Short Takes: Spring 2019 Historicals by RNFF favorites

After being in somewhat of a historical romance reading funk for the first few months of 2019, I was thrilled to see that several of my favorite historical romance writers had new books coming out in the spring. Here are my short recs for books by three RNFF favorites:

Courtney Milan's full-length historicals feature traditional male/female romance pairings. But her shorter works tends to star more unconventional couples. The duo in her latest, Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure, might just win the award for most underrepresented characters in Victorian romance. Although they are both white, both of her lovers are female, as well as "seasoned"—one in her sixties, the other in her seventies. Though the eponymous Mrs. Martin suffers from a lack of spirits after the death of her best friend, she hasn't lost any of her outspoken manner ("My husband, God rot his soul, used to bring prostitutes home all the time. After he'd finished with them, I'd serve them tea and double whatever he was paying them.... It was hard work fucking my husband. Trust me, I should know. I certainly didn't want to do it" [Kindle Loc 225]). She's certainly not the meek, retiring gentlewoman recently sacked boarding house manager Miss Violetta Beauchamps was hoping for, a woman whom Violetta could somehow swindle into paying the far-overdue rent for her smarmy nephew. Violetta desperately needs that money in lieu of the pension her employer had promised her, but then chose not to pay her upon unfairly firing her after she'd worked for him for forty-seven years. In fact, Violetta is far closer to the meek mouse she had hoped Mrs. Martin would be than is the formidable Mrs. Martin herself.

But after Violetta shares the truth of her nephew's boorish behavior with his aunt, Bertrice Martin decides to set off on the adventure her doctor prescribed: not for a rest in Bath, but to London with Violetta, to help the unfortunate woman drive out the sponging "Terrible Nephew" from what she mistakenly assumes is Violetta's boarding house. Milan's trademark humor is in fine form here, as is her penchant for pushing her characters into a seemingly inescapable corners then inviting us to watch with unabashed glee as they use unconventional methods to escape the confines society wishes them to inhabit. Violetta's transformation, from traditionally "nice" woman who is happy to fade into the background to one who speaks out on her own behalf as well as Mrs. Martin's, is particularly delicious.

An Unconditional Freedom, the third entry in Alyssa Cole's American Civil War-set series The Loyal League, features a man as disillusioned as is Milan's Violetta, but far less happy to accept his fate with any meekness or humility. Before the war, Daniel Cumberland's greatest trauma was that the woman he loved (the heroine of book 1, An Extraordinary Union) did not love him back. But after the idealistic aspiring lawyer is kidnapped from his Massachusetts town and sold south into slavery, his happy, carefree nature is quickly beaten out of him. We meet Daniel after he is rescued from enslavement, unable to fit back into his old life, to "be strong and forget what happened," as his father recommends. Instead, he's working as a spy for the Loyal League, a spy who prefers to work alone. But when Janeta Sanchez, a new recruit, enters the league, the angry, disdainful Daniel is assigned to be her partner.

Janeta, the daughter of a Cuban planation owner and the black slave woman he later married, has grown up taking slavery for granted, even while recognizing that her golden brown skin makes others treat her not quite the same as they do her obviously Spanish half-sisters. Moving from Cuba to Florida changed little for her—until war broke out, and her father was arrested on suspicion of being a northern sympathizer. Her lover in the Rebel army promises that if she will spy on the Yanquis, he'll make certain her father is freed. And thus Janeta, the daughter of a slave owner, finds her way to the Loyal League, using her skill at hiding behind layers of pleasing behavior to ingratiate herself with all of its members. All, that is, but the wary Daniel.

Cole choice to decenter the whiteness that typically looms so large in northerner vs. southerner Civil War stories is not only a boon for readers of color looking for greater representation of their experiences in historical romance; it also allows white readers to step away their fears of being associated with the villain in the more typical white/black binary portrayal of slavery. Which may allow them to read without debilitating defensiveness about the blind spots that many whose heritage does not include a history of enslavement and racism often have towards those whose does, as well as the ways that good people are indoctrinated into accepting what we today often self-righteously believe we would never accept ourselves. Take this exchange between after Daniel and Janeta, after Daniel reveals the scars on his back:

     Janeta thought of the time her family had gone into the city center in Santiago. Her mother had clapped her hand over Janeta's eyes when they'd walked by a man tied to a post with his bloody back exposed.
     You don't need to see such things. You are a Sanchez. You don't have to endure such ugliness.
     She couldn't look away now, though. Daniel has bared to her this proof of his ill treatment and all she could ask herself was, "Why?"
     "That man tried to start an insurrection. They had to make an example of him."
     That's what her father had told her later when she'd questioned him about what she had seen. He'd handed her a gift when she'd asked why insurrection was bad, a beautiful porcelain doll with creamy skin, rouged cheeks, and blue eyes, and she'd let the matter drop.
     "What did you do?" she asked Daniel, and saw the muscles beneath the scars tense.
     "You think I did something to bring this upon myself?" he asked, his voice taut, and Janeta's fear came to the surface then. Not that he would hurt her, but that she'd made yet another misstep.
     "No! I—I meant, why did they do this to you?"
     He shook his head and pulled his shirt back up over his shoulder, not turning to face her as he did up his buttons.
     "I was born a Negro in a country where that is a crime, and I was ignorant enough not to know that I had already been convicted."(Kindle Loc 556)

Both Daniel and Janeta discover their own blind spots as they work together to track Jefferson Davis—and struggle to reconcile the plans of the Loyal League with their own secret goals.

After Elizabeth Kingston's call for "Reclaiming Historical Romance" in the December 2018 issue of RWA's Romance Writers' Report, I was interested to see how she herself would address the problem of white supremacy in her own medieval historical romance writing (you can get a copy of her article free via her online store). The third book in her Welsh Blades series, Desire Lines, features two white protagonists, one an aristocratic the other a servant. But neither protagonist is typical of their class, a major theme of the story. The book also includes a secondary character who is dark-skinned, and a brief subplot depicts a Jewish family persecuted by the English. Such characters, while they do not play major roles, go a long way towards disrupting the "white mythos" of the more traditional medieval historical romance.

Gryff and Nan first meet on the road to Lincoln, when the bandits who have been holding Gryff captive attack the group of travelers of which Nan is a part. It is the servant, Nan, though, not the nobleman Gryff who does the rescuing, letting fly with her deadly knives until all of the robbers are dead. Gryff, fearful for his life from more than just the bandits, doesn't tell his rescuer or any of her fellow travelers his true identity, and neither does the narrative, although brief flashbacks hint at his less than lowly upbringing. Nan, though a servant, has benefitted from the favor of several noblewomen, favor that has not only taught her how to wield a knife, but also to speak Welsh as well as a noblewoman would. During their long journey across England—Nan looking for a long-lost sister, Gryff for his best friend, after which both then travel to Wales—the two exist in a liminal space, outside of traditional societal norms and expectations. Which allows each to see beyond the surface of the other, and of course to fall in love with that person. But when their journey comes to an abrupt end, that liminal space ends, too, and each must decide whether their feelings for one another can survive in a world that expects something far different of a nobleman than it does of a servant. An old-fashioned historical in the best sense—not because it has an all-white cast, but because it glories in real angst, high stakes, and a bucketload of both physical and emotional longing, with personal feelings set against seemingly insurmountable demands of honor and duty.

Not to mention the falcons and hawks...

Secrets and Narrative Manipulation in Jo Goodman's A TOUCH OF FLAME

Much of the romantic tension in Harlequin romances of the 1970s and 80s stems from the fact that readers are allowed access into the minds of only one of their books' two romantic leads. Authors show us what their female protagonists think, feel, and desire, but the thoughts, feelings, and desires of their male leads remain hidden, a mystery. Readers, like the heroine herself, are put into a state of suspense, looking for clues about the hero's goals and motivations but never really certain of them until the story's climax, when the hero declares his love. Only after the hero had given voice to previously private, secret feelings can readers, and the heroine, be certain they really know what is inside his head and heart.

Much contemporary romance fiction takes a different tack. Dual (or occasionally multiple) point of view is far more common now than single point of view. The two (or occasionally more) protagonists in a romance novel may not know what the other is really thinking or feeling, but the narrative puts the reader in a more privileged position. Authors allow us to see inside the heads of all parties who are falling in love. The pleasure now is less about the suspense of whether one romantic lead really has feelings for the other, but instead in knowing more than each of the protagonists do, being privy to the reasons why they belong together, even if they themselves do not yet see them.

And then we come to Jo Goodman. Goodman's most recent American-set historical romances are narrated using dual point of view. But even while they give access to the inner workings of both romantic leads, they often do not tell the reader everything the character is thinking or feeling. Her narrative voice is not unreliable, precisely; instead, it feels canny, strategically laconic. Appropriate, no doubt, given that her setting is the 19th century American West, a setting known for the iconic figure of the strong, silent cowboy. As readers, we are being manipulated by Goodman's narrative reticence; assuming we have access to all the important thoughts and feelings of our main characters, Goodman can then later surprise us when one of them reveals something we assumed we would have or should have been told or shown earlier if it had been important to the story. But the manipulation never feels like a betrayal, at least not to me; instead, it makes me just want to stand back and laugh, admiring the skill with which Goodman has shown me some of her cards, while slyly keeping others back.

Goodman's narrative style struck me especially delicious in her latest, A Touch of Flame, in large part because the male romantic lead, twenty-nine-year-old Ben Madison, does not at all resemble the iconic laconic cowboy of western novel and film. Although Ben has just been elected to the position of Sheriff in 1898 Frost Falls, Colorado, he's hardly the strong, silent gunslinger type. We're introduced to him as he's trying to take a nap on the boardwalk in front of the jail:

He tugged on the brim of his pearl gray Stetson and pulled it forward to cover his eyes and the bridge of his lightly freckled nose. Positioning the hat in such a way meant uncovering more of the back of his head and exposing his carrot-colored hair to passersby who'd known him all their lives and still seemed to think they were the first to comment on it.
     Nothing about being the newly elected sheriff of Frost Falls changed that. (1)

Ben's a friendly, steady presence in Frost Falls, always ready to engage its citizens with a funny story, cheerful word, or kind compliment. And always ready to be teased, or to position himself as butt of his own self-deprecating jokes:

     "Did I insult you?"
     "Insult me? No. I don't even know if that's possible."
     "Thick-skinned?"
     "Dull-witted. I don't know an insult even when it's poking me in the chest." (18)

But the joke is certainly on Ben when he goes to the train station to meet the new doctor that his friend, Dr. Dunlop, arranged to take over his practice before he moved back east. Because the new doctor, one E. Ridley Woodhouse, is not a white man, as everyone in Frost Falls, including Ben, assumed. She's a white woman.

Ben promised Dunlop that he'd offer his support for the new doctor during the transition, a transition that has become far more fraught, given Dunlop's keeping the sex of his replacement a secret. And that the women of Frost Falls are even more opposed to a female physician than are its men. Dr. E. Ridley Woodhouse is mannerly, but private, "willing to listen, not willing to share" (120), which makes it hard for the people of Frost Falls to put their trust in her. And she's prickly, too, quick to take umbrage with those who question her skills, or her independence, even if they do so inadvertently.

In order to keep his promise to Dr. Dunlop, Ben chooses to work behind the scenes, deciding when and if to reveal things he knows, and things he is doing, to Ridley and to his fellow townsfolk. Not that this is something that Goodman tells her reader directly; instead, she shows us Ben choosing not to tell the new doctor that he's the sheriff, or to tell the townsfolk they encounter that she's the new doctor, the first day she's in town. And Goodman has Ben think only in passing about the "spies" he relies upon to keep track of the new arrival during the weeks that follow, without giving us any details of who they are, or even if they are aware that Ben is using them for his own secret purposes.

And though a reader certainly assumes that since Ben and Ridley are the two characters from whose points of view Goodman tells her story, the two are headed for future romance, she rarely shows either thinking lascivious, or even romantic, thoughts about the other, at least not until the two are practically in bed together. And while they snip and snipe at one another, their banter is never mean-spirited; Goodman, like Ben, wants to make us laugh, and includes plenty of dry, wry humor as she slowly builds the romance between her amusing lawman and her serious doctor.

If she's going to keep secrets from the reader, why should Goodman choose dual point of view, rather than tell this story entirely through Ridley's eyes? Perhaps to reassure the reader that the secrets that Ben is hiding behind his oh-so-cheerful facade are not secrets that will be damaging or harmful to Ridley if she places her trust in him. Early in the story, Ridley thinks "It was difficult to argue with [Ben]... but it did not keep her from trying. He simply grinned at her in that maddening way of his and rolled over her objections by never addressing them at all. He never really argued so he never lost an argument. It was frustrating and just a little unnerving" (127). If we didn't have any access to Ben's interior thoughts and feelings, such behavior could be read as demeaning to Ridley, a sign of a man hiding a dangerously controlling streak behind a false front of good cheer.

Instead, showing us some of the thoughts inside Ben's head, Goodman shows us a man worthy of our admiration and trust. And thus we cheer him on as he and Ridley gradually being to join forces to help the residents of Frost Falls. They work together to rescue a family overcome by poisonous gas from by a faulty stove; to foil a robbery at the town bank; to figure out why the town's most influential woman, a woman who actively worked to promote women's suffrage, is trying to undermine Ridley's reputation. And most importantly, to come up with a way to help a family whose male head is becoming increasingly prone to drinking and physically abusing his wife, when said wife will not tell the truth about what has been happening to her.

As they work together trying to address the town's problems, Ben and Ridley also make the conscious decision, mid-book, to become lovers. They aren't moved by torrid passion, or uncontrollable desire, but by wry humor, by affection and appreciation, and by deep respect for the strengths and needs of the other. Though on the surface, they appear to be opposites—Ben amusing, Ridley serious; Ben open, Ridley self-contained—at heart, they are quite similar, and quite suited:

    "Sometimes I take things too seriously, myself included."
     "Sometimes." He paused, bent his head to catch her eye. "And sometimes I fail to see when things are serious."
     She shook her head. "No, you don't. I never think that. You merely wear a different suit of armor than I do."
     Ben said nothing. She had captured it exactly. (263) 

Ben's preferred method of dealing with problems is to deploy his particular suit of armor, what might best be described as "soft power": influencing others so that they see what he wants them to see, wants what he wants them to think. Rather than taking the more traditionally masculine path of force, physical or verbal, Ben uses methods more commonly associated with feminine persuasion: he works behind the scenes, placing this bit of information in that person's ear, another bit in someone else's. Which is perhaps why many of the problems he and Ridley tackle—the inequality of traditional gender norms, domestic violence—have clear feminist implications.

And why in the end, their story asserts, some secrets are better kept than revealed.

As least, as long as they're not kept from the reader...

Jo Goodman

A Touch of Flame

Cowboys of Colorado #2

Berkley, 2018

Feminism and the Beast: Juliet Marillier's HEART'S BLOOD

Feminism has long had a hate relationship with the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast." From the animal bridegroom folktale, which Frenchwoman Suzanne de Villeneuve drew on for the first written version of "La Belle et La Bête" in 1740, to the most recent film version of B&B by Disney, feminist literary and cultural critics have often written about the not-so-hidden messages, messages encourage girls and women to stay with and even love "beastly" (i.e. abusive) men, that seem inherent in this trope.

Which is why it is such a pleasure to read contemporary novels or stories penned by authors who draw on the trope, but do so with a clear aim of subverting its sexism. My favorite short story of this type has long been Angela Carter's "The Tiger's Bride," from her 1979 collection The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales, in which it is the beauty who embraces the beastly rather than the beast who is transformed into a beauty. And I've enjoyed novel-length B&B and animal bridegroom novel retellings, too, both for young adults (Robin McKinley's Beauty [1978]; S. Jae Jones' Wintersong [2017]) and for adult romance readers (Mary Balogh's Lord Carew's Bride [1995]; Elizabeth Hoyt's To Beguile a Beast [2009]), novels that draw into question some of the central assumptions of the more sexist versions of the B&B trope.

My new favorite, though, might just be Juliet Marillier's 2009 retelling, Heart's Blood.

Set in a 12th century Ireland rife with magic, Marillier's novel opens with heroine Caitrin fleeing toward the beast's home not to save a father, but instead out of grief for one. Berach, a scribe, taught his daughter Caitrin his trade, and the two spent many an hour working together, bent over quill and scroll. But after Berach's sudden death, Caitrin falls into a deep depression, during which distant cousins come and claim her home. Showing a kind face to the town, but an abusive one to Caitrin, Cillian and his mother Ita insult and physically abuse Caitrin until she has internalized all their aspersions:

You're nothing, her dream voice reminded her. You're nobody. Your father shouldn't have filled your head with wild ideas and impossible aspirations.... Bel glad you have responsible kinsfolk to take care of you, Caitrin. It's not as if you've demonstrated an ability to look after yourself since your father died. (12).

When Cillian insists that he and Caitrin wed, however, Caitrin knows she can remain no longer in her once safe home. And so she flees, with only a change of clothes and a small box containing the tools of her trade. And the hopes that she can somehow find her way back to the "old Caitrin, the confident, serene one," rather than the person she has become since her father's death, the person who could not find the power or the will to speak up in the face of Cillian and Ita's abuse (62).

The folk of a far-western settlement Caitrin lands in warn her against accepting the post as scribe at the castle of their local chieftain—"I can't think of one good thing to say about the man, crooked, miserable parasite that he is" (10). But Caitrin, fearful of a pursuing Cillian, won't let herself belief that their stories of a 100-year curse, a horrible lord, a dog large enough to eat a fully grown ram in a single bite, and tiny beings that whispered in traveler's ears and led the off the path are anything more than fearful exaggeration. Caitrin is not coerced into going to the beast's lair to save her father, as in most Beauty and the Beast retellings; she accepts a job willingly, a job which she hopes will help her find herself.

When Caitrin arrives at Whistling Tor, it is to discover that each and every story is true—at least, in its own way. Anluan, the young chieftain, limps, has the use of only one arm, and has a strangely unsymmetrical face. Caitrin's first sight of Anluan clearly places him in the "Beast" role: "There was an odd beauty in his isolation and his sadness, like that of a forlorn prince ensorcelled by a wicked enchantress, or a traveler lost forever in a world far from home." But Caitrin immediately chastises herself for placing him in such a traditional role: "I must stop being so fanciful. Less than a day here, and already I was inventing wild stories about the folk of the house. This was no enchanted prince, just an ill-tempered chieftain with no manners" (45).

Anluan has tragic reasons for his temper, his physical disabilities, and for his lack of social graces, reasons which are gradually revealed to Caitrin over the course of her weeks at the Tor. And though Anluan often falls prey to abrupt bouts of verbal anger, he never acts violently or harms the handful of faithful retainers who remain. What he does lack is hope—the hope that things might change, the hope that the dark cloud under which he has been living might ever abate. And hope is the one thing of which Caitrin will not let go. It is not physical beastliness, then, but despair, which it will be Caitrin's task to banish—not just from Anluan, but from herself.

Caitrin's job at Whistling Tor is to transcribe the documents of Anluan's ancestor Nechtan, searching for a spell which Nechtan apparently could never find. Not a spell to summon dark power, but rather to disperse it: to send the whispering denizens of the forest, the dark legacy Nechtan's willingness to dabble in black sorcery in order to gain power over his rivals, back from whence they were unnaturally summoned. Many of Nechtan's notes are in Latin, a language which Anluan's father did not have the chance to teach him before he took his life when Anluan was only nine, the most recent of a string of early deaths among the chieftain's ancestors.

The task must be completed by the end of summer, Anluan insists, without ever telling Caitrin why. But when rumors of invading Normans begin to swirl, and acts of hurtful vandalism begin to plague the Tor, the search grows ever more urgent. Caitrin is free to leave at any time; she is no prisoner. And she certainly doesn't long to return home, at least, not to a family that no longer exists. But after receiving a threatening emissary from a Norman lord, Anluan insists on sending Caitrin away. Because he doesn't love her? Or because he loves her too much?

(Spoiler: "At last I begin to understand why my father acted as I did. To lose you is to spill my heat's blood. I do not know if I can bear the pain" [315].)

Again, unlike the traditional B&B story, Caitrin's time "home" is not about proving how bad home really is when compared to the luxury of "away." Rather, it is about conquering her particular monster, banishing those who made her feel less than her true self, and remaking her once destroyed family. A task she undertakes not on her own, but with the help of allies she meets during her journey home.

Community and hope, rather than isolation, doubt, and despair, are what Caitrin needs in order to reclaim her birthright—and then, to claim her place by Anluan's side while he faces his own worst fears.



What are your favorite Beauty and the Beast retellings?



Photo credits:
Castle: Geni
Bleeding heart: Moonbeam 13, Deviant Art

Juliet Marillier

Heart's Blood

Tor, 2009

Romancing the Spectrum: Katharine Ashe's THE PRINCE, Helen Hoang's THE KISS QUOTIENT, Talia Hibbert's A GIRL LIKE HER

I've read quite a few strong romance novels that featured heroes with the social difficulties, language impairments, and repetitive behaviors that characterize those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). But finding books with heroines with ASD has been far more difficult. Not just because the disorder is more commonly diagnosed in men than in women, I'm guessing, but because of many romance readers' preference for "nice" or "perfect" female leads.

Which was why it was such a pleasure to come across not just one, but three romances this past month featuring women falling in love while navigating their worlds as people with ASD.

Katharine Ashe's The Prince (book 4 in her Devil's Duke series) is set in 1825 England, long before the terms "autism" or "autism spectrum disorder" came into medical usage. A "small madness," is the term Ashe's heroine, twenty-year-old Elizabeth (Libby) Shaw and her father use to talk of her set of "peculiarity": repetitive daily routines; an eidetic memory; a lack of a social filter; and a single-minded desire to follow her father and become a physician, in a time when women were not allowed to apprentice as surgeons. Libby's so intent on her goal that when her father travels to London, leaving her behind in Edinburgh, she dons men's clothing and takes on a male identity in order study anatomy and chemistry, and to gain a mentorship at the city's Royal Infirmary.

There's not much of a plot in The Prince beyond Libby's medical studies and her growing romantic relationship with painter Ibrahim Kent (a bit about corpse-stealing comes in late in the novel). And don't ask how the two come to be sharing a house; you have to accept some plot contrivances whenever you pick up an Ashe historical. But the interactions between intelligent, direct Libby and secretive, wounded Kent (or Ziyaeddin, as he was called before he was exiled from his Middle Eastern country [one invented by Ashe]) are a real pleasure. As a painter, "it had always been his curse to see what others did not"; part of Ziyaeddin's seeing is recognizing the beauty in the not just unconventional but outright odd Libby:

He considered himself her protector. He wished to keep her safe, yet so differently from the manner in which her friends and father always had. They always wanted to protect her from the morass of her own thoughts and desires. He wished to protect her for herself, so that she could pursue her dreams. (185)

In turn, Libby uses her growing medical skills not to keep her "protector" close to her side, but instead to help him realize his own long-thwarted dreams.

My favorite lines:

"I finished bleeding two days ago."
     The kisses ceased.
     He rose onto his elbow to look down at her. "What are you saying?"
     "That I shan't get with child from this.... Women do not typically speak of such matters to men, of course," she said, "unless the man is a physician, and even then infrequently. But I should think this a very useful thing for lovers to discuss." (319)

Indeed.

Katharine Ashe

The Prince

(Devil's Duke #4)

Avon, 2018

Unlike Katharine Ashe, new author Helen Hoang uses humor to draw in readers to her story of a 21st century woman struggling to incorporate romance into her tightly structured life. But readers are never invited to laugh at Stella Lane, the protagonist of The Kiss Quotient. Instead, the humor comes from the gap between Stella's way of looking at the world and the ways her family and her co-workers see it. Take the book's opening lines, spoken by Stella's mother: "I know you hate surprises, Stella. In the interests of communicating our expectations and providing you a reasonable timeline, you should know we're ready for grandchildren." I'm still smiling at that one, even after reading it for probably the fifth time now.

Stella, a (presumably white) Silicon Valley native, knows she has Asperger's, or what is now termed ASD, and is quite self-aware about her own differences. She hates uninvited touches; she likes to do things in a certain order, at a specific time each day; she tends to either be indifferent or obsessed in her interests; she can't help but say exactly what she's thinking, without any reference to the impact it might have on others. Stella knows her social awkwardness and singleminded focus on her job (as an econometrician for an online-shopping behemoth) will make it difficult for her to even find a boyfriend, never mind stay with a guy long enough to raise a child together. As Stella thinks to herself, "The problem was she couldn't keep a man for the life of her" (3).

After a conversation with a rude coworker, Stella has an "ah-ha" moment: "Maybe sex was just another interpersonal thing she needed to exert extra efforts on—like casual conversation, eye contact, and etiquette" (8). And so she comes up with a logical, rational plan: she'll hire an "escort" to teach her how to be better at sex, so she'll be better able not just to enjoy the deed, but to attract a "regular" man.

But Stella isn't counting on the emotions that often come along with sex—especially sex with a man as kind, and as gorgeous, as Michael Phan. Biracial Michael (Norwegian father, Vietnamese mother) trained to be a fashion designer, but returned from NYC to help his mother after she was diagnosed with cancer. And since he's always enjoyed women and sex, working as an escort in addition to his day job as a tailor at his mother's dry cleaning store to earn the money to pay her medical bills wasn't a big deal. But he's starting to get a bit bored with it all—until he's hired by Stella.

Because—feelings. Unexpected feelings. Surprisingly moving feelings. And not just on rational Stella's side, either. As he gradually introduces her into participatory, mutually pleasurable sex, seemingly easygoing Michael keeps getting taken aback by Stella's unwitting display of kindness and caretaking, things he's never experienced before from other women who have paid him to have sex.

Self-acceptance is the underlying message here, not just for Stella but also for Michael, who is burdened with his own insecurities and guilt. But it comes with a large helping of kindly laughter, as well as deep insight into the challenges of being an odd duck in a world that would prefer to everyone to quack to the same beat.

Helen Hoang

The Kiss Quotient

Jove/Berkley

2018

Perhaps my favorite of the three books is Talia Hibbert's A Girl Like Her, the first book in her small-town Ravenswood series. The book's cover features a hunky white hero, but the real draw here is the heroine, prickly Ruth Kabbah, whose mother emigrated to England from Sierra Leone. Unlike Stella, Ruth isn't worried about people knowing about her autism; soon after hot Evan Miller introduces himself as her new neighbor, Ruth tells him, "Before you ask, there's nothing wrong with my brain.... I'm autistic." Like both Stella and Libby, Ruth lacks social filters; she's obsessed (with comic books ); and her brain doesn't quite work the same as most other peoples'. As she thinks to herself during a difficult lunch with her neurotypical sister, "it's not you or anything you've done, it's me and this fucked-up tongue that won't obey and this fractured mind that won't think" (308).

But Hibbert's story is not about self-acceptance. Or at least, not acceptance of a disability. It's about coming to terms with past bad mistakes, mistakes that any woman could have made. Mistakes involving a boy, and the strong emotions of adolescence, and not having enough experience to see the difference between healthy and unhealthy desire. Ruth's become a pariah in the small town of Ravenswood, and not because of her ASD; she's crossed the town's golden boy, Daniel Burne—who also happens to be Evan's boss.

But Evan's an adult, and a newcomer to Ravenswood; he can see what the others, too caught up in Daniel's smiles and reputation, cannot: "This man had never been told no, and never thought he would be. Those were the men you had to watch" (187). Even though Daniel's all charm and Ruth is all prickles, it is Ruth who draws his attention, Ruth whom he wants to befriend.

And Ruth whom he wants to sleep with, a prospect that has Ruth, wary from her bad past with Daniel, not quite knowing how to respond:

     "You can't say yes?" His fingers stopped.
     "I can't say yes. I can't say no, either."
     He swallowed. Hard. "You're not afraid of me. Are you?"
     "No." She'd never been less afraid of a man in her life. "I just. . ." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I can't give you permission to fuck me over."
     He smiled slightly. "That's not exactly what I want to do."
     "But you will," she said sharply. Was this really what she thought?
     Yes.
     "You will, and when you do, at least I'll know I never gave you permission." (1876)

It takes Ruth some time to understand just how different Evan is from Daniel. His words—"It's just, I want to do things with you. Not to you. There's a difference" (1892)—aren't enough. He has to show her, not just tell her, that he's worthy of her trust. That's something that can only build over time. But the reward for Ruth, and for the reader, is well worth the wait.

Favorite line:
"Feelings weren't as straightforward and binary as he'd once assumed; around Ruth, he could feel fifty things at once."

Talia Hibbert

A Girl Like Her

Ravenswood Book #1

Nixon House, 2018

The Promise and Limitations of Hope: Courtney Milan's AFTER THE WEDDING

Where there's life, there's hope.
The darkest hours are just before the dawn.
Look on the bright side.
Every cloud has a silver lining.



I'm a person who tends to bristle rather than take comfort when someone offers an time-worn aphorism as a way to deal with a difficult or painful situation. A cup half-empty, rather than a cup half-fill kind of girl, that's me. Be realistic, don't hope for the impossible, and you'll be far better off than deluding yourself with overly easy platitudes.

I would have thought, then, that a romance about two people with irrepressible hope as the cornerstone of their characters would not have held much appeal. Yet such is the skill of Courtney Milan that she makes such characters not just understandable, but immensely sympathetic and appealing, even to one prone to undervaluing the Hufflepuffs of the world.

Readers of Once Upon a Marquess, the first book in Milan's Victorian Worth Saga series (2015), might recall Camilla Worth, the heroine of After the Wedding, as the missing sister of the Worth family, siblings whose fortunes and prospects dwindled after their father, an earl, was declared a traitor. At twelve, Camilla accepted the offer of a uncle to come and live with him, leaving her family behind in poverty for the chance to return to a life of privilege, complete with "gowns, lemon tarts, and a come out" (Kindle Loc 636). But the kindly uncle proved not to be so kindly, shunting the overly talkative girl off to some cousins, who shunted her off in turn to another relative, and then on to someone whom she barely even knew. Now, at twenty, Camilla feels herself fortunate to be employed as a maidservant for a rector, who only offered to take her in because he feared for her mortal soul after she dismissed from another household for kissing a footman. That the godly rector gets a full-day's work from Camilla but only pays her half-wages of course has nothing to do with his offer to help her reform her soul.

In spite of eight years of rejection, though, Camilla can't keep herself from hoping for something better, something more: someone to choose her, to love her. Rector Miles wants Camilla to feel her sinfulness, to feel debased and downtrodden; then she'd be easier to control. But somehow, in spite of everything, Camilla knows "she was the kind of person who, when dragged into hell, would hatch a plan to win the devil over with a well-cultivated garden of flame and sulfur. It wouldn't matter if it was impossible. She would still try. She just would" (1199).

Adrian Hunter's life hasn't been a bed of roses, either, although his family and financial situations are far more secure than Camilla's. His mother was the daughter of a duke, but was disowned when she married an abolitionist of African descent and moved to the United States. Adrian lost three of his four elder brothers to the American Civil War; as the youngest, he was sent to England to stay with an uncle, to keep him far from the conflict. Though that uncle was his mother's favorite sibling, he's also an English cleric; while Bishop Denmore is unerringly kind to his nephew in private, he will not acknowledge him as a relative in public, fearing for his reputation. Instead, Adrian must pretend to be his page, and then, when he grows older, his part-time amanuensis. Even goodhearted Adrian chafes at the pretense, but his promise to his mother that he'd do all in his power to change his uncle's mind, and "bring him round to the cause" leads him to swallow his pride and bear it (333). As does his uncle's continued promises that one day, some day, when the time is right, he'll openly acknowledge Adrian as his nephew. Adrian's brother warns him and warns him against placing too much hope in Denmore, but for Adrian, hope is intrinsic to his very essence.

At the start of the novel, Camilla finds herself foisted upon Adrian, yet another person in a long string of people who don't want her. Bishop Denmore has promised Adrian that if he does him one more favor—hiring himself on valet to Denmore's rival bishop, in order to ferret out proof of some mysterious malfeasance Denmore suspects the man has been up to—he'll publicly acknowledge him as his nephew. It's a promise that the ever-hopeful Adrian cannot refuse.

But the rival bishop, fearing discovery, manipulates maidservant Camilla and Adrian-as-valet into an apparently compromising position, then insists they marry—at pistol-point. Adrian knows enough about English law to realize that a marriage between two non-consenting adults is not valid, and would rather say "I do" now and ask for an annulment later. For her part, Camilla almost wishes the marriage would stick; Mr. Hunter is kind, and handsome, and defended her when everyone was hurling false accusations against her. And she likes him. In fact, it would take very little more to make affectionate, susceptible Camilla tumble into love with her putative husband.

Milan confronts issues not just of racial privilege, but also of gender privilege, as Adrian, as a confident male, treats Camilla with almost as much oblivious condescension as his white uncle treated him as a biracial man. That Adrian is, at least initially, oblivious of the parallels between his male privilege and Bishop Denmore's racial privilege suggests the ways in which being oppressed for one aspect of one's identity does not necessarily translate to understanding when you are unconscious of the privileges a different aspect of your identity grants you.

Hope is what keeps both Camilla and Adrian going in the face of multiple adversities, multiple oppressions, and what draws others to them. But over the course of the novel, both Camilla and Adrian gradually learn not just the promise, but the limitations, of hope. Sometimes, your hopes aren't ever going to be realized; sometimes your trust in others will not be warranted. And at some point, if you are to maintain your dignity, your self-respect, even your sanity, you need to insist upon your own worth, and stop listening to the siren song of "one day." Because those offering it truly believe their own promises, as Adrian finally realizes about his uncle:

He sincerely believed he had done everything for Adrian, because in his mind, Adrian deserved nothing and anything more than that exceeded his allotment. Likewise, he didn't notice anything Adrian had done for him. He expected everything, and anything less than that was too little. (4300)


Ironically, though, refusing to hope in vain may be the most difficult, yet most liberating, act of hope one can imagine:

"She deserved more. He deserved more. And just because the thing she wanted was impossible... That didn't mean she needed to give up hope." (3839)


Photo credits:
Platitudes: Prototypr
Anti-Slavery Act: Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 tumbl
I Promise: I promise one day tumblr

Courtney Milan

After the Wedding (the Worth Saga #2)

Indie published, 2018

Thoughts on the original RITA winners

When I came across romance author Corinna Lawson's January 2018 post on B&N Reads' blog, "The Great RITA Read: In the Beginning," I was decidedly intrigued. Lawson announced her plans to read and then write about past winners of Romance Writers of America®'s Golden Medallion Awards, now the RITA Awards, as a way to "explore the history of the romance genre." This first column focused on the four books which were the first to be named Golden Medallion winners (back in 1982): one long and one short historical, and one long and one short contemporary romance. I thought it would be fun to try and find these books and read them too, and then talk about my findings here on the blog.

Given its place on a Barnes & Noble-sponsored web site, Lawson's post leans towards more toward the celebratory than the analytical. Lawson notes that she had some "preconceptions" about what the books would be like, given conventional wisdom about Old Skool romance. In particular, she worried that these books' heroines would be flat, tame damsel-in-distress. But actually reading the books quickly dispelled her preconceptions: "I had a collection of characters who would not be out of place in a contemporary romance," she argues.

I wondered if I would feel the same.

After reading the two short Golden Medallion winners, Constance Ravenlock's , Rendezvous at Gramercy (Candlelight Regency Special 1981) and Brooke Hastings' Winner Take All (Silhouette 1981), I can report that I both do and don't. Neither spoiled Regency rich girl Alexis Palme, nor window-turned-business-owner Carrie Spencer is your stereotypical passive heroine. Yet both are distinctly limited by the gender roles of the 1970s. And both of their narratives struggle, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, with questions about gender equality that the Women's Movement of the 1970s brought into the popular consciousness.

At the beginning of Rendezvous at Gramercy, our heroine, nineteen-year-old Alexis Palme, is a self-involved, rather heartless girl. Her American mother is dead; since that death, her Swedish diplomat father has "taken to spoiling his only daughter until the sweetness was little more than an evanescent mood and her prettily curved lips were more frequently hardened into a line of stubborn arrogance" (20). Ravenlock doesn't just tell readers this; she shows her protagonist's selfishness in the opening chapter, by having Alexis care more about her clothing than about the war raging across Napoleonic Europe; by showing her refusing her maid's request to remain in England with her sweetheart rather than travel with her to Gibraltar where she is to meet her father; and by having her keeping the ship upon which she is to travel waiting: "Naturally the ship's captain would understand a woman's last minute packing requirements, even if he had stressed the importance of her arriving at the latest by eight fifteen" (12). Alexis, then, is the type of heroine with whom readers are not expected to identify, at least at the start of the story. The romance will spend the bulk of its time tracking Alexis's transformation, from self-centered, thoughtless society girl to other-centered helper of the poor and downtrodden. Ironically, though, it is the very arrogance and self-assurance for which Alexis is condemned at book's start that allows her to succeed in her new role as smuggler and spy.

Early in the story, Alexis's ship wrecks off the north coast of France, landing her in Breton, or Brittany. Rescued by an elderly pair of aristocrats, Alexis's restless curiosity soon leads her to discover that the aloof Count and Countess de Chambord are deeply involved in smuggling goods from the British to help the impoverished Breton peasants. But when the Count is injured, Alexis ends up taking on his role in the smuggling rather than fleeing with the English smugglers herself, going out at darkest night to exchange French goods for British. Masquerading as the Count and Countess's niece, Alexis also pretends to flirt with the suspicious colonel at the local garrison, a man bent on discovering and routing the smugglers, to pump him for information. Said flirting felt pretty smarmy to me as a reader, in part because I got the feeling that Alexis enjoyed what she was doing, plying her feminine wiles to deceive the obviously dim Colonel. Alexis, then, is not a passive damsel, but an active protagonist, but she can only act under the guise of deception.

Another sign of the story's dated feminism is it's "mean girl" foil, a staple of 70's and 80's category romances. The de Chambourd's actual niece, Laure, who arrives mid-book from Paris to create more difficulty for the smugglers, bears a remarkable resemblance to Alexis at the novel's start, and serves primarily to show readers that Alexis is no longer the unfeeling creature she once was. For now, unlike Laure, Alexis is kind to the servants; she respects the poor and feels a landed gentry's responsibility to aid and succor them; and she disdains Laure's focus on finery and frippery (at least when it is the sole focus of one's attention and concerns).

This is a romance novel, but Alexis's love story takes a decided second seat to the derring-do of the smuggling plot. Her love interest is a doctor, Edouard Lautrec, a bitter, disillusioned former naval surgeon who initially suspects Alexis of "the vilest foppery and shallowness" (59). I'd expected that the two would end up working together by book's end, Edouard seeing beyond Alexis's false mask to her true, good smuggler self. But Edouard is pretty much a bystander to the majority of the action up until the very end of the story, after Alexis has stolen jewels from the smug actual niece of the Count and Countess, after she's duped the smarmy Colonel again and again, and after she's disguised herself as a drunken slop-bucket carrier to free her former fellow shipmate, an English seaman, from prison. Only after the dim Colonel finally catches on and imprisons and whips her does the good doctor come riding to her rescue. So yes, in fact, Alexis does need to be rescued at novel's end. But the rescue feels almost as gratuitous as the romance in the book, a cap added to appease the conventional trope of male hero saving the heroine which does little to mask the self-directed actions of the female protagonist we witnessed throughout the bulk of the story.

Caroline "Carrie" Spencer, the heroine of Brooke Hastings' Golden Medallion short contemporary Winner Take All, seems to be far more empowered at the start of her story than Alexis Palme was. She's the owner of Elliot Bay Electronics; she has a college degree; she even enjoys playing basketball in her spare time. A modern empowered woman, no? But this contemporary romance is far more ambivalent about female power than its historical counterpart.

Carrie only owns Seattle-based Elliot Bay because she inherited it from her dead husband. And her authority as owner is continually questioned, not just by other characters, but by Carrie by herself. And by the plot trajectory of the novel as a whole.

Within the first paragraph, we learn that "Caroline invariably felt inexperienced" by comparison to the company's longtime comptroller, and, a few paragraphs later, that "she never could have fulfilled her duties as president so competently without his encouragement and advice" (9, 10). And by page three, we hear that her former brother-in-law has just sold off his share of the company to corporate raider Matthew Lyle, a man who has a reputation for hostile takeovers of reluctant companies. The stage is set: alpha male Matthew against ice queen Carrie, cool on the outside but deeply insecure on the inside.

Carrie thinks to get the jump on finding out about Matthew by going to observe him when he speaks at a local boat show. Little does she realize that he's already out-manipulating her, arranging to casually "bump" into her and ask her out on a date, pretending all the while that he has no idea who she really is. The two have an enjoyable, if argumentative, dinner; when Matthew sees her home, he immediately begins to kiss her (this contemporary is far more interested in sex and sexuality than its historical winning counterpart). In typical Old Skool romance style, Carrie's mind protests, while her body can't help but respond:

Her lips were parted with punishing swiftness, her mouth probed and explored with passionate impatience.
     It was the first time Caroline had been kissed by a man with any real experience and technique. Matthew had gone too fast—demanded more than she could give—and initially she froze, her body objecting by means of a sudden, shocked stiffness. Her hands slid up to push against his chest, rejecting his rough invasion of her mouth. Although he loosened his hold, he refused to release her. His mouth became gentle and persuasive again, caressing, nibbling, teasing relentlessly.
     Caroline heard her own soft moans as she began to kiss him back. Now when he parted her lips the intimate feel of his tongue moving against her own was arousing rather than alarming. And when he deepened the kiss into a passionate conquest, Caroline was only too ready to be enslaved. (53)

Carrie, despite having been married, is a virgin (older, ill husband), and is decidedly skittish when it comes to sexual intimacy. Behavior which the arrogant Matthew interprets as teasing, a tactic to which he strenuously objects. He objects so much, in fact, that he makes her a bargain: spend a weekend away with him, and he'll stop his hostile takeover of her company. He'll settle for two seats on the board of directors and an immediate audit of the books.

Carrie, of course, objects to this crass bargain, but after she discovers that her kindly comptroller, on the instructions of her now-dead husband, bribed companies to win contracts for the firm, her former determination to fight the takeover begins to waver. Because the audit Matthew is insisting upon will likely send Sam Hanover to jail. Carrie worries for Sam, and for her late husband's reputation, but isn't at all happy about the idea of giving in to Matthew, even though subsequent meetings continue to demonstrate that when it comes to his sex appeal, Carrie's mind may protest, but her body inevitably gives in.

Twenty-first century rape victim advocates argue strenuously against the automatic equation of a sexually responsive body and affirmative consent to sex. But in early 1980s category romance, a sexually responsive female body is always read as a sign of willing, usually repressed, female sexual desire, a sexual desire that a strong male will insist takes precedence over any woman's verbal refusal to engage in sex. As Matthew explains in frustration, "When you stand there like that, not moving, I can't take it. Because I can feel you wanting me and resisting it. I can't stop myself from forcing you to respond when I'd rather not have to do that, Carrie" (93). A man knows better than a woman what she wants, and is rather put out when she refuses to acknowledge it.

Interestingly, Carrie's office assistant and close friend Maggie, a divorcee who lives with her boyfriend, offers a different take on female sexuality. Maggie gives Carrie the purportedly liberated woman's view of sex:

"Just remember that when you go to bed with someone, Caroline, you don't have to give him your soul, and you don't have to sacrifice your independence. You'll be giving Matthew Lyle your body for forty-eight hours—nothing more. From what you've told me [that she finds Matthew attractive], you'll probably enjoy doing it. Afterward, you can refuse to see him again, if that's what you want. There's no reason to become emotionally involved with him." (73)

But the 1980s category romance rejects any attempt to divorce emotional involvement from sex, at least for a woman. Though she plays basketball with men, and runs her own company, Carrie is not the liberated woman than Maggie is; she can't imagine sex divorced from love, and neither can the category romance. To Carrie, such a divorce is tantamount to using someone, and using herself.

Carrie is, however (perhaps like the average female reader of 1981?) interested in the women's movement. One of the books she's reading is "the latest novel by an aggressively feminist author who had raked the male sex over the coals in her three previous books" (87). Needless to say, Matthew isn't at all pleased to hear about Carrie's current book: "I'm not letting you near that one. By the time you've read two chapters, you'll probably throw it at me" (87). Feminism is tantalizing, but "aggressive," dangerous wrong. It's not surprising that by book's end, the liberated Maggie is planning her wedding.

Back to the story, from that quick diversion: In spite of her misgivings about his proposed bargain, Carrie ends up deciding to agree to Matthew's terms, reasoning that "It would cost her nothing to go up to the San Juan Islands with him, because if she found that she couldn't go through with it, she could walk out of his cabin and find a place to stay in town. He wouldn't drag her into bed—he was hardly the type to engage in rape" (74).

But Matthew is the type of engage in a bit of kidnapping, in the form of tricking Carrie onto his boat and taking her not to the populated San Juan Islands, but to a private island of his own. Carrie asked to return home, saying she's changed her mind, but Matthew arrogantly refuses: "By Sunday night you'll thank me for kidnapping you; I promise you that" (100). How quickly would an executive in 2018, acting like Matthew does, be hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit?

Carrie managed to fend off his advances, first by drinking too much and throwing up, then by crying, then by admitting she's a virgin. Matthew, of course, misinterprets her revelation:

"Make him happy? When you wouldn't let the poor guy near you? He must have been absolutely besotted with you, to marry you on those terms, His life must have been one long frustrated agony. And I thought he had hurt you! Just what kind of sadistic, manipulative woman are you?" (115)

But at least he stops importuning her. At least for a short while; not a month later, after hearing more kindly things about her from the son of his colleague, who is a basketball teammate of Carrie's, Matthew approaches her again, offering marriage rather than an affair. More bargaining ensues: if she marries him, will he call off the auditors? He says he will, but then breaks his word, which of course turns out to be justified (in order to get rid of the now not so kindly comptroller), once again undercutting Carrie's authority as head of her own company. By novel's end, the two are happy in their marriage, Carrie because Matthew loves her, and because he allows her to keep running a portion of her company (he's split off the government contract side of the business).

The book concludes with the two joking about women's lib:

     "I'm not about to object. I like the idea. Just think—our son could be the next Bill Bradley," he mused. "College All-American, Rhodes scholar, pro basketball player, United States senator. We've got all the right genes, sweetheart."
     "Really?" Caroline asked with feigned coolness. "And suppose we have a girl, you male chauvinist! Your mother wants a granddaughter, you know!"
     "Carrie, my beloved, enough is enough. I'll only accept so much liberation from the women in my family, and that's it! A corporation president for a wife is one thing, but no daughter of mine is going to make it her life's goal to get drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics!"
     "How about senator from the state of Washington?" Caroline countered.
     "If you don't shut up and let me get you where you belong, there won't be any offspring, Mrs. Lyle."
     "Who's talking?" Caroline giggled and held out her arms to him. (189)

In the world of award-winning early 1980's contemporary category romance, there is both acknowledgement of women's desire for greater power and independence, and also deep anxiety about that desire. Winner Take All acknowledges both the desire and the anxieties it provokes, then works to contain those anxieties by insisting that a woman can be liberated, as long as her liberation is palatable to her husband.

And as long as sex continues to be equated with emotional intimacy and love.


Photo credits:
Fort-La-Latte, Brittany: Dutch, Dutch, Goose!
San Juan Islands: Visit San Juan Islands

Disability and Historical Romance: Mary Balogh's SOMEONE TO WED

Protagonists with physical and/or emotional disabilities appear far more often in the Regency romances of Mary Balogh than in the books of perhaps any other historical romance writer. By my count, of her 86 novels published to date, at least thirteen feature a main character with a physical or mental impairment of some sort; other books (Slightly Married, Simply Perfect, A Secret Affair, and probably a few others I'm forgetting) include secondary characters with disabilities of various sorts. Some back of the envelope math suggests that characters with disabilities feature in almost 20% of Balogh's books.

Some critics have found Balogh's engagement with disability issues worthy of praise. For example, Reviewer Caz on Romantic Historical Reviews writes of Balogh's Survivors' Club series, which features protagonists who have all been seriously injured (physically and/or mentally) by war, "In each case, the author has approached her characters' injuries and disabilities sensitively and un-sentimentally, showing how difficult it has been for each of them to regain anything resembling a normal life following their terrible experiences." And although scholar Ria Cheyne cautions in her article "Disability Studies Reads the Romance: Sexuality, Prejudice, and the Happily-Ever-After in the Work of Mary Balogh" that she is not "aiming to fix these novels as 'positive' representations which should be played on some hypothetical list of 'acceptable' representations of disability" (212), her discussion of Balogh's Slightly and Simply series does argue that Balogh's romances with disabled protagonists "offer significant opportunities to challenge negative stereotypes around disability" (201-202).

In contrast, Meoskop, reviewing The Arrangement (book #2 in The Survivors' Club series) on Love in the Margins, finds Balogh's depictions more than a bit lacking: "There are authors that do disability well, and then there's Mary Balogh. Her disabled characters are more Matt-in-Downton-Abbey than Harold Russell." Her review concludes with a clearly ironic recommendation: "If you love inspiring stories about disabled veterans and the wives that don't leave them, then The Arrangement will hit all your Inspirational Story buttons."

Though Meoskop doesn't spell it out, she clearly objects to the way that Balogh's portrayals of the disabled barely skirt, or fall into, the trap of "disability as inspirational" for the non-disabled reader. As Deborah Davis on the Abilities.com web site writes,

Many disability advocates have expressed disdain for being viewed as "inspirational" in popular media and reject the premise that this emotion adds any positive value to their status. This often-used description associated with able-bodied individuals' emotions in connection with accomplishments or just daily living of those with disabilities is seen by some in the community as separating, objectifying, condescending and regressive in terms of equality and inclusion.

(Check out this great post on Everyday Feminism, "7 Reasons to Stop Calling Disabled People Inspirational" for more on what has come to be called "inspirational porn").

All of the above is to tell you that I come with a lot of backstory to my reading of Balogh's latest, Someone to Wed. Its heroine, 29-year-old Wren Heyden, has been a recluse for the majority of her life, and wears a veil to cover her face whenever she goes out in public. Wren has just completed a year of mourning for her aunt and uncle, with whom she had made her home since the age of ten. Having inherited her uncle's glassworks manufactory, Wren is now wealthy—wealthy enough to buy herself what she longs for, but believes she could never win or earn: someone to wed.

For Wren is "severely, cruelly marred" by a large purple birthmark on the left side of her face, which covers her from forehead to jaw (Kindle Loc 317). Although the descriptive words in quotations are the thoughts of the novel's hero upon first seeing Wren's face, they could just as well have been Wren's. For while her birthmark is not a physically incapacitating disability, some unnamed abuse Wren experienced because of it during her earliest years has created in her a major emotional disability: "In my own person I am not marriageable," she tells Alexander Westcott, the new Earl of Riverdale, the third man she's "interviewed" for the position of spouse.

In her joint review of the book on Dear Author, reviewer Janine points to structural similarities between Someone to Wed and Balogh's 1997 novel, Indiscreet. For me, though, the more telling comparison is to Balogh's 1993 category Regency, Dancing with Clara, which also opens with a disabled heroine who wishes to marry. In the twenty four years between the publication of these two novels, how had Balogh's depiction of disability changed? Had any of the insights of Disability Studies, which call attention to the problematic ways that the disabled are often "othered" and marginalized in popular culture, filtered into popular consciousness?

19th century Bath chair

Clara of Dancing with Clara is physically disabled: "crippled," restricted to a wheeled chair, unable to walk since contracting an illness in India as a child (Loc 85). While both Clara and Wren feel that "Only my money can buy me a husband" (Dancing 273), they go about their husband searches differently. Rather than openly declaring her wish for a husband,  Clara allows the gloriously handsome fortune hunter Frederick Sullivan (the villain of a previous Balogh book) to come to her. He flatters her, even tells her that he is in love with her. She knows he's lying (and so does the reader, as we are given his POV, as well as hers). But he's so handsome, and she's so lonely, Clara lets his deceptions go without challenging them, and agrees to marry him. She only tells him to stop calling her "my love" two weeks after they marry, when her own feelings start to become engaged, and his obvious overstatements make her feel as if he is spoiling the good relationship they have started to build. When Freddie gets upset by her request that he stop lying, Clara feels guilty for making him feel ashamed.

In contrast, Wren takes the active, not the passive, role in searching for a husband. It is she who invites Alexander to her home, and she who asks Alexander to marry her. Wren is a businesswoman, not a lady of leisure as Clara is, and she treats the husband search in as businesslike a manner as possible: "Perhaps we could combine forces and each acquire what we want" (263). Though the novel presents Wren's hiding her emotions as a problem she must learn to overcome, her business acumen grants her far more agency than did Clara's passive desires. Wren is also honest with Alexander from the start about what she wants, and what she hopes to gain from him. And he is honest with her about his pecuniary problems, a far different approach than taken by Freddie and Clara.

Both Clara and Wren desire a husband, in part to satisfy "needs," needs of the sexual kind:

She was lonely. Dreadfully lonely. And she had needs that were no less insistent than they could be in other women despite the fact that she had no beauty and was unable to walk. She had needs. Cravings. Sometimes she was so lonely despite Harriet's friendship and despite the existence of other good friends that she touched the frightening depths of despair. (Clara 124)

She had longings and needs and yearnings that were a churning mix of the physical and emotional. Sometimes she could not sleep at night for the ache of something nameless that hummed through her body and her mind and seemed to settle most heavily about her heart. (Wed 431)

But Clara wants Freddie Sullivan in particular, because of his beauty:

She wanted him. Mr. Frederick Sullivan, that was. She wanted all that health and strength and beauty to belong to her. Almost as if she could make them her own, she thought wryly. Almost as if she could transform herself by marrying him. (Clara 327).

Clara, longing to rid herself of her physical disability, imagines that she can "almost" annex Freddie's beauty and health by marrying. Marriage thus equates to being able-bodied, at least in some corner of Clara's mind.

In contrast, Wren is upset when she first meets Alexander Westcott to find he is "the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales" (Wed 448); she would have far preferred a plainer man, an older man, a man, the text implies, against whom she would not feel quite so ugly (Wed 184). Wren is used to being in charge, having a degree of power and control; the text suggests her dismay at Alexander's good looks is a fear of loss of control.

The two books are alike in one important regard: both Clara and Wren engage in satisfying sexual relationships after their marriages. This is in contrast to what Anna Mollow and Robert McRuer argue is a far more "pervasive cultural de-eroticization of people with disabilities" (Sex and Disability 4). But this depiction of the sexuality of the disabled may be as much of a factor of genre as it is a challenge to popular culture norms; sexual compatibility/fulfillment is typically one of several components that are required of any romantic couple who hopes to enjoy a romance HEA. Or in other words, it just wouldn't be a Mary Balogh romance if it excluded sex.

The two books differ as far as which of their protagonists—the disabled or the able-bodied—must learn a lesson, must change and grow, in order for the couple to achieve a HEA. On first glance, it may appear that in Dancing with Clara, it is Clara who has to change: by novel's end, she learns to walk. But the true emotional change comes within Freddie, not Clara. Freddie, a careless, even selfish, rake, a continual disappointment to his family, must learn to put others—in particular, his wife—before himself. This would be a fine, even feminist lesson—if Freddie's lesson did not center around helping Clara overcome her disability.

Freddie encourages Clara to move beyond the protective shell in which her fearful father had always placed her—to consult with a new doctor, to take exercise, to try to move from her wheeled chair. In some ways, then, even though Clara is a protagonist of the novel, she also serves as what Ria Cheyne terms a "yardstick character," a character who exists largely measure the worth of other characters. If you're nice or kind to, or protective of the yardstick character (a kitten, a child, a disabled person), you're a character the reader should admire. This is a problematic construction when the yardstick character is physically, emotionally, or mentally impaired, for the unintentional message is that disabled characters are more important for how others respond to them than important in their own right. From the start of Dancing with Clara, readers are introduced to Freddie as a fortune hunter, a bounder, a self-absorbed man. We come to care for him because he is kind to Clara, and is the impetus to her moving beyond her (falsely imposed) disability and learning to walk again.

Clara's learning to walk again not only rings that suspect "inspirational disabled person" bell; it also suggests that getting rid of one's disability might just be necessary if one is to be fully worthy of love, or is to enjoy love's benefits to the fullest. Abelism is writ large in this earlier book.

Wren, unlike Clara, is the emotional star of Someone to Wed. Alexander begins the story an upright, morally kind character, the kind of person who always puts others first, and this doesn't change very much over the course of the novel. Although he longs to marry for love, he feels it is his duty to marry for money so that he can support the estate he has just inherited. When Wren makes her forward proposal in the book's opening scene, Alexander doesn't immediately reject it; instead he proposes that the two get to know each other a bit first, to see if they could be compatible. And Alexander, the protective, help-others type of romance hero, feels drawn to Wren precisely because of the pain she has suffered in the past. So he ends up getting both to marry for money, and to marry for love, requiring little character change or growth.

In contrast, Wren's character arc includes far more change than Alexander's. Wren's physical blemish, unlike Clara's inability to walk, is not something she can change. And unlike Clara, she never dreams that she can change it, or wishes that she could even though she knows that she can't. But the story does insist that her emotional disability—the abuse she suffered as a child that convinced her never to go out in public, never to mingle in society, never to make a friend beside her aunt and uncle—must and should be overcome. Is this ableism, just writ on a smaller scale than in Clara? Or is this an insistence that viewing disability as only a social construction, and denying the embodied aspects of bodily impairment, is just as problematic? Part of me wants to cheer for Wren as she gradually overcomes her isolation, and becomes incorporated within Alexander's large, extended family. But another part feels more than a bit uncomfortable with the "healing power of love" message. . .

In the Dear Author review mentioned above, reviewer Janine points to her discomfort with what she reads to be lookism, more than (or as much as) ableism, in Someone to Wed. Though on its surface, the story insists that beauty is not skin deep, by dwelling so frequently on Wren's birthmark, and making Wren so isolated because of it, it inadvertently suggested the opposite.

In order to counteract the potential claim of lookism, the story provides a traumatic backstory to explain Wren's isolationist turn. The most problematic aspect of the book for me was this backstory, and its deeply sexist undertones. I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone, but would be curious to hear from other readers what your response was to Wren's meeting/confrontation with a key figure from her past near the book's end.

To sum it all up, then: there are clear and important positive shifts in Balogh's depiction of impairment and disability from 1993's Dancing with Clara to 2017's Someone to Wed. But if Meoskop were still alive and blogging, she'd surely have more than a few scathingly ironic critiques to make of it.

Photo credits:
Inspiration Porn critique: Medium
Bath chair: Wikipedia

Mary Balogh

Someone to Wed

Berkely, 2017