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Title: The Grand Sophy
Author: Georgette Heyer
Publication Info: Sourcebooks 1950 / 2009
ISBN: 9781402218941
Genre: Regency
This 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!)
In 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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@Courtney Milan
Thank you!! For brilliantly articulating what should be common sense…
I think Heyer probably envisaged her as about 14. There are dozens of reasons why Léonie cannot possibly be 19, as stated, and Heyer herself, in Devil’s Cub, implies that she was then not much past 40, when her son was 24. But These Old Shades is technically riddled with faults. Still works as a romantic story, though — and remember how very young the author was when she wrote it.
I had forgotten that there was a gay character in The Reluctant Widow (one of my non-favourites, which I have read only once), but there is certainly one in the contemporary early ‘50s whodunnit Duplicate Death, and he is a grotesque and very cruel caricature of a young, gay male. There are gay characters in Penhallow, too, but that’s such a peculiar book that I can’t remember how they come over. It’s like Cold Comfort Farm without the humour and whimsy.
I know I am repeating myself (and also repeating some points made by SB Sarah) but all of us have hot buttons, subjects that we find very hard to stand back from and assess in a detached way, subjects that are deal-breakers for us in a fictional narrative. That’s normal and human. I could never enjoy a book that featured animal cruelty in a casual way, for example.
What I think we all need to consider is the diversity of human experience. Some of you think that bondage and domination/submission, or sexual fantasies involving shape-shifting or bloodsucking, are fine: for me, they are really major, major anaphrodisiacs, to the point of nauseated revulsion. ‘Squick’ isn’t in it. But at the same time, some of you think that a 20-year age difference between sex partners, or the marriage of first cousins, is pretty disgusting and depraved, while to me they are perfectly normal, acceptable aspects of human sexuality. We have to remember that our own points of view are so strongly influenced by our personal and cultural backgrounds that it requires a considerable effort of will to see them from another perpective.
Indeed, the very root of bigotry is the inability to understand that one’s own personal experience and cultural conditioning are not universal: that there are other ways of seeing, and that people who see in different ways are not always or necessarily misguided, let alone evil, but merely different. The knowledge does not necessarily alter one’s own beliefs and principles, but it can make one more tolerant, understanding and generous.
First Cousins- I know of a couple who immigrated from the same town in Poland about 100 years ago. They entered the US through separate points and one of them lied about where they came from. They married (first cousins). Their kids were OK, but one of their children married a second cousin and their children were not OK. Seriously not.
I have a former relative by marriage who complained about cousins marrying when she moved to a rural area, then she divorced her husband and married her cousin. She has four children with the second husband, the third has a rare neurological disorder that seriously impacts his entire life. (It is stunning that he lived through his first few years.) Since these are the only first-cousin marriages I actually know, I haven’t had the squick erased. I think I am more bothered by first cousins raised together since childhood (because they seem like near-siblings or my cousins seem like near-siblings to me) than a case like Sophie and Charles where they don’t really know each other until they are adults. But I still love “Behold Here’s Poison” with its first cousin H-and-h who know each other their whole lives.
Francis from Reluctant Widow – ruthless and smart, trying to keep his father from treason – I like the idea of spy novels featuring him. And don’t we need Georgette FanFic to counteract the parts that bother us? Maybe something like the Marvel no-prize award winners that explain the inexplicable.
What everyone else said about what Courtney said. Right on!
@lizzie (greeneyedfem): I love that idea about Francis Cheviot! Have you seen the interview with Dennis Rake in The Sorrow and the Pity? Aside from the fact that any man named “Rake” obviously deserves to be the hero of a novel, his real life exploits probably are stranger than fiction.
@Courtney Milan: I also think it is so important to criticize works of the past to ensure these ideologies are not reinforced. I do think Heyer should be read critically in historical perspective. She should have known better given her research skills, but she chose not to.
If taken to the extreme, any number of prejudices can be justified as “a product of its time.” We should look at issues, such as the antisemitism in historical context, but also with a contemporary critical eye.
While some people may say Heyer shouldn’t be judged on one scene in one book and that she is not antisemitic, I say:
This is a clear case of economic antisemitism where the villain is portrayed as a greedy money lender and we are constantly reminded of how Jewish he looks and acts. I assume that Heyer edited her books, and that someone else also edited them. It would be pretty hard if one wasn’t antisemitic to reread this portion many times and not think there was a problem with it. Antisemitism comes in many forms, and while Heyer may not have been burning synagogues, she was part of a casual antisemitism wrought by casually used harmful stereotypes.
We need to understand the historical context in order to better understand the prejudice. However, it doesn’t mean that criticism should go away. In fact, it is a better reason to critique.
@LynneConnolly
I did check those, as well as the Catholic Encyclopeda, which is very helpful in explaining the historical back-and-forth between German and Roman degrees of consanguinity. And the (Sir) Jack Goody reference is this one:
http://books.google.com/books?id=LVkYFGqylfQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=jack+goody&hl=en&ei=SsRKTpjyKsj40gHp763rBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q&f;=false
With Francis from Reluctant Widow—it’s not the character that bothered me, but the way others spoke of him. Sure, someone like him might make an interesting hero, but I’m just tired of ‘dark and ruthless.’
Well… it is so important IF one is reading from a critical, academic perspective and has the inclination to footnote every single thing that varies from one’s own ethical standards. I seriously doubt that most casual readers would seek out such critique, because most of the readers I’ve encountered simply don’t care about historical accuracy all that much. Some romance fans avoid historicals because they’re ‘too much work.’
Personally, I don’t usually read from a sociological perspective; I am already far more critical of fiction since I started writing, and when I come across something like the Golddingus scene, I mentally roll my eyes, say, “yeah, nose-in-the-air British stereotype, up yours, Georgette,” and go on reading. I do know a few people who read with the inner academic ‘on’ most of the time—my wife, for instance—but when I read for relaxation I know, in advance, that authors do not always subscribe to my personal ideals.
Everyone has different ideas of what is ‘important.’ I’d be more likely to spend my time promoting an online petition to make birth-control accessible, or oppose the current racism afoot in the US, than spend the same amount of time criticizing an author who’s been dead for a few decades. Not that the criticism isn’t deserved, but once an author is dead, what are you going to do? The idea of re-editing for ‘acceptable’ portrayals is a can of worms I wouldn’t want to open.
@Rebecca:
In this case, knowing something about Sayer’s background, I’m not surprised and I’d let it slide. From Wikipedia: When she was 29, Dorothy Sayers fell in love with novelist John Cournos; it was the first intense romance of her life. He wanted her to ignore social mores and live with him without marriage, but she wanted to marry and have children. After a year of agony between 1921 and 1922, she learned that Cournos had claimed to be against marriage only to test her devotion, and she broke off her relationship with him.
Harriet, in Gaudy Night is quite autobiographical.
Personally, *I* might have a sneaking wish that someone who treated me that way be horribly murdered. Is it any wonder she saw “bohemians” as either naive and deluded (herself) or horrible hypocrites who deserve to be murdered (her ex)?
As an Italian-American, I don’t know any A. amateur boxers, B. tacky New Jersey housewives, or C. Mafiosi. But that’s almost all one sees represented as “Italian-American” in entertainment. It stinks, but it didn’t prevent me from appreciating the storytelling and performances in, say, The Sopranos.
Heyer’s personal anti-Semitism (of which I wasn’t aware before) makes me lose respect for her as a person, definitely, but I manage to grit my teeth and get through that part without letting it destroy my overall enjoyment of the story.
The prejudice is, unfortunately, historically and geographically accurate. But Heyer could have (and should have) been a lot more subtle about it. Readers in 1950 certainly would have been able to fill in the stereotypical physical description anyway, attitudes being what they were then, and modern readers don’t need the description to make the scene work.
@Dragoness: Yeah, but that gets into the Aaron Sorkin principle, to wit: your creative works are not your personal therapy session, and I’m not giving you seven bucks to provide a safe space for your issues.
If you can file the serial numbers off your relationship with your mother/father/ex/third-grade teacher and create a good story without insulting entire groups of people, go you. Seriously—when you do it well, letting your life inform your work produces some very cool, very powerful material. But if the work you produce *is* offensive, I’m not going to give you a pass because of your Traumatic Backstory—no more than I’d give my friends a pass for making hurtful generalizations when they get dumped.
@Lee Rowan: On the one hand, yeah—I do that too. It’s fine to overlook stuff. I don’t think anyone here has said or even implied that it’s *not*: everyone’s been very careful to say that you can still read and enjoy books with problematic messages.
On the other hand, I could stand to see a little less of the implied “well, why are you wasting your time on this” message, thanks. The value of social justice criticism aside, most people aren’t choosing between making an internet post to the effect that a book has some issues and feeding hungry orphans or even signing a petition. I’m on here because I’m waiting for a phone call at work: if I wasn’t commenting, I’d be over at TVTropes or reading through Achewood. Such is the Internet.
@ Lee: Maybe for some flat reading is pleasurable. For me it would be boring. When something bothers me, I try to understand it. I try to think of it in historical context and then also try to discern why I am bothered. It may not be my dissertation topic, but it doesn’t take me any longer because that is just the way I think.
I seem to have plenty of time for my social and political causes, my interdisciplinary dissertation, a 40-hour/week job, and romance novels. Some of my psychologist friends may call it hypo-mania, I call it happily productive. 😉
I can’t see any suggestion that Georgette Heyer ever had any education outside the home, and in the home her education consisted of being “encouraged to read widely”. The only thing unusual about that for a woman of her time and class might be the amount of reading. I think it unlikely that there were many/any books in existence while she was growing up and forming her opinions which would have discussed racial and religious discrimination, in those terms. I doubt there were many, or even any, that discussed it in those terms even by 1950. There would have been a few by the time she died in 1974, but they still wouldn’t have been general reading, or even on most school or university curricula, outside sociology courses at universities. Nor it is obvious to me that in 1950 the recent convulsions of WWII would have been connected to and have changed the then-existing interpretations of English Regency society.
It is perhaps easy to forget how recent (and fragile) current thinking on discrimination is. (Still no equal rights amendment for women in the USA, I think? Got a bit of a way to go, there, then, even in the current culture of anti-discrimination.)
As for knowing jews, England in the time Heyer was growing up was in fact a very homogenous society with little immigration outside specific locations. Until the late 1930s and beyond, the jewish population in London would have been almost wholly concentrated in the north and east, a long way away from the outer south-west suburb in which Heyer grew up – the Wimbledon synagogue was only founded in 1949. If Heyer did know jews, in her family or socially or through business, I can assure you that the polite mores of English society of her time and class would have prevented any inquiry on matters of race and religion outside her own family. And even if she had family to ask and their knowledge had not been lost, what would she have been told which she could have accurately applied to the English Regency period, given that her ancestors were not in England at the time?
I can understand not liking what Heyer wrote, not wanting to read it, and saying that in today’s terms it is unacceptable. Those are all reasonable and logical points of view. But to criticise her personally for not complying with standards in place 35 years after her death is in my view anachronistic, and betrays a limited understanding of human history and society.
Thank you, Faellie. 🙂
I think you, Lynne and I (and maybe a couple of others) are still not getting through, though.
Long-time SBTB reader here and what strikes me is that this thread contains some of the deepest discussion you could find anywhere on the internets and yet remains utterly civilised, informed and respectful. Go ladies!
On other matters: I am a Grand Sophy fan-girl of many years and SBSarah, you have made me view the book differently and also realise that I will quite happily gloss over and ignore things in a book if they don’t suit me – you quite rightly called me out on that. Doesn’t mean I love Sophy less, but I will read it with my eyes more open in future.
On cousins marrying – not squicky for me in historicals at all (I’m a Brit), but though I love the background of Mary Stewart’s The Gabriel Hounds I just cannot bear to read it because the H/h are first cousins whose fathers are twins and whose mothers are unrelated but have a strong physical resemblance, and much is made of the closeness of the family relationship. Completely icks me out.
AgTigress, I remember your paper at the Heyer conference – that was a very good day!
When a comment begins with a mistake as basic as this one:
it leads to an understandable skepticism about the validity of the rest of the argument.
For evidence to the contrary see Hodge’s biography of Heyer, pp. 3-6. Heyer attended two different girls’ day schools in Wimbledon. Hodge describes Heyer’s father as “a natural and inspiring teacher.”
Sunita: that is new information to me, thank you. Does the biography give details of curricula followed at these schools or similar schools that would have dealt with discrimination issues such that it made a difference? Socially varied population of teachers and pupils at the schools she attended? Heyer’s father’s own views that he might have passed on to his children? Thanks.
@Annabelle
I was quite depressed that some chose to defend Heyer’s questionable portrayal/stance instead of respecting, acknowledging and/or accepting SB Sarah’s right to her reaction and concerns. Your response – respecting Sarah’s reaction, being that willing to listen to (and respect) another perspective and owning your privilege while still loving this novel, warts and all – has improved my mood. Big time. Thank you for that.
I’m equally prepared to gloss over and ignore objectionable content, provided there are still positive elements I can take away from a story. Take a book like GONE WITH THE WIND. It contains the most appalling racism; even the hero supports the KKK. But it also contains some great moments of dialogue and characterization, for example Rhett’s droll, outspoken cynicism and Melanie’s gentle faith in the people she loves. For every steaming turd of racism, there’s a shining nugget of romance gold. The nuggets don’t make me admire the turds any more than the turds make me hate the nuggets. I just try to recognize both elements for what they are, the very good and the very bad, and temper my re-reads and recommendations accordingly.
@Maili, in response to Annabelle
I’m actually pretty impressed at the civility of this discourse, especially considering the sensitive topic, and I never thought that anyone’s positing, “But what if—”, or trying to understand why Heyer would hold such attitudes, or even playing devil’s advocate came off as disrespecting, ignoring, or being unaccepting of SBSarah’s quite valid concerns and criticisms. I hope that she agrees. 🙂
Anabelle, I like that particular Stewart chiefly for the setting, too, and although I recalled that the h/h were cousins, I simply hadn’t remembered the details about their parents. Genetically, offspring of identical twins are, of course, closer than those of ordinary siblings (whether twins or not).
Yes, the Cambridge conference was fun.
The cousin-marriage has never been a squick issue for me, but I think it’s interesting that even in the UK there have been calls for a ban on such marriages several times within the last few years. Mostly this is a result of pockets of close communities where such marriages are relatively common and research has demonstrated that there are indeed higher than average rates of birth defects. See here, here, and here. I think it’s entirely possible we might see a ban here within the next 10 years.
@Michele,
I quite agree. In fact, I think that the conversation has benefited from differing viewpoints, since we are more likely to think critically about a topic if multiple arguments are presented. This particularly lively discussion just demonstrates why I love the community here at SBTB so much.
@Faellie:
Hodge only spends four pages on Heyer’s girlhood, so there is very little detail. She interviewed a schoolmate who is described as the daughter of a High Court Judge. That would suggest the school had a middle- to upper-middle class enrollment (this is around WW1). The other school is described as “socially conscious” by Hodge, whatever she means by that (I can think of a number of different meanings, but I think liberal is probably the most likely).
Perhaps Jennifer Kloester’s forthcoming biography will have more material on Heyer’s early years. Hodge emphasizes her closeness to her father, who was a well-regarded teacher at a prep school in Wimbledon and who also contributed to Punch, but I don’t remember much else (I don’t have the book available in the house I’m in now, so I am dependent on Amazon’s Look Inside function to refresh my memory).
There was certainly fiction that dealt with issues of colonialism in various ways, including discrimination, in the first half of the 20th century, and debates over imperialism were all around for those who were interested. Given the almost total absence of domestic political issues in the Georgian and Regency novels, I’ve always assumed Heyer wasn’t interested, beyond a general preference for conservative politics. That’s not the same thing as being unaware.
For what it’s worth, I’m the descendant of at least one cousin marriage in the US, and probably more pre-immigration (old English Catholic gentry; lots of wealth-concentrating marriage within a small social circle).
I will confess that as a young’un, I mocked a friend who met her boyfriend at a family reunion, but…I mean, come on, the joke writes itself.
A side note re: Orczy- are there any actual Jews in her books? All I can remember is Percy in disguise, in which case we aren’t even talking about how she thought about Jewish people in 1903, we’re talking about how a late 18th century Englishman thought he should dress up to look Jewish, as imagined by an author in 1903, and the reactions of late 18th century French people to him, which is even less likely to corrolate with the author’s ideas in real life. Of course I don’t know much about the Baroness’s opinions outside of her fiction, or I could be forgeting an antisemetic portrayal of a character who actually is meant to be Jewish elsewhere, so maybe the Percy-in-disguise part isn’t really the reason her name often comes up in these discussions?
There’s no denying that most of her books were classist as all get out, though. I still reread them but I often have to stop and snark her on my LJ.
If Sayers was writing the same words today about hipsters, you’d be nodding in agreement with her. Harriet was a bohemian, and a ‘loose woman’ by the standards of the day, and she’s shown as having a very high and admirable moral character for *not* wanting to marry for status and respectability. You could say she was living the bohemian ideal in fact, living for her art, and not for a man or social expectations.
I think Sayers (who clearly admired the upperclass and thought they held their position at the top of society by right not might) was clear-eyed enough to know that with any ‘movement’, be it communism, bohemianism, surrealism, or pre-Raphelites, have their serious, thoughtful adherents who produce works and art of lasting value, and also the rather vacuous, thoughtless, ridiculous adherents invite mockery of themselves and their pretensions. I can support gay rights and still think Peter Tatchell is a wanker, and I can be a socialist when some left-wingers make me roll my eyes so hard I could generate electricity with them.
On her putting admiration of Hitler into a sympathetic character’s mouth, I think it’s important to realise that in the 1930’s, Hitler’s reported opinions about all kinds of things would have been seen as admirable by a good many people, just as the atrocious remarks of people like Michele Bachman have their admirers. If one doesn’t think too hard about things, and the consequences of the extreme sentiments have yet to be realised, then agreeing with sentiments like women shouldn’t be educated and so on might seem perfectly reasonable (and can we condemn our kindly Hitler loving porter when we have modern opinion writers blaming ‘liberals’, feminism, ‘political correctness gone mad’ and baby bearing lesbians for the downfall of western civilisation?) I saw Sayer as chronicling, not agreeing with her working class character.
The stereotypical, anti-Semitic portrayal of Jews in Sayers’ books is regrettable, though she does portray sympathetic Jewish characters too. Would I wish she hadn’t included the anti-Semetic characters? Yes. Do I think it reflects badly on her? Yes. Would I characterise her as anti-Semetic? Not on the evidence of her novels, but her blind spots are obvious and painful to the modern reader. I don’t think we should excuse her failings, but as the woman is long dead, we can hardly educate her past them now. All we can do when we hit them is educate *our* response, and be very clear this stuff wasn’t okay then, and isn’t okay, even if we have to accept that Sayers and Heyer and others sadly aren’t unusual.
Holy crap, Sarah you weren’t kidding about the tvtropes link. Like my SBTB addiction isn’t enough for you. Also, a tuffet is a very fine place to be and I’ve loved cottage cheese since before I could spell it.
Ouch! My mind automatically leaps to the worst case scenario that after living awhile with Miss Wraxton, unliked horses will seem good by comparison. Comedy genius.
At first I was sorry to be late in spotting this post but the lively debate in the comments section is making me rather glad to be late. My personal hot button is misogyny and I find it particularly inexcusable when written by a woman. Goldhanger looks like classic weak characterization which occurs with even the most talented authors and I definitely consider Heyer to have been supremely talented. No work, nor author behind the work, is ever perfect and every character created cannot rise to the top but when characterization, weak or strong, is used as a platform within the fiction to spread personal prejudices it is offensive regardless of whether the writing occurs/occured in 1850, 1950, or 2050. I haven’t read The Grand Sophy, so I can’t comment on whether the character of Goldhanger would rise to that level of intrusion by the author but the throw-away nature of his portrayal as showcased above is disturbing (why call the nose semitic). I do remember the characterization of the pseudo Vicomte de Valmé in These Old Shades and found it, while in keeping with attitudes of the time in which the book was set, more lazy than purposeful on the part of the author. I also wonder if Leonie’s perceived childishness might have more to do with French stereotyping than an actual age issue. Leonie came across to me as volatile but not necessarily childish. I wonder if people would see her as so young if not for Avon’s constant dominant behavior in referring to her as child, etc. I’m fairly new to reading Heyer and my favorite to date is Devil’s Cub. I have a weakness for a good romantic adventure, enjoyed Leonie and Avon more as the parents of a grown hellion than as the leads in their own book, and adored the portrayal of both Vidal and Mary. Devil’s Cub had more depth all around than These Old Shades with the obvious exception of the portrayal of Sophia, Mary’s sister.
The first cousin issue is a non-issue for me. Now first cousins marrying first cousins of first cousins of first cousins raises genetic issues that might make for some interestingly peculiar family members two or three generations down the road. This isn’t only an American issue but the relative modernity of American culture may have something to do with this bothering Americans in general more than it does readers from Britain and Europe.
The education/knowledge argument doesn’t hold up for me in any form as I’ve never found that prejudice and education are mutually exclusive. I am personally acquainted with more than one patronizing university-educated, should-know-better bigot with most of them being born after World War II. When it comes to belief in racist stereotypes it isn’t always actual belief on the part of individuals as an unwillingness to rock the boat that contributes to a culture-wide acceptance of such beliefs and I think the more underground nature of racism, classism, etc. in the modern era should probably scare all of us. Regardless of how Heyer was educated, I don’t think anyone could argue she was dumb, uneducated, or unable to form her own opinions. I wonder if her bigotry and classism might have had more to do with inferiority issues within herself. I see an author’s work being as much a product of the person as of the times in which she lived. Beautiful things can come from inner turmoil but bad things can occur as well.
When it comes to the issue of the lack of character growth on the part of Sophy there is the thought to consider that Heyer didn’t bill herself as romance writer and that The Grand Sophy should probably be considered first and foremost a comedy and therefore the heroine’s journey was probably not Heyer’s main concern. Heyer might have been a closet purple prosaist but I suspect publisher dictated trappings have been around almost as long as the printing press.
This has stoked my critical curiosity enough that I’m going to purchase The Grand Sophy along with quite a few other Heyers while they are on sale. $1.88 at BooksOnBoard. Sometimes late is great.
I would be? I seem to recall from other posts that you’re on the other side of the globe, but if you know New York City, I’ll just say that I’ve worked for the last decade in Williamsburg, and that a scary amount of my social life revolves around Bedford Ave.
I take your point (though I don’t know who Peter Tatchell is). But one of the reasons I think Sayers is ultimately a better writer than Heyer is that while I disagree with many of her positions, her writing rarely falls into cliche. (I disagree with her position on the death penalty, for example, but no one who’s read the end of Busman’s Honeymoon could think that she takes the stance lightly or thoughtlessly, or from an ill-concealed prurient glee at violence.) Some of this (as AgTigress pointed out) may be because Heyer was writing comedies of manners, and Sayers was not (at least, not always).
But I brought up the portrait of bohemia in Sayers’ work (and I was actually thinking of Marjorie, who is seen as sympathetic but deluded, and unworthy of remaining Peter’s lover) to point out what cbackson said a lot more concisely upthread; there was NOT a “universal” consensus about anti-semitism (or racism, or classism) at the time that these authors were writing. (Or indeed, now, as Ann points out.) Even at the time that Heyer’s novels were set there was debate over what I’ll generally refer to as ethical issues about treatment of other people (although the debate was obviously framed in much different terms). History is NOT a single forward march of “progress” and we delude ourselves if we think that our favorite authors were NOT clearly aligning themselves in one direction or another. It doesn’t mean we can’t love these authors. It does mean that we have to recognize that both they and their characters would be people who would be hard to have dinner with in real life, not least because they would not choose to eat with some of us…or would be overly gracious as befits aristocrats who are so completely free of petty racial prejudice against those less blessed in birth.
I’m afraid that means nothing to me, sorry. When I said ‘you’ it was more a generic than a specific you. Every time I’ve seen hipsters mentioned, it’s in the same mocking manner that Sayers adopted towards certain bohemians. Since Sayers was kinder towards alternative lifestyles than G&S were in ‘Patience’, I couldn’t scan her as having an intractable disgust towards all Bohemians, just certain ridiculous specimens.
Peter Tatchell is an Australian gay activist who can also be a bit of a dickhead.
The rest of your comment is made of win.
Heyer is a long, long time love of mine. I first read her when I was quite young and the various “isms” pervading her work went right over my head. I fell in love with the dialogue, the plot hijinks, the pure delightful froth of the world she created. Just as I read Gone With the Wind, cried for hours afterwards, and totally missed the really blatant racism in that book. It took growing up to see the prejudice in those books. And other books as well.
Though, I don’t know it’s right to say that the anti-semitism or the classism or the racism went over my head or that I missed it. What I probably missed was that I was being presented with those attitudes as “norms”—at least inside the world of the books. I think growing up with those norms influenced me in ways that I would prefer not to have been influenced. I certainly have no intent to be disrespectful of any one person or group based on stereotypes, though I suspect that like many people, there are some stereotypes rattling around upstairs that I would prefer weren’t. I think I’m trying to say that the presence of those stereotypes in the books we read matters. I think it’s important to recognize them.
What we do with that knowledge seems a personal choice, given the nature of the highly intimate relationship book lovers have with the world they hold in their hands.
Right after my father died I could barely sit through a movie that had a character with Alzheimer’s. I found it flat out impossible when the disease was glossed over so that it seemed like the person was just a little “drifty” and forgetful. I loved the history part of the Notebook but simply could not tolerate the present tense frame. I could not accept the sentimental view provided in the movie. Which is why the movie is not on my movie shelf.
I’m not saying that the presentation was offensive (in the way the portrait of the money lender in TGS clearly is), but simply that what we can or cannot tolerate in what we see or read is personal. Visceral.
I love reading books and I know that when I read books from previous times, I am going to find elements that I find problematic. For any given work I either find a way to make my peace with that or I don’t. Sometimes, as with Heyer most often, I make some mental nod to earlier time periods and keep reading. Most of the time that works. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t.
I do expect more from someone writing today. I don’t entirely let Heyer off the hook for her prejudice, but knowing how much more widely spread it was at the time and how much less culturally examined it was than it is now or has been for the last several decades, I am more able to wince and keep on reading.
I totally understand when someone can’t do that.
Though it also makes me a little sad because I wish those elements weren’t in Heyer. Totally selfishly I wish it, too, because I would enjoy her books more if I didn’t have to make allowances for attitudes that I really, really don’t like.
That said, I don’t want to end on a bummer note about Georgette Heyer because I really do still love her. I love the diversity of her characters and her plot lines. She can have the coldly superior hero of These Old Shades, the sweetness of Freddie in Cotillion, the youthful hijinks of Friday’s Child, the irreverent hero of Black Sheep, the jokester competent soldier of The Unknown Ajax; the burned out rake of Venetia. I can’t think of a single contemporary writer who has as broad a range in character types and plot lines and story “feel.” I don’t know that anyone does dialogue better. And there are some of her books in which the plotting is jus brilliant.
It was so exciting when I was first reading Heyer because whenever I held a new book in my hand, I just didn’t know what I was going to find inside: wit and humor, yes; romance, yes; but how it would play out? A delight awaiting me.
So, yes, a sensibility that is at times flawed. I don’t blame anyone for not being able to get past those flaws, either in a single book or in her whole world. But for me, she has provided many hours of wonder. Her books have been a joy, a solace, an escape, a vacation. And mostly, they still are.
Ann Somerville:
Thank you for the first laugh I have got from this thread. 🙂 But it is an important point.
As someone whose greatest bugbear with contemporary Regency novels is how the characters show impeccable contemporary sensitivities on pre-marital sex, class, the value of industry, the way to treat servants etc, I have more time for Heyer’s portrayals than many other readers.
I am more likely to throw a book across a room because Mary Balogh makes everybody welcome (which I think is dishonest about the historical situation, thus writing out two hundred years of feminist and Civil Rights struggle) than Heyer’s caricature, for three reasons.
Firstly, I don’t think Goldhanger comes off as a worse person than many white, titled, Members of the House of Lords.
Secondly, Heyer uses the debt to the moneylender as a motif in so many novels that she really needed to put one in—and to write the Jews out is also an act of erasure (I get crosser about texts blind to otherness than texts which are crass in their depiction of otherness).
Thirdly, I really can’t think of any way a girl of Sophie’s class could meet a ‘nice Jew’ in the world of the novel. Jews who are today major movers in High Society (like the Rothschilds) are Continental families and bankers (only enobled in 1885), and D’Israeli (Disraeli’s father) was from a merchant family and a writer in 1815. Sophie does meet a banker (scandalously), but a Jewish banker would be too much; and women in Heyer’s novels never get near artists; and Jews were excluded from Universities, Parliament, Almacks etc until the mid-19th century.
So, having to chose between no Jews and a bad Jew, I’d prefer to compromise on the side of including, even if not inclusively.
reached88—I have ranted for so long that surely I must have reached88 lines by now!
This just proves how widely spread antisemitic stereotppes are still today and even among educated people. I don’t know the exact figures but in the 18th century the Jewish population in Britain was less than 40,000 people. Most of those weren’t moneylenders as well as in Heyer’s time very few were. Most moneylenders were NOT Jewish, and the Jewish ones most likely were neither greedy, unclean or lewd. So when Heyer introduces such a characters, it really isn’t a realistic portrait but an antisemitic stereotype.
Thank you for the review. I had considered reading this book and I am now certain I wouldn’t enjoy it.
While I recognize that in some novels, similar racial stereotyping or slurs are dated examples of past bad attitudes, I cannot enjoy those books for the same reason.
Recently I read the Complete Sherlock Holmes and became agitated repeatedly that anytime there was a murder someone said “Oh there are gypsies in the neighborhood” as though their itinerant lifestyle was obviously the source of crime. And in none of those stories did the gypsies do a damn thing! It was just this awful assumption.
I would love to see some statistics. I think that Rhea is right in saying
regardless of how many Jews were moneylenders. My knowledge of history comes almost entirely from novels, and is in general not my strong suit. I was under the impression that historically in many countries Jews were limited in the occupations they were allowed to legally pursue, and that moneylending was one of relatively few available to them. And I had also thought that Jews were bound by some sort of religious law regarding interest, and thus were the moneylenders of choice, because they would have the best rates. I also sort of have the impression that at various times in England possibly Christians were not allowed to charge interest at all, which meant that when they needed to borrow money they had to turn to Jews or Muslims. I have no idea where I got these impressions, which is wholly typical of me, and they are probably untrue, which would also be typical. I would love to know more. Does anyone know what percentage of moneylenders were Jewish and what percentage of Jews were moneylenders? England in the early 1800s would be most relevant to the discussion, of course, but now I’m curious in general.
@kkw – Ok, you probably didn’t want to get me started on this topic. I don’t know much about English Jews, but I can sort out part of the money-lending thing:
In Medieval Europe, the Catholic Church condemned all interest bearing loans as “usury” which was (and is) a sin. Since the Catholic Church was THE only available church in Western Europe, and since canon and civil law were very much intertwined, this led to an effective prohibition on professional money-lending by Christians in the Middle Ages. Jews were permitted to make interest bearing loans, hence the prevalence of money-lenders who were Jewish. (Christians did duck around the prohibition in a few ways, one of them being “dry exchanges” – that were essentially currency changes where the foreign currency was bought at one price, and sold back at another that had been pre-fixed, not unreasonable if you consider that communication prevented world currency markets from fluctuating at the speed that they presently do. That is, however, a different story. If you’re interested I’d recommend the sourcebook Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World by Lopez and Flanagan.)
So while it may have been true in some places in the Middle Ages that most money-lenders were Jews (the Genoan bankers in Italy, and the Fuggers in Austria, however, were not), it was never true that most Jews were money-lenders. When Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 a plurality (something like a third, if I recall correctly) listed a profession related to the textile industry, followed by nearly a quarter who were in a medical-related field. (Iberian Jews actually had the right of being called “doctor” since universities in Toledo and Cordoba were open to them. In the rest of Europe the universities were exclusively Christian, but the professions of “surgeon” and “apothecary” were not university trained, and can be lumped into “medicine-related.”) After these two big groups of cloth and medicine came every other commercial activity, with money-lending somewhere down the list.
However, to make life a little more complicated, in addition to money-lending, Jews were also prominent (although in this case a minority) of tax-farmers, that is agents of the royal crown to collect taxes. Your friendly local IRS agent is seldom popular, and if you know the portrayal of the Sheriff of Nottingham in several centuries of Robin Hood stories you can pretty much imagine the stories that grew up around Jews stealing the harvest from poor, starving peasants. The reason Jews went into tax-farming was because in many European countries they were direct subjects of the monarch, and thus were considered both loyal and a counterweight to ambitious guilds or nobles (who might make the king do pesky things like grant privileges to a “free city” or sign a Magna Carta). In many places Jewish ghettos functioned similarly to royal preserves. To return to the Robin Hood metaphor: the king’s Jews were like the king’s deer; you weren’t allowed to hunt them without permission. This relationship was almost inevitable when you consider that Jews were outside the traditional feudal system of vassalage, but were in many places too useful precisely as tax-farmers and money-lenders (i.e. those who do dirty work) to be completely dispensed with. It provided the monarch with a source of loans (that could always be canceled by threat of withdrawing royal protection and encouraging the clergy to preach sufficiently anti-Jewish sermons to incite a riot), and it provided the Jewish community with at least nominal protection against the more rabidly anti-Jewish clergy and populace.
As a side note (which speaks to FairyKat’s comment about acts of erasure), I was in college before I read the first portrayal of a medieval Jewish moneylender in fiction that did not make me cringe; it was from the Poema del Cid, which begins with the hero cheerfully cheating a pair of Jews out of a rather large sum of money. I loved it that they were there, they were money-lenders, and no one made any big deal about it. The hero doesn’t trick them because he’s anti-Semitic, but because he needs the money, and they have it. I also loved it that while the poem is ambiguous about whether he eventually pays them back, the later popular ballads have him paying them back and apologizing.
So that’s pretty much the Middle Ages. It’s worth noting that Jews were expelled from England by Edward the Confessor in 1290, and only allowed to officially return by Oliver Cromwell in 1656.
The moneylender thing becomes a little sticky when we start talking about the Reformation. Max Weber has famously linked Protestantism and the rise of capitalism, and while some of what he’s written is problematic, it is true that the Reformation clerics gently reinterpreted the scriptures to define “usury” as EXCESSIVE interest, as opposed to ANY INTEREST AT ALL. Over time the Catholic Church gradually adopted this position as well, and current civil usury laws (mostly regarding credit card contracts and to some extent loan sharks) reflect this definition. The ability of Christians to charge guilt-free interest obviously expanded the banking world tremendously. (For stuff about the transformation of money-lending and the rise of capitalism, and how this related to Jewish stereotypes about money-lenders in the early modern period, see Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches which focuses on the Netherlands, but is probably generally applicable to Protestant Europe, and also quite well written.)
I have no idea what percentage of bankers were Jews by the early 19th century (which is the period you’re interested in), but according to Wikipedia Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) was one of twelve “Jew brokers” licensed by the City of London to trade on the stock exchange there. I would assume that the number of brokers in the City numbered in the hundreds, so if twelve were Jews that gives a general idea of percentages on the stock exchange. Of course, that doesn’t say anything about smaller moneylenders.
I only knew Moses Montefiore as the patriarch of the family that gave its name to the Montefiore Medical Center in my home city (again, the connection between Jews and medicine), but the Wikipedia article about him is quite interesting. He’s around the age of a number of Heyer characters, and he married in 1812, at the age of 28. Heyer would probably consider him the prototype of the “Cit,” as he became quite active in civic life, becoming Sheriff of London 1837, receiving a knighthood in 1838, and a baronetcy in 1846. He purchased an estate in Ramsgate in the 1830s, where he apparently retired to being a country gentleman. My favorite part of the (**uncited, unsubstantiated) wikipedia entry is the following: “in 1873 a local newspaper mistakenly ran his obituary. “Thank God to have been able to hear of the rumour,” he wrote to the editor, “and to read an account of the same with my own eyes, without using spectacles.”“
In short, it’s quite possible that Moses Montefiore might have come into contact with some of Heyer’s characters, at least somewhat later in their lives. However, it’s important to remember that he was one of a very tiny number of Jews in England at the time, and that the vast majority were probably quite poor.
Forgive the long essay. I hope it was informative. I’ll shut up now.
Wow, thank you, Rebecca! That was fascinating. Truly. 🙂
Just to add a couple of points to Rebecca’s excellent comment: Remember that Heyer used contemporary sources like Gronow, Creevey, Walpole’s letters, etc. as if they were reporting unassailable facts. But these accounts quite naturally reflected the biases and imperfect information of the writers.
Consider the example of the “Jew” (John) King, who was a famous Georgian moneylender and to whom Heyer refers in at least one book (April Lady?). He was a fascinating, complex man who was politically active and well connected politically and socially. Heyer reduces him to just a Jewish moneylender, and she emphasizes his dishonesty but does not put it in the larger context of cheating, gambling aristocrats who did whatever they could to avoid paying their debts. Not exactly the honorable aristocratic behavior that she preferred to showcase.
On the Jewish population of Britain: I found a couple of sources that suggest it was 20,000-25,000.