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sophia_sol) wrote2012-03-09 03:06 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2012-03-09 03:06 pm
The Unknown Ajax, by Georgette Heyer
Latest book read! The Unknown Ajax, by Georgette Heyer!
It is a book I have mixed feelings about. To begin! I ADORE Hugo, the male half of the main romance. He is quite possibly my favourite Heyer hero ever? I cannot even begin to describe him, except to say that he is the OBJECTIVE AWESOMEST. Clearly!
Posssssibly it's just my love for Secretly Extremely Capable And Intelligent People Who Play Down How Extremely Capable And Intelligent They Are, and also my love of a person with a good sense of humour. He's just so -- *flails*
Anthea, the female half of the main romance, is awesome too, and excellent at calling Hugo on his ridiculousness. He can't gammon her!
But some of the other things about the book...yeah.
1. It is a book where we are supposed to be HAPPY with the conclusion where nobility can get away with whatever they want without consequences. Richmond is a DARRACOTT. It doesn't matter if he was involved in smuggling! He is a DARRACOTT and it is RIGHT AND GOOD to protect him from the arm of the law! Riiiiight.
2. Relatedly, it is a book where in the (admittedly awesome in other ways) ending, we are supposed to cheer the way the nobility pull the wool over the eyes of the ENTIRELY CORRECT police-type people? I felt really bad for Ottershaw! He was UPHOLDING THE LAW and he was RIGHT about Richmond being tangled up in unsavoury business, and then the Darracotts all make a COMPLETE FOOL of him. It is not cool!
3. And then there's the young woman Claud is bedding, and the language with which she is talked about -- slut-shaming, pure and simple. And containing an authorial assumption that a woman who engages in the behaviour she does could not possibly be a nice/good/sensible/reasonable human being. *SIGH*
And the first two points, which are about the awful classism that pervades Heyer's world (...and, admittedly, the real world at the time), make me all the more depressed since a large part of the point of the book is to not make assumptions about people because of their background! Hugo is a weaver's son from Yorkshire and everyone makes assumptions about him because of that, and then they are astonished to discover how AWESOME he actually is! But this excellent point is undermined by EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE BOOK. WHYYYYYY.
Georgette Heyer, yo. She writes really well, and her books are a lot of fun, but she's not always the most enlightened of souls. It's kind of frustrating. (eg, see also: the really awful Jewish stereotypes in the otherwise brilliant The Grand Sophy. I LOVE THE GRAND SOPHY SO MUCH. BUT THAT SCENE. D: )
It is a book I have mixed feelings about. To begin! I ADORE Hugo, the male half of the main romance. He is quite possibly my favourite Heyer hero ever? I cannot even begin to describe him, except to say that he is the OBJECTIVE AWESOMEST. Clearly!
Posssssibly it's just my love for Secretly Extremely Capable And Intelligent People Who Play Down How Extremely Capable And Intelligent They Are, and also my love of a person with a good sense of humour. He's just so -- *flails*
Anthea, the female half of the main romance, is awesome too, and excellent at calling Hugo on his ridiculousness. He can't gammon her!
But some of the other things about the book...yeah.
1. It is a book where we are supposed to be HAPPY with the conclusion where nobility can get away with whatever they want without consequences. Richmond is a DARRACOTT. It doesn't matter if he was involved in smuggling! He is a DARRACOTT and it is RIGHT AND GOOD to protect him from the arm of the law! Riiiiight.
2. Relatedly, it is a book where in the (admittedly awesome in other ways) ending, we are supposed to cheer the way the nobility pull the wool over the eyes of the ENTIRELY CORRECT police-type people? I felt really bad for Ottershaw! He was UPHOLDING THE LAW and he was RIGHT about Richmond being tangled up in unsavoury business, and then the Darracotts all make a COMPLETE FOOL of him. It is not cool!
3. And then there's the young woman Claud is bedding, and the language with which she is talked about -- slut-shaming, pure and simple. And containing an authorial assumption that a woman who engages in the behaviour she does could not possibly be a nice/good/sensible/reasonable human being. *SIGH*
And the first two points, which are about the awful classism that pervades Heyer's world (...and, admittedly, the real world at the time), make me all the more depressed since a large part of the point of the book is to not make assumptions about people because of their background! Hugo is a weaver's son from Yorkshire and everyone makes assumptions about him because of that, and then they are astonished to discover how AWESOME he actually is! But this excellent point is undermined by EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE BOOK. WHYYYYYY.
Georgette Heyer, yo. She writes really well, and her books are a lot of fun, but she's not always the most enlightened of souls. It's kind of frustrating. (eg, see also: the really awful Jewish stereotypes in the otherwise brilliant The Grand Sophy. I LOVE THE GRAND SOPHY SO MUCH. BUT THAT SCENE. D: )
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I think it causes problems for me as a reader because I find myself viewing the characters' shallowness, classism and obsession with (to me) intensely petty problems like "BUT WHAT DO THE NEIGHBORS THINK???" as character defects that are either going to be corrected or, at least, come back to bite the characters in the end, as they might in a modern novel. Except they aren't, and they don't; the point of the novels, in general, isn't to point out the characters' pettiness for thinking that their problems are the most important things in the world, but to join them in that worldview.
This probably makes it sound like I hate Heyer's books - but I don't! I really like her characters, and I think she writes well; it's just ... I really enjoyed the first one I read, and then found myself having diminishing amounts of enjoyment with every subsequent book, since I found the characters' society so stultifying, repressive and unenjoyable, and kept finding myself celebrating every small way in which they managed to break out of it, and getting frustrated with most of them for not wanting to.
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But as long as I read enough other things in between Heyer books, I do find them extremely enjoyable! (though some are certainly less wonderful than others.) It's dangerous, though, because reading one puts me in the mood to read more IMMEDIATELY, and I just know that's not actually a good idea...
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*nod nod* Yeah - thinking about it, it's not that it isn't an interesting time period, it's that it's typically portrayed in a glittery, fancy-dresses-and-dances way that I don't find interesting at all. I can't really get into the fantasy because I'm too conscious of the dirt that's being swept under the sofa, so to speak, and I keep thinking that all the interesting stories are actually happening around the edges of what's in the books. (This is probably why The Foundling is my favorite Heyer, because it is one of those interesting around-the-edges stories.)
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The Foundling is indeed a great one! Mm, I should reread it. Which other ones do you remember having interesting around-the-edges stories? It's been a long time since I've read most of them.
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Plus I think it's a bit dangerous, actually, to let books of an earlier time have a free pass on things like this -- because NOT EVERYBODY of such eras did actually hold such viewpoints! There was certainly stuff being written during Heyer's time that did not have Heyer's classism or racism. So to say Heyer is only offensive because of her time does a disservice to authors of her time who WERE more enlightened.
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