Heyer's Instead of the Thorn and Why It Isn't a Terribly Good Book

When she gained clout as a writer, Georgette Heyer had her earlier books removed from publication.

I have mixed feelings about these decisions. In Heyer's case, I put the action down to an excess of writerly fastidiousness. After all, she removed from publication books that are arguably not so good but also books that readers requested be republished once her estate took over: Simon the Coldheart and Beauvallet.

Of course, now, many books are in the public domain. I read one of Heyer's early contemporary romances, Instead of the Thorn, and I think I know why Heyer removed that book, at least, from publication. 

As mentioned on Votaries, in the early twentieth century, everyone--not just romance writers--was writing books that delved into the psychology of marriage, from Sinclair Lewis's Dodsworth to Katherine Mansfield's short stories.

The problem? Heyer wasn't that smart about marriage. 

She was a good writer. She created decent characters who within her travelogue/ adventure/ comedic shaggy dog stories entirely work! 

Rather than telling a story, Instead of the Thorn attempts to describe why a marriage went bad and then how it was restored. And Heyer seriously has no clue. 

She tries to argue that a prim & proper upbringing equals a young woman being disgusted by sex. I knew WAY too many young women at the religious university I attended in my late teens/early twenties, many with prim & proper upbringings, who greeted sex with immense relief and satisfaction, whether or not they had the "talk" with their mothers beforehand. 

That is, they were more like Samuel Richardson's Pamela--and, for that matter, Jane Austen's heroines--than anything out of...I have no comparison. Anybody who writes realistically about young women would recognize Heyer's portrait as downright bizarre. Elizabeth, the protagonist, might imitate her aunt. She would quickly shed her influence the moment she went out into society. 

Unless--she was inherently turned off by sex. In which case, no amount of growing up  could save the relationship. 

I'm not saying the wife or the husband is right or wrong in regards to Elizabeth's "love me but don't touch me" behavior. Nor am I arguing that men and women react the same to sex; overall, I don't think that they do. I am saying that so immense a gap regarding physical attraction and congress would spell the end of the relationship (a fact that one young woman at my university announced when she broke her first engagement; she was on the pro-physical congress side and stated emphatically, "You can't talk yourself into feeling stuff"). 

In fact, weirdly enough, Heyer resorts to a kind of sitcom explanation of the central relationship in Instead of the Thorn: Elizabeth, the protagonist, cannot feel desire until she feels true love. 

Really? Because the history of teens and STDs and pregnancies pretty much disproves that truth to the nth degree.  

Heyer's approach here can't be blamed on the romance novel genre. In a romance novel, even one from 100 years ago, the female protagonist would sleep with her husband and even have children before she ever figured out that she actually liked him, let alone loved him. Heyer's approach--pairing sexual interest with emotional attachment--is an attempt at psychology, not practical observation (see Christie's novels for innocent young women who gladly leave their family homes to marry attractive ne'er-do-wells because, well, that's life!).

In fairness, Heyer makes solid points about the  difficulties of a young person moving from a "helicoptered" household to behaving like an independent-thinking adult. Nevertheless, the book doesn't have enough substance to stand beside similar books from the time period.

(It's entirely possible that Heyer came to despise those "modern" psychological novels. She only wrote Instead of the Thorn to make money/break into the industry.) 

In the end, Heyer was a smart writer who ultimately figured out her genre and stuck to it.