By Sneha Rajaram
Originally published on 13 June 2013.
When I first started reading Georgette Heyer at 12, she was a guilty pleasure, not because it’s embarrassing to be seen reading romance novels (because people might think you’re a romantic), but because the message I got at that age was that romance was low class literature, or rather, not literature at all.
Heyer is special for many many things, but most of all her romance novels (still haven’t read her murder mysteries) are the most re-readable ones I’ve ever encountered. At 26 I’m on my fifth read, and my grandmother at 88 still has an annual read.
My fourth read, between jobs in 2009, was when I realized that for me, she was the best writer in the world. Plots, sub-plots, character, themes, historical accuracy, style, everything is impeccable, but the humour, of the “ready sense of the ridiculous” school (to quote her), outshines everything.
One of the greatest criticisms levelled at Heyer is that her Regency era alpha males are offensive. Heyer herself wrote from 1932 onwards. This sort of thinking from the second wave of feminism is represented best by Germaine Greer in her The Female Eunuch, in which she firstly makes the mistake of trying to get two birds (Heyer and Barbara Cartland) with one stone.
Jennifer Crusie would be the ideal person to soberly refute every single bit of Greer’s criticism of both Heyer and Cartland, if she were of a mind to do so. Her defenses of the romance genre were life-changing for me. As for me, since my lack of college education has accustomed me to not having to justify my opinions at all, I’m going to say that Greer’s analysis of Heyer (I can’t talk about Cartland, not having read her) strikes me as singularly superficial.
She doesn’t look at the enormous quality of the actual stories in Heyer’s books, nor does it appear that she’s read anything other than Regency Buck, which she uses as her example. She’s hugely offended by the initial description of Lord Worth in Regency Buck:
…Exploiting the sexual success of the Byronic hero in an unusually conscious way, Georgette Heyer created the archetype of the plastic age, Lord Worth, the Regency Buck. He is a fine example of a stereotype which most heroes of romantic fiction resemble more or less, whether they are dashing young men with an undergraduate sense of humor who congratulate the vivacious heroine on her pluck (the most egalitarian in conception) in the adventure stories of the thirties, or King Cophetua and the beggar maid.
“He was the epitome of a man of fashion. His beaver hat was set over black locks carefully brushed into a semblance of disorder; his cravat of starched muslin supported his chin in a series of beautiful folds, his driving coat of drab cloth bore no less than fifteen capes, and a double row of silver buttons. Miss Taverner had to own him a very handsome creature, but found no difficulty in detesting the whole cast of his countenance. He had a look of self-consequence; his eyes, ironically surveying her from under world-weary lids, were the hardest she had ever seen, and betrayed no emotion but boredom. His nose was too straight for her taste. His mouth was very well-formed, firm but thin-lipped. She thought he sneered.
Worse than all was his languor. He was uninterested, both in having dexterously averted an accident, and in the gig’s plight. His driving had been magnificent; there must be unexpected strength in those elegantly gloved hands holding the reins in such seeming carelessness, but in the name of God why must he put on such an air of dandified affectation?”
Nothing such a creature would do could ever be corny. With such world-weary lids! With the features and aristocratic contempt which opened the doors of polite society to Childe Harold, and the titillating threat of unexpected strength! Principally, we might notice, he exists through his immaculate dressing–Beau Brummell is one of his friends–but when he confronts this spectacle–
“She had rather have had black hair; she thought the fairness of her gold curls insipid. Happily, her brows and lashes were dark, and her eyes which were startlingly blue (in the manner of a wax doll, she once scornfully told her brother) had a directness and fire which gave a great deal of character to her face. At first glance one might write her down a mere Dresden china miss, but a second glance would inevitably discover the intelligence in her eyes, and the decided air of resolution in the curve of her mouth.”
Of course her intelligence and resolution remain happily confined to her eyes and the curve of her mouth, but they provide the excuse for her naughty behavior toward Lord Worth, who turns out to be that most titillating of all titillating relations, her young guardian, by an ingeniously contrived mistake. The Female Eunuch, 1970
This stuff goes on for quite a bit, but I don’t think I can include more without this becoming a Greer post.
I’m going to start by agreeing whole-heartedly with Greer about Heyer consciously or unconsciously conveying certain messages about women’s sexual fantasies. I shudder to think of the poverty of my self-induced orgasms over the last 14 years without Heyer’s “plastic” alpha males. Which means that the sexual fantasies in Heyer’s books are a matter of personal taste. So if someone says to me, “I don’t like that sort of opposites-attract story,” or, “I don’t like dom/sub narratives,” that makes much more sense than a lengthy theoretical reaction.
I’m not going to respond much to the text following this excerpt, in which Greer criticizes the heroine for fainting after being forcibly embraced and kissed by the Prince of Wales. Whalebone corsets, duh! As for being rescued by her “father-lover”, Lord Worth, who’s accused by Greer of protecting her throughout the book unbeknownst to her, I actually kind of like that he fell in love with her in the beginning whereas she took a long time to fall back in love, as they reveal to each other at the end of the book. Today’s romances are often the other way around.
The funny thing is, there’s nothing submissive about this heroine, which is why Lord Worth likes her. As he tells her years later in The Infamous Army, “You know my taste runs to Amazons.”
When I read Greer’s criticism I’m reminded of my second-wave self at 17, and I feel kind of sorry for her. The “ingeniously contrived mistake” is called a plot device, you! And it sounds perfectly natural! And now I’m going to say something more offensive than the entire genre put together: This scale and breadth of offense at the sexual fantasy reeks of deep and unwilling arousal. I guess I’m privileged to be living in an age in which Jenny Crusie exists and BDSM is is getting very articulate about itself.
The thing about Heyer’s alpha males is, they’re all actually represented as vulnerable (as Greer would have seen if her research had been a bit more thorough). They’ve been brought up by servants, spoiled as heirs to lordships, flattered and toad-eaten, and denied non-matlabi friendships and family love. They usually have one manservant or sidekick with whom they can be completely honest, but not much more. They’re objects of the heroine’s rescue fantasies (i.e. the heroines want to rescue them from their respective emotional wastelands), which is actually the battle I’d pick if I wanted to say Heyer is offensive.
I’m tired of narratives in which the woman in a straight couple is working alone at two emotional lives.
Sneha Rajaram divides her time between her living room and bedroom. She likes to eat Maggi noodles (atta) and read fantasy and sci-fi, chicklit and speculative fiction (whatever that is).
June 13, 2013 at 6:47 pm
“I’m tired of narratives in which the woman in a straight couple couple is working alone at two emotional lives.” Not sure what you meant here. I’m the aunt who does the annual read, by the way. Also, I love some Germaine Greer and am surprised at her lack of research. Regency Buck is my least favorite GH novel. With a very few exceptions – Venetia, The Grand Sophy – I think there is a pattern of heroines being by stronger men, and it is a dangerous fantasy mostly because there are no such men in the world and it’s very disorienting to find that the whole pattern is actually reversed – women are invariably stronger than men and it’s such a tremendous mind-fuck to be told so often by so many people, even the great and wonderful GH, that the opposite is true.
March 21, 2014 at 2:08 pm
So glad I found this post, especially because I love Heyer AND Lord Worth, while also managing to be a rabid feminist who isn’t above calling a man out for latent misogyny. However, as much as I love him, I am always aware that he is deeply flawed (just like the Darcy every woman wants), but I will say that what saves him from becoming caricature is the fact that he isn’t static. He does change over the course of the novel, and he does become less of an ass by the end. I especially like that we get to see his older avatar in An Infamous Army, in which we see that Judith isn’t brow-beaten or any less independent than her younger self, despite being married to him. To be fair, I read Regency Buck when I was fourteen, and my childish love for an I’ll-fix-everything Lord Worth-type has definitely receded in the intervening years.
As for the woman doing all the emotional heavy lifting in a relationship, that isn’t a stereotype that’s going to go away any time soon, I’m afraid. So long as gender essentialism exists, so too will the idea that women are the caring, nurturing partners who bring out the best in their emotionally-challenged menfolk. For all that, Heyer gives us some pretty unconventionally sensitive men in Freddy (Cotillion) or Gilly (The Foundling) alongside your traditional alpha males, which just goes to show that it takes all sorts, even in romance?
March 21, 2014 at 2:28 pm
Wow! Cool comment. I agree, that’s why romance as a genre is so full of possibility.
May 2, 2015 at 4:19 pm
An interesting article.
I certainly agree that witty as that excerpt is, Ms Greer should have
made it more thorough and extended her research beyond one novel from
either author (although I do think that Regency Buck is a fairly
representative novel of Heyer’s)
As a teenager, I read some; I’ve re-read a number recently for research; do I like them?
No;
I think they’re cleverly done and witty and serve a reactionary function, both
for sex and class roles; Do I normally have a sense of humour? Well, I
think it sometimes wobbles under patriarchal advanced capitalism’s
ability to transmute all threatening social movements into window dressing and vague talk of ’empowerment’.
I’m doing a bit of independent research on romance and it’s role in the oppression of women because
I
do think that unluckily, romantic fantasies play a big part in the
oppression of women. I think it would be premature to dismiss all the
insights of second wave feminism as outdated;ideas have a way of coming
back into fashion, after all.
I recently read some article which
claimed that sitting reading romances was ’empowering’ because it
challenged male supremacy. Escapism never toppled the status quo,
sadly.
A lot of feminists think that Heyer’s novels are open to
feminist intrepretation, and that’s a nice thought, but given her very
right wing political views, I’m far from sure. The sexual double
standard is upheld throughout (and yes, it was challanged by some in
Regency times and by some in Heyer’s own age).
There is the fact
that one of her heroes – (Vidal in Devil’s Cub) half throttles and
threatens to rape the heroine (some readers think it’s OK because she
shoots him; I’m not one of them; I only wish she’d aimed rather further
down). Another ( ‘Sherry’ in Friday’s Child) physically bullies the
heroine. These abusive ‘heroes’ are surely dangerous fantasy material ?
Does it really come down to a question of personal preference in fantasies or are there more serious issues at stake?
By the way, I write stuff that tries to subvert the genre, for obvious reasons…
I love stimualting debate; do call over on my latest blog post which touches on some structural oddities of ‘The Talisman Ring’ and on the oddly seething emotional intensity of the relationship between Sir Tristram Sheild and Ludovic Lavenham…
May 2, 2015 at 5:59 pm
Silly me, typically I forgot to put my pen name and the link (I’m not always that daft, honestly).
[[https://sophieandemile.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/a-successful-cross-genre-novel-without-a-clear-protagonist-georgette-heyers-the-talisman-ring/]]
April 4, 2016 at 10:55 pm
April 6, 2016 at 10:40 pm
I find it odd how few non British people seem to have any idea what an appalling racist Georgette Heyer was You’ll find mentions of it in Jennifer Kloester’s biography, on Wickipedia and in her quotes. It’s evident in many of her works.. As you are such a great Heyer fan, Sheha, I assume you must be aware of her racism and anti-Semitism, and what she said on the conclusion of the Six Day War. That remark is so offensive that I don’t normally quote it, but here it is,as I think you need to hear it. I wish to emphasize, this is a quote: ‘I’m not fond of the Jews,but I’m delighted they licked the hell out of the wogs’.
I find it odd a person of black or asian hereditary should fantasize about characters made up by a woman with this attitude. You may be sure she imagined her heroes, in so far as she thought much about such cardboard characters at all, as all being dyed in the wool racists like herself. How can you possibly find sexual pleasure in daydreaming about creations from the mind of a racist?
Also, perhaps you are unaware that Heyer despised the readership of her Regency Romances, referring to them in a typical letter re ‘Friday’s Child’ as ‘feeble minded persons’. She was forced to write them to make money, but really aspired to write ‘real historical novels’.