What is it with the British and their long, convoluted tales of inheritance? I just finished an 800-page Jeffery Archer novel that purported to be a rags-to-riches story about a merchant building an empire–an American-style plot–but ended up hinging on baseborn babies and secret codicils and all the other trappings of British melodramatic fiction.
I think that is one way in which I am far too American. That mystical hold of Birth doesn’t pack the same punch with many of us born on this side of the Lochan Mor. We don’t have Lords and Marquesses (?@?) This whole thing of finding out your life is better because you started out in the testicles of one man versus the testicles of another is just too…
I mean, yeah. I get it. Even here in the States we’re some of us born into privilege that others will never know. But the lines are a lot more blurry. Finding out that your Real Father is a rich guy isn’t the same thing as finding out he’s some entitled, landed, parliamentary whingodoodle.
As I ponder it some more, I think that perhaps Slavery was one of the things that transformed our narrative culture away from the Magic Birthright trope. After all, here were vast numbers of people viewed as chattle, the lowest of cultural rungs. Among them there were many, many children who were sired by the Master, the Master’s son or some visiting cousin. And it seldom made any difference at all. Finding out you were The Master’s Daughter wasn’t an automatic elevation into the top rung of society–more often than not it just meant that you didn’t entirely fit in either world. It isn’t the Oliver Twist miracle that it would be in Britain.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with that denouement, but as I get older and do more of my own writing I realise I’m downright angry about it. Because the good ending doesn’t come as a result of anything the character has done. If a novel is a character’s journey from innocence to experience, the exploration of the human heart in conflict with itself, there is no growth in finding out that you started in a different place. Your character is no better or worse in their essential personhood for having had a different origin. Even worse, those novels that end with the uncovering of the Birthright always end with Protagonist being happy and having lots of money. There’s never the question of why this wealthy person figured you were no better than table scraps.
In the last five years I’ve read exactly ONE novel that took this same Birthright convention and worked within the trope while still turning the whole thing on its ear. If you’re into Victorian literature at all, I’d encourage you to hunt down a copy of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith. At the same time, I’d encourage you to not bother with Jeffery Archer’s As The Crow Flies.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
I like Victorian literature (and Dickens–yay, Bleak House with Magical Birthright revelation!) a lot. And I loved Fingersmith.
But yep, that plot device doesn’t translate as well to the US. You have to have a hereditary aristocracy to make it work at all. When birth is the ONLY entree into that world, then biology is destiny.
Interesting, though, I’d never thought about how slavery would work to undercut the whole notion of a hereditary ruling class. The Brits have the “born on the wrong side of the blanket” thing, but sometimes even the bastards could end up being King, if times were weird enough. Whereas we were just as finicky about blood, but in the reverse direction–one drop of the wrong kind disqualifies you from personhood altogether.
I’m not so sure that we don’t have a hereditary ruling class. It’s not as clearly defined as the one in Britain, and its borders are more permeable. But it’s real.
P.S. The only way royal bastards or the descendants of royal bastards ended up as kings in Britain was by conquest.
Thanks for the clarification, nm. But isn’t it true that being a ROYAL bastard was part of the qualifications to get people to rally behind you as a contender to the throne (unless you were Cromwell, IIRC)? They wouldn’t do that for a commoner, even as part of a conquest/revolution. But I am a long way out of my comfort zone and may be babbling, sorry.
And the permeable borders thing was what I was getting at. When having a big pile of money is your main (not only, but main) ticket into the upper class, birth naturally matters less. Not that it doesn’t matter at all, but with the decaying of the East-Coast WASP aristos, some of the sting of “noveau riche” passed off a bit.
Arrgh! “Nouveau” riche, I mean. Sigh.
Jess, that “royal blood” thing really isn’t true. In fact, you had to claim that you were (by some very involved accident) the legitimate heir and that the person on the throne was illegitimate, if you wanted backing. Oliver Cromwell was an exception in the sense that he didn’t claim descent from royalty (though he sure wasn’t hurt by his family connection with Thomas Cromwell, which meant he could suggest some sort of hereditary right to advise kings), but he also based his gov’t on the claim that he was the legitimate (i.e. chosen by Parliament) ruler who had conquered England from an illegitimate one (i.e. the king, who fought against Parliament). A profound change in the idea of where political power ought to reside, but a continuation of the idea that it took legitimacy to rule in England. Even William III had to claim that the new-born son of James II was actually illegitimate to justify his invasion.
And I’m not so sure the USian aristocracy has decayed. I recently encountered some “old money” people here in Nashville* who are in their 60s but have never set foot in East Nashville. They know no one in the music industry, admit a few from health care/insurance into their circle (those would be the nouveaux riches, to them), and mostly hang out with other old money folks and a bunch of people from Vanderbilt (who I have to assume are their equivalent of the clergy in Jane Austen’s England). They can pick up the phone and get the head honchos at any bank in town to take their calls, I’m sure, and from some things they said I think that goes for local politicians at all levels, too. That elite is not the only wealthy group out there, to be sure, but they are alive and well and maintaining their class power and distinctions. Even here.
*They were big benefactors at an event I attended. I spent some time chatting with them because they fascinated me, and I obviously fascinated them, living in East Nashville and all.
And BTW I’d like to apologize for all the contradicting I’m doing right now. The heat is getting to me, but that’s really no excuse. I’m sorry.
I like the academic/clergy analogy. Very tidy.
And please, no apologies. I may be in the (internet) minority, but I’d much rather have someone with actual knowledge set me straight than be allowed to prattle away being all kinds of wrong while smart people start to scroll my comments. So thank you!
I’m sorry I missed all this discussion. NM, I know some folks like that. They strike me as quaint, like an almost-extinct zoo animal.
That’s the chief way where the U.S. differs. While we have a monied class, they are not de facto rulers. Nor can their ranks ever be truly penetrated. You can marry in, you can be the bastard offspring of, but none of that will ever make you one of them. Hence our version of the rags-to-riches trope, which centers either on just plain bootstrapping up through industry or, more frequently, the attainment of celebrity. The more old-fashioned of such novels require birth-entree into such worlds (i.e. you must be beautiful to become a celebrity cf. Valley of the Dolls). More and more, however, our fiction tends to be about bringing order to chaos (serial killer fiction, horror fiction) or acquisition of knowledge (adventure fiction, murder mysteries.)
As for bastards on the throne, I confess that I find few subjects as dull as the history of royality and long ago lost track of which king was deposed why, born to whom and succeeded by whom. I have no use for kings in general, really. It’s a personal failing, but there we go.