Characters Downstairs

As an historical novelist writing about early 19th century aristocrats, servants inevitably play a large role in my books. Particularly valets and ladies' maids, who were intimately involved in their employers' day-to-day lives. I confess I find this a difficult relationship to juggle, and I often worry that my own modern-day sensibilities make me not do it justice. I want to be true to the period. On the other hand, there’s a wide range of behaviors in any era and people are people with the same emotions and compassion. It’s hard to believe there wouldn’t, at least in some cases, be a strong emotional bond between two people who spent as much time together as valets and ladies’ maids and their employers.

When I blogged about this on my own website, the post elicited some fascinating comments. Some pointed out that servants, particularly valets and ladies' maids, can often have interesting insights into the heroes and heroines and their situation. They are close observers of their employers' lives yet at at the same time a little removed. Our own Pam Rosenthal does this brilliantly with the heroine's maid in The Slightest Provocation. The maid is quite uncompromising about her mistress's faults and the heroine, though a very sympathetic person, is often quite blind to her maid's feelings.

Other readers pointed out that in a number of novels the heroes and their valets have served together in the military, and that these shared adventures can create a bond that breaks down class boundaries, at least to a degree. One wonderful example of this type of relationship is Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter, who served together in Word War I. Neither is the sort to verbalize his feelings, but the respect and affection between them is evident. My mom and I had a hero and his valet (his former batman) with a similar sort of relationship (less formal actually) in one of our Anthea Malcolm Regencies, A Touch of Scandal.

Lord Grantham and Mr. Bates in Downton Abbey have also served together in the military. One of the things I love about Downton Abbey is the subtlety and insight with which it handles the relationships between the family and the staff. You see the intolerable nature of the whole system and yet the earl and countess are decent people who genuinely care about their staff. Which makes the fact that it’s an intolerable system all the more interesting.

One of my favorite hero/valet relationships is Lord Damerel and his valet Marston in Georgette Heyer's Venetia. Neither has been in the military, but they have had a lot of adventures together all over the Continent. Their friendship is understated but evident, and to the disapproval of some of the other servants, neither behaves precisely like a typical master and valet. I love the scene at the end where Marston congratulates Damerel and Venetia on their betrothal. Marston is one of my favorite valet characters.

In my own series, the heroine Suzanne and her maid Blanca have a distinctly atypical relationship. Both are playing roles, just as Suzanne is playing a role in her marriage and her position as a diplomatic wife. While Suzanne and Blanca conform to the roles of aristocratic lady and lady's maid in public (including to a large degree in front of Suzanne's husband) in private they are friends. Both women can be honest with each other in ways they can’t even with the men in their lives. Which is fun for me to play with as the author. Suzanne's discomfort with the whole idea of servants (while at the same time she acknowledges the luxuries of the world she lives in) reflects some of my own discomfort.

Suzanne's husband Malcolm and his valet Addison have a much more conventional relationship, yet they too have shared adventures and they too are very fond of each other, though neither would put those feelings into words. Their relationship, as a reader pointed out in the comments on my website, is based “more on action than words.” Both are hemmed in by the roles they were born to (even though Malcolm in many ways disagrees with those roles). And then there’s the fact that neither is good at putting his feelings for anyone into words – including the women they love.

What are some of your favorite valet, lady's maid, and other servant characters in books? Writers, what challenges have you faced in writing about the "downstairs" world?

Of Sense and Sensuality -- and the Original Sinful Fruit

I'm having much too much guilty, craftsy fun these days, as I put the finishing touches on my contribution to Brenda Novak's recently completed auction for diabetes research. It's Pam Rosenthal's Sense and Sensuality Gift Basket, a gleaning of the sweet and sexy scents and flavors evoked by certain moments in my romance novels.

Moments like...

~ when Joseph, hero of The Bookseller's Daughter, wakes up in Marie-Laure's bed under bunches of herbs hung from the eaves to dry:

He sniffed: rosemary and lavender. And something else, spicy as cinnamon, tart as lemon. A woman. The sheets of her bed smelled like her. (Which tiny excerpt is affixed -- with curly ribbon, naturellement -- to a little packet of chocolates, infused with rosemary and lavender, lemon and cinnamon.

~ Or when Phoebe, heroine of Almost a Gentleman, remembers what it was like the first time she kissed David, Earl of Linseley:

...sweet as toffee, heady as tobacco, dark as earth... (The curly ribbon this time wrapped around the neck of a bottle of delicious unisex fragrance. It's called "Butch." And it's sold -- most appropriately, if you know about the gender play in Almost a Gentleman -- in a great little San Francisco store called Nancy Boy.)

There are beeswax candles and herbal bath salts redolent of the bathtub scene in The Edge of Impropriety... exquisitely flavored French macaroons that call to memory the banquet in The Bookseller's Daughter...

...and more, including an apple-scented bath and shower gel I hadn't planned to get but which I had to have when I saw it.

Because apple is probably the sharpest, most pervasive flavor of The Slightest Provocation: from the raw one that eleven-year-old Mary steals from her family's sideboard to share with twelve-year-old Kit; to the cooked ones inside the French tarte tatin over which a grown-up Mary and Kit seduce each other in Calais; to the fermented ones used to make the apple brandy in the bottle a furious Mary pitches at Kit later that night.

It's the original sinful fruit, as I once mused in a post to the (now sadly defunct) blog for erotic historical romance writers, The Spiced Tea Party. "Perhaps it's the irrevocability of that first crunchy bite that gets everybody's attention," I wrote. "Once you've pierced the bright red or green skin with your teeth, there's no hiding what you've done, no going back."

Perhaps. Though I wasn't consciously thinking of any of that when I wrote The Slightest Provocation. Fortunately for everyone, I wasn't trying to write "symbolically," which (trust me) never works; I didn't have to try, because, as I wrote in the Spiced post, "the cultural resonance has been so obvious, so everpresent," the apple evoking temptation and transgression since Eve, since the apples of immortality of Norse and Celtic mythologies, since Sappho and since the Apple of Discord that started the Trojan War. Writing about Mary and Kit's temptations and transgressions, I needed only keep my inner ear open to the braided mixed messages of the culture.

Cultural messages are always mixed, as much a matter of passionate improvisation and profound misreading as direct transmission. From Frank Browning's deliciously informative book, Apples, I learned that in the original Hebrew Book of Genesis, "the nature of the tree of all knowledge was left vague," While in the Greek texts, the word for apple is melon and the Latin is malum.

After the fall of Rome, when the only repository of classical learning (save the Muslims on the Iberian peninsula, as hoyden Lynna often reminds us) were the great Irish and Benedictine monasteries. And according to Browning's sources, the Irish translators of the Bible were not only taken by the similarity of the words for apple and evil, but influenced by the ubiquitous pre-Christian Celtic mythologies of apples as the source of knowledge and revelation.

"In effect," Browning concludes," the placement of the apple in the Garden of Eden is one of the most clearly pagan acts in the development of Christianity."

Not to speak of the age-old association of power, knowledge and sexuality, that continues to weave itself though everything I write.

And how about you?

Readers: are there certain thematics and aromatics that enrich your enjoyment of romance and other fiction?

Writers: do you call upon these themes and sense impressions when you write?

Anyone (but probably especially writers): what kinds of fun, time-wasting things do you find to do with your hands when you should be doing something else?

And for anyone who didn't win my gift basket (and because this Sunday's my birthday), here are a few more offerings:

~ A link to the original Spiced Tea Party post, with its discussion of Sappho's extraordinary poem about reaching for apples.

~ A link to one of the most wonderful of the cultural messages I try to keep my inner ear open to: Yeats's "The Song of Wandering Aengus" with its own eternal gorgeous reaching through the Celtic twilight toward "the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun."

~ And (if you'll permit me) a link to my own web page -- because I've decided to offer another Sense and Sensuality Basket, this time as a contest prize.

Clothing Makes the Character

Pam had a great post last year about period clothing in the wonderful movie Milk and the fascinating television show Mad Men and in historical fiction. As I blogged about around the same time, one of the things I loved about Milk was its wonderfully vivid recreation, in settings and costumes, of San Francisco in the 70. At times I felt I was watching scenes from my childhood. I recently caught up on seasons one and two of Mad Men and then was riveted to season three (and am now eagerly awaiting season four). It's a fascinating, layered show, that brings to life New York in the early 1960s. It's the era when my parents were dating and first married. I have pictures of them in similar clothes to those in the show, my dad in suits and ties and gleaming white shirts, my mom in fitted dresses and suits that required a girdle and a structured bra. By the time I remember them, in the 70s, my dad's version of formal was a turtleneck under a sports coat, and my mom usually wore jeans to work or Diane von Furstenberg-type dresses that were fluid and much less structured. They look like different people from the couple in polished, formal clothes in those early 60s photographs.

Clothes are so much a part of defining a character. As Pam wrote, But as a writer I'm more interested in the clothes from the inside out. The way they make us feel when we wear them. Because our clothes may be our most consistent guides and goads to who we try to be in a world we didn’t create; our nakedness when we're alone an intermittent reminder that we aren't exactly those people; our nakedness with a lover a way of revealing this fact.

I love clothes, both as a writer and in real life.I think a lot about the clothes my characters wear and what that says about them. I love to pour over Regency fashion plates (I'm so thankful for Candice Hern's great website)and think about which clothes would fit which character. Sometimes I think about what sort of clothes my characters would wear if they were living in the present day, which can be an interesting way to get a new take on the characters.

I like to describe clothes as the characters interact with them. I think quite a bit is revealed about Charles and Mélanie in the first scene between them in Secrets of a Lady where Charles shrugs out of his evening coat sparing a silent curse for the close-fitting passions of the day while Mélanie unwinds the voluminous folds of her cashmere shawl, peels off her gloves, unwinds the ivory satin ribbons that crisscrossed her silk-stockinged ankles. Charles is impatient with clothing and doesn't think about it much. Mélanie removes each layer with care. I changed the color of Mélanie's dress in that scene several times, until I settled on champagne-colored silk, which immediately seemed right. Writing this post, I realized there's also a metaphorical element in that Charles and Mel are undressing in that first scene, removing the layers of clothing that define and contain their roles, in the way they will strip away layers of secrets in the course of the story. Recently a reader commented on the fact that their clothes disintegrate over the course of their adventures, as the façade of their perfect life also crumbles.

Later in the book, Mélanie thinks She felt naked and vulnerable, as though the layers of goffered linen and pin-tucked sarcenet and rushed velvet had been stripped from her body. Layers that constrained her but also defined who she was, who had been for seven years. I think I pay particular attention to clothes and accessories when I'm writing about Mélanie because she's always playing a role. One of the first lines I wrote about Jeremy Roth was where he thinks that Mel looked like a woman who always wore earrings, which I think says a lot about both Mélanie and Roth. In Beneath a Silent Moon, Mélanie wears a shirt and breeches for a couple of nighttime adventures. I hadn't planned that in advance, but when I got to the scene where she and Charles go to explore Dunmykel's secret passage, it occurred to me that Mel, who always dresses for the part, almost certainly would wear breeches on occasion and would probably have packed them on this trip, knowing the sort of adventures she and Charles might encounter at Dunmyel. That led to the sequence later where she's mistaken for a boy by the smugglers. The morning following the first scene, Mélanie thinks that She'd exchanged last night's shirt and breeches for a cambric morning dress, scalloped and threaded through with peach silk ribbon. The ensemble of a decorous wife. Like me, Mel understands that the right clothing defines a character.

Vienna Waltz, on which I'm currently finishing up revisions, takes place in the social whirl of the Congress of Vienna, so clothes are particularly important to all the characters. Whether it's masquerade ball costumes, elaborate court dress, Renaissance costumes the Carrousel (a recreation of a tournament) or simply what one wears to pay a morning call. In the midst of investigating a murder, Mélanie/Suzanne thinks She chose a Vitoria cloak of Pomona green sarcenet and a French bonnet of green velvet and white satin with Blanca’s advice (she was after all calling on one of the most fashionable women in Vienna though the purpose of the visit was not social). She also ruins an evening gown early on in the book, climbing over the roofs of Vienna to avoid pursuit. She tends to be hard on her clothes. I'd been in tears if I ruined so many beautiful dresses.

Writers, how do you approach clothing your characters? Readers, do you notice details about clothing in books? Any examples that particularly stand out?

Sex as a Literary Challenge

In her recent post Pam talked about writing a seduction scene. Which got me to thinking about writing love scenes. Or to be more accurate, sex scenes, as there are certainly love scenes that don’t involve sex, except as subtext. Sex scenes are perhaps a particular challenge for the historical novelist because, as Pam said, of the need to carry "with it the feeling of its historically understood world, quite as fully as any other scene in the novel." Which includes everything from the mores of the time to contraception or the lack of it to details of clothing as it is removed (with which last issue Kalen is a wonderful resource).

When I first began co-writing Regency romances with my mom, under the name Anthea Malcolm, my friends teased me that our books started very chaste and slowly got more explicit. In our first book, The Widow’s Gambit, the characters barely embraced. In the second, The Courting of Philippa, there were more detailed kisses. (There was also a description of birth control methods when the radical reformer hero took the Silver Fork novelist heroine to a meeting put on by another reformer). In the third, Frivolous Pretence, which focused on an estranged married couple, there was an actual sex scene, though it faded to black. Our fifth book, A Touch of Scandal, had ex-lovers who resumed an illicit affair. Sex scenes were part of the story. I told my mom she had to write them. Our sixth book, An Improper Proposal, was a marriage of convenience story. My mom said, “You have to write one of the sex scenes this time.” I wrote my first draft of the scene on a day when my mom was out shopping. And (this is true, though it sounds so funny now), I turned down the screen on my computer, so I couldn’t look at the words as I typed them. When my mom got home that night, I said, “Okay, I wrote the scene. Go look at it and tell me what you think. But I don’t want to be there when you read it.”

Oddly enough, after that first scene I stopped being embarrassed about writing sex scenes. I got to find them quite a fun challenge, especially trying to make each one true to those particular characters and that stage in their relationship (my favorite, I think, is the one in Shadows of the Heart, which takes place in the crypt of a church after the hero and heroine have narrowly escaped being killed). But when I wrote Secrets of a Lady, it was quite obvious to me that after the opening interrupted sex scene, Charles and Mélanie were too focused on finding the Carevalo Ring and getting their son back to stop to have sex. On top of the fact that their relationship is so strained that Charles finds it difficult even to look Mel in the face let alone make love to her. In fact one of the reasons I had Mélanie be attacked fairly early in the story was to break through some of the distance between them so that Charles at least touches her. If you examine the book, their physical contact slowly increases through their desperate adventures in search of the ring and Colin.

In Beneath a Silent Moon, (which thematically is in many ways all about sex), Charles and Mélanie do make love fairly early in the story. When I wrote the scene, I automatically faded to black without thinking about it. I did the same with a later sex scene in the book. Despite the fact that what happens between them in the second scene is important to their relationship. They both think about the scene later. Charles even apologizes to Mélanie for it being "without thought." But I rather like the fact that it's left up to the reader's imagination to fill in precisely what did happen, why it disturbs Charles, why Mel is much more matter-of-fact about it. I’ve come full circle, in a way, from from being embarrassed to write sex scenes to enjoying writing them to liking the mystery of not showing everything. Of hinting at exactly who does what and how and what it means to them but leaving a great deal up to the reader’s imagination.

When I blogged about this topic on my own website, our own Mary Blayney said "I love writing sex scenes, but I find the longer I spend creating them the less effective they are. I think it has everything to do with my understanding of the characters sexuality which I have to admit I do not always know as well as I know other aspects of their lives."

I had thought about it in quite those terms before, but I think understanding a character's sexuality may be one of the more elusive pieces of developing a character. One can know a person very well without knowing about the intimate aspects of their life. And the historical novelist has to think her or himself into the head of someone whose sexuality is influenced by the societal pressures of another era. Depending on the era about which one is writing, one sometimes has to tease attitudes toward sexuality out of subtext in letters and journals and literature of the era (while in other eras the historical record is much more frank and explicit).

In the discussion on my website, Cate commented on sex scenes that are less explicitly detailed. "One of my favourites is Laurie R King’s Russell, who writes throwaway lines like: 'And then my husband came in looking very handsome in his suit and one thing led to another and we never got around to talking about X until morning.' (Forgive my paraphrasing, I don’t have my books handy.) It so wonderfully suits the characters of Russell and Holmes.

"I find lines like that almost more entertaining than fully-described scenes. Just so delightfully understated — and I can imagine as much or as little as I wish to on my own. I tend to write scenes like this for my own characters, but not always."

I too love the way Laurie King handles handles these moments. The throwaway lines can either be witty as in the example Cate quoted or quite emotionally powerful (as in a later scene from The Moor where Russell is upset–understandably–after having just viewed a dead body and Holmes comes in (reappearing unexpectedly after an absence) and holds her (”Holmes was always very satisfactory at determining, with a minimum of clues, what in a given situation was the required course of action.”). I also love that if you read King closely you can often figure out the physicality of a scene (say how Russell and Holmes are lying in bed) without her overtly describing it.

How do you feel about sex scenes? What makes them work or not? How detailed do you like them to be? Writers, how do you approach writing sex scenes? Do you enjoy writing them or find them a chore? How much detail do you go into? Has your approach to them changed through the years or with the type of books you write?

Further Research Ramblings: Sense and Sensibility Asea

I think it's Shelley's 1822 death in a boating accident (not quite 30 years old! Why, oh why, didn't he let Lord Byron teach him to swim?) that lies at the root of my interest in Regency figures at the seaside. In any case, I began The Edge of Impropriety with a boating accident, and ended it with a happier trip by water.

But what did they wear during that period when sailing?

No point patterning anyone after Shelley: this radical, atheistical, vegetarian son of a baronet (who borrowed every penny he could against his expectations, with the aim of depleting the family holdings by the end of his life) wore threadbare shirts wherever he went and rarely bothered with neckware. The prototypical romantic poet would have been sadly out of place among the gentlemen of Regency romance -- and anyway, he seems to have mostly gone sailing with his guy friends and left Mary, Claire, Mrs. Leigh Hunt, and the rest of the ladies home with the babies.

In the prologue to Edge I mentioned that Lady Hedges is "dressed for boating," but I didn't go into detail. And the guilty secret (now it can be told!) is that while I was writing it I rather imagined she and her husband board their sailing vessel dressed like Edwardians -- white linen, white flannel, perhaps even "boater" hats.

Entirely off-period, but good enough to get me through writing a prologue and imagining a set of supporting characters.

But in my current work, whose 1813 hero and heroine also go sailing (in a scene that's central to the narrative) I'm not so comfortable finessing the question. (Side issues: why, in women's fiction, do we take such pleasure in having the clothes described to us? And why couldn't Jane Austen have given us a little more to go on?)

So I posted an inquiry on the Beaumonde discussion loop, and was guided (most clearly, of course, by our own Kalen) to various period fashion plates for ladies' seaside wear, and some terrific background information about water and watering places as well.

Somewhat shorter skirts, I thought -- hmm, good point. And note the half-boots. While as for the pantalettes in the print over to the right, I decided to pass on those, agreeing with an 1806 quote from The History of Underclothes that calls them "the ugliest things I ever saw" and swears that the writer "will never put them on again.")

Of course, a truth little acknowledged (by readers -- or writers) of Regency romance fiction is that the second decade of the 19th century wasn't the loveliest ladies' fashion decade, the gowns being increasingly plagued by those hellish ruffles. Looking at the fashion plates, it seemed to me that all the clothes in the fashion plates were chosen for a certain artistic, even romantic, beach effect -- aforementioned ruffles flutter in a gentle breeze as the lady gazed poetically out to sea.

And as I pondered this, I received another response to my query, a bracing email from the prolific and perennially award-winning Regency romance author Allison Lane (who's tutored me before in period matters and consoled me when it was too late to fix my errors -- and whose complete backlist is available at RegencyReads.com):

If your female character is going to sail, make sure she's wearing fabrics that are closely woven and sturdy, in styles that don't billow. Sailing ships, from the smallest to the largest, are loaded with ropes that love to grab anything loosely woven or flapping in the breeze. She will also need a pelisse, both to control the skirts of her dress and to keep her warm since it is nearly always cool to cold on the water. So the ruffles that started appearing on clothing in the latter Regency are awkward at best on board a yacht. She will also need sturdy shoes that won't skid easily.

Sometimes there can be no doubt that you're hearing the voice of reason, not to say wisdom. And after all, I thought, how seriously do "rational creatures" take the dictates of fashion? (The phrase, btw, referring to women, is of course Mary Wollstonecraft's, though I love that Mrs. Croft uses it in Persuasion, and Fiona Shaw speaks it gorgeously in the 1995 movie version...)

But as to "rational creatures" being rational about what they wear...?

Oh. Well.

Which was when I knew what's going to happen aboard my boat -- a war between the rational and the not-so, fashion-wise. A face-off between the wearers of pelisses, sturdy shoes, etc, and the true believers in fashion.

Except, for some reason, I didn't want to say "pelisse," a word that always sounds furry to me.

And so I began to wonder exactly how Jane Austen had described the scene in Emma where Jane Fairfax is almost knocked overboard, during a sailing party. Well, how Miss Bates describes it to Emma, anyway (in a novel where much is said but not everything must exactly be believed), in reference to Mr. Dixon, who, as Miss Bates has it,

...does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Jane at Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit -- (I can never think of it without trembling!) -- But ever since we had the history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!"

Of course, Miss Bates only has this from the very secretive Jane -- and Emma, as we know, will make of it what she will -- but one thing I'm sure we can believe is that what Jane was wearing is a... habit, quite, as Allison put it "to control the skirts of her dress and to keep her warm."

Except that I'd though that habits were only worn by riders and nuns.

At which point in the process I had to break a rule I've lately set so that I can achieve even a minimum daily word count -- which is wait until later to check the period accuracy of a word.

Nope, in this case we were going straight to my beloved OED (free online for all holders of San Francisco Public Library cards) to... to what, check Jane Austen's period accuracy? Well, to get more of a feel for how else the word was actually used at the time. By, as it turns out, Jane Austen again -- who has Catherine Moreland wearing a habit on the rainy day she's first driven to Northanger Abbey. While Walter Scott, in 1824, points out that riding-habit as a specific use of the word feels, at least to him, relatively recent, when he refers to "The elegant compromise betwixt male and female attire, which has now acquired, par excellence, the name of a habit."

Anyway, I love "habit" as something a Regency lady would wear to sail. Even, or especially, when her sensibility might favor the flutter of ruffles, "habit" sounds to my ear more like an imposition of sense and discipline than "pelisse" does.

Want to take bets as to whether some future editor will let me keep it?

Do you love using the OED as much as I do?

And what excellent research resources (textual or human) are you especially grateful for?

The Marriage of Two Minds

I seem to have a knack for missing RWA conferences where my friends win Rita Awards. I wasn't at either of the conferences where my friend Penelope Williamson won twice in the 90s. In those pre-internet days, I didn't know she'd won until she got back from the conference and telephoned me. Last Saturday, thanks to Twitter, I knew Pam had won the Rita for Best Historical Romance for her wonderful The Edge of Impropriety at almost the same moment it was announced from the stage.

One of the things I love about Pam’s writing is that her characters have, in Regency terms, “a keen understanding”–they’re brainy people who enjoy talking about ideas (The Edge of Impropriety’s hero and heroine are a classical scholar and a Silver Fork novelist respectively). This past week, while a lot of my writer friends were at RWA, a post by Jean on the All About Romance blog on “The Beautiful Minds of Heroes” got me thinking more about brainy characters.

The first brilliant hero Jean mentions falling in love with is Sherlock Holmes. I confess I discovered Sherlock Holmes first through dramatizations (notably the fabulous Jeremy Brett series). I didn’t actually read the Arthur Conan Doyle stories until I discovered Laurie King’s Russell & Holmes books. Because much as I love brainy characters on their own, I particularly love intellectual and romantic partnerships between two exceptionally brilliant people. There’s the fun of watching two fine minds click over solving a problem. I love the scenes of Russell and Holmes talking through a case. The same is true of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane--I’m particularly fond of a scene in Have His Carcase where they break a code together. Mulder and Scully’s debates about science and paranormal phenomenon were one of the delights of The X-Files.

There's the delight of clever wordplay, such as Lymond and Philippa's improvised "Languish Lock'd in L" play in The Ringed Castle. And the tension of emotion simmering beneath a coolly intellectual façade, which comes out so beautifully in the scene following the play in The Ringed Castle where Lymond realizes he's in love. Or, as Russell's friend Veronica says in A Monstrous Regiment of Women (speaking, indirectly, about Holmes, or rather someone she's comparing to Holmes) "A challenge, I suppose, to break through that ascetic shell and set loose the passion beneath. Because one could feel the passion. My God, you couldn't miss it, in his eyes and his mouth, but it was under control."

There’s also the inevitable clash of two people who love to think. As Miss de Vine says to Harriet in Gaudy Night, “A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. You can hurt one another so dreadfully.” That’s certainly true of Peter and Harriet and also of Holmes and Russell and Mulder and Scully. In all three cases, a determination to battle a problem through intellectually and a refusal to open up emotionally can leave the other partner feeling shut out. Peter in Busman’s Honeymoon, Holmes in The Language of Bees, Scully battling her cancer, Mulder coping with family revelations.

I love writing about brainy characters. The intellectual debates, the fun with words, the angst of clashing minds. In theory, at least, Mélanie, Charles, and Raoul in my books are all brilliant. Of course, that means the author has to keep up with them, which is sometimes a challenge . It took me a long time (and a consultation with a friend who was a math major) to devise the code Charles and Mel break in Secrets of a Lady (much simpler than the one Have His Carcase).

Do you like reading about brainy characters? Do you like them paired with a partner of equal brilliance? Any interesting examples to suggest? Writers, do you like writing about brainy characters? What are the challenges?

Infidelity - the dark side of romance?

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It’s at the heart of the conflict in Casablanca, Tristan & Isolde, The English Patient, Anna Karenina, Notorious, Brief Encounter, The Painted Veil, and countless classic love stories. And yet for many readers, it’s a deal-breaker, particularly when it comes to genre romance.

As a reader and a writer, I don’t dislike infidelity or adultery plots per say. Infidelity is an uncomfortable subject but uncomfortable subjects can make for good drama. It can definitely be a challenge to give a story a happy ending after someone’s been unfaithful. Of all of the stories I mentioned at the start of the post, only Notorious has a conventional happily-ever-after ending. The others have unhappy or bittersweet endings. If the marriage survives the infidelity, you need to believe that the couple can get past it, that it won’t happen again, that the betrayed partner won’t constantly blame the unfaithful partner (which is pretty mucht he conversation Steve and Miranda have with their marriage counselor in the recent Sex & the City movie). If the unfaithful lovers end up together, one can find oneself sympathizing with the betrayed spouse. Notorious pulls it off by making the spouse a villain, albeit a complex one who genuinely loves his wife. Although when I posted about this topic on my own website recently, Lesley pointed out that "In classic fiction, it seems that adultery by a woman is punishable by death (Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary), but from the C20th this is less often the case (Lady Chatterley for instance)." but from the C20th this is less often the case (Lady Chatterley for instance)."

Of course the terms of the marriage and the expectations go into it affect the level of betrayal. In my historical romance, Rightfully His, there’s a subplot between the heroine’s sister and her husband who have a society marriage in which both have lovers and they get along quite amiably. However, in the course of the book, they realize that they love each other and the terms of their marriage change.

Lesley brought up the Poldark novels (the tv series based on them), in the course of which both Ross and Demelza are unfaithful and yet ultimately they get past the betrayals. "In the Poldark novels, the repercussions of both Ross and Demelza’s infidelities echo for many years, continuing to put strain on what is otherwise a strong and loving marriage. With a long series covering many years, there is plenty of scope for a writer to work through the issues raised." Stephanie added, "While I don’t think two wrongs make a right, I couldn’t help feeling a glimmer of satisfaction that Ross finally got to experience a bit of what his wife had endured for years, during his obsession with Elizabeth." I have to say, I felt much the same.

Both the hero and heroine in Pam's wonderful The Slightest Provocation have been unfaithful when the story begins with them married but estranged. It gives them a lot of past baggage to work through but it also means they start with the scales, in a sense, balanced.

Lesley also mentioned Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolò series: "I know many readers couldn’t forgive Gelis in the House of Niccolo books, and felt that the reasons given for her behaviour weren’t sufficient to justify her actions." Some of the most spirited Dunnett discussions I've been involved in concern readers differing views of Gelis. Personally, I had issues with the House of Niccolò in the end (while at the start, I liked it better than the Lymond Chronicles) but not because of Gelis. I could understand why she did what she did, and I could believe she and Nicholas got past it. (Though ultimately, when everyone’s motivations were revealed, it all got a bit murky.)

I write about betrayal a lot, so when I write about infidelity, I like to explore how it compares and contrasts to other types of betrayal. In Secrets of a Lady Mélanie has undeniably betrayed Charles in a number of ways, but I deliberately left it ambiguous as to whether or not she committed adultery. I actually was explicit about it in an earlier draft of the book, then decided I wasn’t sure myself so I left it open to question. I figured out the answer for myself a bit later, and at some point, when appropriate, I’ll work it into a subsequent book.

They do confront the issue of infidelity and their different expectations going into marriage, in a scene in the as yet unpublished The Mask of Night:

You didn’t intend to be faithful when you married me.”

She regarded him with that scouring honesty with which she confronted uncomfortable questions. “No, I didn’t. But then I’d never hold my own behavior up as a model of anything.” She smoothed a crease from her skirt. “Did you? Intend to be faithful?”

“Yes, as it happens. But it was hardly as though I had a very active career to abandon.”

“And you take your promises seriously.” In the warm wash of candlelight, Mélanie’s gaze had the bruised look he remembered from last night. “Fidelity hasn’t been a word in my vocabulary for a long time. It might have been once. When I was a girl playing Juliet in my father’s theatre company. Before—”

“Everything else.” Before she’d been raped by a gang of British soldiers, seen her father and sister killed, been left penniless and homeless.

“Being raped was the least of it,” she said, in the low, rough voice he’d learned to recognize from moments when she dredged up long-buried truths. “I could have got past that, I think. It was losing everyone I cared about, fighting for survival. I had to claw my way back to a sense of purpose. When I did, so much I’d used to value didn’t make sense anymore.”

“There’s more than one kind of fidelity, Mel. You’ve been remarkably faithful to a number of things.”

Her gaze fastened on his face. “Charles, you know that I—“

He looked into the scarred, beautiful eyes from which he’d never been able to hide things. He found he didn’t want a declaration based on duty or guilt. “I know you,” he said.

How do you feel about infidelity in books? Is it a deal-breaker? If not, what you think makes it work in some stories? Does it make a difference whether it’s the hero or the heroine who is unfaithful? What the terms of the marriage are? Whether it’s a story about a couple overcoming one or both partners’ infidelity or the story of a pair of unfaithful lovers? Oh, and if you've read Secrets, do you think Mélanie was unfaithful to Charles after they married? Why or why not?

Marriage in Trouble Plots

I recently returned to reading Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil, which I had started last summer and then put aside (I sometimes hit moments when I’m writing when I just can’t read anything). I was drawn back immediately by the richness of the writing and the sharp emotional details. I was also struck by comparing and contrasting the book with the recent film, which I also liked. The major events are the same, but the emotional arc is quite different (though Kitty Fane does grow and change in both). It’s rather as though someone were to film Secrets of a Lady with the same basic plot but have the story end with Charles and Mel realizing they’d never really known or loved each other but staying together for practicality.

The other the thing The Painted Veil got me to thinking about is one of my favorite literary tropes–marriage in trouble plots. They’ve always fascinated me, long before I started writing about the marital angst of Charles and Mélanie Fraser. That’s why, when I cite influences and inspirations for the Charles & Mélanie series, in addition to the more obvious ones like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Scaramouche, Dorothy Dunnett, and Dorothy Sayers, I mention Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson books.

Reading The Painted Veil, I pondered the fascination of this plotline. The intimacy of marriage ups the stakes in the conflict between two people. Percy’s devastation at Marguerite’s seeming lack of trustworthiness is all the greater because she has just become his wife. Betrayal, I think, is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. How much worse is it when that betrayal comes from a spouse? Years of living together also gives characters a knowledge of each other that recent lovers wouldn’t have. In The Real Thing, the hero has a wonderful speech about knowing one’s spouse, in a way that goes far beyond carnal. That knowledge can be used for good or ill. George and Martha know just how to push each other’s buttons. So, for that matter, do Maggie and Brick.

Particularly in an historical setting, marriage makes it difficult for two people to walk away from each other, no matter how poisoned their relationship has grown. When I blogged about this topic on my own website, JMM commented that I admit, I like marriage in trouble plots more in historical settings. The stakes are higher because divorce was harder or impossible. There’s a fascinating tension in two people pretending to be a couple to the outside world, while being estranged when they’re alone. Think of Percy and Marguerite keeping up appearances to the beau monde yet unable to communicate in private, Maggie and Brick maintaining the charade of their marriage (or at least Maggie trying to) in front of his family. Kitty and Walter Fane sharing a bungalow in a cholera-infested town, seen by most as a devoted couple who’ve risked infection so as not to be separated.

On my website, Stephanie commented that I tend to think of “marriage in trouble” plots as falling into two categories:

1) The marriage begins in unpropitious circumstances–a forced alliance, a shotgun wedding–and the couple has to try to make it work.
2) The marriage starts out solid, even loving, and then has to weather a serious crisis.

Kitty and Walter in The Painted Veil fit the first example. The know each other very little (hence much of the tragedy). Ross and Demelza's relationship, in Winston Graham's wonderful Poldark series, begins as the first example and then morphs into the second as they fall in love but also face various crises in their marriage. Dorothy Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon shows the very much in love Peter and Harriet weathering the first crisis in their marriage as they adjust to being a couple. (As Mélanie thinks in Beneath a Silent Moon, "Marriage was a shocking invasion of privacy.")

Lesley brought up a third variation and cited our own Pam: Another variation on the theme is Pam Rosenthal’s ‘The Slightest Provocation’, where they married young, there was bad behaviour on both sides, and a long separation, but with maturity they realise that what draws them together is more important than past mistakes.

RfP added What I love about TSP is exactly what you mentioned–the way Kit and Mary know how to push each other’s buttons. Combined with the flashbacks, Rosenthal convinces me the button-pushing is a sign of intimacy and of something worth salvaging, not a sign of toxicity.

One of the many things I love about The Slightest Provocation is the way the flashbacks are interwoven, so the reader learns about Kit and Mary’s marriage as they reflect back on it. A rich portrait of their marriage emerges.

Taryn wrote that she likes marriage in trouble books because there are so many secrets, hidden hurts, and long history to unwrap and sort through. With any married couple, there’s a past to explore–how they came to be married and why, what they both expected from the marriage, how that expectation compares to the current reality. And history is something I love to explore as a writer, whether it’s historical events or the personal history shared by two people.

Do you like marriage in trouble stories? Why or why not? Any favorite examples to suggest? What do you think makes them work? Writers, what are the particular challenges of writing this type of story? If you've written this type of book, do you find yourself spending more time than usual making notes on the characters' history?

Love in Subtext

One of the things I love about the blogosphere is the way a post and the attendant discussion can inspire another post and create a rich conversation among readers and writers. My post about The Privileged Class Enjoying Its Privileges was inspired by a wonderful post of Pam's. Pam’s post a couple of weeks ago took off on the 1930s romantic comedies I’d mentioned in my post and as she said social class and escapist glitter in the Depression-era movie, The Philadelphia Story.

My thoughts also drifted to The Philadelphia Story after some wonderful follow up comments on my post. I got out my video and watched the movie for the umpteenth time. It’s been one of my favorites since I first saw it at the age of ten. Even before that, I’d read and loved the Philip Barry play on which it is based. What struck me watching this time is how, in a movie that says a great deal about love and types of love and in which who will end up with whom is an open question, Tracy and Dexter’s love story is almost entirely in subtext. They talk about their past, but they don’t talk about their present feelings until the very end of the movie, when he proposes. And even that is indirect. Tracy is announcing to the assembled wedding guests that she and her fiancé have called off the wedding. She asks Dexter what to say next, and he feeds her the lines a speech saying that two years ago I did you out of wedding in this house and I hope to make it up to you by going through with it now as originally planned. Even their brief exchange afterwards doesn’t contain any “I’ve always loved yous”, but the words they do use (”Are you sure?” “Not in the least; but I’ll risk it–will you?” “Oh–I’ll be yare now–I’ll promise to be yare!” “Be whatever you like, you’re my Redhead.”) are somehow more meaningful.

One of my favorite Georgette Heyers, The Grand Sophy, is similar in that hero’s and heroine’s feelings are not expressed either in dialogue or, this being a novel, in inner monologue. Sophy and Charles spar from their first meeting. Perhaps the closest we get to a window into Charles’s feelings is the moment when he looks at Sophy across his young sister’s sickbed as though a thought, blinding in its novelty, had occurred to him. Charles does ask Sophy to marry him but even then neither says “I love you” in so many words. In fact his proposal is Will you marry me, vile and abominable girl that you are? and her reply is Yes, but, mind, it is only to save my neck from being wrung!

I first read The Grand Sophy at about the same age I first saw The Philadelphia Story. I remember reading the scenes between Sophy and Charles over and over, trying to tease out who felt what when, trying to decipher clues to their emotions (just as I would look for clues to Tracy’s and Dexter’s feelings whenever I saw The Philadelphia Story). Much as I love Heyers like Venetia and Frederica, in which there is much more exploration of the characters’ feelings, there’s something fascinating about a story in which so much is unexpressed.

Writing this blog, I tried to think of other stories in which the romance develops without the feelings being verbalized. Mulder and Scully’s love story unfolds without the words being spoken and without the viewer even being quite sure what is happening when. Yet the clues are there when you rewatch the episodes (one of the things I love about rewatching Seasons 6 and 7 in particular). Mulder’s I don’t want to risk–losing you in Requiem (the Season 7 finale) is much more powerful than a more explicit declaration of feeling.

Thinking back to my Declarations, Resolutions, & Other Heart-Stopping Moments post, Gil and Ingold in Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy don’t express their feelings until that last scene where Gil asks Ingold if he wants her to stay with him. Their feelings for each other are more palpable than Charles’s and Sophy’s but expressed in gestures and often as much in what is not said as in what is said. The same is true of Holmes and Russell in Laurie King's Mary Russell books. The books are first person, so the reader is privy to more of Russell’s feelings than in some of other stories mentioned. But Russell and Holmes never express those feelings to each other. And Holmes finds a way to propose without putting any of it into words (You do realize how potentially disastrous this whole thing is? I am old and set in my ways. I will give you little affection and a great deal of irritation, though heaven knows you’re aware of how difficult I can be). Neither has said “I love you” to the other through the eight books of the series thus far. Though Holmes’s behavior in those books perhaps contradicts his claim that he would give Russell “little affection and a great deal of irritation.” In fact, to me one of the most romantic lines in the series was in Locked Rooms in which he says (don’t have my copy in front of me so I’m paraphrasing) that he doesn’t think the the sun rising in the west would cause his heart to stop but The sight of my wife going over the rail of a ship might have done the trick however.

My own Charles and Mélanie don’t often verbalize their feelings (in fact one reader on my website asked if I ever intended to dramatize the moment where they first say "I love you" to each other). Neither says “I love you" in Beneath a Silent Moon, including in the final scene. Charles instead tells Mel he “needs her” which somehow seemed a stronger declaration to me in that moment. They do say “I love you” in the first chapter of Secrets of a Lady (before their happy jewel box life completely falls apart) but even then it’s with the slightly embarrassed acknowledgment that the words can seem a cliché (Will it sounds hopelessly redundant if I say I love you too?). Charles tells Mel he loves her again, late in the book, but the words are clipped, almost harsh, wrung out of him by extreme emotion (as is his first declaration of love in a vignette I posted recently on my website). Charles and Mélanie talk in code more than verbalizing their feelings directly. In that, I suspect I was influenced by many of the stories discussed in this post.

What do you think of love stories in which the romance is expressed in subtext? Do you like them or do you prefer more explicit declarations? Writers, do you find characters who only admit their feelings in code easier or more difficult to write than characters who express their feelings more freely?

The Privileged Class Enjoying Its Privileges

I claim to believe in liberty, equality, and fraternity. And I live here.

My heroine Mélanie says these words to her mentor and former lover Raoul in Secrets of a Lady, surrounded by the surrounded by the Siena marble, intricate fretwork, and Aubusson carpet of her elegant Berkeley Square library. Pam had a wonderful post a couple of weeks ago which got me thinking about Mélanie’s words. Pam wrote about the conundrum of being “deeply egalitarian in my attitudes toward social, political, and economic matters” and yet writing “in a genre that centers itself upon the pleasures and pursuits of the Regency ton.”

These days, it's difficult not to think about economic matters. And for those of us who write predominantly about aristocrats, the contrast is perhaps sharper than ever. The 1930s romantic comedies I loved as a child were a big influence on me as a writer. So many of those stories (Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, My Man Godfrey among others) take place in a rarefied world of cocktail parties and dinner dances, weekends in the country and engraved cards of invitation). In many ways it's a fairytale world of escapism with black tie and glamorous gowns and cocktails on the terrace. And yet the darker side of the Depression era is not out of sight. My Man Godfrey begins with the madcap society girl heroine on a scavenger hunt from which she brings back the "forgotten man" hero and makes him the family butler. The hero, Godfrey, turns out to have a more complicated past than meets the eye, one which brings the story back to the whole ever-present question of "forgotten men."

In Holiday, the hero, a young, self-made man, wants to take a holiday and "come back and work when he knows what he's working for" to the horror of his socialite fiancée and her Wall Street father (but the delight of his fiancée's sister). In The Philadelphia Story (which remains one of my all time favorite movies and plays), a left-wing reporter assigned (to his disgust) to cover a society wedding, goes to write about "the privileged class enjoying its privileges" (writing this post, it occurred to me that Bow Street Runner Jeremy Roth in my books probably owes something to Mike Connor; both view the privileged class with a jaundiced eye). In the course of a midsummer night both Mike and the heiress bride-to-be Tracy Lord re-evaluate their attitudes toward social class as well as the nature of love and morality.

My mom, who grew up during the Depression, introduced me to these movies (in the days before vcrs and dvds, we often went to old movie revival houses). My mom was also a lifelong liberal with a strong sense of social justice. As I wrote in response to Pam’s post, “I absorbed strongly egalitarian values from my mom, who also introduced me to Georgette Heyer [and Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and other writers who's books are largely set in a rarefied and aristocratic world] and took me out for tea and with whom I started writing Regency romances. Even our first book, The Widow’s Gambit, which was very 'London Season,' had scenes set in the darker side of the Regency world. Exploring that darker side is something I’ve done more and more through the years. But there’s no denying my central characters live a very elite privileged existence.” And in my own life, though I certainly don’t live in Charles and Mélanie’s elite world, I confess I’m a political, social, and economic liberal who also enjoys the opera and nice restaurants and has a weakness for designer labels (usually purchased at 70% off :-).

In my books, Mélanie in a sense confronts the same paradox. She married her aristocratic husband Charles Fraser (diplomat, politician, duke's grandson) because she was working for a cause that opposed everything his world stands for. She realizes her marriage had catapulted her neatly over an artificial and quite unconscionable social divide. And yet she thinks in Secrets of a Lady that the longer one played a role, the more natural it became. She had grown all too comfortable with the privileges she had married into. It’s a conundrum she continues to wrestle with. In fact, I think she’ll confront it more in future books, when her past and ideals aren’t so buried.

Mélanie's conflict mirrors a number of my own conflicting feelings as an author who writes about a very privileged set of people. I love reading (and writing) about balls and gowns and country house parties and social intrigue. But I’m also fascinated by the contrast between the “Silver Fork” world and it’s darker, more Dickensian side. When I blogged about this topic on my own website, Stephanie commented, "It’s not an easy line to tread. Because I enjoy reading about 'the glitter and the gold' in historical romance, yet few things raise my hackles more quickly than a hero or heroine born at the top of the food chain and carrying around a whopping sense of entitlement....Maybe the difference between an obnoxious versus a sympathetic member of the elite has to do with how they 'wear' power. Do they wear it expecting lesser beings to tug their forelocks and kowtow? Or do they wear it more lightly, understanding that, as people born to wealth and station, they might have something of a duty to those less fortunate than themselves? I suspect that Regency–and for that matter, Victorian–society had plenty of people occupying both ends of the spectrum."

That range of attitudesgives writers a lot of leeway in how portray characters. Think of the difference between Anne Elliot’s self-absorbed father and elder sister in Persuasion versus Darcy who has a strong sense of the duty that comes with his position. Or the way Emma's attitudes change over the course of her namesake book. When my mom first introduced me to Emma, she compared Emma Woodhouse to Tracy Lord. Austen may not write about climbing boys and the stews of St Giles, but she does a brilliant job of showing the plight of women without a fortune without anyone lecturing about it.

And writing about the powerful, doesn't necessarily mean ignoring social realities. As Taryn commented on my blog, "power, well-used, is very attractive, and mis-used is intriguing as a force to be feared."

As writer Mike Connor says to Tracy Lord, "With the rich and mighty, always a little patience."

How do you feel about power and privilege in the novels you read? Do you prefer to read about characters living an elite and aristocratic life? Do you like to see the dark side of that life or escape in to the fairy tale? Does it make a difference whether the story is set in the past or the present day? Does the current economic situation make you yearn for escapism or make you want stories more grounded in economic reality? Or both?