Book Review

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

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Title: The Grand Sophy
Author: Georgette Heyer
Publication Info: Sourcebooks 1950 / 2009
ISBN: 9781402218941
Genre: Regency

Book CoverThis is a difficult book to review. On one hand, up until a specific point, I liked it. On the other hand, it turned offensive to the point of horror, demonstrating not only a repulsive prejudice but a use of lame stereotypical stock characters that detracted from the strengths of the novel. In the end, my enjoyment was dissolved by my own bitter disappointment.

Until that point of 0_o, I was loving this book.

Sophy is the only daughter of a diplomat, and has been following him around war-busy Europe. Now that her father has been assigned to South America, Sophy is to live with her aunt, Lady Ombersley, who will help Sophy find a husband. But Sophy’s father’s description of her is not at all the reality, and while most of Lady Ombersley’s family thinks Sophie is wonderful, her son, Charles Rivenhall, who has taken over management of the family’s finances and is as a result somewhat cranky in his responsibility, thinks Sophy is more trouble than she’s worth – and his fiancee dislikes Sophy, too.

Sophy strikes me as something of an original manic pixie dream girl, except for the diminutive tone of “pixie” because Sophy is very tall. She’s unconventionally attractive, memorable, energetic, irrepressible, and for God’s sake she comes with a small dog, a parrot, and a monkey. She’s got schemes. Plots! Plans! An almost diabolically ruthless intention to better the lives of everyone around her!

Of course, if you look up the book on TVTropes, Sophy’s listed as a “Chessmaster,” which she is, indubitably. She’s like a Manic Tall-Ass Chessmaster Dream Girl. She knows best, so stay out of her way.

(NB: If you follow the link to TV Tropes, I am not responsible for the approximate 4.5 hours of productive time you will lose. K?)

Sophy’s a bit like the movie version of Mary Poppins, with the vaguely sinister but well meaning and caring determination to making everyone all better, plus resolving every romantic pairing possible, including her father, who would be better off un-paired.

So what were the parts that I liked?

I loved the dialogue. I can’t even measure my giddy enjoyment of any scene in which Charles and Sophy debate, argue, attempt a civil discussion, and end up having a marvelously entertaining row.

I also loved the unintentional comedy from characters Sophy’s cousin Cecilia, and her aunt, Lady Ombersley. The idea that “no one can deny that nothing could be more ill-timed than Charlbury’s mumps” made me giggle for hours.

Sophy is a source of much consternation, with her determination to be literally and narratively in the driver’s seat. In one scene, Charles is discussing Sophy with his truly revolting fiancee, Eugenia Wraxton, after Sophy demonstrated to Charles’ horror that she is quite skilled at managing a team of horses. Miss Wraxton is most displeased for a multitude of reasons, from her desire for everyone to be miserable to her dislike of Sophy for taking Charles’ attention from where it ought to be (on Eugenia, of course):

“I am sure that it is not wonderful that she should have. To drive a gentleman’s horses without his leave shows a want of conduct that is above the line of pleasing. Why, even I have never even requested you to let me take the reins!”

He looked amused. “My dear Eugenia, I hope you never will, for I shall certainly refuse such a request! You could never hold my horses.”

ORLY?

But this is my favorite scene, because Sophy is so hilariously awful about the awful Miss Wraxton, and everyone can see (including the reader) how bad she really is, except for Charles, her fiance.

“Since you have brought up Miss Wraxton’s name, I shall be much obliged to you, cousin, if you will refrain from telling my sisters that she has a face like a horse!”

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

“I consider Miss Wraxton’s countenance particularly well-bred!”

“Yes, indeed, but you have quote misunderstood the matter! I meant a particularly well-bred horse!”

“You meant, as I am perfectly aware, to belittle Miss Wraxton!”

“No, no! I am very fond of horses!” Sophy said earnestly.

Before he could stop himself he found that he was replying to this. “Selina, who repeated this remark to me, is not fond of horses, however and she -” He broke off, seeing how absurd it was to argue on such a head.

“I expect she will be, when she has lived in the same house with Miss Wraxton for a month or two,” said Sophy encouragingly.

The best parts of this book are the comedy, both in the dialogue and in the mad cap collective happy ever after-ness of the ending, which, much like a Shakespearean comedy, ties up every lose end so the reader is secure that every last person shall go on marvelously. Just don’t think about it all too hard or you’ll see holes. Big enough to ride a horse through.

The characters were mirrored in a way that I enjoyed as well. There’s an amazing similarity between Eugenia and Sophy. Both are interfering busybodies, and both overstep their social boundaries on a continual basis. But the reader is invited to cheer for Sophy and loathe Eugenia because Sophy wants people to have what they want, and to be happy. Eugenia, meanwhile, would prefer everyone were miserable and perhaps even without meaning to do so, makes everyone around her unhappy.

As Sophy says of Eugenia’s engagement to Charles: “She felt it a pity that so promising a young man should be cast away on one who would make it her business to encourage all the more disagreeable features of his character.”

So what didn’t I like? GEE CAN YOU GUESS?!

I wasn’t thrilled with the abrupt happy ending, the sudden turnabout for Charles and the lack of not-fighting scenes for Charles and Sophy. And as Sunita pointed out via Twitter, Sophy doesn’t change or grow or evolve. She gets her way, and everyone around her is probably better off for her involvement, and they’re all happy, but Sophy doesn’t develop. She achieves through her own machinations, which, while entertaining, was not as satisfying as having her develop or grow as a character.

But what really soured this book for me was the anti-Semitism.

HOLY GODDAM HELL WAS THERE EVER ANTI-SEMITISM.

I got a warning, when Hubert, Charles’ not-doing-so-well brother says, describing his financial predicament to Sophy, “Faced with large debts of honour, already in hot water with his formidable brother for far smaller debts, what could he do but jump into the river, or go to the Jews?”

Jewish moneylenders. Oh, boy. So then Sophy takes it upon herself to go confront said Jewish moneylender. And then the whole book went to hell.

…the door was slowly opened to reveal a thin, swarthy individual, with long greasy curls, a semitic nose, and an ingratiating leer…. His hooded eyes rapidly took in every detail of Sophy’s appearance.

Mr Goldhanger had the oddest feeling that the world had begun to revolve in reverse. For years he had taken care never to get into any situation he was unable to command, and his visitors were more in the habit of pleasing with him than of locking the door and ordering him to dust the furniture…. The instinct of his race made him prefer, whenever possible, to maintain a manner of the utmost urbanity, so he now smiled, and bowed, and said that my lady was welcome to do what she pleased in his humble abode.

GOLDHANGER? With a “semitic nose” and the “instinct of his RACE?” Really?! That’s the BEST HEYER could come up with?! A stock character embodying every possible negative stereotype of Jewish people? It was so badly done it was multiply offensive. Not only was I offended personally as, you know, a Jewish person, but I was more offended as a reader as well because IT WAS SO BADLY DONE.

Hamfisted, clumsy characterization, over-the-top villainy, AND EXTRA BONUS BIGOTRY on the side.

As Sunita wrote recently, knowing the depth of Heyer’s own anti-Semitism and bigotry makes it a bit more difficult to savor her books. I’m not sure I’ll be picking up a Heyer any time soon, even though I have yet to read Venetia and Cotillion, and both have been recommended most highly. (NB: Since writing this review, I read Venetia; review forthcoming!)

Dancing GoldmemberIn the end, though, in order to move past my reaction, I started mentally substituting “Goldmember” for “Goldhanger” whenever I read his name, which made it much easier to take.

Otherwise, my final impression is one of disappointment. Deep, bitter, offensive disappointment.

And thus I’m struggling with how to assign the grade. Even as I fill in all the fields, and code everything, I’m still hopping from grade to grade in my mind. I liked some of the characters, I loved the dialogue, I enjoyed the fast-moving yet flimsy structure that pulled everyone together into a suitable finale and the plot manipulations (aka Sophy manipulations) that caused them all to arrive at their suitable ending.

I abhor the wooden, stereotypical villain, his nearly meaningless role and the unnecessary bigotry and anti-Semitism. It was pedantic and poorly done, and while I’m now unhappily acquainted with Heyer’s own anti-Semitism, I’m still baffled by the nearly elementary and frankly stupid use of the character. I very rarely presume to know what the author was thinking while writing, but in this case, the insertion of stock caricature is so disturbing, it’s as if Heyer said, “Hmm. I need a really evil guy for the heroine to vanquish with her charm and some stuff concealed in her muff! And to make him really, really evil, in case you missed the evil, nefarious, greasy, dishonest, cheating and greedy parts of his character, let me make sure you don’t miss it by making him JEWISH!”

(Also: no, not that muff. Sorry.)

So, frankly, I can’t praise this book any more than I already have. The parts of dialogue I so adored are not nearly enough for me to overcome what I found so repulsive. Without Goldmember, I’d have probably graded this book at about a C+/B-. The story was entertaining but I didn’t feel any real empathy for Sophy the way I would for a heroine who grows, learns and evolves in the story. I was initially wonderfully entertained, but with the major flaw highlighting all the other smaller flaws, I cannot recommend this book any more than I’d recommend buying fruit that was rotten inside.


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Comments are Closed

  1. Maddie Grove says:

    @ Lee Rowan: I’d rather read Heyer than Woodiwiss any day, myself. Woodiwiss’s writing is inferior to Heyer’s, and her plots are either nonsensical (I still can’t believe Ashes in the Wind) or unbalanced (see The Flame and the Flower, where everything happens in the beginning and end, but nothing happens in the middle). Then there’s the misogyny, as well as the romanticization of both rape and slavery…in the 1970s, no less. I won’t make excuses for Heyer’s bigotry, but at least I’ve read books by her that didn’t offend me and were fun to read.(Frederica is my favorite.)

  2. Merry says:

    AgTigress, I rarely disagree with you.
    This, however, is one of the exceptions.

    I love Sayers. However, to lift a quote from ‘Busman’s Honeymoon’, Peter said “But then he’s a Jew, and knows exactly what he’s doing.” [With money.]
    To me, that suggests the stereotypical view that people of the Jewish persuasion were well used to dealing with money and indeed had a flair for handling money.

    Ngaio Marsh wrote ‘A Clutch of Constables’. In that book, the heroine encounters a man who was born in England, of an English mother and an Ethiopian father. He’d lived all his life in England and spoke only English, but still the heroine asked him if he’d ever thought of going back to “his own country.”

    I love some of the books she’s written, such as ‘Light Thickens’. Usually, Marsh is wonderful with Shakespeare. I’m kind of glad I’ve never read anything she’s written re: Othello.

  3. Faellie says:

    I hope (because I hope that views of and conditions for women will be better then than they are now) that in 60 years many of the books given good reviews on this site will be considered misogynist and sexist.  I also hope that in those 60 years’ time the celebration on this site of romance novels, whether historical and contemporary or from the 1979s or today, will be given a big WTF?, because the token references here to sexism and worse aren’t really enough to deal with the serious issues the majority of these books raise.

    That doesn’t mean I don’t like this site and don’t read romance.  I just read both with critical faculties intact, and choose the books I read carefully, basing that choice on avoiding the issues which most squick me personally (for instance, lying for personal advantage is a big no-no for me) as well as on the tropes which I most like.  There are very few writers all of whose books I like, but I can like the books I do without the thought of the books I don’t getting in the way.

    I learnt a long time ago that it is very difficult for most people (including me) to even recognise the societal norms in which they grow up, let alone to step outside them and come to opposite views.  Even those of us who think that we are now enlightened and right thinking are almost certain to find out in future years and decades that we are not, and that we need to develop and change our views.  That we are even in a position to recognise that fact is due to the advantages of the society in which we live, the education with which we have been gifted and the information which is made available to us.  I dislike condemnation of people who haven’t had those advantages, when there are so many of us who do have those advantages and still fall into the same traps.

  4. Ziggy says:

    I feel you! As a South Asian Muslim, I have also had that awful experience of settling down with a lovely book, everything’s going nicely, when suddenly I turn the page and get sucker punched by an ignorant or hateful throwaway comment. Don’t get me started on the Sheikhs! UGH!!!

    I do like Georgette Heyer, and I like The Grand Sophy – but it is horribly let down by the Jewish moneylender. Firstly because it’s racist and bigoted, but also because it lets Heyer down as a writer as well. It’s like, “really Georgette? Is that the best you can do??”

    If you decide to try Heyer again, which I hope you do as I love your reviews, can I recommend Faro’s Daughter? It is my favourite, because Deb is not just feisty or whatever, she is a wonderfully self-sufficient character, and she isn’t a lady or part of the gentry or anything, her father runs a gaming house. Good fun.

  5. Elanor says:

    I always felt a bit uncomfortable with the “instinct of his race” line, but, like so many books from less enlightened times with passing bigotry, I move on. When I think of The Grand Sophy, I think of the hilarious characters and the brilliance of Augustus Fawnhope, who consistently cracks me up. Though, I admit, I always thought the first cousin thing was creepy. She should have made them second cousins, at least.
    There are just so many authors who cause this dilemma, but ultimately, I like to try and take a balanced approach. Hence, I can forgive and enjoy Heyer, Enid Blyton, CS Lews (but I want to slap Susan) and so many others, especially those I have loved since childhood, because ultimately the enjoyment I got outweighed the few moments of ick.
    I’ve always had trouble reconciling really horrible people who make something that I love. Wagner was a nasty, nasty dude, but I love his music. Walt Disney was not a great human being, from all I’ve heard, but Fantasia changed my life. It may seem silly, but for me, I always felt that perhaps it was a cosmic balance thing; their souls pouring into something beauty to atone for the crappiness in their hearts.
    I can understand people might want to forswear Georgette Heyer, it’s your call, but man, I can’t help but feel my life is just that much better for having read Cotillion, Arabella, Frederica and Friday’s Child. Cotillion is hilarious and Freddy is my favourite Heyer hero, Arabella is adorable, Frederica is just wonderful with gorgeous characters, especially Felix and Friday’s Child is kind of genius, especially Ferdy’s dark allusions to the machinations of a mysterious character whose name can be obtained upon application to the Honourable Marmaduke Fakenham.

    PS the Capcha tells me already62, and that, the day after my 32nd birthday, is somewhat alarming.

  6. Kim says:

    I feel you! As a South Asian Muslim, I have also had that awful experience of settling down with a lovely book, everything’s going nicely, when suddenly I turn the page and get sucker punched by an ignorant or hateful throwaway comment. Don’t get me started on the Sheikhs! UGH!!!

    @Ziggy:  Ugh.  I avoid Sheikhs like the plague.  I am married to a South Asian Muslim and converted to Islam myself a few years ago.  I put a comment on another thread about my excitement over Nowhere Near Respectable by Mary Jo Putney where the heroine is Indian/British (grew-up in India)…in a Regency.  I was enjoying the book, but then she has this ability of “perfect scent.”  It is referred to as her “bloodhound nose.”  It made me cringe every time it was mentioned.  While I don’t think the intention at all was to dehumanize her, it bothered me that the first time I’ve encountered a South Asian regency heroine and she has a dog-like sense of smell.  I just thought it was interesting that when we see a heroine that already faces prejudice from some small minded characters, that she has this ability that is generally not associated with humans.

    It ruined the book for me, especially since her ability was the crux of the novel.

  7. I think it’s a bit unfair to label Heyer as an anti-semite. As far as I know, she didn’t join the Blackshirts, sympathise with Moseley or campaign against the Jews.
    BTW, when she refers to “the Jews” as a moneylending class, that’s as much a product of the Regency, as the sources she took her research from used that terminology to describe them, whether the moneylender was Jewish or not.
    I’d have said she was anti-Goldhanger and guilty of casual, careless thinking when it came to creating a secondary character. She isn’t to be absolved from that, but to call her anti-Semitic is probably going a bit too far.

    It’s a problem a lot of writers today have to contend with. If I create a villain who, for instance, happens to be gay, will I be perceived as anti gay, or will I have to balance it with a “good” gay character?

  8. Sally says:

    I dunno. I love Georgette Heyer, and I love The Grand Sophy (which has one of the best proposal lines ever, for my money). I can’t say I love the racial/class stereotyping she uses, but I think I mentally adjust my expectations for old books. I would think very badly of a contemporary author who used such devices, but I can let it slide with GH, Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie. Just as I’d challenge a young person who was sexist/homophobic, whatever, but if it was an octogenarian, I’d roll my eyes, think ‘Dinosaur’ and keep my mouth shut.

    GH was born in 1902, and was a product of her time – when she wrote this book, she was in her late forties and for her whole life rampant anti-Semitism had been pretty much the norm. In that respect, she is no different from Dickens. Even after WW2, stereotyping of this nature was commonplace. So no, I don’t love it, but I do find I’m able to mentally edit it out in a way I would find impossible to do if it was in contemporary fiction. I get that some people might not be able to edit it out, though. And I would certainly not write GH off entirely – so many of her books are corkers.

    Captcha = progress84. Need I say more?

  9. Sally says:

    Reading back through the comments, I see that some don’t buy the ‘product of her time’ analysis – but I do. I don’t see, as a previous commenter argued, that acknowledging that certain views were prevalent in any way diminishes the people at that time who didn’t hold them. People are shaped by the prevailing views and mores of their culture. Yes, some have the strength and insight to swim against the tide, and thank goodness for that, for they are the agents of progress, but I don’t think it’s ‘BS’ to suggest that a woman born in 1902 might well have more reason to hold certain attitudes than one born eighty years later.

    I just don’t think we can hold the past to the standards of our own time. I would lay money that in 80 years some of the prevailing attitudes in our society will be looked back at in disbelief – and I’m sure that some of those beliefs will be ones that I currently hold (despite my liberal, libertarian stance on almost everything). Minority views arise, challenge the status quo and become majority views.

    If GH was anti-Semitic, then she was almost certainly no more anti-Semitic than most of the people around her, what she wrote was almost certainly no more bigoted than much of what she read. To explain isn’t necessarily to excuse; as I said, I would be hugely offended by such blatant stereotyping in a contemporary book, because I would expect more of a contemporary author.

  10. TGS has never been one of my favourite Heyers because I am not happy with the cousin element. Heyer wrote other books with distinct tinged of anti-semitism and snobbery, and I am always well aware of them when reading her…or any other of her contemporaries, from Evelyn Waugh to the allinghams and Sayers. My mother’s parents and uncles/aunts were of that generation also and totally reflected heyer’s world view. It was endemic in the English middle classes, and I can remember challenging my grandfather and great uncle for the way they spoke about Jewish people as late as the 1980s. So I know where she was coming from, although I don’t endorse it.

    When we are readers, I think it is important to take different contexts into account because it all teaches us about the way the world is shaped and is altering. There are three types of context I am thinking of: the world within the text (16th century Venice in othello); the world of the writer; the world of the reader. When reading historical fiction, I would say the world of the writer is almost as critical as the setting of the text itself. In at context I don’t endorse heyer’s worldview, but I am prepared to accept it in the context of the book she is writing…in other words it doesn’t render the book a wall banger. Unlike egregious historical errors which really drive me wild.

  11. Asia M says:

    The Grand Sophy is the only Heyer book I’ve read, and I’m sad to say I didn’t particularly like it. Okay, it wasn’t painful or really bad, but most of the comedy was apparently lost on me (except the horse-face part, which I remembered). I was disappointed with how little romance there was (the end between Charles and Sophy was indeed all but unexpected), and the action didn’t thrill me at all. It’s possible that the fact I read it in Polish might not have helped.

  12. Catriona says:

    Sarah, can we do a thread on romances that we want to love, we should have loved, everybody else loves them…but that we can’t stand because something just left a bad taste in our mouths?  And I’m not just talking about “it was a different time/old skool romance,” but even stuff in today’s romances that ruins them beyond repair.

  13. Pamelia says:

    I’m glad some other people mention the first-cousin issue in this book as being problematic.  That was the part of the whole story I had to put on the “ignore it and it will go away PLEASE” backburner of my reading mind.  Yet, for the time period in which it took place that was not considered a big icky incestuous deal at all.  Heck, modern readers should find LOADS of problems with any historical book that attempts and attains historical accuracy; from sexism and class-divisions all the way up to and including racism.  Yet, if those historical truths are ignored or reshaped to fit today’s morals then we have to call the writer to the carpet for anachronism.  At the same time I know that every book is a product and representation of the time in which it was written rather than the time in which it takes place.  It’s a marvelous conundrum.

  14. Meoskop says:

    …why did it take 50 years to write The Help?

    The Wedding Princess hadn’t grown up yet? The Help is a whole other discussion, but it isn’t the book you must think it is.

    This thread is an interesting example of privilege in action. Faced with egregious bigotry in action the majority move not to condemn it but to excuse it. It shouldn’t offend because it is (insert excuse here).

    Really, The Help is an excellent example after all. If we turn away and excuse casual bigotry our pleasure reading, then The Help happens.

  15. Dede says:

    Come on, Donna. A muff is ALSO a fur fashion accessory for keeping a woman’s hands warm. Cylindirical, it was fur on the outside and some soft fabric on the inside. It might also have little pockets for safekeeping of small objects or a hankie. I imagine the slang terms came from the accessory.

  16. I’m glad some other people mention the first-cousin issue in this book as being problematic.  That was the part of the whole story I had to put on the “ignore it and it will go away PLEASE” backburner of my reading mind.  Yet, for the time period in which it took place that was not considered a big icky incestuous deal at all.

    I suspect that cousins marrying is much more of a taboo for US readers. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins, and Charles Darwin was married to his first cousin.

  17. SB Sarah says:

    Sarah, can we do a thread on romances that we want to love, we should have loved, everybody else loves them…but that we can’t stand because something just left a bad taste in our mouths?

    Oooh, yes. We’ve done one of those a long time ago, but sure. No problem at all – I’ll set one up. Catriona, you want to email me the book or books you’re thinking of to get started?

  18. Pamelia says:

    “This thread is an interesting example of privilege in action. Faced with egregious bigotry in action the majority move not to condemn it but to excuse it. It shouldn’t offend because it is (insert excuse here)”

    Hmmm… I would hesitate to call something written 60 years ago “in action” in any sense of the words.  I don’t consider it my sense of privilege, but rather perspective that compels me to view the various injustices and terrible truths of our past in a different way than those going on right now.  True, many of them are the same and/or still in the process of being (I pray) remedied, but I can’t condemn a book every time it pushes a button for me.  I can’t say I didn’t enjoy Gone With The Wind or Tarzan or Bleak House because one had slavery, one had patronizing colonialism/racism and one had crippling poverty and filth thrust on a good portion of the people within.  I know what my own morals/standards are and I stick with them.  A book which trespasses on them should disturb me and reinforce my abhorrence for the current practices of the same sins/crimes, but it mostly makes me sad for the world’s past terrors, grateful for what progress we have made and cautiously hopeful that we can keep going the right way.

  19. Donna says:

    @Dede, I know what a muff is. I’m old enough to have had one when the were popular for little girls. It was white rabbit fur & I LOVED it. It was the envy of my classmates. Unfortunately, only good for hand warming as it had no little pockets.

  20. cbackson says:

    @James Lynch:  I was coming here to say the same thing.  Shylock (and his predecessor/inspiration, Barabas of Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta) is largely a victim of an anti-Semitic society.  I’ve always thought of the character as an example of how oppression can warp the oppressed. 

    The problem is, however, that no matter how nuanced the text, anti-Semites have definitely made use of The Merchant of Venice for their own ends.  And given that these were popular entertainments in an anti-Semitic era, it’s unlikely that an Elizabethan audience would have seen much beyond the expected stereotype.

    As for Heyer:  I love the Grand Sophy, but I can’t just dismiss that scene.  It wasn’t like people didn’t know what anti-Semitism was in 1950; I think there’s a bit of modern-day hand-waving in the assumption that people didn’t know better back in the day.  Western society had just had an object lesson in the fruits of anti-Semitism.  Israel had declared independence.  Heyer lived in an era that was *not* universally anti-Semitic, and she had to have been exposed to other perspectives.

    It’s kind of like the idea that “everyone” thought slavery was okay in the 19th century – actually, it was a controversy that went back to the founding of the Republic; slaveholders were well aware that a substantial segment of American society thought slaveholding was morally indefensible.

  21. Rebecca says:

    The Help is a whole other discussion, but it isn’t the book you must think it is.

    Thanks, Meoskop.  I was biting my tongue about that trying to not respond.  In fact, I quietly second pretty much all of what you said.

    People are shaped by the prevailing views and mores of their culture. Yes, some have the strength and insight to swim against the tide, and thank goodness for that, for they are the agents of progress, but I don’t think it’s ‘BS’ to suggest that a woman born in 1902 might well have more reason to hold certain attitudes than one born eighty years later.

    I think the issue here is assuming that people are EITHER heroic agents of progress who swim against the tide, or merely passive objects who float with a huge impersonal “tide” that they have nothing to do with.  If people are either super-duper heroes or simply “products of their time” who exactly are the people who invented and created the racism of yester-year?  Do we assume that all people are “victims” of circumstance and that the “circumstances” which shaped their world view were totally anonymous – the invisible hands of God or the marketplace, perhaps?  That’s a awfully big loophole in terms of individual responsibility (and one which I think has been pretty much rejected by international law since the Nuremberg trials).

    Racism at least is a CREATED phenomenon, mostly for the sake of economic advantage.  (Read the stunned and horrified denunciations of those who enslave Africans based on skin color of Portuguese theologians in the fifteenth century, and then read the otherwise humane Las Casas one hundred years later.  It is possible to create a mindset frighteningly easily.)  As a writer (i.e. someone who has access to and shapes public opinion) posing as the passive receptacle of received attitudes becomes even more problematic.  “No position” IS a position, a tacit endorsement of the status quo.

    That much is generally true.  In terms of the specific writers discussed here – Heyer, Sayers, and Marsh (all of whom I love) – I think it’s fair to point out that they specifically go out of their way to mock and belittle all of those characters who would historically have been the ones to “swim against the tide” and be “agents of progress.”  Much as I love Strong Poison, the basic message is that those who are “bohemians” (consciously left-wing artists, who condemn the prevailing attitudes toward class and sex) are sweetly naive and deluded at best, and horrible hypocrites (who more or less deserve to be murdered) at worst.  Marsh has at least one mystery where the murderer [SPOILER] turns out to be the “red” radical, who is once again revealed as venal, as well as loud, obnoxious and generally not like the salt-of-the-earth peasants who don’t want to get above their station.  Heyer’s treatment of “radicals” is more gently mocking, as there are occasional comical family members who do NOT want their daughters/sisters/etc. to marry self-evidently marvelous aristocrats, but who are invariably vanquished by the determined ladies in questions (sometimes with some help from the duke in question).  Within the context of the novels, these scenes are by turns funny, thrilling, engaging and satisfying, BUT I think it is naive to say that they are not actively FORMING the “tide” against those people who seriously fought for social justice.

    I’m not advocating for art in the service of worthy social propaganda.  But I do believe that writers have a responsibility to be as aware as possible of the mindset they are propagating, and I think it’s completely fair to call them on it.  If they’re alive, that may mean dialogue with the actual author.  In the case of the dead, it’s only a question of being aware of the poison when reading, and not pretending that it isn’t there (or avoiding it, if it’s completely too painful to read).

    It’s not “cheap” or “easy” condemnation (as someone up the thread wrote).  It’s difficult and painful, and the more we love the rest of the author’s work, the more painful it is, just as it is painful to call out the evil spoken or done by beloved older family members.  We call it out BECAUSE we love them, and want them to be better, or want to understand HOW someone so beloved could be so hurtful.  Or how such an otherwise talented author could have written such crap.  Because let’s face it, the art of characterization is basically linked to extremely accurate observation of traits.  And when you come with a set of prejudices you basically put on giant blinkers and green goggles, and anything you try to “observe” about a specific character will come out a stereotype, and be poor writing.

  22. Elizabeth says:

    I think it is often what you are sensitive to. Not “over” sensitive, but what bigotry is noticable to different people. I stopped reading the Jaz Parks series, which smart bitches had nothing but good things to say about, because of how uncomfortable I got with the off-handed racism in some parts. An example similar to this situation was the unnecessary jokes about a taxi driver and his hilarious inability to just speak English. Completely lazy use of an offensive trope, but at least Heyer had a need for a villain. In this case, there was no reason to add this but a change to laugh about foreign cab drivers.

  23. Lee Rowan says:

    Well, in terms of ‘product of her times…’  I’ve always had a sincere hate for the first Queen Elizabeth since I read that she had live cats collected, caged, and burned to death for her amusement.  Product of her times?  Sure.  Would I kick her in the shins for it, given the chance?  You bet.  Was it perfectly normal, for her time?  Probably so.  But I’m sure there were plenty of people of that time who kept cats as helpful vermin-control agents, and took care of them.  Still, Lizzie didn’t kill those cats herself—other people did it for her, and other people laughed.  Cats were agents of Satan, or so everyone ‘knew.’

    Recognition of a prevailing condition isn’t condoning or excusing it, and it’s not as though human civilization (as embodied by the readers of this fine blog) has reached its pinnacle. 

    The “first cousins squick” is a prime example.  The first time I ran across it, I was taken aback, but when I actually looked it up, no taboo.  My guess is that it comes from small, isolated communities in the US—of which there were many, before the auto became common; most people never traveled more than 50 miles from where they were born.  There were many places, particularly in the rural South, where close-kin marriages produced the physical problems that were the reason for incest taboos.  And such liaisons in wealthy families, intended to concentrate wealth, created some problems, too. 

    BUT:  As others have said, there is really NO RATIONAL REASON for squickation by first-cousin marriage.  None. 

    And yet—are any of you who are squicked by it horrified at your own prejudice?  Because that’s all it is—an aversion no more rational than the ones against interracial or same-sex unions.

    I always have to suspend my disbelief when reading or writing stories that deal with earlier times, when a few people lived very, very well but most people were facing lifelong drudgery from before dawn to well past dark.  And I try not to let my own good guys forget that the ‘lesser orders’ are human.  But that’s a tightrope, too—an overload of 20th-century attitudes (I’m not sure what a 21st century attitude is, yet, and I’m a product of the 20th) will wreck an historical as much as too heavy adherence to outdated beliefs.

    congress64… now, orgies do squick me.  64 is way too many participants for ‘congress’

  24. robinjn says:

    WRT QE1 and cats; cats WERE minions of the devil to many in those times. In fact, the wholesale slaughter of cats helped give rise to plague, since rats were not adequately controlled. It also may have helped give rise to a number of vermin-hunting small dogs; Min Pins are a German breed but are quite old and may have originated during that time. Dogs were acceptable, cats were not. And it was also a very common theme to torture/kill animals for amusement and sport. Bull baiting anyone? Cock fighting got its start in those times as well.

    As far as first cousin marriage, it goes back way before the American South. I am not a historian so I know I will get at least part of this messed up, but wasn’t marriage within a certain degree of closeness strictly prohibited by the Catholic church? Does marrying close have consequences? Actually it certainly can. For instance, the Amish tend to have a number of specific genetic disorders due to very close intermarriage over time.

    Homozygosity (lack of variance, or heterozygosity in the genes) can be both beneficial and detrimental. Purebred dog breeds, bred for centuries only to individuals of their own breed, tend to be quite homozygous. In simple terms, breeding closely in the gene pool will double up on both good and “bad” genes and will be more likely to lead to the exposure and expression of recessives. A recessive gene can be as benign as blue eyes or as dangerous as cancer. Most humans, first cousins are not, are matched due to love, or (then) political alliance. Genetic defect and disease being pretty much last in line for any attention. Therefore there tends to be more likelihood for problems. Dogs (and cattle and horses) have been bred for health, working ability and longevity rather than because Rex has fallen madly in love with Fluffy. Therefore we have many dog breeds who are quite inbred yet live long healthy lives. And there’s my genetics discussion for the day!

  25. AgTigress says:

    I learnt a long time ago that it is very difficult for most people (including me) to even recognise the societal norms in which they grow up, let alone to step outside them and come to opposite views.  Even those of us who think that we are now enlightened and right thinking are almost certain to find out in future years and decades that we are not, and that we need to develop and change our views.

    Faellie:  thank you for your words of wisdom. 🙂  It is very easy to see the faults of the past, and extremely difficult to look ahead to the future, and see how we will be rated by future generations.  It ill behoves us to castigate our forebears for being products of their culture, when we are also products of ours,

    Back to the ‘first cousins’ issue:  as Laura implied, this is totally an American hang-up.  On checking the facts, I find that the USA, alone in the western world, actually has laws against first-cousin marriage in many states.  Europe, the Middle East, Australia, have no problem with first-cousin marriage. 

    As I have said before, first cousins are within the permitted degrees of consanguinity in most religious law (Catholics have vacillated a bit, historically, usually in the form of permitting such marriages, but making them the subject of a dispensation).  In the past, first-cousin marriage was very common in Europe for a number of reasons.  At present, in the UK, around half of the (often arranged) marriages in the British Pakistani community are between first cousins, so there’s certainly still plenty of it about in my own society. 

    What this amounts to is that a modern American reader gets all twitchy about the cousin thing, while the rest of us barely notice it, and certainly don’t find it in the least disturbing.  Cultural differences, again.  I notice all sorts of things in contemporary American fiction that are weird, to me, but I accept that I am reading about a different culture.  Approval or disapproval is not really the issue.  It is all about learning about human variability, the ways in which we are alike, and the ways in which we are different.

  26. SB Sarah says:

    I loved the first Jaz Parks, true, but like most series, I couldn’t keep up with it, though I still love that first book like holy smoke.

    As I said, that which pushes my buttons may not set anyone else off. Yet this subject and debate is about a rather big button that has bothered more than just me.

    That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone who adores this book despite the character I found so offensive and objectionable. Likewise, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me or my intellect, understanding of history, or ability to appreciate a book separate from the author, merely because I found this book offensive and objectionable and gave it a D.

  27. Lee Rowan says:

    Dogs used to be bred for sensible goals—these days all it takes is a look at the breed-related health problems of show dogs to see that fashion has replaced common sense.  I don’t know about horses—I hope it’s different but knowing humans, I doubt it.

    I know the incest taboo is much older—I was referring to what others have noted, that the cousin taboo is more common in Americans than Europeans.  It isn’t all in the US, though, I’ve heard Brits joke about Royal genes.  Sayers has a line about it, in fact—when Wimsey is dithering over being a father because of supposed genetic weakness, Harriet says something to the effect that his brother married his own cousin, but his sister married a commoner and their kids are all right. 

    If someone’s got a genetic predisposition to problems, sure, it would be risky to marry a relative.  Long-term inbreeding is a bad idea.  But there’s genetic screening for problems now, or amniocentesis, or if it’s a very serious issue, adoption. 

    I’d veer away from marrying a cousin because I think it’s better for kids to get a little way out of the nest before settling down themselves.  Cross-pollination IS healthier, no question.  But for most people, first-cousin marriage isn’t much of a risk.

  28. robinjn says:

    Uh Lee, as someone who has owned purebred dogs for over 25 years, including show dogs, who does contract work for the Orthopedic foundation for Animals, which holds the largest dog health database in the world, and who knows a lot of dog breeders AND show dogs AND show dogs that function quite well in their ancestral role, there are so many inaccuracies in your statement about dog breeding it’s hard to know where to start. And since this isn’t the list for it, I won’t.

    Suffice it to say that there are some very highly inbred breeds out there that regularly live long, healthy lives into their teens. And some heterozygous breeds with an unholy hell’s worth of genetic issues. A couple of years ago the BBC came out with a wildly inaccurate portrayal of dogs and dog breeds which has since been accepted as gospel. And while it is absolutely true that there are some breeds that have huge problems, the vast majority do not. And mixed breed dogs actually have the genetic ability to get far more inherited disease than most purebred breeds….

    Anyway, sorry, if anyone wants to talk dog genetics feel free to contact me privately at robinjn @ gmail.com (close spaces). As it pertains to humans, the problem comes with “breeding close” with no attention to genetic disease consequence.

  29. Sunita says:

    I’m not sure where the idea is coming from that first cousin marriage is a peculiarly American squick.

    For the US, it’s certainly the case that many states still prohibit first-cousin marriage (either entirely or for couples who are younger than late middle age), so it is not “merely” a cultural squick but one that is reinforced by state law.

    The Catholic Church has effectively prohibited it at various times since the 13th century; even today first cousins need dispensation from the church to marry. Rules in the Greek and Russian Orthodix churches include prohibitions against 2nd cousin marriages as well. Obviously these rules cover non-American Christians in Europe and elsewhere.

    Within Hinduism the rules vary by region. Hindus in north and central India are largely prohibited from marrying first cousins by caste rules, but South Indians are not as uniformly barred from the practice.

  30. I’m with Sarah on this, and I should probably keep my mouth shut, since this is one of my hot button personal issues and it borders on politics, and I’ve been on the road for four days and so haven’t seen this unfold…but basically, screw keeping my mouth shut, I’m going to say this anyway.

    I love Georgette Heyer’s writing, but when I read this book that characterization totally killed the book for me. I read a lot of Dickens, too—he writes in my time period, and it’s just necessary to read him to try to get a feel for what he thinks—and every time I’m beginning to sink into one of his stories, GOD DAMN he lets a massive stereotype loose, and it kills any enjoyment I get from reading.

    I insist on judging Heyer by today’s standards. I live in today. I read in today. My enjoyment of a book is irrevocably determined by who I am, today. If Heyer were a living author, I would think long and hard before buying her books, simply because I would have a serious problem sending money her way.

    I don’t think anyone deserves a pass, ever, for harboring serious prejudices based on immutable characteristics. No matter when they lived. And yes, I’m saying that as a product of today—but I’m also saying it as someone who has been told to shut up when Venerated Old Person says something racist because she “can’t help it” and she grew up in an era when it was “okay” to say things like that, and so we should all just let them say it.

    Ultimately, I just can’t handle being told that it’s not okay to criticize someone because “everyone else was doing it.” Or that somehow someone deserves a pass because she was a product of her times. When “everyone else is doing it” is precisely the moment when someone needs to be criticized. I wish this review had been written for this book when it came out in 1950, but it wasn’t, and I’m glad as hell it was written today.

    But suppose I did buy the “product of her times” thing for people who literally are never exposed to an alternate way of looking at the world. 

    We’re not talking about the kind of person who has never seen a Jew, and who only knows what they were told by their grandmother. We’re talking about Georgette Heyer. I can tell by reading her books that she was a brilliant, educated, intelligent woman with keen insight into human nature and an extraordinary capacity for research.

    If she’d once bothered to think of Jews as human, she would have figured out pretty quickly, based on all available evidence, just how wrong she was to vilify them. It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize her for not employing the talents that she so ably used in every other arena here. The woman who boasts that her research is unparalleled doesn’t once bother talking to a single Jew? Or reading their history? Or finding out one single thing about them? And she continues with this attitude after World War II so ably demonstrated that those kinds of caricatures could have lasting, devastating consequences?

    How does Georgette Heyer, researcher extraordinaire, get a free pass for that? How does one of the most intelligent women around manage to avoid thinking about what was a hotly debated topic back then? Her racism in 1950 was a choice—maybe just a choice to not challenge herself, but a choice nonetheless, and absolutely I can hold her to task for that. This wasn’t a situation where literally everyone thought the world was flat and nobody had challenged the received wisdom, and she wasn’t so disconnected as to be unaware, nor so incapable of critical thought as to simply persist in her beliefs when challenged. She was given much by way of education and talent, and on this particular issue, she completely dropped the ball. It’s the Georgette Heyer’s of the 1950s who most deserve criticism.

    I love Heyer’s writing. I do. I just bought a boatload of her books on $1.99 sale. But I have very little respect for Heyer the racist, and when the one eclipses the other, as it does in this book, I have to get up and walk away, and I can hardly blame someone else for feeling the same way.

  31. I’m not sure where the idea is coming from that first cousin marriage is a
    peculiarly American squick.

    I didn’t even know there was a squick about it until I started reading US blogs/sites about romance, so as a result I now associate the squick reaction with Americans. I didn’t mean to imply that only Americans are squicked by first cousin marriage.

  32. Oh, and I also didn’t mean to imply that all Americans are squicked by it.

  33. Liz Mc says:

    I don’t think we can decide on the basis of one scene in one book whether Heyer was anti-Semitic, nor do I think it matters to how we judge the book. But the “product of her times” argument bothers me: people change. Just what “time” are we a product of? Heyer was born in 1902, but she wrote this book when she was almost 50. If she hadn’t changed any of her views of life in those years, I’d be surprised, and I wouldn’t think much of her. My grandmother was also born in 1902. She lived for 94 years, and over the course of those years, she changed her views on a lot of things (she learned to accept her gay son, for instance). Having 1902 views in 1950, if Heyer did so, is not something we should hand-wave away.

  34. Sunita says:

    @LauraV: I didn’t think you meant to imply that either. You are invariably precise in your language. But it’s come up on this thread and the other Heyer thread. I agree that in the context here, it’s about what romance readers find normal/abnormal, and the boards may be dominated by American and UK readers (or at least we talk the most about this). I’ve seen it in discussions at AAR’s boards as well in the past.

    My personal experience and my academic research on Hindu marriage patterns reinforces the cousin-marriage ban in non-southern India, so I never thought it was just about Americans.

    Jack Goody has a provocative explanation for the Catholic prohibition, focusing on the financial motivations of the Church. Skimming a few scholarly works on the subject, I have seen figures that range from 20% to 43% (unit of measure is societies allowing cousin-marriage). Whichever figure you choose, it clearly incorporates far more than the US.

  35. Miranda says:

    If we’re talking about that which squicks us with Heyer, Leonie in These Old Shades acted so very, very childishly…I would have put her at about 8 in the opening scenes and certainly no older than 10…that the entire romance between her and the Duke gave me the creeps. It was SLIGHTLY better by the end, but only slightly.

  36. Merry says:

    I don’t think trying to understand the context of someone’s racism is ‘giving them a free pass.’ It does help to understand that they’re not deliberately trying to be offensive.

  37. First cousin marriage never bothered me until I wrote one and my editor at an American publishing house said, “you can’t do that!” She seemed genuinely horrified and I couldn’t understand it.
    If you check the tables of consanguinity, first cousin marriage has never been prohibited. Since the Catholic church wasn’t just a spiritual organisation, but a political one in times gone by, it was useful to hold back on occasion.

    And yes, I agree, to condemn Heyer and accuse her of anti-Semitism beecause of one scene in one book does seem a but OTT.

    And I’ve come back mainly because of the reference to Leonie in “These Old Shades.” Yes, that is my Heyer squick book. There’s some evidence that Heyer wrote Leonie as much younger than the 19 she is stated to be, and may have put the age in as an afterthought. Leonie behaves childishly. “I’m glad the pig man is dead” are the words of an immature child, not an adult, and Avon is constantly referring to her as “child” and “infant” and “mignonne” and “little one.” It made me shudder when I read it at 15 and it makes me shudder now. Avon is a great character, but he should have someone with the strength to stand up to him, not a child.

  38. Donna says:

    And yes, I’m saying that as a product of today—but I’m also saying it as someone who has been told to shut up when Venerated Old Person says something racist because she “can’t help it” and she grew up in an era when it was “okay” to say things like that, and so we should all just let them say it.

    Thank you Courtney Milanfor letting me know I’m not the only one. I actually shook my finger in my father’s face and told him I NEVER wanted to hear that word out of his mouth again. I’m not sure what shocked me more; that the man who taught me not to judge a book by it’s cover & not to act like I’m better than anyone for any reason used a slur I had never heard cross his lips before, or the fact that he gave me a look that said he had no idea what I was talking about. Unless they have Alzheimer’s, it’s never too late to correct bad language. 

    And the squick about 1st cousins? As someone who works for an orthopaedic surgeon who treats a lot of babies with polydactyly – yes, there are damn good reason to reproduce outside your own gene pool.

  39. SKapusniak says:

    I must be very strange in that reading through this thread, that I’m suddenly consumed by nothing so much as the desire to read ‘The Goldhanger Inheritance’; a big expansive series of novels set in Regency London, where our Jewish widower hero, and the daughter that in his grief he taught to shoot pistols, crack safes, pick pockets and do double entry book-keeping, of whom he is very proud indeed, jointly run their banking house whilst solving crimes involving impecunious young noblemen coming to grief in and around the Port of London and the East End.

    Oh, and on Francis Cheviot from ‘The Reluctant Widow’—who I think someone mentioned as Heyer’s offensively stereotyped gay character—if you squint at him, and tilt your head just right,  you realise in a flash that he is soooooooo very, very much the dark, patriotic, but utterly ruthless gay secret-agent hero; just of a completely different series of novels that only happen to cross streams with Heyer’s book at that one point. And now I have yet another non-existent set of stories that I want to read.

    The plot bunnies have gotten me…aargh!

  40. lizzie(greeneyedfem) says:

    *standing ovation to Courtney Milan*  I’m glad I’ve spent money on your books. You said that beautifully.

    And SKapusniak, it’s not quite the series you describe, but Lady Barbara’s Dilemma is a Regency romance where the B couple is Jewish, but of different classes and degrees of religiosity. Deborah Cohen is the daughter of a widowed merchant, not a moneylender, and she doesn’t shoot pistols or crack safes, but I enjoyed her plotline very much—and the Jewish identity of her and her hero, Sir David Treves, creates a major plot bump for the A couple. Highly recommended. Although I would love to read either of the other series you described as well! Someone get on that, pls.

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