Will They Last? Would They Even Get Together? Alverstoke and Frederica

Frederica by Georgette Heyer is an odd book.

In some ways, it is one of her funniest books. She captures young male exuberance like nobody else on record. 

So much so, I ponder if THAT is the book she wanted to write, not a romance (whatever the assigned genre).

The reason? 

Lord Alverstoke ends up with a young woman who is remarkably similar to his sisters whom Alverstoke supposedly doesn't like too much. 

The story opens with Lord Alverstoke turning down his sisters' demands that he present their daughters. However, when Frederica--a very distant relation--shows up to ask the same thing for her sister, he agrees, in part to annoy his sisters, who are forced to acquiesce to the scheme to get what they want. 

Granted, the sisters have plenty of money and are well-able to usher their daughters into society on their own. And Frederica doesn't. Granted, too, it is quite normal for a man to marry a woman who resembles his sisters or his mother. Moreover, Frederica is honest, good-tempered, and rational as well as a good manager. She is quite likable as a character!

Frederica wants a manor house for her sister,

not city suburbia.

But, like Alverstoke's sisters, she pursues goals based on a story/long-term solution she has created in her head and she has a tendency to misread and override her siblings. 

She wants her sister, Charis, settled "comfortably" yet ignores her brother Jessamy's point that Charis is perfectly willing to marry the middle class guy next door. Charis is somewhat lacking intellectually but is quite a good house manager herself and enjoys the attendant jobs. She doesn't want a society match (and ends up falling for a member of high society for reasons entirely disconnected from his status--a man, unfortunately, who will encourage Charis's silly side).

Pastors were seen as cute--but clueless.

Frederica also treats Jessamy's desire to become a pastor with borderline contempt.

At this point, the text betrays the author's perspective. Like Austen, Heyer rarely discusses religion. Unlike Austen, she doesn't seem to have understood it, including why anybody would be interested in it. 

This blind-spot aids in the earlier books since the upper-class blithe indifference to bourgeois, plebeian, religious concerns was part of the aristocratic personality. But as Heyer's books near the Victorian era, the blind-spot becomes somewhat disconcerting. 

In fairness, Heyer does a fine job with Jessamy's sixteen-year-old seesawing from moralistic yearnings/worries to "fit to burst" activities (all that energy cooped up in a study!). 

Still, Frederica's dismissal seems a trifle shallow. 

In the end, Alverstoke falling for Frederica comes off as a bit forced--and I can't escape the impression that Heyer felt the same. She resorts to far more "telling" (from Alverstoke's point of view) than in her other books. Readers are told that Alverstoke is surprised by how taken he is with Frederica, how he wishes to keep her from any kind of suffering. Readers are told that Alverstoke is in love. 

Eh...

I think that Heyer was truly telling a story about a man who becomes a guardian to two ADHD young men--and the romance got thrown in to make the book a romance. 

My fan fiction solution to follow.