Georgette Heyer

A Consideration of Her Period Influences Part 3

Comedies of Manners

The Comedy of Manners is used frequently to describe the novels of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer both, but in clustering Heyer's novels into sub groups, the Comedy of Manners must take on a more specific set of defining features which draws this group of novels just as closely into comparison with Fanny Burney. The feature which Burney contributes to this group is the "entry into the world of a young girl of virtue and understanding...and exposing her to circumstances and incidents that develop her character," (Harvey, 1978, p126) The contribution of Austen is quite simply in the character of Emma. In it's form here, the Comedy of Manners centres around the tumultuous intrusion of a strong minded heroine upon the orderly life of the hero. A further important aspect of this group of novels is the emphasis on dialogue humour of a style present in the plays of Richard Sheridan, and in the later nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde. Sophy Stanton-Lacy in The Grand Sophy is one of Heyer's strongest representatives of the Comedy of Manners heroine. Though Sophy is an innocent in the ways of polite London society she has an honesty of perception, a vigorous enthusiasm in everyone else's business and a sophistication refined and developed through her unorthodox upbringing, the motherless child of a British diplomat travelling through the turmoil of Regency period Europe. She is simultaneously the perpetrator of some of the sub genre's most comprehensive manipulations and the deliverer of some of Georgette Heyer's best lines. In the same way that Emma Woodhouse sets out to arrange the world for Harriette Smith, Sophy ndertakes the task of sorting out the affairs of her cousins the Rivenhalls. While Sophy shares boundless energy, and an overwhelming desire to make things right, with Emma, she has an acuity of perception, and a mastery of every situation which Emma lacks. A minor character in The Grand Sophy observes "'When I last saw you, you were engaged in arranging in the most ruthless fashion the affairs of the most bewildered family of Belgians I have yet encountered" (Heyer, 1950, p81). The reader is clearly warned.

Another emmaesque Comedy of Manners heroine, Frederica, says of herself :

"'And I took such pains not to appear to be a managing female!'

'Are you one?'

'Yes, but how could I help it, I must tell you how it comes about - But pray won't you be seated?...'" (Heyer, 1965, p27).

The same might be said by Sophy, from the moment of her introduction to the reader, she effectively takes the action in hand. Subsequently, everything which occurs is either a product of her engineering or swiftly brought into line with her plans. However, as with Emma, everything which Sophy does is directed, relentlessly, at the needs of others, concern for herself, for her own romantic interests does not feature in her plans. Perhaps the greatest, the most significant, difference between Emma and Sophy lies in the nature of their experience. In Emma, the humour is driven by the opposition of "Emma's high spirit and intelligence to the utter banality of her life" (Grey, 1986, p33), for Heyer, it is the nearly unlimited realisation of this spirit and intelligence.

"'I shall be much obliged to you, cousin, if you will refrain from telling my sisters that [Miss Wraxton] has a face like a horse!'

'But, Charles, no blame attaches to Miss Wraxton! She cannot help it, and that, I assure you, I have always pointed out to you sisters!'

'I consider Miss Wraxton's countenance particularily well bred!'

'Yes, indeed, but you have quite misunderstood the matter! I meant a particularily well bred horse!"

'You meant, as I am particularily aware, to belittle Miss Wraxton!'

'No, no! I am very fond of horses!'"(Heyer, 1950, pp 141, 142)

Dialogue such as this marks out the influences of play dialogues by Wilde and Sheridan, and formed a major part of Heyer's construction of the Comedy of Manners. As with the development of the romantic in most of Heyer's period writing, varying levels of conflict is generated between the hero and heroine and it is through the exchange of dialogues such as this that the conflict is explored and ultimately resolved in the Comedy of Manners. These novels, in their heavy dependence on dialogue as the mechanism of character and plot advancement indicate their debt to the construction of plays. They distinct from the quieter less obtrusive humour which Heyer employs else where that can be sourced with Austen, moving from gentle irony to the observation of the ridiculous. It is above all, the careful building of the idea of the ridiculous through dialogue which is at play in Heyer's Comedy of Manners writing, which distinguishes it from the quickly deposited single line observations of characters or the authorial irony which she employs in her other novels. As with Oscar Wilde's work:

LADY BRACKNELL : ...Are your parents living?

JACK : I have lost both my parents.

JACK : I'm afraid I really don't know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be truer to say that my parents seemed to have had lost me....I was...well I was found.

LADY BRACKNELL : Found!...( Wilde, 1966, p3) (and what's worse, in a handbag),

Heyer's Comedy of Manners' emphasis on character clashes and multiple readings in these dialogues, can be traced back to the work of Sheridan as can be seen in this passage from The School for Scandal :

LADY TEAZLE: I assure you, Sir Peter, good nature becomes you. You look now as you did before we were married, when you used to walk with me under the elms and tell me stories of what a gallant you were in your youth and chuck me under the chin, you would, and ask me if I thought I could love an old fellow who would deny me nothing - didn't you?

SIR PETER: Yes, yes, and you were as kind and as attentive -

LADY TEAZLE: Aye so I was, and would take your part, when my acquaintance used to abuse you and turn you into ridicule.

SIR PETER: Indeed!

LADY TEAZLE: Aye, and when my cousin Sophy has called you a stiff, peevish old bachelor and laughed at me for thinking of marrying one who might be my father, I have always defended you and said I didn't think you so ugly by any means - and I dared say you'd make a very good sort of husband. (Sheridan, 1988, p226)

There seems to be a development, then, from Sheridan, as a period contemporary for Heyer's writing, through Wilde, to Heyer's own use of dialogue comedy in this group of novels. An often utilised aspect, in Heyer's novels, of the innocent heroine come to town is the meeting with the man of fashion. Frederica's first introduction to Lord Alverstoke is to a man who declares

"'I am seven-and-thirty, ma'am...and I should perhaps inform you that I am never of use to anyone!'

...'Never? But why not?'

...'Pure selfishness, ma'am, coupled with a dislike of being bored'" (Heyer, 1965, p28),

This has echoes of Burney's comment on the fashionable Mr Meadows, "'Ceremony, he found, was already exploded for ease, he therefore exploded ease for indolence...joviality, too, was already banished for philosophical indifference, and that, therefore, he discarded for weariness and disgust'" (Burney, 1988, p278). Of course, as with the rake, the fashionable man of indolence is reclaimable by the heroine within Heyer's construction. Not, though, by virtue, but by freshness and innocence, with which to dispel the hero's cynicism. Where Cecilia, in conversing with Meadows is confronted with obstinate boredom "'Does all happiness, then, depend upon the sight of buildings?' said Cecilia, when, turning towards her companion, she perceived him yawning, with such evident inattention to her answer, that not chusing to interrupt his reverie, she turned away" (ibid, p274-275), Frederica entrances and intrigues Alverstoke out of his enui and into romantic entanglement and Judith Taverner, in Regency Buck manages to hold the doyen of the fashionable, Beau Brummell, "'at [her] side for half an hour and then ask...what it can signify'"(Heyer, 1958, p68).

This is clearly neither a comprehensive survey of the period contemporary sources which Heyer appears to have made use of, nor a complete consideration of her applications of those sources. However, it provides, I hope, a strong indication of the extent to which Heyer, in making use of such material, was able to provide a depth to her construction of the Period Romance which effectively captured and reflected a sense of period verisimilitude absent in many other writers in the field. Indeed, Heyer is clearly unusual among writers of Period Romance in terms of the longevity of her novels, which have been in print from their publication to today. In crafting her novel's with an awareness of not only period detail, such as exactitude of costume, but of period contemporary concerns and perceptions, which she built into the shaping of her themes, characters and plots, Heyer ensured for her novel's a sense of 'truth' in their portrayals.

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