Learning from Fan Fiction: Paul Mansell and Heyer's Occasional Pettiness

When I went to write Heyer fan-fiction about one of Heyer's mysteries, I discovered that a character Heyer disliked was truly not that unlikable.  

In They Found Him Dead, Paul Mansell is a member of a firm owned by the first and second murder victims and by a near-victim, heir presumptive to the head of the firm. The Mansells--father and son--are suspected in the murders and attempted murder since they are trying to put through a deal that the victims and near-victim oppose. 

It makes sense to suspect Paul--however, Heyer's own writing gives readers no reason to detest him so much.  

*Spoilers*

At one point, Paul Mansell, the son, gets upset at the questions posed to him by the detectives. He states that he is being offered up to them by someone they should suspect instead. 

Turns out--he is right! 

At another point, Paul Mansell discusses the supposed motive for the killings--the possible deal--with the near-victim. He points out that a decision must be made. The near-victim is right to refuse to make an instant decision. But Paul Mansell is also simply doing his job. 

And yet throughout the novel, Heyer continually has characters refer to Mansell in slighting ways. The way he dresses! The fact that he was divorced! He is oily and snaky!

It's the kind of petty high school labeling that underscores some of Heyer's work (not all) and seems to show up when she is being lazy. There's absolutely no reason for the reader to dislike Mansell, other than that the protagonists (and detectives) keep criticizing him. A writer who uses this approach runs the risk of readers beginning to dislike the protagonists. (Heyer is a good enough writer, her protagonists remain decent people though it's a close call.)

In my fan-fiction, I kept Mansell's character mostly as is except I increased his interest in cars and gave him more concrete motives: he wants the deal to go through so he can buy himself out of the firm and do something else. 

I also linked him with Trevor. Trevor is the erstwhile boyfriend of a victim's wife, Rosemary. Rosemary--who talks incessantly about her "deep" feelings throughout the novel--is quite hilariously presented (she is believably awful because Heyer shows that she is awful). 

I borrowed Dempsey for Trevor.

In my Heyer fan fiction, men can openly marry men and did so in medieval and Regency times. In a reversal of the usual pattern, modern England has become less supportive of the idea. Without the survival mechanism of earlier times--marriages performed for money and diplomacy--marriage mart lads have fallen out of style. (One reason Paul wishes to leave the firm is that he is tired of his father's pressure on him to marry a woman.) 

Trevor pursues Rosemary because it seems like the kind of thing he should do. When she throws him over--because her husband inherited a fortune--he ends up in Paul's orbit. Eventually, they form a relationship. Trevor's bluff personality complements Paul's somewhat acerbic one. Paul gets out of the firm and sets up a high-end garage for fancy cars. Trevor invests. Eventually, they marry. 

A far happier ending for those characters!     

The Transformation of Leonie from These Old Shades

On Votaries, I am examining characters who transform/don and discard disguises. Women in disguise are a common trope in romance. 

Leonie from These Old Shades doesn't change in personality. She does transform from girl-dressed-as-boy to girl-dressed-as girl.  Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon immediately identifies her true sex. His friend, Hugh, takes a little longer. By the time Alastair delivers Leonie to his sister, a number of people in Leonie's life have already seen through his disguise. 

That is, the transformation is not like Viola's in Twelfth Night, the ultimate revelation that she actually is female. For Leonie, giving up her disguise means she must accept a change in roles.

Leonie weeps bitterly when Alastair gently informs her that she will stay with his sister and be introduced to womanhood. In the long run, Leonie is comfortable with the transition. In the short run, Heyer captures the pain of change, whether due to circumstances or age.  

Heyer's triumph is that Leonie remains herself: honest, active, a little bloodthirsty, and utterly devoted to Alastair. She learns to dance. She enjoys "dressing up." She learns that she is pretty and enjoys her prettiness. 

She sheds her disguise when she accepts the inevitability of change. She does not shed her fundamental character.   

The Transformation of Gilly from Heyer's The Foundling

On Votaries, I am discussing characters that transform. A character that transforms too much may leave the readers confused. A character that transforms too little may leave the readers disappointed. 

Gilly from Georgette Heyer's The Foundling is a great example of a character who transforms just enough. 

Gilly’s uncle and trustee feels compelled to protect Gilly’s inheritance as the Duke of Sale. (His own son, who also supports Gilly, would inherit if the uncle was less protective and upright.) 

Gilly is a soft-spoken young man who has been coddled and watched-over all his life. He eventually goes “walk-about,” leaves his protective supporters, to have an adventure of his own. 

The book is one of Heyer's travelogues, which means that Gilly encounters a con-man and a damsel in distress. He engages in several adventures and acquits himself. 

At the end, when he returns home, his uncle attempts once again to "help" Gilly through blustering goodwill. Gilly finally lays down the law and makes it clear that he, not his uncle, is the Duke of Sale.  

What makes the scene so perfect, however, is that Gilly remains Gilly:

The Duke raised his head and met his uncle's fierce look with one so icily aloof that Lord Lionel was startled. "I have borne enough!" he said, his voice still level and low-pitched, yet anger throbbing in it. "I will not endure any longer this ceaseless thwarting of my every wish. I am fully sensible, sir, of the great debt I owe you for your unremitting care of me...but my gratitude would be increased tenfold if you would bring yourself to believe that I am neither a child nor a fool...It is not I who stands in danger of forgetting that I am Ware of Sale!" 

Lord Lionel is taken aback. But he is a fair-minded man: 

"I never saw you look so like your father before....Ware of Sale, indeed. There, stop glaring at me, Gilly. I have a good mind to box your ears."

The rigid look vanished from the Duke's face. 

He quickly accepts his uncle's olive branch. He continues to speak in a sweet and low way that is more effective than shouting the place down. He doesn't transform into a perfectly confident, perfectly extroverted, perfectly commanding (in style), perfectly perfect Duke of Sale. He remains Gilly--only he has gained the ability to trust himself in his role. He expects others to treat him accordingly. 

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 she died and her estate took over: Simon the Coldheart and Beauvallet.

Of course, now, many of those earlier books are in the public domain. I read one of Heyer's earliest 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 married when she published Instead of the Thorn but being in something is not the same as being smart about something.) 

Now, Heyer is a good writer. She created decent characters who within her travelogue, adventure, comedic shaggy dog stories entirely work! 

Rather than telling a story, however, Instead of the Thorn attempts to describe why a marriage went bad and then how it was repaired. 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 aunt's 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 that particular relationship. 

To be clear, 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 between "I like the idea of courtship and marriage" and intimate congress would spell the end of any relationship (one young woman in college announced, when she broke her first engagement, that physical attraction and desire are important, adding emphatically, "You can't talk yourself into feeling stuff even if you admire someone"). 

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 idea to the nth degree.  

Heyer's approach here can't be blamed on the romance novel genre. In one sub-genre of the romance novel, a female protagonist will sleep with her husband and have children before she ever figures out that she actually likes him, let alone loves him (and this sub-genre is quite old). Many romance heroines--including Austen's--have been perfectly capable of feeling attraction/desire without knowing exactly what they feel. 

Heyer's approach--pairing sexual interest with so-called grown-up insight into "the other"--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!). Arguably, women are less likely to enjoy "friends with benefits" than men, but a young woman like Heyer's Elizabeth would be FAR more likely to convince herself of an attachment than to run screaming to the hills because her husband wants to have sex. (And if she did run screaming, I'm not entirely convinced she would come back.) 

In fairness, Heyer makes solid points about the difficulties of a young person moving from a "helicoptered" household to one where she has to behave 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 her "modern" psychological novels for exactly the reasons I've detailed above. She was married for 54 years, had a son, who married a divorced woman, and three grandsons. As mentioned above, people can do something without understanding it. However, Heyer's experience may have come to bear some weight in her assessment of what she wrote when she was much younger. 

And it's possible that Heyer never liked the book. She wrote Instead of the Thorn in the first place to make money/break into an industry (fiction) that had become fascinated with the problem of marriage.  

In the end, Heyer was a smart writer who ultimately figured out her genres--Georgian and Regency travelogue romances plus murder mysteries--and stuck to them.

Figuring out one's gifts: THAT is impressive.   

The All-Knowing Romance Character

The all-knowing romance character was quite common in early Harlequin romances.* This is the romance character who shows up and sneers at others while informing the lover, "I KNOW what's best for you. I KNOW you truly love me."

Unlike this same character in fantasy and sci-fi (and even there, it gets tiresome), the romance all-knowing character is a jerk, male or female. 

And, as I mention on Votaries, even in fantasy and sci-fi, it is best if that character has depth and some uncertainty. For instance, Tolkien's mentors are limited in their knowledge, and they know they are limited. Even the kingly Aragorn gets frustrated at the breaking of the fellowship and blames himself for waffling over whether he should he go with Boromir, which he wishes to do (and has an obligation to do), or with Frodo & Sam, now that Gandalf has seemingly perished. 

It is best in romance if this character is also limited. 

So, Duke Avon in These Old Shades comes across as sarcastic and aloof and smarter than everyone else. And Leonie rather worships him. But he loses his cool when confronted by his ex, who points out that he has changed. He at first intended to use Leonie as a weapon. In the end, he wants to restore her to her position. 

Likewise, I've always preferred Johnny Lee Miller's Sherlock, precisely because he has a underlying persona of vulnerability and he is willing to admit it. 

And Joan calls him out when he gets truly pompous.

Back to romance! In Dangerous Convenience Store, the masterful yakuza-next-door, who wants to get out of the organization before he tells his lover all about his past, actually puts the relationship at risk with his aloof "I know best" attitude. I find the series quite impressive (so far) because the ordinary college student protagonist doesn't pretend that his semi-boyfriend's occupation might NOT be a problem. Love DOESN'T conquer everything. Being in a relationship with a gangster is NOT a good idea. 

In addition, in Dangerous Convenience Store, the masterful yakuza-next-door doesn't feel masterful. Rather than inviting the audience to be awed by his masterfulness, the reader is encouraged to see him as trying to fix a situation he may not be able to fix--and he knows it. (He is rather like Jane Eyre's Rochester: he appears masterful but is a kind of Golden Retriever underneath.)

The well-rounded, limited character is always more appealing than the all-knowing one. After all, in One Punch Man, Saito carries his uncertainty with him. 

*The character is making something of a come-back in romances these days--I will discuss why in a later post.

More Heyer Fanfiction: Aubrey & Oswald

Oswald behaves rather like Scott Baio

on Love Boat, who acts like Igor

when embarrassed.

As I mention elsewhere, I find it easiest to create Heyer fan-fiction if I keep the rules of a social order in mind. I also find it easier if I try to stick to the rules/plot of the original text. 

With Venetia, I kept Venetia and Dameral, one of my favorite couples in Heyer's fiction, as they are.

For a male/male relationship, I turned instead to Oswald. Oswald is one of Heyer's most delightful characters. A young man from a neighboring estate to Venetia and Aubrey's, he has convinced himself that he is some kind of Bryonic hero and pursues Venetia in that way...until a true Bryonic male, Dameral, shows up in the area. Oswald immediately recognizes that in terms of broodiness and a dark past, he is seriously out-classed, mostly because he has the most prosaic, ordinary, non-dark past of any male of Venetia's acquaintance. 

Edward Yardley, the pompous guy who also pursues Venetia, tries to scold Oswald. But Venetia is more understanding.

In my fan-fiction, Oswald is actually interested in caustic, scholarly Aubrey, Venetia's brother However, Oswald's family's estate is one of the few that has passed through a bloodline (rather than through adoption). He pursues Venetia, and does so badly, because he is doesn't know what else to do. When his parents decide he is making a pest of himself and send him away, he goes to see Aubrey and confesses his feelings. 

Aubrey is too self-protective to take Oswald seriously since he knows what Oswald's parents expect from him.

However, when Venetia marries Dameral, Edward ends up marrying one of Oswald's sisters. It turns out, Oswald's genial father doesn't much like Edward either. Oswald's father would rather work with rakish Damerel and competent, straight-forward Venetia than condescending Edward. If Aubrey and Oswald marry, then Venetia can stand as "doyenne" to the estate, and one of her and Damerel's clever sons could inherit after Oswald. 

Consequently, the estate passes from a bloodline inheritance to an adoption inheritance. 

Estate matters settled, Oswald goes to Greece to find Aubrey, who is carrying out his beloved research. After they marry, they spend 1/2 a year in Undershaw and 1/2 a year abroad. 

What amuses me about my solution is that in Heyer's Venetia, Venetia and Dameral do in fact remain well-liked by the locals, despite Edward's tut-tutting. My solution takes advantage of the book's wrap-up.

A-Z Romance! Harrington & Heyer Fan Fiction

The Lords of the Armory books by Anna Harrington brought home three truths (for me) about romances: (1) A problem or plot is always better than a bunch of "meet-cutes"--Harrington supplies the former; (2) a conspiracy or Big Bad makes my brain go numb; (3) yaoi/M-M romance is attractive for a reason. 

In truth, I so admire stories that have actual problems/conflicts that must be solved, I might have kept reading Harrington's novel if the main romantic couple had been male-male. 

But conspiracies don't interest me--and romantic heroes who badger romantic heroines for information while the romantic heroines stalwartly refuse...interest me almost as little. 

I much prefer to watch the hero and heroine work together. There are traditional romances that accomplish this end. In Total Surrender by Anne Mallory presents a dour hero and a cheerful heroine who nevertheless work together to salvage her father's business. Imagine if Eliot from Leverage got together with a female version of Hardison...

And therein lies the attraction of yaoi/M-M because both would simply use Eliot and Hardison. 

The Anne Harrington book A Relentless Rake starts with a brother and half-brother (father's bastard) receiving instructions on their assignment. And I immediately found the brothers' relationship more interesting than the possible romance. Granted, they are brothers, but that biological tie is easily kept or tweaked; the "working" partnership could be explored in terms of friendship and/or romance. 

I've discovered the same with my Georgette Heyer fan fiction. In some cases, keeping the original pairings is more effective. But in some cases, a male/male pairing become infinitely more interesting.

So, for instance, with The Unknown Ajax, I kept the original pairing--Hugo and Althea--but concentrated on Richmond and Vincent in my fanfiction. In the book, Richmond is a wild young man who wants to go into the army. His doting grandfather refuses. Richmond appears to become quiescent but in fact is busy running a smuggling ring. Vincent is a sardonic man who doesn't appear to care about anything. Even though Richmond looks up to him, Vincent keeps his distance until matters reach a crisis. Then all the cousins have to pull together. 

Richmond and Vincent coming to terms struck me as far more interesting than the warring supposed opposites, Hugo and Althea. Hugo and Althea are a decent couple but so much "oh, no, I'm not REALLY attracted to you" bantering does get a tad tiring after awhile.

That is, I prefer Nick and Nora--already boon companions who banter--working on a separate problem than what my mother (in a different context) once referred to as "revolving door" relationships. Richmond and Vincent are already friends. The issue isn't one of "yes, but do I really like you?" The issues are Richmond's tendency to hero-worship and Vincent's tendency to cynicism while, on the action side, the issues are Richmond's desire to get a commission and Vincent's willingness to drop his pose for at least one other person. 

The Trope of the Forced Relationship

Speaking of breach of promise suits...

 

A common trope in Regency romances is the couple who must marry because they were caught in a compromising situation.

 

Imagine that Elizabeth and Darcy have met again at Pemberley--no longer actively antagonistic but still wary with some of the same family hindrances--but they are caught making out by, say, one of the Bingleys, and the rumors start to fly and to protect Elizabeth's honor, the two must marry.

 

Basically, Lydia and Wickham blended with Elizabeth and Darcy.

 

It isn't a completely horrible plot. The very funny The Viscount Who Loves Me by Julia Quinn is partly based on this approach. It can work.

 

But it suffers from immediately catapulting the plot into "oh, no, we only married because we had to" angst, which can get a tad tiresome. It isn't that the conflict has zero teeth, but it's not clear where it is expected to go. Unless the book becomes all about dysfunctional people who hate each other (which plot can also be rather tedious), the only plot left is for the characters to adjust.

 

Adjustment plots can offer some substance. With A Civil Contract, Heyer produced a book in which the young high-status hero marries the daughter of a middle class financier (of rather crass manners), all in order to save his estate--and the people who live on his estate. He gives up, he thinks, a great romance with a young woman of his own class who tends to swoon in dramatic moments.

 

Over a year later after the birth of his first child, he finds that he likes his wife and is far more interested in innovations to his estate than enacting melodramatic scenes with the ex-girlfriend, who is married now to someone else anyway.

 

The book is not everyone's favorite Heyer--it's never been one of mine--but it is one of the better versions of the "they had to marry--do they even love each other" plots since Heyer allows the couple to grow naturally together over time.

 

Still, one can shake the "Uh, what else were they supposed to do? Hate each other and be miserable? Who wants to read that?" sense of inevitability.

 

Granted: part of the attraction of romance is HOW a couple works things out. But if one is writing narrative arcs, it is best to preserve some point of change or active choice...rather than to say, "Well, yeah, of course everybody trundled along okay. They are reasonably civilized people, after all." And since the point of change or choice for a "forced marriage" with a HEA (Happily Ever After) is to not have an affair, not commit murder, not wallow in self-pity, not build a separate staircase to one's study (Thomas Hardy), not write blistering letters to each other for public consumption (Bryon and...everybody)...

 

I'm not sure I see the point. Oh, thank goodness, nobody acted like a total jerk is not the most satisfying pay-off. If, on the other hand, the ultimate point is that the marriage won't work out, unless the book is a murder mystery, a non-fiction tome about the dissolution of modern marriages will achieve the same goal. 

Overall, I think Austen was wise to keep her sights trained on how the couple work things out before the wedding. The married couples in her fiction, no matter what, simply manage. Mrs. Tilney may not have had the best marriage with General Tilney, but, eh, it worked well enough. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet may be on completely different wavelengths--but they have five girls and they both care about them, if in very different ways. Other couples--such as the Crofts--are wonderful together!

 

Austen understood marriages--she was quite observant. But she was writing narratives, not self-help manuals.

Great Heyer Quote: The Old-Fashioned Romance & the Reality

In the world of "wow, there really is a holiday out there for everything," April 14th is National Ex-Spouse Day when ex-spouses are encouraged to forgive each other and move on. 

For Romance & Manga, I thought a quote about how romances don't always fit a pattern was appropriate.

The quote--from Sprig Muslin by Georgette Heyer--also illustrates why Gothic literature was so attractive to nineteenth century Englishers (and still is). 

Gothic literature arose out of the tension between the modern world and the more visually attractive past. Nobody really wanted to give up newspapers and telegraphs and slowly improving modern medicine. Not really. 

But the appealing images of castles and knights and monasteries lingered. 

In Sprig Muslin, young Hildebrand (who is not in fact the hero of the novel), reflects:

It was not that he disliked the plan: given the right setting, there was nothing he would rather do than ride off with Amanda on his saddle-bow. The mischief was the right setting was lacking. The adventure demanded an odd dragon or two in the background, and a few false knights in full armour...

A nineteenth century scene was hopelessly anachronistic...one was more likely to be sent to prison, or, at the very least, severely reprimanded for having done something that one's elders would say was not the thing. 

As in a number of Heyer's novels, it is the level-headed persons, Gareth and Hester, who get together. They were friends for years, but Gareth has to move on from a past romance before his and Hester's relationship can really take hold.

It is a sweet romance untroubled by dragons, false knights...and prison.

Beauty & the Beast by Georgette Heyer: Venetia

A Valentine's Day post! 

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 honestly 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, when he was an older teen, he ran off 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 nonredeemable out of an honest belief in his own (rather mild) rakishness (he isn't exactly a member of the Hellfire Club). 

Damerel and Venetia meet and become friends. 

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 when they cart 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. 

Like Avenant and Gaston in the classic renderings, Edward--the so-called worthy suitor--then reveals his small-mindedness and inherent spiritual meanness by trying to pull a Darcy ("I struggled against my feelings for you, but failed") without Darcy's growth (Edward determines that he should have never given into his feelings).

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. 

Venetia once again shrugs. She knows exactly whom she is marrying. She knows exactly what she wants. She has always known, if only people would listen instead of trying to "fix" her. Her brother Aubrey agrees that she and Jasper (Damerel) will suit, and Aubrey knows her better than anyone. 

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.

Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer

Since I'm posting about Georgette Heyer these days, I decided to re-post an edited 2005 Votaries post about Heyer and Austen, specifically how they differ from each other. Both are very good.

* * *

Everybody is On the Make

In Austen, everyone suffers from "on the make" syndrome. Listening to Pride & Prejudice, I was struck, moreso than I have been in the past, by the hardheadedness underlying all that sensibility. Elizabeth gets angry over Darcy's interference with Bingley & Jane, but her anger is undercut by the fact that everybody is interfering with everybody all the time. Her aunt gives her advice. Elizabeth gives her sister and Charlotte advice. Charlotte gives Elizabeth advice. It's just an orgy of opinion giving! What is comes down to is: everybody wants love but nobody wants to be poor (see my post Romance and the Weird Relationship to Money for why this makes sense).

The most respectable of historical romance novels, such as Georgette Heyer's work, try to capture this on-the-make quality of Regency life. Georgette Heyer, who did a large amount of research on the dress and setting of the periods she wrote in, never marries her lords to peasant girls. She's no more democratic than Austen, and there are some Austenish ziggers in her comedy, although in general her comedy is lighter and less consequential. 

In truth, Heyer's writing can be very funny, but she was less concerned with underlying causes and more concerned with writing a good story. Everyone is on the make but somehow that fact never rises entirely to the surface. Heyer keeps it carefully under control. Lovely young ladies turn out to be heiresses. Handsome young men turn out to her heirs. Supposed changelings turn out to have Viscounts for fathers. Don't worry. There's no angst here (thankfully).

Plot versus Story

Using established definitions, plot is a narrative arc. Story is a series of events: this happened, then this, now this. Plot is best described using a Stephen King image. He describes the process of writing as uncovering a skeleton. The narrative is already there, whole, intact. It just needs to be brought to the surface. With story, on the other hand, the end is always a twist, a change of fortune, the turn of the wheel. 

Austen is about plot. Heyer is more about story. In Heyer's These Old Shades, the non-changeling changeling gets captured by her despicable father, rescued by her saturnine lover, presented to all of Paris, confronted with the supposed fact of her illegitimacy at which she runs away to save her lover from her supposed bad reputation. She is finally recovered by her lover and restored to all her rights and privileges (I'm using lover in the old sense of the word; nobody sleeps with anybody until they are married, although the dandies and members of the ton sometimes have mistresses; all the sex occurs off-stage).

Now, in all honesty, These Old Shades and other Heyer books are a whole bunch of fun--and the books are not devoid of plot; there is always a conflict that gets paid-off. But they are not quite the same as plot-driven books. With plot, the ending is incipient in the beginning. There's an inevitability about it. No twist is necessary to bring about a particular denouement. It lies in wait, inviolate, known (although not necessarily unveiled yet to the reader). The parts of the narrative hold together like a statue or shape. As one reads, one gets a sense of an emerging totality.

Take Elizabeth and Darcy. Both undergo an enlightenment, a point when they reorganize their thoughts and feelings. Elizabeth is angered, then humiliated and aggrieved by Darcy's letter. Darcy is angered, then embarrassed by Elizabeth's accusations of "ungentlemanly" behavior. But the argument, letter, and realization are a long-time coming. The mutual feelings of attraction and irritation have been hovering since Day One (I side with those who argue that Elizabeth was always attracted or at least interested in Darcy since "slow burn" does not mean, "Oh, I had no real interest--now, I suddenly do!" which is why romances--despite stereotypes--rarely use the "I don't take lack-of-interest for an answer" hero). 

Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley isn't contrived. Darcy's intercession with Wickham & Lydia isn't a lucky chance. It is made necessary by Darcy's behavior at Netherfield Park, where he purchases reputation at the expense of Lydia's future (who might not matter but Elizabeth and Jane certainly do). This is behavior he must rectify.

Conclusion

I'll go so far as to say that all great works have plot, rather than just story. However, story is a good alternative to a lousy plot. Heyer's fun and roller-coaster-ride stories never fail to satisfy.

Heyer Characters: The Amoral Protagonist

Sometimes in Heyer, the amoral character is the villain. But in These Old Shades, the Duke of
Avon, Alastair (whom his friend Hugh sometimes refers to as Justin) is mostly amoral. 

He was quite strict in his guardianship of his siblings. But his personal life has been a run of gambling and affairs and duels. 

He sort of reforms when he meets Leonie. He is nearing 40 and the reader is given every reason to believe that he has left behind his love 'em and leave 'em days. He initially intends to use Leonie to revenge himself on an enemy. He ends by restoring her position and reputation in society and then marrying her. 

Heyer does two things terrifically right: (1) for all his amoral tendencies, Alastair has the class-based conventions of his class/time period. He has a low opinion of peasant-born and base-born individuals, especially those foisted on society. I'm not saying I agree. I'm saying that Heyer captures the cultural mores of a class which will wink its eye at some things but stay absolutely firm on others. It depends on a certain amount of cognitive dissonance but it is very real. 

(2) Although Alastair will prove a stern and affectionate husband, he doesn't turn into a sweet, kindly, poetry-spewing dandy. He remains sarcastic and something of a "fixer" through The Devil's Cub, which tackles his son's adventures. His son, a rake, is in fact more morally aware than Alastair. He is a generation younger.

Alastair belongs to the eighteenth-century before the French Revolution. Most of Heyer's romances take place closer in time to Jane Austen's period. But her few earlier romances do a fantastic job capturing the mindset and feel of the time period. 

After all, as several characters point out, Alastair and Leonie will do fine together: she's just as indifferent to proper later-Victorian ideals as he is and far more bloodthirsty.

Heyer Characters: The Sweet-Natured Hero

The sweet-natured hero is one of Heyer's classic character types and a welcome change from the alpha alpha alpha alpha male that literarily dominates romance literature.

Darcy and Rochester are far more common than Bingleys in most romance literature.

Granted, Darcy is more introverted than consciously pushy. And Rochester is a big marshmallow wrapped in all kinds of denial. But the Bingleys are often secondary characters. 

In Heyer, they have their own books!

One of the best examples is the Duke of Sale or Gilly from The Foundling. His parents died when he was a baby. He is raised by his uncle who is a blustery, domineering man whose fundamental goodness is demonstrated by his care of Gilly. The uncle is, after all, the heir to the estate. Nevertheless, he raises his nephew with all the assiduous attention that frankly, he doesn't force on his own son. He coddles Gilly through his illnesses. He hires dozens of servants and companions who adore Gilly. He manages all Gilly's affairs "for his own good." He honestly believes in his duty to raise this child successfully to manhood. 

The sweet-natured boy grows up to be a sweet-natured man. Eventually, he rebels at his constant "handlers" and escapes on a series of adventures of his own. He comes through with flying colors and even learns to stand up to his uncle.

Where Heyer excels with these heroes is that she doesn't turn them into shouting, domineering alphas. They retain their gentle natures. They just learn to go their own way and insist on their rights. Gilly is, after all, the Duke of Sale.

It is quite honestly difficult to find these heroes outside of Heyer and M/M literature. M/M literature has quite a number. One of my favorites is from Jackie North's holiday novella, Hot Chocolate Kisses, in which fussy (but not OCD), homebody Cory--who loves Christmas and gets particular about people taking their shoes off in his home and reads Charles Dickens aloud--has a core of toughness that gives him the chutzpah to stand up to the police on behalf of his once criminal boyfriend, who has a definite Rochester vibe. The relationship is entirely believable. 

A noteworthy comparison: Heyer gives Gilly a cousin, Gideon, who is his best friend and one of the few people in his life to believe that Gilly has the fundamental strength to be as tough as he proves to be. The relationship in Hot Chocolate Kisses is not dissimilar. 

Georgette Heyer: The Competent Hero

To be fair, nearly all of Georgette Heyer's heroes are competent. 

Sometimes they start out flighty and kind of daft or--in the case of The Foundling--young and bullied by well-meaning relatives. But they always find their inner strength, take control of their lives, and prove that they can handle messy situations with aplomb. 

Even the rakes prove themselves through competence rather than swoon-worthy prose. When Vidal, the rake hero of Devil's Cub, mistakenly kidnaps the wrong sister (the practical, kindly, and, yes, competent one rather than the flirty, shallow one), he attempts to seduce her on the boat ride across the channel. She is, however, hopelessly seasick. Vidal is amused, gives up the seduction, and gets her a basin to throw up in instead. 

Although all of Heyer's heroes eventually demonstrate their competence, a number of them start out that way. Gervase Frant, hero of The Quiet Gentleman, is a compact, level-headed, faintly whimsical yet entirely unflappable earl. The Quiet Gentleman is one of my favorite Regency novels since it has an underlying murder mystery plot. Gervase solves it, but he solves it more like Charles from the Wimsey novels than like Wimsey. More practical, easy-going contemplation than flashy talkativeness and physical antics. 

I like Peter Wimsey, but I'm always glad when the Charleses get their due. 

Heyer extols practicality in her heroines as well.