Scrooge versus Phil: Personal Change versus Romantic Change

The repentant hero is quite popular, especially at Christmas! In terms of romance, there is a marked difference between Scrooge from A Christmas Carol and Phil from Groundhog Day. 

Although Scrooge lost a great love--the scene earns a song in The Muppet Movie--few versions reunite him with that great love. Likewise, The Grinch doesn't start dating at the end--not in the picture book or animated feature. And although Russ from The Kid has a girlfriend/wife waiting in his future, his change is due to a visit from a "ghost of Christmas past," not the potential significant other.

Yet, the repentant hero in Groundhog Day does have a romantic attachment.

The difference lies in the character arc. Scrooge and The Grinch and Russ undergo an internal realignment. The internal change is shown through external images and events. The stories are quite remarkably well-told. 

With Groundhog Day (also a great film), the change is about the main character learning to get along with other people.

Scrooge alters internally and shows that internal alteration through his treatment of others. 

Phil learns how to change internally by treating others, even a life insurance salesman!, better over time (one day over and over).

I think that both types of change/epiphany are possible. Romance is more suitable to the second type than the first. The Beast learns to be less beastly by spending time around Belle.  

Scrooge learns to be less awful through forced personal reflection. 

A-Z Romance! Fessenden and Dangerous Christmases

Christmas literature is filled with murderous relatives, serial killing snowman, unpleasant Santa Clauses and so on. 

Jamie Fessenden's Tomte uses a Scandinavian folk figure, the Tomte, to deliver up the classic Northern trope of the human captured underground/in a mound (see Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope). The events are tied into Christmas. 

The not-entirely-pinnable nature of Tomte is well-done. The alluring world of the Älvor (elves, fairies) is well-conveyed: attractive yet dangerous. I also enjoyed the time travel switch. 

However, I disliked the ending. I'm a big believer that if one is going to undertake life-changing and risky decisions, one should live with them. In The Titan's Bride, when Mizuki decides to stay in his lover's world, his existence as a teen is erased from Earth and others' memories, but the cost of that erasing lingers. People miss him without knowing why. 

I also found the tie-in to Christmas something of a stretch. The visit to the toy shop is quite effective. I would have suggested using additional direct Christmas tropes/archetypes to solve the problem at the end. 

The book did get me thinking, however, about that link between danger and Christmas! The Winter Solstice is a time of year where darkness comes up against joyousness. I've always felt that the combination was pure human instinct and necessity. Humans intelligently, cleverly, creatively handle the vagaries of nature--seasons, biological changes--by creating rituals. 

Below are a few mystery/murder stories for this time of year:

• "Back for Christmas" from Alfred Hitchcock Presents: in all honesty, the Christmas season doesn't play that big a role, but it does supply a clever pay-off. And it stars the marvelous John Williams.
• Die Hard...of course!
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas
• Envious Casca by Georgette Heyer
• Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaoi Marsh. Marsh uses the Christmas season directly. Perhaps because Marsh was also a playwright, the murderer's "disguise" is almost directly connected to an English/Celtic version of Father Christmas, who visits the house party which is graced by a huge tree. The weather also plays a direct role.
• "The Necklace of Pearls" by Dorothy Sayers, which uses English customs as part of the plot.
• Master of the Hall by KJ Charles, also replete with English customs--and a Damon Runyon set of dangers!
  

 

Shakespeare's Couples: Orlando & Rosalind are Kinda Boring

I'll discuss girls-dress-as-boys (or, speaking historically, boys-dressed-as-girls-dressed-as-boys-who-dress-as-girls-again) more when I reach Twelfth Night. 

For now...I'll confess, I don't think As You Like It is all that funny. 

I did when I was younger, likely because I saw a cut version of the play in the park and enjoyed it. But after trying multiple versions this past summer, I determined, "Nah. I don't know what Shakespeare was doing here, but it's not comedy..." 

The play drags as The Royal Shakespeare Company filmed version proves. The many, many, many conversations feel like clever people exchanging in-jokes while the rest of us look on. Shakespeare honestly doesn't have to feel that way. 

 

Branagh's version starts out better than the others because he cuts it ruthlessly. However, I have to agree with various critics who don't understand the purpose of the Japanese setting. I liked it for its own sake but it doesn't contribute to the movie one way or the other.

 

His leads do have great chemistry! Bryce Dallas Howard doesn't look remotely male, not even enough for us to pretend. Still--the premise calls for a great deal of belief and disbelief being suspended.

 

Olivier and Elisabeth Bergner (image above) also have great chemistry. Granted, it's hard to believe that Olivier hiked into the forest to find the exiled duke (good heavens, he looks healthy for a starving man!). But once the two lovers meet, he has supposedly recovered. And she's adorable. 

 

But I decided that the biggest problem with the couple is that the play is more Sleepless in Seattle than You've Got Mail--that is, the play is mostly about the leads when they are NOT together rather than ongoing interactions between the leads. 

 

Not even Helen Mirren changed

my mind about the play.

Much Ado About Nothing and Taming of the Shrew depend more on ongoing interactions. Twelfth Night is somewhere in the middle. As You Like It: not so much.

 

Granted, As You Like It has more interactions than Sleepless. But it takes a surprisingly long time for the couple to have anything approaching an actual conversation. 

 

Maybe the play is a decent drama or an okay comedy about peasants. But as a comedy about a couple...frankly, I think it falls flat.

 

A-Z Romance! Enoch and Anachronisms

Suzanne Enoch's books strike me as modern people doing stuff in Regency dress. Independent young women take risks that not even Bronte would defend.

And if people enjoy that kind of thing, they should read it! 

I don't much. Many of the historical romances I read use modern-ish language and avoid some of the more unpalatable attitudes of the past. Yet I accept many of them as true-to-the time period.

And I asked myself, How does a contemporarily-written historical romance avoid sounding too modern?

The solution, I determined, comes down to the characters' mindsets.

In one of the many Jane Eyres I've watched, Jane Eyre and Helen are introduced as two giggling girls with beautiful hair. They bond when they both have their hair cut off (the event is borrowed from a minor character in the book). The haircutting is preceded with a show of bravado as they both coyly offer up their hair to the bad headmaster. It's the equivalent of the obnoxious junior high girls who say, "Oh, absolutely, whatever you say" to the teacher in fake compliant voices.

Lowood is a horrible place, and the headmaster is a horrible guy. But the confident, quirky, sarcastic behavior of the girls does not fit the time period.

Consider that Jane is inwardly passionate and defiant and Helen is dying. What do they actually say to each other in Bronte's novel?

[Jane said,] “Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a liar?”

“Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.”

“How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?”

“Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man: he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies...Besides, Jane”—she paused. “If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

“No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me I would rather die than live—”

“Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement.”

Helen's response here is Daria coupled with religious fervor while Jane's is pure passion and anxiety. Both are entirely appropriate to the time period. Jane, Helen, and Miss Temple do nothing to risk Jane or Helen actually being expelled.

In sum, in believable contemporarily written historical novels, characters are aware of the real risks of their setting and try to handle them.

KJ Charles's Band Sinister is a great example. A young man and his sister, Guy and Amanda, end up in the house of a man, Philip, with a bad reputation. It turns out that the supposed rake doesn't have orgies and consort with Satan-worshippers. He does consort with Deists and early Bohemians. 

The characters are mostly all members of the gentry, but unlike the others, Guy and Amanda are reliant on a stingy and censorious aunt for their allowance, Amanda's marriage prospects, and their overall acceptance in genteel society. A scandal would massively hurt that relationship. 

Consequently, towards the end of the novel, Guy and Philip have a raging row about Guy bowing to "proprieties," but then, Philip can afford to shrug his shoulders at society while Guy is thinking about the future and survival. Guy and Amanda do want to be free of the aunt. They consider selling their books and furniture and setting up on their own. That decision would entail a total change in lifestyle for the siblings, which Philip doesn't understand until some of his more Bohemian friends point it out to him.

When Philip returns to clear the air and offer Guy a better alternative, Guy still doesn't thumb his nose at his aunt. He is as courteous as he can be. As Philip states,

"[M]erely listening to that conversation [between you, Guy, and your aunt] just now, I wanted to leave that room a pile of smouldering wreckage. Whereas you didn't, despite far greater provocation. You thought; you were kind; you at least made a reconciliation possible in the future...I'm already notorious. I can't prevent any of that, so the question is whether you are prepared to accept a certain amount of unwanted attention of ill-natured gossip [by becoming Philip's secretary]."

Guy replies, 

"I daresay I can learn not to mind being talked about, if you don't mind trying to be talked about a bit less."

The language is somewhat modern. But the acknowledgment of real choices and real consequences and real risks within the milieu makes the book "historical."

Capturing the mindsets of the past may not be entirely possible--it should be attempted.

Lifestyles Matter in Love: Rear Window

The idea that love can overcome any barrier is nice in theory. In reality, it is less than practical.

That doesn't mean, love can't overcome differences in backgrounds, family, social standing, economic disparities, educational experience, and future goals. But if members of a couple think that declarations of affection are enough, they are kidding themselves. 

In Rear Window, Jeffries argues that (1) Lisa wants him to change (she implies he could change by becoming a society photographer, which, of course, he would loath); (2) Lisa isn't prepared for the life he leads. He is entirely correct, at least in that moment. The exchange also produces one of the best lines by Jeffries: "I'm just trying to make [my lifestyle] sound good." 

They come together over the case. Lisa is daring and clever. Moreover, the script implies a few times that she is not entirely enthralled by her shop-lunch-get-quotes-from-celebrities lifestyle. She may in fact be up for jaunts in the wild. 

Which doesn't mean Lisa has subordinated her personality. She still is greatly interested in fashion, which world can be cut-throat in its own way. 

The relationship could possibly work if both parties accepted that certain things they do are off-limits. So Jeffries visits warlords and takes pictures, then returns to Paris where Lisa is easily navigating political and personal minefields within the fashion world. He attends a show. And then they both go to, say, the 1956 Olympics or the first interfaith meeting in Morocco or a session of the House Un-American Activities Committee. 

In other words, I don't think Lisa should be hanging out around the Suez Crisis with Jeffries. It has nothing to do with competence or well-meaningness. It has everything to do with experience. And I rather suspect that Jeffries' sardonic comments may not go over terribly well with Balenciaga (though fashion designers are fairly tough), especially since it is doubtful that he would have any  idea what he was talking about. 

They could be a working couple, who each respect the work the other does partly alone.

The Conservatism of Erotica: Reibun Ike's Series

The 2-volume manga series here is about men from a group of related islands--all with different economic specialties--who battle to be king of the island alliance.

They engage in a frankly biologically-based battle that comes down to who can get the other man to..."spill." 

I'm being coy because being more direct would turn this into a sex blog, which it isn't (precisely). 

The manga is much more direct, both visually and verbally. 

And the series is one of the most thoroughly conservative series I've ever read. 

It is also remarkably well-written. Not only are the characters given clear and memorable personalities and not only does each couple have its own arc--the arcs are connected to human behavior, culture, and the central conflict. 

The primary couple is Harto and Matthew. Harto attends Oxford, where he has to learn to dress somewhat differently. There he meets Matthew, his boyfriend-to-be. He isn't sure how Matthew will react to his cultural practices. Matthew, an anthropologist, isn't sure either. But he is able to make the leap from I'm may not like this personally to I'm not the issue here--he is a rather objective guy. 

Another couple, Vampir and Naga, have to deal with Vampir turning into a somewhat different person--due to his island's mystical practices--during battle. Where exactly does love begin and end when the issue is "you are the person I want to be with"? 

And another couple have to deal with family members insisting that their marriage can't go forward unless the battle delivers a certain outcome. That particular storyline produces an examination of various cultural practices associated with permanent relationships, like who builds the couple's house and where.

And so on...

The series is truly remarkable and falls into erotica rather than porn because the set-ups are not merely excuses for characters to have sex or even loving dialog. I've read manga which were supposedly "cleaner" where I could never figure out whether the characters even had personalities, let along motivations for anything. But Reibun Ike's series is story--or, rather, a series of stories about characters and sex. 

In the end, how to be in relationships is what matters. And who people are--how they look, think, battle, and resolve problems--also matters. The physical is important. So is the emotional (feelings, memories). And fidelity is always on the table. 

A-Z Romance! Drake

I picked up Olivia Drake's The Duke I Once Knew. Although I found the main character engaging, and I appreciated her desire to head out on her own, I found the premise somewhat unappealing:

She goes to work as a governess for the sister of a man with whom she lost contact years earlier. They blame each other for the ceased contact, and she never wants to see him again!

Yet she goes to work for his sister...

Right.

I think Elizabeth Bennet visiting Pemberley is allowable because (1) it is one day; (2) she is honestly curious about Darcy. She is shocked to encounter Darcy but accepts his appearance as an acceptable possibility. They use the encounter to reach a friendly peace, before Darcy determines to court her again.

But going to stay on an estate owned by a man whom one supposedly loathes because he broke one's heart--with the excuse that he won't ever visit--makes me roll my eyes. Even though the main character has limited options and is afraid her family will change her mind if she doesn't move rapidly (one of her more believable motivations), she does have other options.

Take Jane Eyre:

Jane spends eight years at Lowood as a student where she "had the means of an excellent education" and two as a teacher. However, once Miss Temple leaves, she finds she is tired of the "uniform" life.

I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”

So she places an advertisement in the paper.

"A young lady accustomed to tuition is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family where the children are under fourteen. She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music.”

She only receives one reply--from Mrs. Fairfax--but here is a young lady at the age of eighteen showing more careful thought and activity about her future than a character who is near thirty. She later uses her education to help at St. Rivers' school. 

I don't much care for female characters who treat every encounter as an opportunity to argue; however, I do rather like them to use their heads. I don't care for heroines who are maneuvered into situations they would never have brought upon themselves: oh, my, how did that happen? 

Elizabeth and Jane comes across as more modern than some contemporarily written historical characters.  

The issue of lovers who previously fell out beginning over--see Austen's Persuasion--will crop up again.