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So I love regency romances. Georgette Heyer is generally agreed to have been the creator of the genre, and is loved by most regency fans. And I can't stand her. I found myself ranting about why on twitter, but didn't have enough space to rant properly, so here we are.
I have only read a few Heyer romances, spaced out by the several years it took for me to forget how much I'd hated the last one before trying again. So I can't give an entirely informed opinion on her. Many people I highly respect adore her books, and that's fine. This is just why I don't like her. Note that the title isn't "why Georgette Heyer is objectively awful". I just get annoyed when she's presented as the Ultimate Regency Author All Regency Fans Love and All Regency Authors Should Emulate.
The two things I dislike about Georgette Heyer are (a) Her books in and of themselves (b) Some of the effects her books have had. I have no strong opinion on her as a person, she seems to have been kind of bigoted but also undeniably talented and hardworking.
First, the books themselves.
I think I have to start by saying what I like about the regency romances I do enjoy. So: I like the general romantic arc where two people meet, connect, solve their problems, and find happiness together. Being sex averse, I like a setting that means people have good reasons to be a bit weird about sex, though I'm fine with romantic sex scenes in that context. And I enjoy watching marginalised characters overcome adversity: at the very least a woman gaining agency, but preferably stories which also show working class/POC/Queer etc characters triumphing over the bigotries of the 19th century. For me the status quo is the villain, and the happy ending is triumphing over it.(*)
I've also read a moderate number of regency-ish novelists like Jane Austen (theoretically the inspiration for Georgette Heyer), and so while I don't have a deep understanding of the period do have some feel for it, and enjoy books which capture that feeling.
As I said I can't speak with a lot of authority, but every book of Heyer's I've tried has actively wallowed in sexism and classism. For her the status quo is the appeal. The final straw for me was The Grand Sophy which was aggressively antisemitic. She was writing in the 1930s-1970s, so can be forgiven for some old fashionedness, but was not only bad for her time, she was worse than many writers of the regency, especially Jane Austen, for whom sexism etc was a background noise they were used to but not something they celebrated.
I am particularly thrown out of stories with a lot of gender essentialism since it sets off my dysphoroia, and Georgette Heyer has it in buckets. She's sympathetic to women, but sees them as inherently different to men. She has witty, determined, and complex female characters, but her male love interests are (from what I've seen) all utter douchebags, so I keep going "Why is this awesome protagonist dating that jerk??" Even her fans tend to say the romance isn't the point: they read her books for the fun banter and shenanigans. But if I don't enjoy a romance novel as a romance it's much less fun, and if I don't believe the happy ending is actually happy it's ruined.
They are very witty, easy to read, and cleverly put together, and some of the characters and plots are great. That's just not enough to make up for the rest for me.
The other thing her books have going for them is how much regency detail they contain. She was a meticulous researcher, and her books have lots of old fashioned slang and little facts about locations and fashions etc that most modern writers (of her era or mine) wouldn't naturally know. But her books don't feel right to me. The fashions and social structures are heavily focussed on and fetishised when period authors included them as unremarkable background. There's too much regency slang, mostly individually fine but feeling gratuitous in aggregate, especially when she uses obscure terms frequently eg she sued another author for stealing the phrase "to make a cake of oneself" because she knew it only existed outside her books in an obscure memoir noone else had read. Also there's this weird double vision of people in early 19th century reflecting the attiudes of an early 20th century author. This "wrong feeling" is very subjective, and wouldn't bother me anywhere near as much if it wasn't for the broader influences I go into below.
So. That's why I don't enjoy her books. If it were just the books themselves, I wouldn't mind so much. But the problem is that since she kickstarted the regency romance genre she is seen as the platonic ideal all regencies should aim for, and her books act as the template others work from, so there's no escaping her legacy. She definitely deserves respect for being so prolific and well loved! And I can't blame her for other people's laziness, any more than I can blame Tolkein for crappy Lord of the rings knockoff fantasy. But it's still really annoying.
For a start, people replicate her particular brand of sexism and classism. Obviously, 21st century writers are perfectly capable of adding these things in independently, especially when trying to match 19th century writers. But the prejudices of the early 20th century, as reflected in Heyer's books, are different from those of the regency or of now. And Heyer was more prejudiced than the average person of her era. It's like people writing "historical fantasy" that assume the past had the attitudes of 1950s Disney fairytale movies. Even if they're criticising those attitudes it's still massively anachronistic, and also annoying: "look at me subverting the terrible prejudices of the regency" they say, while actually subverting a specific, particularly regressive 20th century author in ways that are often still less progressive than Jane Austen. And often they're not subverting anything, they're just replicating Heyer's biases thoughtlessly.
Also, people copy her dialogue, which is 1930s American in it's bones with a veneer of regency-nerd pretension. I find it more irritating than the people who just don't bother at all and write like modern Americans.
Signs you're reading a Heyer knockoff:
Now the thing is, at this point the "regency" as defined in Heyer's books and those who've followed her is it's own fantasy setting, as different from reality as your average Robin Hood movie. Obviously some people kink on manly dudes in perfect cravats and that's fine, in and of itself. If these books were clearly labelled I would avoid them and not care, but they're not, so I grumble. Just like fans of pre-Tolkein-ish fantasy grumble about Tolkein knockoffs, fans of actual fairytales grumble about Disneyfied versions, and people who know anything about old fashioned language get annoyed at gratuitous and incorrect use of "thee". Wikipedia talks about a distinction between "regency romances" in the vein of Heyer and "Regency Historicals" which aren't as tightly bound by the established conventions, but in my expereince the differences aren't that neat.
Especially anoying to me is when people apply Heyer-esque conventions to adaptations or analysis of actual regency books, especially Jane Austen. The number of people who view Darcy as a Manly Regency Hero...
Of course the question remains: if Heyer hadn't started the regency romance genre, would it exist at all? And if it had developed independently, would it be any different? If I'm honest, I don't know the answer to either of those questions. I would rather the genre exist and be flawed than not, and a lot of the flaws were pretty inevitable. And I am 100% in favour of witty banter, thee dimensional strong willed female characters, and hijinks, so I can't say I hate everything in her legacy. But she still exemplifies a lot of what I find annoying in regency romance, so I'm going to resent her anyway.
(*)Examples: Courtney Milan, Rose Lerner, Anna Cowan. Some even have QUEER CHARACTERS! And POC! Not as villains!!!
I have only read a few Heyer romances, spaced out by the several years it took for me to forget how much I'd hated the last one before trying again. So I can't give an entirely informed opinion on her. Many people I highly respect adore her books, and that's fine. This is just why I don't like her. Note that the title isn't "why Georgette Heyer is objectively awful". I just get annoyed when she's presented as the Ultimate Regency Author All Regency Fans Love and All Regency Authors Should Emulate.
The two things I dislike about Georgette Heyer are (a) Her books in and of themselves (b) Some of the effects her books have had. I have no strong opinion on her as a person, she seems to have been kind of bigoted but also undeniably talented and hardworking.
First, the books themselves.
I think I have to start by saying what I like about the regency romances I do enjoy. So: I like the general romantic arc where two people meet, connect, solve their problems, and find happiness together. Being sex averse, I like a setting that means people have good reasons to be a bit weird about sex, though I'm fine with romantic sex scenes in that context. And I enjoy watching marginalised characters overcome adversity: at the very least a woman gaining agency, but preferably stories which also show working class/POC/Queer etc characters triumphing over the bigotries of the 19th century. For me the status quo is the villain, and the happy ending is triumphing over it.(*)
I've also read a moderate number of regency-ish novelists like Jane Austen (theoretically the inspiration for Georgette Heyer), and so while I don't have a deep understanding of the period do have some feel for it, and enjoy books which capture that feeling.
As I said I can't speak with a lot of authority, but every book of Heyer's I've tried has actively wallowed in sexism and classism. For her the status quo is the appeal. The final straw for me was The Grand Sophy which was aggressively antisemitic. She was writing in the 1930s-1970s, so can be forgiven for some old fashionedness, but was not only bad for her time, she was worse than many writers of the regency, especially Jane Austen, for whom sexism etc was a background noise they were used to but not something they celebrated.
I am particularly thrown out of stories with a lot of gender essentialism since it sets off my dysphoroia, and Georgette Heyer has it in buckets. She's sympathetic to women, but sees them as inherently different to men. She has witty, determined, and complex female characters, but her male love interests are (from what I've seen) all utter douchebags, so I keep going "Why is this awesome protagonist dating that jerk??" Even her fans tend to say the romance isn't the point: they read her books for the fun banter and shenanigans. But if I don't enjoy a romance novel as a romance it's much less fun, and if I don't believe the happy ending is actually happy it's ruined.
They are very witty, easy to read, and cleverly put together, and some of the characters and plots are great. That's just not enough to make up for the rest for me.
The other thing her books have going for them is how much regency detail they contain. She was a meticulous researcher, and her books have lots of old fashioned slang and little facts about locations and fashions etc that most modern writers (of her era or mine) wouldn't naturally know. But her books don't feel right to me. The fashions and social structures are heavily focussed on and fetishised when period authors included them as unremarkable background. There's too much regency slang, mostly individually fine but feeling gratuitous in aggregate, especially when she uses obscure terms frequently eg she sued another author for stealing the phrase "to make a cake of oneself" because she knew it only existed outside her books in an obscure memoir noone else had read. Also there's this weird double vision of people in early 19th century reflecting the attiudes of an early 20th century author. This "wrong feeling" is very subjective, and wouldn't bother me anywhere near as much if it wasn't for the broader influences I go into below.
So. That's why I don't enjoy her books. If it were just the books themselves, I wouldn't mind so much. But the problem is that since she kickstarted the regency romance genre she is seen as the platonic ideal all regencies should aim for, and her books act as the template others work from, so there's no escaping her legacy. She definitely deserves respect for being so prolific and well loved! And I can't blame her for other people's laziness, any more than I can blame Tolkein for crappy Lord of the rings knockoff fantasy. But it's still really annoying.
For a start, people replicate her particular brand of sexism and classism. Obviously, 21st century writers are perfectly capable of adding these things in independently, especially when trying to match 19th century writers. But the prejudices of the early 20th century, as reflected in Heyer's books, are different from those of the regency or of now. And Heyer was more prejudiced than the average person of her era. It's like people writing "historical fantasy" that assume the past had the attitudes of 1950s Disney fairytale movies. Even if they're criticising those attitudes it's still massively anachronistic, and also annoying: "look at me subverting the terrible prejudices of the regency" they say, while actually subverting a specific, particularly regressive 20th century author in ways that are often still less progressive than Jane Austen. And often they're not subverting anything, they're just replicating Heyer's biases thoughtlessly.
Also, people copy her dialogue, which is 1930s American in it's bones with a veneer of regency-nerd pretension. I find it more irritating than the people who just don't bother at all and write like modern Americans.
Signs you're reading a Heyer knockoff:
- attempts at "witty banter", generally not anywhere near as witty as actual Heyer.
- a Manly Domineering Hero who believes in Manliness, defined in a very 20th century way.
- a headstrong, willful heroine who ultimately wants to be dominated by the Manly hero, in a very 20th century heroine sort of way.
- the hero growling at the heroine for being so headstrong. He may call her a "minx".
- emphasis on the quintessential differences between men and women
- All sympathetic characters will be aristocracy or at least gentry, and the class will be presented as spending their days invested in fashion and gossip. Their clothes will be described in great detail, especially the hero's perfectly pressed and knotted cravats.
- Characters may be endearingly eccentric, but when push comes to shove will unquestioningly support the status quo.
- Terms like "chit", "diamond of the First Water", and "ton" will be said frequently, but basic conventions of regency dialogue (like not using contractions, or avoiding modern US slang) will be ignored.
- In short: Everyone will be concerned with the ton, and refer to the heroine as a diamond of the first water, except the hero, who will call her a headstrong chit.
Now the thing is, at this point the "regency" as defined in Heyer's books and those who've followed her is it's own fantasy setting, as different from reality as your average Robin Hood movie. Obviously some people kink on manly dudes in perfect cravats and that's fine, in and of itself. If these books were clearly labelled I would avoid them and not care, but they're not, so I grumble. Just like fans of pre-Tolkein-ish fantasy grumble about Tolkein knockoffs, fans of actual fairytales grumble about Disneyfied versions, and people who know anything about old fashioned language get annoyed at gratuitous and incorrect use of "thee". Wikipedia talks about a distinction between "regency romances" in the vein of Heyer and "Regency Historicals" which aren't as tightly bound by the established conventions, but in my expereince the differences aren't that neat.
Especially anoying to me is when people apply Heyer-esque conventions to adaptations or analysis of actual regency books, especially Jane Austen. The number of people who view Darcy as a Manly Regency Hero...
Of course the question remains: if Heyer hadn't started the regency romance genre, would it exist at all? And if it had developed independently, would it be any different? If I'm honest, I don't know the answer to either of those questions. I would rather the genre exist and be flawed than not, and a lot of the flaws were pretty inevitable. And I am 100% in favour of witty banter, thee dimensional strong willed female characters, and hijinks, so I can't say I hate everything in her legacy. But she still exemplifies a lot of what I find annoying in regency romance, so I'm going to resent her anyway.
(*)Examples: Courtney Milan, Rose Lerner, Anna Cowan. Some even have QUEER CHARACTERS! And POC! Not as villains!!!
Re: Why I don't like Georgette Heyer
Agh, it looks as if I duplicated some paragraphs in that post; how annoying.
Do let me know if you have come across anything online remotely critical of Heyer besides your post and that of the late MM Bennets. I seem to be able to find little but 'I'm on to my fifth read of 'Devil's Cub/The Talisman Ring/Venetia and am cooing with delight etc etc' [sighs]
I'd have loved to have heard of your Grandmother's experiences.
Re: Why I don't like Georgette Heyer
I have long had the intuition that Heyer was relying heavily on some original source for most of her depictions of the slang and pursuits of wild young men with more money thean sense in Regency London, the places they visit, etc. Here it is. You'll find all of it in here: 'Life in London' by Pierce Egan (published 1823: available from Amazon, but also free via Archieve.Org and other such websites for downloading old classics.
I do think she should have acknoweldged this as a source (and also Thacekery, from where, incidentlaly, she took the term 'chit'; Becky Sharp uses it, for one) instead of talking vaguely of Austen and Byron. Though a best seller in its time which led to lots of spin offs and plays, it had fallen into obscurity by the early twentieth century, and I suppose Heyer must have followed a lead and found it in the British Museum Library.
Also the main characters, 'Corinthian Tom' and Jerry Hawthorn (though not the stout and bespectacled Bbb Logic) seem to me to be the originals of most of those heroes. Tom is a leader of fashion, but no 'pink' or 'dandy', 'handy with his dives',stands on his honour, is given to using the 'ribbons' to 'drive to the inch' in Hyde Park of a Sunday morning, keeping an elegant mistress 'bark of frailty' and but with a general eye for the 'prime articles' at the Opera. He is equally at home in Almacks' as in a low 'boozing ken' where everyone is getting 'bosky' or 'leaky' or strolling among the 'cits' at Vauxhall Gardens, at Tattersall's, etc etc. His 'Coz' Jerry is less clever, but 'gamee till he's floored' and full of hgh jinks.
Of course, I'm not saying that Heyer was guilty of plaigarism, as you can't steal an idea. I supose she should be given due credit for cleverness in turnign these cartoon characters written for men into romantic figures in historical romance.
Still, somehting about how she lifted this stuff wholesale without acknoweldgement, grates.
I don't deserve credit for unearthing this myself - I got the lead from the late M M Bennetts website - but I do think that given Heyer's massive influence (which I regard as having had a very unfortunate effect on the fictional depiction of the Regency age), and the way that so many writers on the Regency era dare not use those terms for fear of being seen as having copied them straight from the pages of Heyer, it needs publicising.
On the class aspect of Heyer's writing and its influence, I wrote an article about that, which was published by Public Books. Here it is:
[[http://www.publicbooks.org/the-regency-romance-hoax]]