I wrote Althea, my
first book, because I needed something to read.
I think most readers know that feeling: you look around wanting a
particular something and you cannot,
in that moment, find it. What I wanted
was more Georgette Heyer, new Heyer;
but Miss Heyer had recently died, and there would be nothing new from her any
more.
I discovered Georgette Heyer's books in high school, and
read her entire oeuvre, including her
medieval books and her mysteries; what I really loved were her Georgian and
Regency romances. They were witty and sparkling
and filled with nifty sense of the time and place, and unlike most of the
period fiction I had stumbled over up to that time, they weren't Victorian; call it aesthetic preference or just
cussedness--the Victorians don't speak to me.
But the Regency, as depicted by Heyer, was bright and frothy and
delightful.
Then I encountered Jane Austen, and fell into an entirely
different and deeper love; Austen writes of love and money but without Heyer's fascination
with the nobility of the nobility (virtually none of the titled characters in
Austen are admirable). Austen is deadly
funny, observant, and firmly rooted in a real time and place (my favorite line
in Sense and Sensibility comes at the
end, when the heroine and her husband are so happy that "they had in fact nothing to wish for, but the
marriage of Colonel Brandon and Marianne, and rather better pasturage for their
cows."). I went through a
brief period where my passion for Austen kind of spoiled Heyer for me. But I got better.
And I became curious about the Regency. I knew there was a Prince Regent, but I
wasn't really clear why, or why it mattered, or why there was a whole period
named for him. So in college I took
courses in English history, and started reading around, and a whole world
opened up to me. The Regency has everything. Okay, I suppose all periods
have everything--heaven knows the Georgian and Victorian eras on either side of
the Regency had plenty going on. But the
Regency has the Napoleonic Wars, the Romantic poets, famine, the rise of
enclosure, new science, new technology, a burgeoning middle class, the
beginnings of a police force in London, a shift in attitudes from the passion rationality
of the Enlightenment to a more romantic sensibility that would eventually find
its peak of sentimental expression with the Victorians. What's not to love?
So what was the Regency?
George III was still king, but had been afflicted off and on with a
disease (it is thought to have been porphyria) which made him periodically
irrational. He had had one severe bout
of madness in 1788, but recovered. In
the first decade of the 19th century he began to slide into insanity again; he
was in his sixties (the average life expectancy in England 1800 was 40), half
blind, and now mad. Asking the heir to
the throne to be regent--to act in his father's place--seems like a
no-brainer. But there were politics,
both familial and national, that got in the way (I have a great sympathy for the man who would become George IV) and despite the
King's infirmities, it wasn't until March of 1811 that a Regency bill was
passed in Parliament and the Prince of Wales became the Prince Regent.
Technically, then, the Regency lasts from 1811 to 1820, when
George III died and the Regent became George IV. But for purposes of Heyer, and my own Regency
writing, I'd say it's more like 1795-1825.
In costuming terms, roughly from the rise of the Empire silhouette and a
more informal, more relaxed style (related very directly to the rise of the
Romantic movement) to the beginnings of that odd top-heavy broad-shouldered look
in the 1820s.
In terms of manners, the Regency is a fascinating mid-point
between the earthier manners of the 18th century and the fetishistically
refined manners of the Victorians. But
even with the more relaxed standards of the Regency, one thing did not change:
the place of, and expectations of, women of the middle and upper classes. Marriage was a tool for the preservation of
property; it was virtually the only career open to a woman of good family; and
if a woman had little money or property to bring with her, she'd damned well
better bring virginity and a pristine reputation.
Austen and Heyer both, in their own ways, focus on
this. The rules and penalties were
understood, and it was only a very naive woman, or a very privileged woman, or
a remarkably strong-minded woman, who went against them. It is hard for modern audiences to understand
how devastating it is to the Bennet family when Lydia elopes with Wickham in Pride and Prejudice: not only does Lydia
cast her own "virtue" aside; she calls into question the upbringing,
moral fiber and marriageability of her sisters as well, and her sisters must marry or be reduced to grinding
genteel poverty. Heyer, who places most
of her characters in the nobility or upper tiers of society, seems more concerned
with the social costs of misbehavior or eccentricity. Austen (who writes from her experience as an
unmarried gentlewoman) knows just how precarious a woman's situation could
be--she concerns herself with the clash between the need for money and the desire
to love one's mate.
The older I get, the more interested I am in this stuff:
convention and the punishments for transgression. In writing Point of Honour, the first of my Sarah Tolerance books, I wanted to
take a woman of good family who had (rashly) thrown away her virtue, and find a
way for her to survive in a Regency society, unlikely to marry but unwilling to
become someone's mistress or a prostitute.
Fusing noir mystery with Jane Austen (with a dash of Heyer) let me do
that, and situate my stories in a London that is grittier and more dangerous
than anything in either Austen or Heyer.
But when I wrote that first book I wanted glitter. I wanted froth. I wanted the glitz and pleasure
of dazzling ballrooms and gorgeous clothes and being able to think of the
perfect rejoinder before the other
person leaves the room, and the comfort of an uncomplicated happy ending. Much as I love Austen, when I wrote my first
book I wanted Heyer's Regency. Thirty
years later, I still think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to want.
From Deborah: You can find Madeleine's delicious Regency Romances at Book View Cafe or Powell's bookstore online
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