Book Log 36/2012 - Georgette Heyer: The Grand Sophy

[jacey]

I can see why a lot of people list this as their favourite Heyer Regency romance. Sophy Stanton-Lacy is a delightful character, full of mischief, self-confidence and an insight into character surprising for her tender years, whose main flaw is thinking - no, knowing - what's best for other people. While her father is in South America on a diplomatic mission he leaves her with her aunt and her family in London. Sophie immediately decides that the family needs her help. It seems she's arrived in the nick of time. Cecilia, her cousin, has fallen for an absent-minded but handsome poet and is on the point of rejecting a very good match with an entirely suitable man. Cousin Hubert has fallen into the clutches of an unscrupulous moneylender and Cousin Charles, supposedly the sensible one since Sophie's Uncle is a confirmed wastrel, has affianced himself to a humourless bluestocking whose entire raison d'etre seem to be to find fault with the whole family, set herself above them all in manners and morals and to make sure Charles knows about it.

Rushing in where angels fear to tread, Sophie soon has the house in an uproar. Bringing the younger children a pet monkey is only the start of it. She infuriates Charles by insisting on keeping an independent stable with a splendid riding horse and her own phaeton and pair of spirited bays (entirely too frisky for a woman to handle!). Not only that but she carries a gun and knows how to shoot it - which comes in very handy on a couple of occasions.

Naturally everything comes within a whisker of turning to complete chaos, but works out well in the end. Yes, it has all the issues of misogyny inherent in women being treated as if they had no brain at all, but it's set in 1816 and Sophie is one of the few feminists in Heyer's fluffy Regency world, or would be if feminism had been a Regency concept. Very enjoyable.

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I do see what you mean and while her character's obvious racism made me uncomfortable, if you turn the character into a non-racially-typecast character I think the chapter works in and of itself in showing Sophie's somewhat reckless disregard for convention, but also her talent for pre-planning and her courage.

With regard to the racism - there's a fine balance between looking at something unacceptable today and seeing it as a product of its time - i.e. looking at yesterday through today's lens. And to be honest I don't know how I feel about that because I see both sides to the argument as having merit. The wikipedia article about Heyer suggests she was a snob - especially with regard to foreigners. Literary reviews have suggested she relied heavily upon character stereotyping in all her work. I think Heyer's evil moneylender fell victim to both her snobbishness and her short-hand stereotyping. Was it wrong? Quite certainly from our present point of view - though she used many stereotypical characters, few of them foreign and most of them English upper class twits. Indeed she had another strereotypical foreigner in this book in the character of Sophie's father's Spanish fiancee, who was indolent to the point of sluggishness and who raised manana to a whole new level of inactivity. Racial stereotyping? Possibly. Offensive? Not so much. Why? Because time and time again, for a millennium and more, Jews have been victims of racial stereotyping in literature and as we all know, much worse in real life.

Does this chapter shows that she herself held the same beliefs as the people she was writing about 150 years earlier would have done? I don't know how much was author intrusive voice and how much was well-researched character voice. She would be taken to task for the former today, most certainly, but in the context of the period she was writing about I'm not sure that it's any more out of place than Fagin (and the musical, Oliver) or Shylock.

About a decade ago, in Leeds, I saw Patrick Stewart do a one man show called 'Shylock, Shakespeare's Alien' - about the different ways he's played Shylock during his career and the different ways of reading him in Shakespeare. Afterwards he chaired an open dicussion which included members of the faculty of Leeds University's Jewish Studies department. (Stewart's then wife was Jewish, which may also have given him a different perspective.) It was a fascinating discussion which ranged from one woman saying Merchant of venice should never be performed in public again to other more reasoned arguments that the Jew in Shakespeare was shorthand for 'foreign' or 'alien' - a character people would instantly recognise as being 'different' - and should be regarded as a product of its time.

And after having said all that I'm still not sure you're wrong about the stereotyping though I think you're wrong about omitting the chaper for the shape of the book.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your considered opinion. Agree with pretty much everything--though my instinct is still to skip that section. (BUt then I tend to reread portions of some of Heyer's books anyway.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ask me tomorrow and my opinion may be completely different because I can see both points of view. I'll chew it over with my close friend M who is British/Jewish and see what he thinks of it. I'm pretty sure he's not a Heyer reader, but will be very familiar with Fagin and Shylock as an ex English teacher.

Incidentally does the literary treatment of Fagin and Shylock strike you as being similar to Heyer's moneylender or do you think Heyer did a particularly bad/lazy job on that particular character? Just curious.

I wonder if the big question is should we censor or re-edit classic works of literature to suit our more politically correct 21st century attitudes or should we just endeavour to set them in context for people coming fresh to them?

Green Knight had harsh things to say about racism in Enid Blyton's children's stories on that count, written in the 30s, 40s and 50s but still being published today in their original editions. I suppose I'm more uncomfortable with children reading that because they have no context for it. (Personally I would like to see Blyton censored on the grounds of literary merit or lack thereof which would kill two birds with one stone.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It's not an easy question to answer. Re Blyton, I owe her a huge debt--at age nine, I loved her Adventure books passionately, rereading them over and over. Their shortcomings were utterly invisible, though I cannot read them now at all.

Shylock is a complicated character. Fagin . . . well, Dickens did caricature. I supposed one could say Heyer did too. It's the smugness of her anti-Semitism that revolts me--if Goldhanger wasn't such a disgustingly one-dimensional stereotype--I dunno. I just find that chapter so poisonous and so unnecessary I enjoy the book more if I skip it altogether, and mentally add a line, "Sophie took her pistol to the moneylender, where she was forced to use it to recover the note-of-hand." And the story goes on without a whit lost, because we see how resourceful she is everywhere else.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right. She is smug about Goldhanger.

Re Blyton, I had a brief flirtation with 'Famous Five' when I was about 8 or 9. I rwad as many as i clould get hold of and then very quickly went back to my pony books. My biggest influence from my childhood reading is Monica Edwards who mixed ponies with adventure and had set of thoroughly interesting character who I more or less grew up with. I still re-read them from time to time and am delighted to fing they don't diminish with (my) age.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Alas, those never made it over to here, or at least our small library annex!