what he's doing and sends her to wait for him downstairs. The seeds of redemption are already germinating in his heart.

Whereas Austen is cynical (I feel justifiably so) about the chance of a rake's redemption through the love of a good woman, and her heroines escape the likes of William Elliot or Henry Crawford, Heyer's novels abound in rakes just waiting to be reformed by her heroines. At least, they're reformed characters at the time the inevitable bear-hug takes place (I always find these 'crushing embraces' rather anaphrodisiac myself. Give me Peter Wimsey's 'Tu m'enivres!' any day.) I do wonder whether Avon, Alverstoke, et al do really remain faithful to their wives. Of course Venetia, in the eponymous novel, is quite calm about that possibility: 'It would be quite unreasonable to wish you to change all your habits,' she says to Lord Damerel.

Maybe Heyer was herself quite relaxed about husbands pursuing 'adventures? To her, the most important ingredient in romance was friendship, and this comes out, again and again in the novels. To share jokes, to be co-conspirators (sometimes against the world), to be comfortable with each other  is the crucial thing - far more important than the heroes' heroic physique and handsome face (anyway, they're not all Apollos).

Marcus Stone: The End of the Story

What are beyond the pale, though, are any 'natural' children. 'Children of your own?' the country doctor asks Alverstoke. 'Not to my knowledge,' his Lordship replies. And this at an era when courtesans often took their curren protectors' surnames and bore them children. Harriette Wilson was infertile, but her sister and rival Amy had children. This was also a time when noble lords often knew that only their eldest son was their own. This policy had its shortcomings, as the heir sometimes died, like Lady Melbourne's eldest son. So the next Lord Melbourne was William Lamb, later Victoria's Prime Minister, who was generally supposed to be Lord Egremont's son. Lord Alverstoke has had 'liaisons' with society women (though Heyer fuzzes this, leaving it hanging in the air whether these were only flirtations). In reality, of course, he would have bedded Cyprians and noble ladies alike, and  might well have planted his seed in some well-born household, not to mention giving his courtesans children as well as diamond necklaces.

'Natural children' indeed, are the sticking-point in the courtship of Sir Waldo Hawkridge and Miss Ancilla Trent ('The Nonesuch'). She believes him to be taking care of a squad of them and thus would as readily think of becoming his mistress as his wife. There's an oddness about this: one could almost infer that men who did the decent thing by their natural children (as did Harriet Smith's father in 'Emma') were deemed to be more immoral than those who abandoned them.


Actually, it was quite common for men to support their out-of-wedlock children in the Georgian era. Charles James Fox did. I think I'm right that the Duke of Devonshire introduced at least one into his household, and the Duchess's daughter by Mr Grey was looked after in his family. Dido Belle, the illegitimate niece of Lord Mansfield, was brought up almost as a daughter, and she was mixed-race, too.

So why are illegitimate children so offensive in Georgette Heyer that they need to be suppressed altogether? A modern writer might bring them in, and the heroine might love them as much as Alverstoke loves Frederica's younger brothers.

If this was an essay, I'd have to answer that question myself, but this is a blog, so I lay the matter before you, dear readers. What do YOU think?

All pictures are from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain, including in the US. They were also all created post-Regency, which seemed appropriate.

Romantic Heroes (and how we perceive them)

by Marie-Louise Jensen

I'm writing this post on St Valentine's Day having just run the gauntlet of the pink-and-heart-strewn aisle of my local supermarket. And as Catherine Johnson so rightly says, on the blog today what single person wants to be reminded of Valentine's Day?

But what with the day of romance and all that plus a great conversation I had on twitter yesterday, the thought of romantic heroes and how they've changed has been going over in my mind.

I'm a Georgette Heyer addict. I admit that without shame or excuses. Whenever the going gets tough, the tough hide under the bedclothes and read Georgette Heyer. I discovered her historical fiction novels (almost exclusively Georgian or Regency) at 14 and have returned to them in times of illness and trouble ever since. They've also influenced my own writing.

But rereading a few of them more recently with a more heightened awareness of gender and power balances within relationships, a few of the male protagonists, the way they are portrayed and the female responses to them, make me uncomfortable.

Heyer's female characters are, like most women of their time in fiction, entirely concerned with finding a husband; a genuine constraint in a society that doesn't allow women autonomy. The desirable husbands were a range of dashing blades, dissolute bucks, witty dandies, brave soldiers and the like. Quite a swoony collection of men, in fact.

The ones that make me uncomfortable are the 'masterful' men - and the women who like to submit to this mastery, because it's what they've secretly been desiring all along. What makes me so uneasy is just how close 'masterful' is to 'controlling and abusive' and how close this submissiveness is to 'she likes it really'.

There's a difference, I feel, between a strong male character and one who is imperious and dominating. It's a fine line, and just which side of it we tread and find acceptable has changed enough in the last few decades to make a few of these older books (Heyer was writing mainly from the 1930s to the 1960s) jar with the modern reader. Strangely there is more that jars with me in Heyer's historical fiction than there is in Austen, the Brontes, Gaskell, Burney or even Radcliffe - many of whose heroes are positive paragons of virtue.

I've become gradually more aware, over the years I've been writing, of the need to portray mutual respect between the genders and around issues of consent. This is especially the case writing for a young adult readership. Romance writing is a responsible business. The romances you read as a young person are likely to shape your attitudes to and understanding of romantic relationships.

The rise of teen 'dark romance' with its borderline-abusive relationships, including stalking, voyeurism, danger of imminent death and other unsavoury ingredients, portrayed as romantic, trouble me very deeply. I know I'm not alone in this.

I've reacted by making my own male protagonist in my most recent historical novel, Runaway, more respectful. I probably need to go much further down this path, in fact and make my girls more assertive, although this is harder to achieve convincingly in historical fiction, where social norms were different. But consent and mutual respect are vital to portray. In fact, I think I'll end this with the wonderful words of one of the university guides my eldest son came across a year or so ago: "Consent is setting the bar too low, guys. Hold out for enthusiasm."

Changing Language

by Marie-Louise Jensen

When I'm researching and reading old books, I love to find and note all the ways language has altered over the centuries. Writing my first Georgian book, The Girl in the Mask, I had to write down a note for myself:

1) You keep your clothes in a closet.
2) Your wardrobe is your collection of clothing
3) Skirts are the part of a man's coat below the waist
4) Ladies skirts were referred to as petticoats or 'coats
5) A dress was a gown.



There were others, but those were the frequently used ones I was concerned about getting right (I did make one mistake in Smuggler's Kiss which slipped through).


When I ask school children today what ladies in the 1700s called their dresses, they struggle to get the right answer, instead guessing robe, frock, tunic etc. The word gown has been pretty much lost.

Incidentally, I remember my grandmother always talking about 'frocks'. With the arrogance of youth, we'd roll our eyes and sigh, but in fact the word has come back into fashion now in the phrase 'posh frock'. I secretly always rather liked it.

I had fun in Runaway with a few Georgian phrases. For example, I used the expression 'sick as a cushion'. I'd come across it in Georgette Heyer novels and always found it amusing, so I put it into some dialogue. But the copy-editor queried it. When I hunted for it in the OED, I couldn't find it, but I did find 'sick as a parrot', which I thought was equally amusing, if not more so - given that parrots can be green. In the end, lovely assistant editor tracked down 'sick as a cushion', so although I kept parrot, I've notched it up as a phrase to use in future. I have quite a store of them and I always love coming across them when I'm reading too.

Blinding with Science or Charming with Curiosities? by Katherine Langrish

When one is writing historical fiction, problems of language often arise.  I don’t mean just dialogue, though that’s a perennial one which is solved in different ways at different times.  It was once thought colourful to go all faux-archaic and bespatter your characters’ speech with thees and thous, but the result was usually unfortunate: ‘Tush, tush, child, fie on thee for a wayward wench!’ Robert Louis Stevenson referred to this style as ‘tushery’: he tried it himself in ‘The Black Arrow’, but never thereafter, writing to his friend Henley,

The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy. So I turned me to-what thinkest 'ou?-to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing.


Most historical writers now aim for an unobtrusive modern style, on the sensible grounds that ‘old fashioned speech’ sounded modern to those who used it.

But the other linguistic problem is what to do about obsolete or technical terms. Some time ago, friends of mine were having a conversation about words their editors had asked them to alter, or at least explain, in case children might be puzzled by them.  Among these were ‘colt’ (young male horse), ‘merlin’ (small hawk), and 'jesses' (the straps attached to the feet of a hunting hawk). When I was writing about Viking ships in ‘Troll Blood’, I was asked to weed out or explain much of the nautical terminology – ‘reefing a sail,’ for instance, and ‘a lee shore’ and other sailorly commands such as ‘luff’ or ‘jibe’.

Fair enough, you may think: we don’t want to be obscure. But do children really stop in their tracks – or worse, derail – when they come across an exotic word they don’t understand?  I doubt it. When I read an unusual word as child, one of four things would happen:

(A) I would semi-skip over it.  This is the best option for things like: “‘Luff, you lubbers!  Haul on those sheets!” roared the captain, as the sail went aback”. I didn’t have to know the exact meaning of the words; I could see that the ship was in difficulties and the captain was worried, and that was enough.  Luff and lubbers and aback, and their ilk, got stuffed into a mental category of ‘mysterious words that sailors use’.  (As does ‘ilk’, in fact, which I’m very vague about.) And that’s pretty well where they still are. 

(B) I would pick up the meaning from the context.  On reading that the Flopsy Bunnies fell asleep because lettuce is ‘soporific’, I didn’t go to the dictionary, neither did I make a conscious mental note that soporific must mean something to do with making you sleepy; the word merely took on a contextual colour, or flavour, which I would recall the next time I encountered it. Children are good at making these associative leaps because this is how they learn their own language anyway. It may lead to the occasional misapprehension, but such things are generally cleared up by experience.

(C) I would ignore the word entirely and carry on, which is what I still do if I’m reading The Waste Land or, say, a 19^th century literary essay with bits of original Greek poetry dropped in here and there.

As a last resort:

(D) I would carry the book to my mother and ask, “What does this word mean?”

All four of these options are legitimate and I believe we ought to make sure children feel OK about using them. A healthy reader is like a healthy cross-country runner whose steady pace is not broken by obstacles and stumbling blocks.  A confident child reader should have the toughness and elasticity to leap over the odd unusual word and keep going.  And how are they going to acquire that confidence if every text they read has been raked and weeded? 

Real pleasure can be got from working out the meanings of obscure words and phrases.  Here is an example which may remind us adults what it's like to read something peppered with unfamiliar words:

Vincent was the first of Matthew’s two sons to reach Darracott Place, driving himself in a curricle to which were harnessed two magnificent black geldings, randem-tandem; and by the time Richmond, who had been looking out for him, let out a halloo and exclaimed, ‘Here’s my cousin at last! Oh, he’s driving unicorn! He’s the most complete hand!’ even Mrs Darracott, with whom Vincent was no favourite, felt a measure of relief.

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

First of all, I have no idea in what way a curricle differs from a phaeton or a barouche or a landaulet or any of the other carriages Georgette Heyer frequently alludes to, but I get the point that the type of carriage Vincent drives is as important as the type of car he would drive if this were set in today’s world. If her editor had told Heyer that all these technical terms were just too confusing, and had made her stick always to the generic word ‘carriage’, the book would be poorer. I might never have realised that carriages weren’t just a way to get around, they were status symbols, indicators of character.  I would have a less nuanced view of the Regency world.

Second, knowing that a tandem is a bicycle built for two, I deduce that ‘randem-tandem’ means the horses are harnessed one behind the other rather than side by side.  This sounds flashy and difficult to manage, and sheds more light upon Vincent’s character and his young cousin’s admiration. As the book is not a fantasy, ‘driving unicorn’ does not for one moment fool me into believing that Vincent is actually driving a unicorn. Instead, I gather it to be a slang term for this same arrangement of the team, and Richmond uses it to show himself both knowledgeable and appreciative of his older cousin’s expertise. ‘A complete hand’ isn’t an expression in use today – a moment’s thought suggests that it comes from card games – but in context its meaning is obvious. Vincent is in control of his team and his life. He holds all the cards…

Heyer is magnificent at this kind of thing. It’s not tushery, either, because it works; it doesn’t get in the way. Instead of divorcing us from her characters, Heyer draws us in to share their world. Here’s an indignant young man complaining about the behaviour of the spoilt beauty he’s been trying to prevent from running off:

“She said she was going off to spout her pearls that instant, so that she could be gone from the place before you reached us!  She’d have done it, too!  What’s more, I wish I’d let her!”

            “I don’t wonder at it.  But you did not – which was very well done of you, sir!”

            “I don’t know about that,” he said gloomily.  “…The thing was, she’d put me in such a tweak by that time that I was hanged if I’d cry craven! Told her that if she tried to shab off I’d squeak beef – what I mean is, tell the landlord who she was and what she was scheming to do.  So then she threw the clock at me. That brought the landlord in on us, and a couple of waiters – and before I could utter a word, the little hussy was carrying on as though she thought she was Mrs Siddons!  Well, she’d threatened to tell everyone I’d been trying to give her a slip on the shoulder if I wouldn’t let her leave the room, and by God, she did it!”

            “Oh no!” exclaimed Miss Trent, changing colour.

The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer

Could this be any clearer?  Well, it could.  ‘Spout her pearls’ could be altered to ‘pawn her pearls’ for instance. But though I’ve never heard of ‘spout’ as a synonym for ‘pawn’ (or maybe 'sell'), the general meaning is clear, and the slang gives much more character to the young man’s speech.  The really difficult bit – ‘if she tried to shab off I’d squeak beef’ is glossed, ostensibly for Miss Trent’s benefit – and ‘a slip on the shoulder’ is also glossed by Miss Trent’s embarrassed reaction. The dramatic actress Mrs Siddons is presumably still well enough known for the allusion not to be obscure, but even if a reader hasn’t heard of her, it shouldn’t matter. The context does the job. It’s fun – it’s exhilarating – keeping up with Heyer’s lively stream of eighteenth century colloqualisms.

Instead of worrying about individual words and their supposed difficulty, let’s teach our children to throw themselves into a story and keep going to the end, in spite of the odd word they don’t quite understand.  Learning not to be afraid of strange words is exactly like getting down the length of the swimming pool without minding the odd wave that hits you in the face. 

You discover your own ability, and it’s more fun that way.



Picture credits:
The Black Arrow - cover, 1888, Wikipedia 
The Unknown Ajax - Heineman 1959, cover by Arthur Barbosa
The Nonsuch - Heineman 1962, cover by Arthur Barbosa