I have long harboured a raging contempt for Jane Austen novels. While I appreciate that they have a certain humour and plot structure to recommend them I just cannot get past the fact that they are peopled with folks who have no concerns other than finding the socially and economically “right” marriage. Oh, sure, there’s the occasional parson or schoolmaster who serves as a figure of fun and/or a match for one of the secondary characters. But the bulk of folks in what I have now discovered is called “Regency Romance” are members of the upper classes to whom jobs are an anathema.*
I blame my upbringing, really. And it’s ironic because both my sister and mother enjoy Austen immensely. But I just find the whole “I have to find a rich husband” thing kind of off-putting.
So imagine my surprise when I found myself enjoying a Regency Romance this weekend.
I came upon Georgette Heyer accidentally. She was an author who had been published in the mainstream, her books were inexpensive ($1.99) on the Kindle and highly-rated. Since they were written in the 1940s I assumed they’d be about the Edwardian era, kind of like Downton Abbey. Ooops. Apparently Heyer is a queen of Regency Romances and her books, although written well after Austen are direct descendents of dear Jane’s style and themes. I decided to stick with Grand Sophy, in part because I like stories about iconoclastic females who shake up society and in part to see if my antipathy for Regencies was an Austen thing or a Genre thing.
I now think that it’s probably a bit of both. I enjoyed Heyer far more than Austen. The story I read seemed more designed for pure entertainment and less about making statements. Austen was cranking her stuff out at the height of the Victorian empire, when class distinctions were very rigid and England was the ruler on which the sun never set. Heyer, on the other hand, was sending her stories into the Blitz.** She said in one interview that her books were meant as an escape for people to read in bomb shelters–and read them they did.
I don’t think Heyer will turn me into an unabashed fan of Regency Romances. I may read the other book (Cotillion) of hers that I bought in my ignorance, but I’m in no hurry. But I do appreciate that she’s cemented in me the knowledge that I don’t like Austen for Austen’s sake. If YOU do, that’s fine. You’re not any sort of bad person. I mean, I don’t like peas either. Or meatloaf. It’s just a personal taste thing.
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*This isn’t strictly part of today’s post as far as themes go, but it’s stuck in my brain so I think I’d do better to get it out there now. I have a theory that the growing popularity of YA novels is based on the same need in readers as the Regency Romance. Because today’s teenagers are in many ways our version of the idle rich. Sure there YA novels that address “real” issues like getting into college, being in love with the “wrong” person, having cancer at a young age, etc. But many of the more popular ones feature kids with a credit card bestowed on them by their Disappearing Parent and a lot of beach parties, cookouts, proms and other amusements. People whose method of reading-escape entails focusing on a whirl of gaiety are drawn to such stories.
**I read several reviews of The Postmistress last year when it was one of the Hyped Books of the summer. I was floored by how many grown women mentioned that until reading that book they had no idea about The Battle of Britain. I could understand if it were a WWII event more removed from our cultural consciousness–a lot of the South Pacific battles and social upheavals don’t register–but this is the freakin’ Battle of Britain. For crying out loud, it even figures in the Chronicles of Narnia. It comes up in high school history class. Or it damn well ought to. I’m stymied at the level of ignorance.
I would never try to talk you into liking what you don’t like, but I do want to correct a couple of misconceptions you seem to have about Austen. First, she didn’t write “Regency romances.” She was a realistic novelist writing contemporary fiction*. She happened to live during the Regency, but she wasn’t a historical novelist setting her stories in a period that seemed more enticing, as Heyer was.
Second, she lived during the Regency, not during the Victorian era. The class system in England was much more fluid then than it had been a generation earlier (which is a side theme of many of her novels, and of immense importance in Price and Prejudice), but less so than it would become for the first half of Victoria’s reign. And the Empire was just beginning to be pieced together, and some of her characters are enriched by that, but others are literally risking their lives to make it happen (which is a side theme of many of her novels, and of immense importance in Persuasion. Regency romances don’t particularly deal with these topics, though IIRC a couple of Heyer’s do (the class/wealth part, not the danger part).
Third, Heyer, whose work I have enjoyed very heartily, so this is not a knock at her, has nothing in common with “dear Jane’s style” but instead is full of Exclamation Points! and lacks all of Austen’s devastatingly stealthy undermining observations about persons and society.
Fourth, US students know very little about bits of wars that USian troops weren’t directly involved in, but then British, or former-Soviet-republic, or French, or whatever students know very little about the parts of wars that their own troops weren’t involved in, so it all evens out.
Fifth, you don’t like meatloaf? What in the world is the matter with you?
*It says A Lot about the period that money was becoming a major concern even to people who had high class status, like her heroines, and that women couldn’t have personal ambitions outside of marriage, which was what made finding the right (compatible) husband so crucial — because that was it; that was the rest of one’s life.
Queen Victoria wasn’t even born yet, so no Victorian era during Austen’s time. The problem in Austen’s time, of course, was that women of her class weren’t allowed to work, even if they had no money, which she didn’t. They were allowed to become governesses–that was it. And some of them turned to writing to make a living. She was writing about this conundrum. One of her characters in Emma likens this to slavery–being sold off to the highest bidder, or becoming a spinster governess. And the conclusion wasn’t always for the heroine to marry rich, but instead married the person she wanted to, in defiance of what relatives said. In S&S, the heroine marries a vicar who gets a living of 400 pounds a year, barely enough to live on. I love Austen novels, but I can see why others might not, and I’m definitely not into the worship-Austen craze that so many of my 18th C friends are (Austen’s time period is usually considered as part of the long 18th, which is an incongruously long C beginning in 1666 and stretching to 1830.) Scholars are weird, I know, but Austen is definitely not Victorian.
Sorry, I cross-posted with nm. I didn’t mean to barrage you.
No problem at all. I’m just glad I have readers who are not afraid to tell me I’m an eejit.
Okay. I feel like a dumbass. I thought Austen wrote circa 1850s. Ive always thought that I knew her to be a contemporary of Dickens et al.
Clearly I am woefully mistaken.
I think I need to correct some of my misconceptions; I see myself getting an Austen biography read in the very near future.
Thanks for setting me right.
Also: Meatloaf the food is just Pre-vomit to me. But Meat Loaf the singer is AWESOMESAUCE. So it all evens out.
You might be thinking of George Eliot. She was a true contemporary of Dickens, only seven years younger than he was. BTW, I didn’t know she was 7 yrs younger off the top of my head. I googled it. So I admit this lest I look like a literary history show-off (which I kind of am). Sorry. I have to know something about something.
Hey, Google is our friend. I use it all the time to either find out something I didn’t know or to double-check myself. I’m horribly ashamed and mad because I do usually factcheck every blog post I write. Today I didn’t because I had a lot on my plate and figured I could let it slide just this once.
Yep.
Lesson learned.
As for Eliot, you’re undoubtedly correct. I interchange them mentally all the time–in my mind Austen, Eliot and the Brontes form one congealing mass of Lady Writers of Britain I Don’t Enjoy. Except I love Jane Eyre.
Any way, I’m forever mixing up not only their works but their biographies as well.
You like Meat Loaf the singer? Ewwwwwwwww. (It’s a generational thing.)
Whenever I play Meatloaf in the car, my kids always say, “Why are his songs so LONG??????”
I’ve never read a Jane Austen novel, but I am a big fan of movies based on her books. How sad is that?
Janet, I am an unabashed Meat Loaf/Steinman fangirl. Just tell the kiddoes the songs have to be that long because they have to fit in a lotta awesome.
nm has known me long enough to know that I feel this strongly about Meat. I assume she’s had to block that knowledge in order to survive.
Oh, BTW, I meant to mention before that if you enjoy Heyer but aren’t into all the Regency trappings you might enjoy her mysteries, which are contemporary (for her) and often howlingly funny. OTOH, she has sort of bad values (IMO) and they are rather more glaring when not being distracted from by historical frou-frou.
I know I’m coming across as very critical of her, when I’ve read practically everything she wrote. She is pure escapist fun, and impossible to justify on any other grounds. But if a couple of hours’ escape is what you’re looking for, you can’t do much better.
I was actually super offended by the anti-Semitism in Grand Sophy. While accurate to the period it really pulled me out of the book. I actually had to set it aside for a day.
I like her construction of farce, which is a tremendously difficult thing to write well and something I admire. But so much of the period is uncomfortable for me. I might try one of her mysteries if only to divine if the attitude is period-specific or if she chose that period as a showcase for her own prejudices.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
She’s got attitudes, to be sure.
I *LOVE* Georgette Heyer! Some HP fandom friends of mine turned me on to her several years ago, and I read her whenever I get a chance. Cotillion is one of my faves of hers (and Sylvester … and Frederica … and Sprig Muslin … and I’d better stop now), and I love her mysteries too (such as No Wind of Blame and A Blunt Instrument).
I enjoy Austen and others for many reasons. None of which are about women seeking husbands. You ought to know me better than that! I find it interesting that the authors find ways to empower their characters in a time when women had so little power no matter what class of society they inhabited.