Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Just a couple of quick thoughts as I steal a minute from work . . .

I like my Regencies to field slightly impoverished, untitled ladies (i.e., upper class but not titled) and titled gentlemen.  That’s because I’m a sucker for this genteel version of rags-to-riches, wherein the lady’s inherent virtues win her both love and lots of money to spend on hats.

I suspect that I like my Regencies (and historicals) to feature upper-class men and women because they were the only ones who had the leisure to play—so they’re the only ones through whom I can live that life vicariously.  I don’t get real super-excited about the idea of living the life of, say, a merchant’s daughter or yeowoman farmer—way too much drudgery.  The glimpses I get from Anne Perry’s novels of what even a sort of middle-class woman (with only one servant) faced in terms of housework alone are quite enough of a reality check, thank you very much!

So give me Frederica any day of the week!

SB Sarah asked: “[W]hat did the big busted girls do in that age with all those empire waist dresses? If I wear one? I look like a buxom hobag. For an age of decency, what was up with that?”

They wore stays! In real life, I mean. There’s a scary dearth of them in romance novels (drives me NUTS!). I’m a DD, and my tits looks fantastic in my Regency gowns, cause I have on the correct undergarments!

Two examples, c. 1790s and 1820s (which are like the ones worn throughout most of the era):

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/1819stay.jpg

-Tonda

Actually, I fret about this issue often, and it’s what most often makes me take a break from reading historical romances. I think to myself: “I have been reading, almost exclusively, for nearly a month now, about an imaginary Aryan super-race. Too many superlatives. Too many handsome, wealthy, wellborn WASPs.” And I lay off the romances for a while.

I am trying to be more self-conscious about my choices than my late paternal grandmother, bless her—who read the precursors to genre romances in the 1970s, and introduced me to the pleasures of Heyer, Clare Darcy, Barbara Cartland, et al. This lady had worked in service during her youth in the 1920s to a wealthy family. It wasn’t an easy job, from her accounts. Relentless, early hours, no time off. But she worshipped the memory of her employers, that life style, modeled her own home and doings after them, and pushed for all of her sons to go to college, as the sons of that family had. And her reading matter, all her life, was incessantly about kings and queens and titled people, the wealthier the better.

I understand now, believe me, but at age 17, I thought it was just sad.

I see her as a romantic now, like Gatsby, who admired Daisy because she: “gleam[ed] like silver, safe and proud, above the hot struggles of the poor.”

I think she just wanted a rest sometimes, and was fascinated by those who were somehow exempted by their birth from engaging in that struggle, and by the way this exemption freed them to devote all their consciousness to mental cultivation, including the subtleties and amusing little self-torments of love.

I like it, too, but damn, I feel a disconnect sometimes—as recently, after watching scenes from the Superdome in New Orleans, it was really hard to pick up the latest historical romance with my bookmarker stuck into it. I can’t always do it.

I’m not sure why I like the titled. I think it has something to do with being pretty sure they took baths from time to time. The untitled...not so much, lol.

I like to joke that I’m in the only time period that affords me, a dark skinned ethnic, the opportunity to live my life with options and possibilities. Any other decade or century and I’d be serving or servicing. It’s pretty true though.

Also, I grew up poor and I’ve always wondered--maybe hoped--that I’d find something truly noble in a rich person from time to time, because a good percentage of them can be really crappy. So, I turn to regencies. :)

Smooches,
Dee

I always go for romances that feature untitled heroes and heroines. If there aren’t any, I’ll read those that feature titled heroes and heroines. I’m not a huge fan of the nobility, but I usually see them the way we view large companies nowadays. Families like these provided local economy and local employment, but with no benefits or perks for their employees, including those in the domestic service, farming, “white-collar” staff, and such. This usually colours my perspective of titled characters, e.g. I don’t see them glamourous, just part of the old British economic machine. Actually, this applies to historical romances with similar set-ups outside Great Britain. :)

This entry really caught my eye, since I’m an as-yet-unpublished writer who just finished a first draft of a Regency with a wealthy, high-born heroine and a commoner hero.  I wrote it that way because *I* thought it was sexy and romantic to have them fall in love despite everything and find a way to defy convention and be together.  Now all I have to do is convince at least one editor and then enough readers that I can then sell my next book and the one after that!

I’m not anti-lords-as-heroes, but I am a little tired of feeling like I’m reading the same book over and over again, and since I read/watch a fair amount of stuff set in the same era that’s not romance (Aubrey/Maturin, Sharpe, heck, even Jane Austen’s characters are more middle class than noble, etc.), I’ve developed an interest in the non-lordly side of life.  I just hope there are enough readers who feel the same to allow me to tell the kind of stories I love!

I think the point you bring up applies to modern chick-lit too; current editors think that since they live and work in Manhattan that all chick-lit fans love to read about working single upper-class women who live and work in Manhattan.  It irks me to no end.  I’ll take the small-town Midwestern/Southern gal’s story anytime.

If I read a historical romance novel, I prefer the lower-class gal or the lower-class guy.  I think the class situation is one reason I tend not to read too many of them.  I don’t do royal worship.

Did you ever watch “Manor House” when they showed in on PBS? It was interesting to see how the family seemed to forget about the people “serving” them in the house.  Only one of the “servants” left with a real positive memory of the family - the butler.

I hope I haven’t gone too off-topic in this comment . . .

Hey, Susan. I love “spotting” people on this site!!!

It’s not the readers you have to convince, it’s the freaken editors. They all seem to like titles, and uber, uber alpha males. Leaves those of us who’d like a nice supportive beta, who just maybe is a plain mister, out in the cold (same with non-English settings, NY seems very set on English settings, cause they know those sell).

My first MS featured a plain mister, and I got told by three editors they’d look at it again if I could butch him up and give him a title. Grrrr. I’m doing that right now . . .

Hey, Tonda!

“It’s not the readers you have to convince, it’s the freaken editors.”

TELL me about it!  Most readers I know, even if they prefer a certain type of hero, a certain setting, or whatever, also like variety.  I love the Regency.  I’d hate to see it die out.  But I’d love to see more variety at the same time.  If you can have mysteries set in ancient Rome or historical fiction of the Civil War, why not romances?  Not to mention variety *within* the Regency--hence my commoner hero and mostly Spanish setting! 

“So while I notice and remark upon my frequent preference for the titled pairings, there is definitely an audience in myself and other readers for innovative pairings. No discouragement intended!”

Thanks, Sarah!

You don’t have to buy titles--sometimes you can win them.

still smirking,

Baroness Knickersnatch

(I noticed the class-as-an-issue trend in nearly all of my own books, published and unpubbed [more’n a dozen in all] . . .But when you write historicals it seems almost inevitable--even without the damn titles)

A lot of folks have hit on the attraction of titled H&H, especially to American readers--the upper classes had the leisure to go on adventures; they moved more freely through society, giving them opportunity to go to balls, routs, Venetian breakfasts, the opera, etc.; it’s the lure of the “other”; and folks at the upper end of the social spectrum generally _looked_ better ‘cause they had better nourishment as children and into adulthood.

However, who’s the classic Regency hero? 
_Mr._ Darcy.  An old name, an honorable name, a big bucks name, but nonetheless, he bore no title.

Sincerely,

Duchess Twitterpants, who despite her title is a true republican (please note the small “r") Daughter of Liberty.  Though I must say, I do favor the Federalists on most issues…

Okay, here’s my question, FWIW:  do you think the persistence of titled characters in Romance, particularly Regency Romance, is the product of a still-cogent fantasy need OR a legacy of the old days of Romance that has become imprinted as a tacit generic requirement?  Or perhaps some combination thereof.

Reading all these comments makes me think more about why I’m not automatically drawn to Regencies.  For the most part, unless the nobility of the characters is addressed in an interesting way (I’m with Candy in being drawn to social taboos in Romance, for example), I either find it annoying or forgettably cliched or disruptive or innocuously entertaining. There are many times I block it out, since it so often seems to be nothing more than part of the infrastructure of the Romance novel. It’s not that I ignore class issues, because I’m particularly sensitive to those.  But in truth, I don’t think the average Regency is really about class, no matter how steeped in it the books are.  In fact, I think you could really do some serious social studies work in talking about Sherry’s designation of the Regency super-race and their perpetuation as a self-reflexive and self-affirming attempt to keep the upper classes as the standard of reference and therefore beyond consideration themselves.  There’s a “taken for granted” quality to some of these novels, where even whent he hero is “marrying down,” a big part of the HEA is that the heroine is absorbed into the upper classes as a reward for her virtue.  The book may investigate the heroine’s background, in preparation for her move to the big leagues, but there doesn’t seem to be the same necessity for the hero’s perfect class credentials.  Because even though class is of profound significance in the world of these novels, I’m not convinced it’s given much consideration in the Romance publishing industry beyond the idea that it’s what’s always been and always sold.  Obviously, as is clear in this forum, some writers really are thinking about it, but as a whole, I wonder how reflective the industry is on the subject.

Relating to SB Sarah here, I was thinking about odds and ends in the shower this morning, though my topic of musing was human instincts.  Thus, I’m going to answer this from a tangental tack somewhat related to what I was thinking on earlier today:  if natural selection and survival of the fittest are real phenomenon as I think they are, it applies to humans just as much as it does to other animals.  I never studied anthropology, but watching a few investigative specials on tv have led me to the idea that consciously and unconsciously, humans are always instinctively drawn to characteristics in other humans that can help them a) survive and/or b) pass their genes on successfully to offspring (and further, help these offspring survive).  Modern cultural mores and science have coated us with a veneer of civilization as well as opened up some options to us to achieve these two things with greater ease (in some places) and with greater variety (e.g. in vitro fertilization).  However, when push comes to shove we’re still animals at heart with instincts for survival and procreation, and so there’s always going to be an attraction to those characteristics in others that incorporate the best odds of achieving the furtherance of life. 

Thus, those who have achieved a place in life - by birth or by will - where the guarantee seemingly exists for a comfortable living for self and offspring are attractive to us regardless of time and regardless of place and regardless of how we think about noblesse oblige in general. 

I think this instinct for/attraction to strength and power is one element that helps explain our fascination with those who seemingly “have it all”, at least materially speaking.

For me, this theory helps explain a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me before (young women claiming true attraction to older, less physically appealing men with material wealth and/or social power, invading forces raping the women in the territories being invaded, etc.), but as this is a completely unscientific personal pet idea, I can understand if this idea doesn’t work for anyone else and multiple departures from logic can be pointed out.

It’s important not to get too hung up on titles.  The Ton consisted of the Aristocracy, who had titles, and the Gentry, who did not (except for Baronetcies, which are hereditary knighthoods, and did not give you a ticket to the House of Lords).  And remember that titles are passed down to a single heir. While the second son of a Duke would be called Lord Whatsit So-and-So, it was only a courtesy title and his son would be plain Mr So-and-So - Beaumaris in Heyer’s Arabella is the grandson of a Duke, but is of the Gentry, not the Aristocracy. The Aristocracy and the Gentry were aware of the differences between them, but they were to a greater degree united by the fact that they didn’t have to earn a living, and it is this that separated them from the rest.

“The rest” included a growing mercantile and industrial class who were making their money on the back of the agricultural and industrial revolutions (this wealth was effectively taken from the agricultural labourers and skilled and semi-skilled artisans whose jobs were destroyed by the factory system, but that’s another story).

The rigid social system described in so many Regencies is in many ways a defence thrown up by the Aristocracy and the Gentry against these parvenu industrialists and mercantilists, but it was an unfortunate necessity for many Aristocratic families facing financial ruin to marry heiresses from this new middle class just to keep them in funds so that they could continue not to work. Heyer’s A Civil Contract is a classic portrayal of what this was like.

A century later the same thing happened, but instead of industrial heiresses the choice of the Aristocracy was American heiresses.

One of the fascinations with the Regency period is that in many ways it was the last gasp of the landed aristocracy.  Leading as it did into the rise of the industrial class, the barriers defining who constituted the gentry began to fall--if you were a captain of industry, you could expect a knighthood and your status was no longer so closely tied to land ownership.

That was one of the key components of what separated the classes.  Land ownership moved you into the gentry class, even if you were relatively poor.  A rich person in the city who didn’t own an estate of some sort wouldn’t carry the same status as a country squire who’d been “Hogsbreath of Hogsbreath Hollow” for a few generations now. 

This was one reason too why land was “entailed”.  You didn’t want it passing to just any parvenu schmoe with enough money, you wanted to keep it in your family, no matter how poor they were.

I meant to say - that site selling titles is not selling real ones, as the 7th Earl of Bradford will tell you.

Um, I know this is slightly off topic, but how, exactly, does one throw a Regency?

Do you storm into the bedroom, stamp your foot and shout at the hubs, “Lord Purebottom, if you don’t ravish me now, I shall surely wither away!”

Something like that?

Um, I know this is slightly off topic, but how, exactly, does one throw a Regency?

I don’t think it can really be taught; you have to be born into it. It’s like a slow curve, but with much more sensibility.

Tonda said:

My first MS featured a plain mister, and I got told by three editors they’d look at it again if I could butch him up and give him a title. Grrrr. I’m doing that right now . . .”

That really disappoints me but, alas, doesn’t surprise me. I know they’re gonna keep buying what they think will sell, and as long as readers continue to pony up the cash for books with one or more titled protagonists, things won’t change.

I still enjoy books with a titled heroine and/or hero, but at the same time, it bugs the shit out of me. Maybe I’ll just quit buying them for a while and make a point of supporting books that aren’t so hung up on titles.

I’ve found myself tending toward nobly born protagonists in the fantasy fiction I write, and it’s something I’m now consciously working to avoid.

I like the books that have characters just outside the ‘ton’ world.  The ones where the characters get to be more ‘down to earth’ and laugh/jeer at the follies of the rich and lazy.

I also like the ones where the guy still works, even if he has to do it ‘in secret...lest he be shunned or laughed out of the ton’. Or he had to re-make the fortune his good-for-nothing forbear wasted.  Whatever, he is a productive human, he works, he spies (for the good side of course) or he truly works at taking good care of his home/dependants.

So, I am not drawn to the stories of the idle rich/titled.

My theory on why people are would be a very simplistic the heroines usually gets to have LOVE and MONEY...in abundance.  She also gets to have a long and healthy life.  And really, wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Sam

Playing around with a few different ideas here; I’m still groping for cogency, so I hope this makes some sort of sense.

SB Sarah wrote:
“Romance readers might have more in common with the titled class of historical novels than they realize, having already cashed in on a lottery of birth.”

I think that’s a big part of why I like my upper-class (although not necessarily titled) characters; it’s also why I get tired of contemporaries set in Manhattan with more names of shoes than names of characters.  I need some kind of identification with the people in the books I read, but have different expectations from historicals than from contemporaries. 

Now, in historicals (as in the SF and fantasy I read), I know I’m entering a fantasy realm.  I want my characters to allow me to fulfill what Robin called the “cogent fantasy need”—in my case, the little wish inside to enter a more glamorous and carefree world than the one I really inhabit.  At the same time, though, I need to be able to identify with the characters.  The rich folks are the ones who do both.  They live the fantasy life I want to inhabit; anachronistically or not, they are like me (have leisure, are educated, and yes, take baths!). (Note that, because I know I’m in fantasy land, I don’t have to think about all the repression etc. that provided the infrastructure for that fantasy).

Plonk me down into a contemporary, though, and I’m no longer in the same kind of fantasy realm.  I’m still living vicariously through the characters, but my unconscious expectations are different.  Now I’m looking to explore aspects of my “real world”—based on place, circumstance, or whatever—that are otherwise inaccessible to me.  But because I’m not in fantasy land any more, I need a stronger identification with the characters; I need them to be much more like me.  And, to the extent that they still help me fulfill a cogent fantasy need, that fantasy needs to be much more in line with the possible in my own life.  Hence, fewer shoes :)

Oh, and fiveandfour, what you wrote is more than just your pet idea—you’re describing the basic framework of evolutionary psychology (the new version of sociobiology).  It’s pretty controversial, but gets a lot of attention in some academic circles.

OK, resting my brain now . . .

SamG wrote: “I like the books . . . where the guy still works, even if he has to do it ‘in secret . . . So, I am not drawn to the stories of the idle rich/titled.”
Most historical romances fail miserably to show just how hard the rich/titled worked. If you were idle, you ended up poor. These were the captains of industry, the CEO/CFOs of their age. The vast majority of these guys worked damn hard (plus they were essentially Congressmen on top of it all). No, they weren’t out in the fields or down in the mines, but they were working none-the-less.

Younger sons weren’t allowed to be idle playboys, either. Most were required to do something to help shore up the family’s position and wealth (Soldier, clergyman, MP, etc.). 

It may be that people don’t think Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and their ilk work, but I’ll disagree. Their work is simply not the same as that of most people, and is harder to grasp and quantify. Now shift that position back a few centuries, and you can easily see why authors have a hard time showing how hard these guys worked, and often write them as idle playboys. Plus, editors don’t like it when you spend too much time on that “boring” stuff (even in contemporizes).

Stupid spell-check.

Contemporaries. Not “contemporizes”.

Most historical romances fail miserably to show just how hard the rich/titled worked. If you were idle, you ended up poor. These were the captains of industry, the CEO/CFOs of their age.

Bingo.

Many of their wives also worked, revolving their lives around their homes [social events and running the house], families [networking, etc] and their husbands [networking, socialising with the better ones, etc]. There was much more personal freedom outside the nobility, but alas, not everyone realised this. Thanks, Tonda.

“Tonga”

Spell check strikes again! It always wants to change my name to a tropical island country (Tonga) or a frozen wasteland (Tundra). HAHAHAHAHAAHA! No middle ground there.

And I agree that it’s sexy as hell when a man shows he’s capable and smart. As Julie Ross said in her hero workshop, BONG goes the scale to the male side.

As someone from the country that specialised in absentee landlords (that’s Ireland), I’d have to respectfully disagree with the notion that the aristocracy were hard workers. Just read Jane Austen’s near-contemporary Maria Edgeworth’s wonderful Castle Rackrent for more on that subject. Yes, there were plenty of aristocratic landowners who looked after their tenants. But all of them had estate agents who dealt with the boring bits, and plenty of them paid no attention to their tenants at all, hence the development of the Land League here in Ireland (where, unlike Britain, the vast majority of the rural population were tenant farmers) at the end of the 19th century. And being an MP or a member of the House of Lords (who, by the way, vetoed lots and lots of vaguely progressive bills until their veto was removed shortly before the first world war) was in no way comparable to being a modern MP or Congressman today. Not least because they weren’t actually required to turn up very often.

If you were idle, you ended up poor.

Well, if you were a bad investor or a gambling addict or had a very bad land agent you ended up poor, but unless you were a younger son you could get away with being pretty damn idle.

Some of my favourite writers ever, from Nancy Mitford (who of course was the daughter of a Lord) to Georgette Heyer, wrote books about aristocratic characters. But I can honestly say that the title bit has no effect on whether I like characters or not, and I certainly wouldn’t have a preference for aristocratic characters over middle or working class ones. Maybe it’s because I’m lived for my entire life in a country in which there are people who have titles, and I went to university with plenty of people who had titles, but they certainly don’t have any glamorous charms for me just because their greatx10 grandfather did a favour for Charles II. I don’t have a big problem with them or anything of the kind (although I’m not fond of the blinkered sense of entitlement so many of them exude). I just don’t care.