A Box of Old Romances: *Massively* Overthinking Harlequin and other American Romances, Part 1!

I used to read a lot of romances as a teenager.  When I say romances, I don’t mean Mills and Boon, or the huge bodice-rippers with half dressed women on the front being ravished by pirates; not the English ones - as I quickly came to see that these were beyond wish fulfilment and were a sort of odd exercise in alternate reality, where we were all secretaries falling in love with our bosses, or tennis stars falling in love with our coaches, or businesswomen in a man’s world…falling in love with a man who might as well be our boss.  It was riven with an odd class consciousness (everyone was posh or well bred or rich or wanted to be rich; everyone was very aspirational or terribly beautiful or talented…no one at all was normal or troubled, unless they be beautiful and troubled). No.  I started reading American romances – Harlequin: the intimate Moments, the SuperRomances, the Intrigues, the Special Editions.  For anyone unaware, these subheadings signify different sorts of stories, e.g. the Intrigues were what is known as ‘romantic suspense’, relationship growth with thriller elements – Nora Roberts writes a lot of these nowadays, to name only the most successful one ever!  

The thing is, don’t think I was fooled – the American romances were also full of politics, and class themes, it was just that because they weren’t here, England, I found it easier to ignore obvious BS and enjoy my suspension of disbelief in a well told story where you basically know what you want to happen: you want two people to meet, have a journey together of actual travelling or simply of events they must face singly or together, and at the end you want not too many people to be suffering or dead, and you want the two people to have decided to be a couple.  It’s reassuring. The whole genre is very reassuring.

Now, its ultra reassuring because not only is it filled with tropes we all recognise (amnesia of hero or heroine resulting in behaviour change is an obvious one; rags to riches or vice versa is another incredibly common one), but it guarantees you that no matter what hardship the 2main characters suffer, they will be ok – and not lonely – at the end.  That’s quite powerful, specially when you are having a bad day, or a bad phase in life.

I have continued to indulge my enjoyment of the genre here and there, between other things, sometimes not touching a romance for years, then reading 20 all at once.  Recently, I had one of those astonishing ebay deals you get every now and again: 200 books for not much money at all.  The main haul of titles harked back from a period in life where I used to read a lot of romance as I was finding life hard (the late 90s, early 2000s).  So I got shipped a lot of books that reminded me of a period where I had some hope, but it was dying, and I was trying to find it again, by reading of love love love, over and over again.  Trying to brainwash myself to catch the vibe. (And while it failed, in the sense I eventually completely changed my life instead of staying firm in the face of difficulties, which the rather conservative romances would have wished me to do, I am sure, they none the less gave me many interesting and happy times in the midst of troubles.)

So I gathered up the box and opened it. Sorted, as I do, the books into their concomitant series and sections.  Recognised old covers, old and loved familiar authors. Realised some were in the box from even before I used to read.  I wondered how the tone of these books would change over time.  As each genre - fantasy, sci-fi, romance, all these niche genres – they all tell us so much about whenever they were written. They tell us of an eras dreams, an eras thoughts on relationships both intimate and political, larger.  They tell us about ideas on economics, on poetry. It’s all there, you just have to have one eye on the story and one eye on the subtext. 

I’m going to do an odd thing in these rambly reviews here. I’m going to half tell you about the stories in each of these books, talk about the characters and how I found them shaped - as I can’t help but do this, as a writerly person myself; and I’m going to let you be as amazed as I was to find I keep seeing politics in them, propaganda. Establishment stuff, both harsh and gentle. Read on and you’ll see what I mean. Sometimes, you’ll find I got all carried away with the story when I read it; but then spent the entire rambly review talking about the subtext!  This is partly because, as a foreigner, all this stuff is massively interesting as social history from a distance, for me, as an observer of an export of American culture.  I hope any Americans reading find it interesting, and don’t get offended at any speculations I make – or if you do, don’t take it too seriously.  Don’t worry, I find English culture ridiculous in some ways too; remember how I said I can’t even read our romances as they are just too stupid?!  I enjoy yours far more…and have no intention of stopping reading them, so far!

So.  Here is the beginning of another no doubt long and endless occasional series, the Romance Reviews Ridiculously Overthought! Welcome to my overflowing box of old romance books, dated anywhere between late 80s to the late noughties…

PLEASE BEWARE - IN MY RAMBLY COMMENTS MAJOR SPOILERS MAY APPEAR.

1. A Holiday Gamble, by Jane Feather (novella), part of the ‘Snowy Night With A Stranger’ Christmas anthology, 2008
   (Let’s start off gentle.  I received the box just before Christmas and there were lots of Christmas romances in it. This one had a beautiful glittery cover.  As I was feeling quite stressed and know Jane Feather to be a reliable author, I picked it straight up.  It’s not a Harlequin series title, as a few of the books in the box were not. Most of the reviews will be of those; but this and a few others will be an exception.  Also, this is a historical, and that will be an exception too.  Most of the titles I look at will be contemporary; not because they tell the times better- no, historicals tell wishes even better than contemporaries; but simply because the box has more contemporaries in it than anything else. This was lovely, very Christmassey.  Loved the female highwayman, caught in a strange trapped situation and having to rob to try and get out of it. It was quite a claustrophobic read, the pair shut in a hall with the dissolute and sinister guests. This didn’t have the annoying tameness that some of the American romances can have, in that it promises a scary or high staked situation, but then deals with it so gently you feel cheated.  This managed to give more depth in a small novella than I have felt from some full length stories of similar plot.  Felt quite real - the bravery of the female lead shone through.  ACTUAL BOOK.)
2. When Sparks Fly, by Sabrina Jeffries (novella), part of the ‘Snowy Night With A Stranger’ Christmas anthology, 2008
   (A very nice Christmas tale with the unlikely plot of the invention of safe explosives for mining work - I do like when historicals teach me something. Which happens a lot with romances, actually. This also taught me about the fire-y and definitely unsafe Xmas game of ’Snapdragon’.  I felt the hero’s guilt here, and it was well played; the heroine’s explanation of his punishing of himself held valid psychological truth – again, this is what romances can do so well, when they bother: emotional intelligence and explanations of behaviour.  It becomes like a puzzle to solve. ACTUAL BOOK.)
3. The Wallflower, by Jan Freed, Harlequin SuperRomance,1998
   (Bit of a cracker, this one. Lovely strong female lead. 
   
   Though I did find some very illuminating stuff inside about Republican political bias and views, circa late 90’s.  The author bit stressed that she writes ‘strong sassy females in stories with traditional values’ – which was my first clue.  Then this, on p.21, showed me that I was definitely dealing with a Republican sensibility in the writer, which she had transferred to her characters.  The heroine, masquerading as a school student has a disagreement with the teacher, the hero, who replies: “There’s a great deal in the adult world that is unfair, Sarina.  Some people – the people who form the backbone of our society and economy – learn how to cope with challenge and adversity. Others continually blame circumstances for getting a raw deal and then ride the rest of us piggyback throughout their lives.”  That sounds so reasonable and commonsensical doesn’t it?!  And yet it can lead to so much judgement and harshness and callous behaviour.  There was a later bit where the hero laments the fact he can’t fancy a woman who “shared his traditional values” and wouldn’t mind staying at home and raising his babies and keeping house; instead finding another woman who does like him. The woman was a vice principal of a school – how is he so certain she would give up what the character gives every indication of as a satisfying career? Also, the hero himself accepts that his own woman is forming a new business at the end, just as she already had one and was very successful.
   
   I can’t help feeling some of these sentiments are contradictory: the traditional value bit seems to indicate that the man goes out to work and does the manly bring home bacon bit, and the woman is the angel in the house – a very important role, but circumscribed, and all manner of guilt implied for trying to do another role as well, or god forbid, instead.  And yet – in every single one of these American romances I read – ALL the women are exceptions to this stay at home rule, all very strong and sassy, all know what they want, none I have read give up their career at the end, and the men learn to work round it with very good grace.  So the values they propose are overturned each and every book.  I’m not sure what it means for the readers who might believe in these ‘values’? If you aren’t terribly sassy and obviously very go gettery, then you are doomed to be content to stay at home with no choice, reading vicariously of these other females living lives with more than one dimension?  Or: that there are always exceptions and they are always welcomed and gloried in by the people, especially the men, who subscribe to these values??  Not sure.  Also it’s women writing these…are they advocating changing the roles of women in families with ‘traditional values’?  Or showing that there is room for allsorts?  Again, not sure, as an outsider looking in.
   
   This book and the next one [Shenandoah], really got it through to me what is so comforting about these books in times of stress - the lack of movement, the lack of actual freedom, it all being very establishment and very proscribed in terms of roles and expectations.  Having your freedom removed to play a story we know the ending of, or a role we all understand from childhood, is in one way, very comforting. I fall back on these dreams that I know would make me ill if I tried to actually live them, whenever I am stressed. Bit like sexual fantasies, I suspect: not meant to come true, wouldn’t be the same at all!
   
   Lastly, on the politics bit- which really did quite strongly inform this book, in the background: I read and understood more than I usually do of the Republican ideal – this is why stories are such great teaching methods.  I really and truly think left and right are not that far apart: we place our emphasis differently and we seem to interpret events from different places - but I think we are actually championing similar ideas.  We’ve just got so used to only hearing the extreme views of either side [both stupid and unworkable; both hostile and superior sounding] that we forget we have much in common.  I can see why the right think they are so leader-suited; and why they think the left are weak.  From statements like that I quoted above.  It’s a misapprehension, a harsh judgement on others.  On the other hand - sometimes the left needs to be a damn sight more judgmental and show a bit of backbone – so, in conclusion, I say grandly – this was a FASCINATING bit of background social and political history.  I learned.  Always great.
   
   Annoyingly, I have banged on for so long about the political bits of this book I have not actually mentioned it had a basic if utterly cracking and well executed plot, seething with brilliant sub-characters [liked the bit when Fred went all cowboy on the bad character who was going to date rape Kate], and was fluid and without cliché in the writing.  The self-improvement aspects were wonderful too, a really positive message.  Totally recommended. If you like romance and are on the right- you’ll enjoy and agree with everything; if you like romance and are on the left – you’ll understand those others better!  Really can’t complain: very strong book J  ACTUAL BOOK.)
4.  Shenandoah Christmas, by Lynette Kent, Harlequin SuperRomance, 2001
   (This was lovely too. Not quite sure why it didn’t annoy me, as one of the plot’s major sub characters was a Pastor [not a species I generally enjoy, though the TV show Rev softened me up recently], and the writer was clearly Christian, though it wasn’t overly played upon, despite the whole subject of the book being a Christmas Pageant involving a nativity play. I mention it as I generally try to avoid romances with religious overtones; I find they detract from me feeling that the characters are finding each other. It becomes too preachy.  It’s a fine line to walk.
   
   The really strong thing here was the main character, Cait Gregory – she just sailed off the page as strong but vulnerable, and not prepared to give up her career that she had had to fight for in the first place and had worked a lot to get to this point for.  I really liked her. I was rather surprised she did so well with the Thanksgiving dinner when she’d never done one before [there my enjoyably vicarious identification with her failed; I couldn’t see myself doing that well!], but she was characterised as someone who would succeed at anything she tried her hand at if she was determined. 
   
   Her musical leanings were really well done.  As were the children, and the non-talking Shep in particular. A very good all round family drama, with issues of sudden enforced retirement and depression, theft of community money, reasons for disliking Christmas, and family vs. career explored well. One of the strengths of romances can be the family focus; sometimes it can feel cloying, but in this case, I simply felt it as believable.  ACTUAL BOOK.)
5. Merry’s Christmas, by Pamela Bauer, Harlequin SuperRomance, 1995
   (Fascinating - just when I thought I would never like a man with a moustache ever again, who was NOT Tom Selleck; along comes hero Holden!  Oddly, this romantic hero was never fully physically described, just dark, tall, ‘tachey, and abandoned as a child, so sharing a huge bond from an early age with the heroine, with whom he spent a portion of his childhood in a foster home.  I am bit perplexed as to how he afforded to become a top lawyer when he came from absolutely nothing, but I know the genre’s belief in the power of the American dream wants me to gloss over this and believe he worked 90 jobs while studying college and making valuable contacts that usually only money would procure, in order to become the amazing success story he is at the start.
   
   Hmm.  It’s also fascinating that I am never this cynical while reading these rather lovely stories – in this case, the hero and the heroine only ever meet at Christmas, and are reunited for a last Christmas at the start as she is getting married to someone else unsuitable [too old and dry], and he takes it upon his Holden self to apprise her of this, hence Christmas story.  The added element of the foster child Holly and the heroine’s wish to help her, was very sweetly and oddly realistically done, till the treacley end.  But…this story, whilst not passing any reality tests, felt very real while reading and I enjoyed it very much.  A caring heroine, the musical Merry, who has CDs out but still plays in department stores on large pianos in a sequinned dress [lovely imagery there in those scenes].  I enjoyed the sleigh ride [sounded wonderful, sniff, real dream stuff].
   
   I find I am very much enjoying the variety of scenarios and the greater depth of tone in these SuperRomances set in the late 80s through to late 90s.  They feel much more real than the later ones; not sure why.  I started one the other day that began with a violent car crash and a theft - that would not happen in a modern one: too much.  The old ones seem to be able to peel romance and hope from anywhere; the newer ones have a limited range of acceptable scenarios and heroes, especially (Navy SEAL anyone?).  The older stories also have better titles: Merry’s Christmas is oddly inspired!  I criticise this books tenuous hold on reality; but I really did love it.  So there’s my schizo opinion; seek out this book for a good Christmas romance.  ACTUAL BOOK.)
6. A Christmas to Remember, by Kay Stockham, Harlequin SuperRomance, 2007
   (The last one I will read in 2014, which whispered in with my finishing it just before New Year. I liked the idea of a man with amnesia waking up to be a much better person and realising his past self had done awful things; namely to the woman he is now falling in love with. Of course, it all became rather preposterous when it turned out he really wasn’t that man, and was another man altogether, who had always been decent, though obviously also had his own problems. It, when you think about it, overrode the whole need for forgiveness to get over events of the past that was one of the overweening messages of this book. I’m discovering that a lot of these later SuperRomances, are very Christian in tone, just in the background, moreso than the older ones [which were more overtly Republican in tone than the modern ones, as if they have swapped one version of an ideology for another as time moved on; noticeably from the late 80s-90’s to the mid 90’sthrough to early 2000’s].
   
   Anyway, the funny thing is, whenever I come to review these books I always start talking about the messages and themes in the background, which of course I am noticing whilst I read them, but on the other hand, as I read, I am usually completely caught up in the story and the character. This one I read in 2 days, one half in just one evening, as the characters were so very readable.
   
   The heroine, Mallery, suffered a bloody awful family, especially her mother and father, that just would not let her forget an event of her past, getting pregnant on the eve of college from a quick relationship - that had been very painful for her as well, but they acted like it was this big shame on their entire family…move along from tribal times, people, enter the 21^st century.  Family pride always sounds good, but it leads to such harsh judgement. I wanted to really yell at her parents.  Anyway, she managed to do a very good thing for her mother, despite the woman’s annoyingness [the story actually tried to handle the theme of depression here, and as a frequently depressed person, I likely should have been a lot more sympathetic to the mother, but I just found her annoying…ah well, no one likes a mirror!]  Good book, enjoyable, if a bit overwrought emotionally – then again, had I not eaten it up so fast, I might not feel that way about it; if I had read it slower I might not have been so overwhelmed by the wrenching, that is, after all, a big part of this genre here and there…ACTUAL BOOK.)
   
   And lastly, for this post:

7. Sunflower, by Margot Dalton, Harlequin SuperRomance, 1992
(This was a lovely time capsule gem of a romance.  They don’t write them this way anymore!  The main character experienced a car crash and major theft as the starter, then inherited a rodeo horse and becomes a travelling rodeo helper out of a desire to help the horse away from that life. And to be nearer the hero who is disarmingly genuine and easy company. 

The car crash and theft at the start was quite wrenching, and a good sudden explosive beginning.  It reminded me how tame and derivative a lot of the more modern romances can be.  The old ones basically pick any scenario, craft a heroine we feel we know and could almost be – never too thin or beautiful, simply genuine and with dreams and hopes; and a hero who could almost be real, he’s just a touch larger than life.  They may well have a formula, these older books, but the formula has definitely changed in modern times, and I think I prefer the old.  So much more setting, scenery backdrop, portraits of communities of people [as opposed to communities of values, which ends up preachy].

The nicest thing about this entire romance was the sense of the wider company conveyed. Not only the other rodeo riders, male and female, but the people watching, the sense of being involved in events, involved in a whole scene.  You really felt you were there, and you shared the heroine’s experiences of feeling part of something [and face it – why are we reading these books if we don’t want to feel part of something?].  There was an epic scale to the way some of the events were told, a sense of pulling back and surveying the wider scene that I really enjoyed, it felt real and authentic, emotionally [which is where it needs to feel real, in these stories].

The next thing to mention was the excellent portrayal of two characters, subsidiary but vital to the plot action: Clem and Cody.  Clem is a rodeo clown who is losing his nerve, and he is painted so incredibly well: I felt his small wiry physicality, his passion for another better life [he wants to start dog kennels], and his bravery at the last, saving Robin from the also incredibly well painted bull, Whirlwind.  Excellent characterization of an animal- not anthropomorphised, just told and told well. I felt the animal too.  The whole scene where Clem goes up against the bull at the end was so well done, it was actually like my first ever watching of Titanic: as in, I got so involved in the story of Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio and Billy Zane, that I completely FORGOT [yes truly I did, that first time] that the ship was going to sink, and I was surprised when it started to!!  I actually forgot I was reading a romance, where things mostly are guaranteed to end up well, and thought Clem was going to die.  When he went into the field, I actually stopped reading, put the book down and started crying, as I really thought that was the end of him, and I had to prepare myself!  I was amazed when he made it through.  Now, THAT level of involvement is Damn Good Storytelling.  Damn good storytelling can show [of course,] in any genre, but I’m always so happy when it does show up in a romance, as it can be a very lazy genre, especially nowadays.  This book Had Me Going, I was fooled.  I’m impressed.

Then of course, there’s Cody, a very underplayed sociopath.  He was very nicely done - he wasn’t over the top, as so many of romance’s villains are; he didn’t speechify…he was simply gradually laid out, till you became more and more uneasy at the way he didn’t quite make sense or add up as a sum of his actions. And then he had a psycho fit at the end, and you realized he was a completely different kettle of fish to what you had thought; and that the hero Matt, had been correct to get angry with Robin and warn her away from him from the start.

And then it ends, quietly and calmly and nicely.  We go from thinking gentle Clem will die, from finding a stabbed body, from Robin being gored by that bad bull…which is all pretty heavygoing action for what has become a lighter and fluffier genre by the moment [unless you class some of the rougher new paranormals or suspenses, in terms of action] – to everyone getting explained and calmed and off they go. And even though it’s all pretty unbelievable, in terms of the high drama and of the happy ending, you just flow right along with it, as it’s so well written and convincing.  Emotionally.

I think Margot Dalton is the best of this old box of books I’ve read so far. I’m hugely hugely impressed.  This book was magic. 

Also: Sunflower – that is a much better title for a romance, or any book, than the usual titles romances get these days!)

And that’s it for this first outing of this occasional series. These will get read between other things, and when I feel down – as they do perk you up.  So I won’t overburden you with loads of these reviews.  But if you’re into romance, you could do worse than look out some of these oldies.  

Yes, old romances have covers where men are sewing!  What a different world we live in!

Women, Money and Debt in the 18th Century Novel, Part 5: Amelia, Section 2

Women, Money and Debt in the 18^th Century Novel, Part 5:

Amelia, Section 2

18th Century London, as seen by Canaletto

 Looking at the prevailing obsession with money, the getting and managing of it (and what happens when you can’t pay your debts), in eighteenth century English literature – with specific reference to female heroines in Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724); Henry Fielding’s Amelia (1751), and Fanny Burney’s Cecilia (1782).

Last section, I introduced you to Amelia, heroine of Fielding’s book of the same name – the perfect wife by the mores of the time, who because of an inept husband, falls into financial troubles.  The first part of her story was all about how that happened, and debtor’s prison. This is the next part of my analysis of her story, her journey as a woman in an alien financial world of the 1800s, burgeoning free market capitalism – how does she cope with the people around her, all of whom seem to want something?

                                    ***

And just in case you’re a trifle lost – here are the earlier posts in this series:

http://blackberryjuniperandsherbet.blogspot.co.uk/2014_05_01_archive.html

=> that’s the Introduction and Abstract to this mammoth undertaking!

http://blackberryjuniperandsherbet.blogspot.co.uk/2014_06_01_archive.html

=> that’s Roxana, Part 1…in a galaxy far far…etc…

http://blackberryjuniperandsherbet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/women-money-and-debt-in-18th-century.html

=> that’s the last part of Roxana’s story and it’s analysis.

http://blackberryjuniperandsherbet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/women-money-and-debt-in-18th-century.html

=> the first part of Amelia’s experiences.

Welcome to part 2 of my analysis of Amelia – the last novel written by Henry Fielding, and published December 1751.  It’s part of what was referred to at the time as ‘domestic’ novels.  To cut along plot short – Amelia, a good and quiet girl, runs off with a soldier to London after a blisteringly romantic attachment and marriage, where he is then wrongly imprisoned.  Disaster.  She is tempted on all sides by offers of help from unscrupulous people, mainly men, and resists them; meanwhile her husband is seduced by another woman in prison.  Their difficulties worsen and worsen, in the way of these novels, until Amelia saves the day by inheriting some money from her mother – she pays off the debt her husband was imprisoned for, and they make a run for it back to the respectable country, from the wicked and dissolute city.  The End.  It’s a real eye opener to the attitudes of the times.

                                                ***

Whilst Flanders comments on “the venal commercialism of human relationships”[1] within the prison, Thompson notes the importance of money to the action in the wider London Milieu: “things are for sale that shouldn’t be for sale”[2]. Indeed, throughout the book, the rich take advantage of those poorer (little changes…).  Examples of two characters who abuse their positions of trust to take advantage of those they have offered help to, show Fielding aware that folly and vice are frequently rewarded in the often corrupt arena that was public society.

'Henri Fane and His Guardians', by Gainsborough.  This was the sort of image the aristocracy liked to present of themselves, though the cartoons of many commentators of the time, told a much more dissolute story.

Firstly, the Lord (an example of corrupt aristocracy) who debauched Mrs Bennet offers to pay her husband’s debts, not as a form of charitable aid but as a means to put her under obligation to grant him sexual favours (pp.295-300).  Secondly, Colonel James (an example of the corruption within the military establishment) promises to pay Booth’s debts and get him a foreign commission; but his real desire is to remove Booth from the scene in order to seduce his wife(p.327, 344-5, 375).  The Lord and Colonel James use the financial problems of others as a means to their own ends.  By placing Mrs Bennet and Amelia under an obligation they can only repay with sex, these men attempt to force them into liaisons that are akin to coerced prostitution.

Unlike Roxana, who seizes the situation of debt and repayment and turns it to her own advantage (for a while), Amelia’s and Mrs Bennet’s situations are complicated by the presence of their husbands, and their strong Christian moral codes.  Amelia chooses to brave out the hardship rather than take on an obligation she cannot satisfy, while Mrs Bennet lacks Amelia’s natural caution and is ruined by the standards of the day, forced into a life of retreat (wonderful double standards; man who seduces her not forced to any change at all!).  Mrs Bennets only weapon against such instances later in life is to use her own story as a cautionary tale to save others, as she does with Amelia.  Alison Conway comments that for Fielding, commercial vice is seen as gendered: “In London, a woman’s beauty is understood to be for sale.  Indeed, almost all social and commercial transactions lead back to some kind of prostitution.[3]”  She elaborates on this position, proposing that Fielding has chosen to

[…] represent the sins of modernity, and particularly of modern capital, in metaphors of the sexually diseased, and usually female body. […]  The disease of commercial culture seems embodied in corrupt sexual behaviour which circulates, like money, unseen and unnamed.[4]

In contrast to the goodness of the largely unseen Amelia (unseen at least, for a good portion of the earlier part of the novel), the women we do see are venal in the extreme: Mrs Trent, Colonel James’s wife and Mrs Ellison (who actively pimps).  Fielding commonly presents both marriages and his portraits of female friendships within Amelia as manipulative and venal; Amelia is the only character in the whole of the book who is always simply sincere and authentic, never using wiles.  Even Mrs Bennet, when she is Mrs Atkinson, uses her friend Amelia by dressing up as her at the masquerade, to try and get military preferment for her husband (pp.416-7).

A cartoon by Rowlandson, called 'Launching a Frigate'. This satirised the way some older women in polite society often preyed upon younger less fortunate ones, luring them into prostitution with promises of security and a better, more protected life.  The women were pimps at best, Madams more often.

Thompson views the novel’s partial focus on prostitution (which he terms “domesticity’s contradiction”) as closely allied with Amelia’s general tone of antagonism toward “capitalisation”[5].  He sees a pivotal comparison between Amelia, her role as ‘the good wife’, safeguarding her integrity at all costs, and Mrs Trent.  Amelia is explicitly termed Booth’s “Treasure” (p.235), as compared to the worthless Mrs Bath or Colonel Trent’s wife, who is a commodity to be traded. “Wives are supposed to have use but not exchange value”[6].  (Ah, economics!!!)  Benedict also examines the other marriages portrayed in the book, finding the Trents’ a pimping arrangement, the James’s frigid and ambitious, and the Booths’ something of a role reversal, with a woman all but heading the household.  She concludes that

[…] the pairing and mirroring of marriages in the novel sketches a structure that continually reinforces the possibility that a loose domestic union will create unhappiness and corrupt public values and behaviour[7].

Morris Golden sums up the London scene perfectly:

The stakes are mean – military promotion, prestige at the expense of others, sexuality without a trace of exuberance – and the game is wearying.  Ant reminder of virtue is a roaring joke[8].

He adds that this is the environment in which Booth succumbs to temptations, and in which Amelia is left to dodge the attentions of dissipated men.  Booth’s reaction is to become “overwhelmed by the perplexing, dominant superficiality of society”, which has imprinted its own external “chaos” within his internal self[9].

The idea of the 'angel in the house', women's natural calling to the glorious private sphere was celebrated most in Victorian times, but it was a cult well underway in the eighteenth century, with the paintings of artist Pehr Hilleström, a Swede, much to thank for it.  Mini propagandist works as these genre scenes were, showing women going peacefully and contentedly about their domestic bliss, they did much to prop up the seperate roles theory,along with religious conditioning.

Booth’s only respite from the unrelenting corruption of the public sphere is his very different life at home, with Amelia.  Even here, Fielding’s narrator informs us, financial strains are beginning to create trouble between husband and wife:

[since] how is it possible that without running in debt, any persons should maintain the dress and appearance of a gentleman, whose income is not half so good as a porter? (p.184)

As well as this problem with necessary appearances[10] (which was proved necessary by the behaviour of those like Justice Thrasher), all the tempting offers of loans and help from rapacious ‘friends’ confuse Booth.  He can only look to Amelia, and hope for once his moral compass is guiding him rightly, when he worries

I own I am afraid of obligations, as the worst kind of debts; for I have generally observed that those who confer them, expect to be repaid ten thousand fold.  (p.235)

Amelia always gives Booth good advice (whether he takes it or not); and occasionally even subsumes her own good sense, by not rebuking him when he has been particularly irresponsible of gullible, resulting in yet another loss of money for the already fragilely balanced family.  A typical incident, to illustrate Amelia’s devotion to her family, and easy practise of frugality, is summed up by Fielding, one day when Booth is late home for dinner:

Having sat some time […], reflecting on their distress’d situation, her spirits grew very low; […] she [nearly rang] the bell to send her maid for a half pint of white-wine, but check’d her  inclination in order to save them the little sum of sixpence. […]  And this self-denial she was very probably practising, […] while her husband was paying a debt of several guineas incurred by the ace of trumps being in the hands of his adversary. (p.439)

Cartoons of the eighteenth century took joy in pointing out the dangers of gambling - for all classes, not just the poor.  Some gaming was illegal and houses could be raided.

The aristocracy were no better - Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire here depicted gambling for her usual huge sums, by cartoonist Rowlandson, a figure as famous in those days, as we remember Hogarth to be now.

The wider portrayal of the London mis-en-scene, together with an incident like this, with its clear boundaries between the good matron at home suffering for the sake of goodness and Christian prudence, contrasted with the obviously ruinous world of gaming, allows several critics to make rather bald assumptions about Fielding’s intentions.  These critics maintain that he wished us to see public affairs through the medium of private issues.  As Benedict puts it: “Fielding is equating domestic and political arrangements”[11].  Although it is true that the novel lays heavy emphasis on the goodness of Amelia at home versus the rapaciousness of social relations away from the sanctity of hearth, other critics have found the theme of corrupt elites and microcosmic examination of private affairs leading to conclusions on public affairs a trifle trite and incomplete.  Zomchick for example, comments: “corruption in the public sphere and honest affection in the private are necessary representational antitheses for the more accurate representation of Amelia as a character[12].  They are not there simply to draw a binary moral opposite within the didactic scheme of the novel. 

Many critics have deplored the failure of this scheme in the novel.  Castle, for example, views the first half of Amelia as having no plot, because its incessant didactics get in the way.  Indeed, Castle sees the novel as akin to Booth’s desultory “perambulations around the prison yard, from one sense of iniquity to another” (p.199).  Michael Irwin views this in a kindlier way, feeling that “since the story has so heavy a didactic load to carry, it is not surprising the structure should be subject to strain”.  Castle also comments that the basic “embedded issue” of Booth’s financial situation is often lost in the “welter” of small incidents of hypocrisy and setback.[13].

I incline more towards Zomchick’s assessment, as I think the containing of Amelia within the home sphere causes her to be both tellingly circumscribed and almost iconic, as a presentation of the plight of ‘respectable’ females in the mid eighteenth century (remember, Amelia was published in 1751).  The path Amelia has chosen, that of wife – adoring wife – has limited her power as an individual, both economically and emotionally.  However, as Roxana’s fragmented identity showed us in her sections, perhaps clinging to a small and constricting role is safer for a woman of Amelia’s or Roxana’s middle class background at that time.  Certainly, the financial troubles caused by her husband’s ineptitude forces all kinds of strain on Amelia’s sense of her public self, and forces her several times from the private to the public sphere – to her detriment.

George Cruikshank's depiction of street fighting in London, as late as 1823, shows just one of the many dangers of London.  Many caused by drinking and gambling debts - both of thos eoften linked to extreme poverty. Note the fighters in this pic are not poor; records of the time show minor street fights as incredibly common, even in the better parts of town.  This carried on from the early seventeenth well into the late 18th century.

Fielding makes clear her danger in the world outside, through a number of symbolic incidents.  A ready example would be Amelia fainting when she visits Booth for the first time in the public sphere of the prison (p.153), as a figurative way of showing she cannot survive outside the private sphere.  (This is a likely assumption, as Fielding is fond of symbols, such as the extended use of Sophia’s muff as a symbol for her virtue in Tom Jones.)  Conway eloquently describes Fielding’s characterization of Amelia as a “miniature portrait” – and elaborates on this image, discussing Amelia’s literal forays into the public domain, as echoed by the fact of her actual miniature, stolen by Sergeant Atkinson, being carried out into the public domain.  What happens to a woman – or to the idea of a virtuous woman – outside, without male protection, is very different from her reception when perceived to be with a man.  Conway notes that

The difficulty of establishing an icon of virtue whose meaning cannot be misunderstood emerges in Fielding’s attempt to render Amelia as an active heroine in a place [the public sphere] where no one will recognise her moral value[14].

She goes on to explain what happens to Amelia in public: “[her] meaning is necessarily altered when she enters the corrupt public domain, and neither her appearance nor her actions can rectify that slippage.”  Thus it would follow that Amelia’s place is safely within the home, where she excels, exercising her “talents of cookery, of which she was a great mistress, from the highest to the lowest” (p.496); whereas in public she is twice mistaken for a prostitute (pp.401-2, 405-6).  Amelia’s rejection of the values of the public sphere, as she unknowingly tries to comfort her husband, explain her success in the private.  She says:

Great fortunes are not necessary to happiness.  For my own part, I can level my mind with any state; and for those poor little things, whatever condition of life we breed them to, that will be sufficient to maintain them in. […]  For it is not from nature, but from education and habit, that our wants are chiefly derived. […]  Industry will always provide us with a meal; and I will take care, that neatness and cheerfulness shall make it a pleasant one.  (p.157)

She manages, “without demanding autonomy” for herself, to provide by her labour what her husband apparently cannot[15].  Due to her supervision of an adequate (if undeniably thrifty) household order, Amelia produces an alternative to the extravagant economies of the public sphere.  In this way, she usurps Booth’s role as breadwinner, in the sense that she is the more efficient manager of the two.  Despite the restriction of her circumstances, as physically the Booths cannot go too far from the court, and must hide indoors lest they are seized by creditors, for a good portion of the novel (p.202); and economically, Amelia proves that her understanding of the rules that manage her sphere is superior to  Booth’s understanding of his.  Booth’s incapacity to manage money causes a bleeding of the public world into the private. Family life and privacy have their cost: “In Amelia, to lack wherewithal means exposing the private world to the demands of another’s self-interest”[16].

                                                ***

We’ll leave Amelia there for now, stuck between the need to go outside and the fact that it was fundamentally unsafe to do so, as a certain sort of woman, in those times. What can she do? How can she get her husband out of debtor’s prison? Her friends cannot or will not help. What will happen to her? How does Fielding resolve the tale?  The last part of Amelia’s tale next time…and then we will look at what happens to an heiress, a woman who has all her own money.  Surely THAT can’t go wrong?!

Think again…

---

[1] W. Austin Flanders, Structures of Experience: History, Society and Personal Life in the Eighteenth Century British Novel (Colombia, S. Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1984), p.292.

[2] James Thompson, ‘Patterns of Property and Possession in Fielding’s Fiction’, in Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol. III, No. 1, October 1990, pp.21-42 (p.39).

[3] Alison Conway, Private Interests: Women, Portraiture, and the Visual Culture of the English Novel, 1709-1791 (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p.143.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Thompson, p.155.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Barbara M. Benedict, Framing Feeling: Sentiment and Style in English Prose Fiction,1745-1800 (New York: AMS Press,1994), p.39.

[8] Morris Golden, Fielding’s Moral Psychology (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts press,1966), p.51.

[9] Golden, p.98.

[10] Muldrew notes this is a very real problem for the ‘middling sort’ of the age: “What mattered was not an internalized or autonomous self, but the public perception of the self in relation to a communicated set of both personal and household virtues,” -  Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Creditand Social Relations in Early Modern England (London: Macmillan Press, 1998), p.156.

[11] Benedict, p.35.

[12] John P.Zomchick, Family and the Law in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: The Public Conscience in the Private Sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1993), p.131.

[13] Both critics comments taken from Henry Fielding: The Tentative Realist (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1967), p.122. 

[14] Conway, p.144.

[15] Zomchick, p.142.

[16] Zomchick, p.137.

Thinking While Worried, Walking With Blisters In The Rain

I walked for 2 hours this morning. All the way into East Croydon and almost through it, halfway to what used to be Mayday Hospital.  It drizzled and persisted with being that strange slightly off white the sky can be when it chooses to. Supplying enough light to be almost over bright, but at the same time: dull.  I was struggling to think to myself – ‘gosh, what a lovely day!’, because that was what I wanted to think. It wasn’t too cold, which was a good thing.  I ended covered in sweat on my top half despite being dressed quite lightly.  I got blisters on my feet as I didn’t have the right socks on.  The right shoes, but not the right socks.  People never remind you about getting the right socks, it’s always about the shoes.

The odd thing was, I didn’t think I’d been paying massive attention as I walked, but on the bus on the way back (by the time I realized had walked off my stressy unable to sit still feeling and had now entered the exhausted feeling), I kept seeing shops or signs of fields I had passed, and realizing they were incredibly familiar, that I had memorized them exactly.  A large purpley mauve sign on a flower shop; a huge green (but dull, that light) playing field next to a primary school, just screened from the road by hedges.

I missed having Fluffhead with me. We have been having lots of walks lately. He was ill with one thing after another all December, and off school even before the holidays. Today was my first day without him for a long while. School started again.  There had been a huge loud and heartbreaking crying fit before school about not wanting to go.  Forced dressing after cajoling and bribery and reason failed to work.  Crying down the street. And then meeting two of his friends and instant cheering up.  But still.  There’s been other problems at school recently. I was worried they would recur. So I did that thing I do that I seem unable to not do: where I just can’t stop thinking about the person I am worried about.  As if, should I hold them in my head constantly, it will somehow enable them to be ok. It’s not magical thinking.  Party because I don’t think it works; partly because that’s not how magic works (holding worry in your head is almost the antithesis to doing good magic!). It’s just me being obsessive and overly responsible for another.  If Fluffhead was bigger, we’d say co-dependent.  But he’s still a child and still reliant on me in many ways, so we don’t say that. We just say I worry dramatically, overly; that I’m over protective.  I try not to show it too much in front of him, don’t want him growing up terrified just because I am (and fear is a plague, it spreads easier than a cold).

But I missed him.  I missed watching his small feet in their cute Bobox Velcro do-up shoes pacing beside me. I missed his warm hand with the cold fingers in mine.  His red Thomas jacket, hood up against the wind.  I missed him telling me about the bus schedules and the trains coming, and wanting to go to Purley, or East Croydon.  In his funny high voice, with his novel word order he does sometimes (“where him will go?”).  Even though he seemed quite fine when he eventually got to school, I had that incredibly twitchy utterly stressed out feeling.  I wanted to come home and do a thousand things with my sudden time, but knew I’d never be able to settle; that the best thing to do was to let my body walk it off.

Due to an earlier conversation with Hystery, I was half in mind to trek until I found a Catholic Church and then go and find a Virgin Mary and look at her for a bit, quietly.  But I didn’t see one Catholic Church the whole walk.  Which was weird, I seem to remember them being everywhere.  Instead, I DID see 4 protestant churches, 2 united/free churches and 2 pentecostal churches above shops, the way those often are – any space available.  I saw signs inviting me to creches, prayer meetings, bible study classes, the Alpha Course.  I wandered on, a bit bemused by the sudden lack of Virgin Mary’s.

For the first ever time, I went into the Whitgift Centre and didn’t get lost looking for the shop I was going to.  (I had decided that since I had come this far, I might as well be useful before I went back, go to Holland and Barrett and get sausages for Stanley. So I did.  Unable to not go past the Toy Barnhaus next door without going in, and worriedly buy some wooden track for Fluffhead with money I really couldn’t spare. Who am I cheering up with the track? Him, or me? I don’t want it.  But I want to have something nice to give him in the future as a reward for something. Always a good idea to keep rewards around the place; you never know when you might need a 5 year old to do something big – and you can’t run a barter economy entirely on chocolate.  And I was still, of course, thinking about him.)

While I was in there, there was a strangely emotive mainstream slightly country but not song on. Feeling emotional, it caught me immediately and I started listening.  Though it was a whole other world: someone had left someone, someone was sad, someone wanted them to come back and was being very mournful and very lyrical about it.  See how it was sort of country? I asked who it was at the desk. Taylor Swift. When I got home, I looked her up. She has nice hair. I might download the song and sit here pensively enjoying the mood whilst not sharing the precise problem.  The song had some nice key changes.  She can’t even be 30 yet.  Oww. 

When I got back, Mum was still here. Which is a bit difficult, as when I am this stressed, company tends to stress me further.  And mum is great, but she is also a very stressed person (only she’s one of those weirdly interesting stressed people who think they aren’t stressed and keep telling you how happy they are despite a vast amount of negative things and negative interpretations and slants on things coming up in conversation from them).  So I tried to be very polite and minimal and hid in my room.  Typing this.  When all I want is to go in the living room, sit under a blanket and watch Deep Space 9 (come to me, Odo) till it’s time to go and get Fluffhead, and see if he had an ok day, or whether the troubles have started again.  I wish it wasn’t so hard to be with people. But it just is. Not all people, granted. And not all the time. But enough of them; enough of the time.

So today is not mine.  But I suppose, being me, that is to be expected.  This day is another of those endless days of change, between, neither one thing nor another. It’s very clever of Hekate to be the goddess of between things and changes, because it makes her the goddess of just about everything, when you think about it.  All things are either in a state of change or they are about to be, or they just were.  Or they really should be. If I was a goddess, and I had to pick an area of expertise, I could probably not have done better than to pick that.  Plus the whole illuminating darkness thing. Who isn’t in the dark? Some of us are just more aware of it in a tortured or otherwise kind of way. Clever Hekate.

It’s raining again.  My hair has just dried from this morning, and my feet are still throbbing.  I dream of my sofa and my blanket and the TV.  And, to an extent, of not being quite as me as I am. Possibly I shall be someone else for a while?!  I think I might go and make some cookies. It’s something to do and I have flour and sugar and chocolate I can cut up.  How about dark chocolate ginger cookies? That sounds wintery.  Sensual things hold the attention, usually, for me.  The wind does that low hum in the background.  

 Stanley wants snow. I wonder if it will come?