Ms Weston regrets but offers a firm promise of amendment…
With apologies, my blog this week is a Heyer recap and a pointer to the hero’s moral compass. I want to refer you back to a previous piece I wrote, called A Debut with Highwayman, about Georgette Heyer’s first book. That looks at a few of her contemporaries, as well as the folklore of the glamorous highwayman which was current by 1921 when The Black Moth was published and then stuck around for most of the twentieth century.
The reason for this recycling is twofold. First, I had a vaccination this week which has left me distinctly wimbly. I’m really only functioning on 50% of the necessary cylinders at the moment, and a coherent blog is beyond me.
But second, and more important, is that Heyer’s biographer, the lovely Jennifer Kloester, came to stay with me recently and our conversation turned to the moral conduct of Georgette’s historical heroes. Mostly they were Georgian or Regency and there was a distinct code of behaviour which she pretty much shares with Jane Austen, with maybe a dash of Fanny Burney.
And I wondered how much that code had lingered into the twentieth century only to evaporate in the twenty first. So that my generation and maybe the next recognised the hero’s moral compass, as it were. But by the time the 21st century writers were producing Regencies, that had changed, in line with the readers’ current experience.
And that’s what the blog I have been mulling over will be offering you next. But not until the &*@^ing vaccine has worked out a peace agreement with my resident microbes.
Until then, a very Happy Easter!
Sophie
Thanks, Sophie. Another look at Heyer is always worthwhile. I hope you’re firing on all cylinders very shortly. Happy Easter.
Aw, sorry you aren’t feeling quite the thing, Sophie. Hope it passes off soon. Thanks for the reminder of your excellent piece on Heyer heroes. As a present day writer of Regency Romantic adventures I am always wrestling with that very problem of the moral compass. Heyer knew not all 18th C rakes were as honourable as her heroes (witness her villains, who were quite, quite odious!) and she was already walking a fine line, I think. Today’s reader experience and expectations have changed, so the heroes have to change a bit, too. And don’t even get me started on the female characters…!!!
I do very much agree with Sarah’s comments. Some readers, sadly, want heroes who are 21st century feminists in flap-front breeches. And some writers give them that, too. But it ain’t how it was. Back then, men essentially owned everything, including their women. So, for example, a woman who left her husband would probably never see her children again. (Because the children, like the wife, belonged to the husband/father.) Wife-beating was common. And marital rape didn’t exist as a concept. I could go on. And it wasn’t only the male villains who took advantage of their position. More reasonable males accepted that that was how the world was ordained to be…
Get better soon. Take your time. Looking forward to the moral compass blog. It’s a very interesting subject to me. I get readers complaining about 18th century male conduct sometimes and I have to explain the mores of the time. Not that they buy it, but at least I’ve done my research! Sarah is spot on with her comments too.
Hi get well soon. Looking forward to your next blog when you are fit and well. Take care.
Thank you all for your sympathy. I’ve been sleeping lots more than usual and I think that’s getting me back on track.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot since Jen and I talked about it. Very interested that some readers complain about 18th century male conduct. Have added that to my list of anomalies between experience and expectation in life and in reading that need looking at.