Introduction and the Romance Novels
"The record of what any individual has read is almost always incomplete ... we must content ourselves with the allusions and references in her works" (Margaret Anne Doody speaking of Jane Austen)
Introduction
Georgette Heyer wrote a wide range of novels between 1921 and 1972, though she is most widely known for her Period Romances. Within this genre Heyer wrote 32 novels, in the process of which she effectively gave the genre shape, developing a distinctive approach to the Historical novel and the Historical Romance. The Historical novel, as a genre in popular writing, was established in the eighteenth century at the hands of such practitioners as Daniel Defoe and Walter Scott. The genre's identifying features are the use of significant historical events or personages as the central concern of the novel. Into the twentieth century, the Historical novel developed into the Historical Romance, maintaining the essential aspects of event and personage, but emphasising a romantic relationship within an historical context. Heyer herself wrote both Historical novels and Historical Romances, but her first novel, and her most successful novels in terms of sales and authorial profile, were the Period Romances.
In these novels Heyer changed some key factors of the Historical Romance. There is in the Period Romance a reduced emphasis on historical events and personages. These elements of the novel are reduced to providers of colour, kept well back from the main movement of the plot. As a setting for the romantic involvement of the novels' central characters, it is the reconstruction of period details which takes priority. The language, the description of costume, the manners and customs, are all used to create the sense of time and place specific to the chosen period. Within this constructed period environment, the course of the romantic entanglement must follow patterns which coincide with the reconstruction of that period.
Georgette Heyer's favoured period was that of Regency England (1811 - 20), with some exploration of the the preceding years. Heyer used novels and letters, in order to provide the 'authentic' details for her novels, but in creating the consistency of her world, she went beyond the period detail into an exploration of period-contemporary literary concerns and themes. This in effect allowed her to create a sense of period which went beyond that of other writers of Period Romance, and more specifically Regency Romance. Indeed, many other writers of the Regency Romance have owed more to researching Georgette Heyer's novels than Jane Austen's. Margaret Anne Doody says of Jane Austen's reading, "The record of what any individual has read is almost always incomplete. In Jane Austen's case, we must content ourselves with the allusions and references in her works and in the available letters..." (Grey, 1986, p347). In the same way, it is possible to suggest much of what has shaped Georgette Heyer's literary reconstruction of the Regency and preceding periods. Heyer's own understanding of the period of which she wrote seems to have extended beyond the use of Austen, both in letters and novels, to encompass a much broader range of sources. Her novels contain not only the names of novelists such as 'Mrs d'Arblay', Mary Brunton, Charlotte Smith and Walter Scott, but also aspects of their work which suggests at least some familiarity with it. Also, as Regency Romance writers followed Georgette Heyer's work as a guide, she herself shows significant influences from an older contemporary author of Historical Romance, Baroness Orczy, especially in her earlier work.
In using the literature of her historical period, Heyer did not so much try to make use of specific plots of early novels for her own work, rather she seems to have drawn from them a sense of the possibilities for her characters' lives and expectations. Further, in making her characters active readers of the novels of the time she creates a dual awareness. On the one hand, the characters within the novel have been handed potential scripts and on the other, the readers are given hints to the significance of the action. Georgette Heyer could clearly not write The Wanderer or Emmeline for a twentieth century readership, not even an early twentieth century readership. The distance between cultural realities is two extreme,
"One of the reasons why they don't write novels like they used to is that they would never get away with it if they did."(Fairbanks, introduction to Smith, 1987, p ix).
Heyer writing for the twentieth century audience was in a position of having to present the concerns of the earlier period in a way palatable to her audience. This entailed much simplification of theme, even of such elegantly simple thematic development evident in, say the writing of Jane Austen, and the construction of plots which were attractive and believable for her twentieth century popular novel readership. The regency novels of Georgette Heyer are no more accurate mirrors of the Regency Novel than her presentation of the regency world reflects the realities of Regency England. They are a careful amalgam of selected details of Regency England with twentieth century perceptions. In considering these works I shall focus on the influences which Austen, Richardson and Burney, in particular, helped to shape the period novels, as well as such influences as Sheridan and Wilde, and the Baroness Orczy. In her development of the Period Romance, Heyer created distinct sub genre in which she was more able to utilise the range of literary ideas and character types which abounded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. There is a great deal of mixing between these sub genre, though they are clearly identifiable. In considering the literary influences which can be traced in Heyer's novel's, it is useful to discuss them in these clusters of theme and style. Heyer's novels, then, might be grouped into three main sub genre, the Romance, the Comedy of Manners, and the Intrigue Adventure, while a fourth group of novels, making various use of key elements of these genre, centres on the development of the Marriage Romance. In crafting each of these sub genre, Heyer sought to deal with specific aspects of her Regency theme. This enabled her to develop each aspect with careful attention to the construction of period verisimilitude, making use of specifically theme appropriate detail and sources.
The Romances
Heyer's Romance novels might be identified by their central focus upon the development of the romantic relationship between the two main protagonists. In the construction of this relationship, there is most frequently a significant body of misunderstanding to be worked through. This of course is the central patter of the contemporary romance novel, and indeed, Heyer's first Romance novel, Powder and Patch, set in the mid eighteenth century, was first published by Mills & Boon. However, the later novels in this group draw most heavily from the novels of Jane Austen, for character, setting and plot constructions. In terms of setting, as with Austen's novels, Heyer places the action in retired and genteel country areas or within the polite confines of Bath. The gentleness of these settings has allowed her to deal with the complexities of plot in a way which is less broadly comic than many of her earlier novels, making use of a more gently ironic humour, indeed, "an Austen like irony" (Aiken Hodge, 1984, p112). The quietness of the setting, free of serious threat, also in effect allows Heyer to create a more intimate focus on the development of relationships. Bath Tangle is Heyer's earliest Regency based straight Romance, published in 1955, and this and the other five novels which comprise this category, make up nearly half of her published novels in the last 17 years of her writing career. Though it is a later category of novel, the romance relationship plot is significant in all of Heyer's Period novels, but here it acts alone, without additional genre complications. In the absence of these complications, it is in these Romance class novels where Heyer works most with inter-related sub plots.
In Bath Tangle, Heyer presents a story of conflict between Serena Carlow and Ivo Rotherham, once betrothed, after the will of Serena's father leaves her the ward of Ivo. In this plot, Heyer touches on a theme which is active in many of her novels, and which forms the central concern of women's writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: the precariousness, of women's position in society and it's 'dependence' on male support. As Aiken Hodge notes, "Serena, who has been brought 'up more as a son than a daughter' by her adoring father loses not only a beloved companion but also the man's world she shared with him" (ibid). This is the world of politics, and one which Serena can only access through the offices of her father or her husband. With the death of her father and without a husband she is "[r]educed to knotting fringe and sharing the title tattle with her widowed stepmother"(ibid). Indeed her engagement to Rotherham was clearly related to their shared interest in politics, their split due to their propensity to argue about everything else. In this novel, Heyer draws on Jane Austen's Persuasion, to provide the false romance sub plot. As with Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth who "had no fortune" (Austen, 1981, p942), Serena too has had a true love lost due to family pressure "Alas he had no fortune, and Papa could not countenance the match." (Heyer,1955, p5) and as with Anne Elliot, Serena's Hector Kirkby was also a soldier on active duty. It becomes at this junction inevitable for any one familiar with Austen to prepare themselves for the reappearance of Hector Kirkby. In this way, Heyer plays with her own and the readers familiarity with Austen, in order to set up a false romance which challenges expectations, requiring the reader to consider the 'true' romance as bearing somehow more weight, by virtue of it's subversion of the pattern.
Of course, for Heyer the subversion was never a substantial departure from her conservative reading of feminine destinations. With a strong-minded heroine in Heyer's world there is never room for an idealised, golden haired, gentle mannered mate; rather, strength of mind was matched with strength of mind, character with character, but always within a context which affirms that the heroine has met her 'match' in one who is able to contain her energies. Serena, seeking to continue her involvement in the world of masculine politics, suggests that her new fiance, the mild Kirkby, might be interested in pursuing a career in parliament, but he is not her equal in thought nor is he able to act in the ways in which she is not. In the novel it is only the incisive and political Rotherham who can redeem her from her feminine bondage. The tangle of sub plot romances which Heyer weaves from this initial triangle of interests can be seen as a reflection of the tangled romantic threads in Austen's Emma. Rotherham on news of Serena's engagement to Kirkby, becomes engaged to Emily, a young woman whom Serena has befriended, who is loved by Rotherham's cousin and whom she believes she loves, while Kirkby finds himself in love with Fanny, Serena's young beautiful stepmother. In the novel's final resolution of these tangled romances, the position of the women, with regard to their future is secured. For Serena, the forceful, Rotherham; for Fanny, the romantic and handsome Kirkby; for Emily, the protection of her Grandmother from the matrimonial schemeings of her family, until she chooses her own partner.
As in Emma there is much in this novel of believing to be in love and not realising who it is that you are in love with, whether from youth, in the case of Emily, or romantic idealism, as in the case of Kirkby and Fanny, or from obstinance as in the case of Serena and Rotherham. In each course of romantic disentanglement, the dilemna which the women face is clear in terms of the social constraints which Heyer is seeking to illuminate. For Serena and Fanny, the perceived limitations of life without male countenance, for Emily the prospect of a loveless marriage arranged with her family's social aggrandisement in mind. In considering the social constraints upon the destinations of women Heyer is building her period reconstruction with the same light handed approach which can be seen in Austen's own writing, expressing the same concern for the vulnerability of women in society. As the novel has interlinked sub plots, it also has a secondary thematic exploration which adds to the reconstruction of period verisimilitude, that of snobbery and money. For the false relationships of the two true lovers it is this factor which most identifies the falsity. Emily's engagement is brought about with the assistance of her family's greed for position, a situation which can not be tolerated within Heyer's romantic world. Similarily, Kirkby's love for Serena is confronted by the unsuportable burden that she has more money than he does (much more). If Kirkby's inability to match Serena's ambitions and intellect does not make him ineligible, his desire that she should relinquish the use of her money, to a trust for their children, so that he might support her, certainly does. While Heyer almost never allows her heroine to have more financial substance than her hero, she never expects her to give up the wealth that is her's. Within this theme the 'vulgarian' nature of Mrs Floore, Emily's Grandmother becomes important. Though not of 'good birth', it is Mrs Floore's trade accumulated wealth which enables Emily's Mother to socially aspire. However, unlike Mme Duval, Evelina's grandmother in Fanny Burney's Evelina, she consciously chooses to avoid embarrassing Emily or Rotherham (except as an equally conscious threat to ensure Rotherham's good behaviour). Burney dealt with the ideas of the conflict of position and wealth both in Evelina and Cecilia as issues of concern in her own time, and it is thematic concerns such as this which Heyer utilises in order to colour her romance world credibly .
Heyer frequently makes conscious acknowledgements of her uses of earlier writers, as in the case of Bath Tangle, where her primary literary sources are Persuasion, Emma and Evelina. These acknowledgements are addressed quietly to readers who are familiar with the sources, rather than being forcefully pedantic or self conscious. In the case of Persuasion, it is a few passing lines of dialogue between Rotherham and Kirkby regarding the Serena's fortune :
"'She must be persuaded to do that!' 'I don't Know what your powers of persuasion are...but I should doubt whether you will succeed'" (Heyer, 1955, p137)
For Emma it is nothing more than Mrs Floore's affectionate name of Emma for Emily. And for Evelina it is a casual direct reference to that novel,
"For Evelina, you know, was quite my favourite book"(ibid, p54)
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