Venetia is one of Georgette Heyer's most captivating novels with a truly independently-minded heroine.
Many of Georgette Heyer's heroines are independently-minded--right up until the hero proposes and then they become coy. Venetia does not.
To start, Venetia is a 25-year-old member of the gentry who lives in the country with her scholarly and sarcastic brother Aubrey. She is a great Beauty. She is also frank and without pretense. She and Aubrey are entirely honest with each other.
Venetia has suitors but has frankly and without pretense told them that she is not interested. They continue to press their suits, specifically Edward Yardling, who is sententious, condescending, and absolutely sure that Venetia doesn't really mean the things she says.
The "Beast" arrives in the form of 38-year-old Damerel; a member of the gentry, he ran off when he was an older teen with a married woman, who obviously seduced him. He is quite similar, in fact, to Rochester, a once idealistic young man who was sorely disillusioned and has adopted the pose of being unredeemable out of an honest belief in his own (rather mild) rakishness (he isn't exactly a member of the Hellfire Club).
Heyer is quite good at showing (as opposed to telling) the reader how the hero and heroine of her books get along. She excels with Damerel and Venetia. They share a sense of humor. They talk easily. Venetia is not in anyway shocked by Damerel's experiences. She finally feels that she has found someone that she can speak to her on her wavelength.
Neighbors and family members, however, separate them--first, by convincing Damerel of the inappropriateness of the match and then by literally distancing the couple by carting Venetia off to London.
Damerel's acquiescence to the separation is rather irritating. Continually throughout the novel Venetia's entirely truthful and objective statements are not taken seriously by the people around her. She says the same things again and again, but no, no, no, she couldn't possibly mean them! "We" have determined that she truly thinks entirely the opposite! She's a "good girl." Venetia obviously finds this continual dismissal of her actual statements less than palatable.
For Damerel to do the same thing seems unlike him since he appears to be one of the few people (Aubrey is the other) who takes Venetia seriously.
However, Damerel is suffering from what Venetia calls "idiotish nobility." I will allow him to be an idiot, temporarily.
Venetia rescues the situation when she realizes that her mother, whom she believed to be dead, is actually very much alive, having divorced Venetia and Aubrey's father and married a pompous member of the Prince Regent's set. The mother is, bluntly, not good ton. If Venetia has anything to do with her, she will "fall."
So Venetia does.
Venetia shrugs her shoulders. She told him. Again and again and again. He didn't listen. Sucks to be him.
Venetia returns to Damerel's country-seat to find him in a kind of stagnating holding pattern: morose and utterly unhappy. She informs him that she has made friends with her fallen mother. Like the princess in Shrek, she is now--reputation-wise--an ogre.
The outcome is not so extreme. Heyer, like Austen, understood that true social destruction is not entirely wise. Venetia has a powerful and wealthy uncle by marriage as well as good friends in the neighborhood. Damerel is not as irredeemable as he imagines. They will not "fall" as far as they expect.
However, the text does make one incredibly insightful point. The uncle protests that a man of Damerel's age is set in his ways. He has established patterns that are difficult to break. He won't "reform" overnight.
My personal feeling is that the uncle worries too much. Damerel has obviously reached a point in his life where change will be more organic and natural than forced. Still, the uncle has a point.
The Beast will not entirely transform--and since we all, like Venetia, love the Beast more than the prince anyway, that is just as well.
