Recent reading

[luzula]

In for a Penny by Rose Lerner (2010)
Regency romance, which has been in my bookcase a while. This was very page-turney and readable: it's about the heir of an earl who, when his father dies and leaves him deep in debt, has to marry the rich daughter of a tradesman. So basically the plot of Heyer's A Civil Contract, but with a lot more sex: the reason Penny accepts Nev is that she's sexually attracted to him, even if she doesn't quite realize that at the time. The UST and eventual sex are well written, but there are still issues and self-doubt in the relationship, which I mostly enjoyed, although at some points it went too far--I'm pretty sure he doesn't just love you like a sister, when he's had passionate sex with you multiple times! There's also other plot with a villainous baronet, a mismanaged estate, and mutinous tenants--and I liked how Nev's previous mistress is also a character in the story. The main characters are uncomfortable with the class system in a way that I partly read as the author's discomfort. I see that this is her first book and she's gone on to write historical romances with lower-class protagonists, which I'll be interested to read.

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (1720)
This was great! It's an engaging yarn about a woman having to make her own way in the world--my god, how she juggles husbands. Besides that, she is also at various points a kept mistress, a thief, and an inmate of Newgate. I enjoyed how much this book is of the early 18th century: Moll is definitely not Clarissa Harlowe, or the story would have ended when she was seduced in her teens. Moll clearly enjoys sex, at least when it's a man of her choosing. There's a scene in Newgate when she repents of her sins, with an amusing aside to the reader: I know you're mostly in this for Moll's adventures, but hey, you have to listen to the repentance too! But she does get a happy ending and isn't punished for her sins. I did wonder about her children: there are passages like "and then I lived with that husband for four years and had two children by him, before [insert more-or-less improbable demise of that husband]", but the children mostly don't appear again. It's not like she doesn't care at all about their welfare: there's one child she has to abandon and pays for extra-good care for. But they're just not characters in the book. The most significant other female character is another woman who helps deliver that child, and later on is Moll's partner in crime and never betrays her.

I listened to an audio version read by Georgina Sutton, which I much recommend! I see that she has also recorded Margaret Oliphant's Hester--I bet she does a great job with that, too. I get these from Naxos Audiobooks, a collection of classics to which I have access via my public library.

Comments

[falena]

I like Rose Lerner precisely because she has lots of interesting, lower-class characters. She does good Jewish representation too (I like all sort of non-generic character backstory and a characterisation). I think her strongest are her single m/m novella (Sailor's Delight), or perhaps it's me showing my preference lol, and True Pretenses.

[luzula]

Yeah, I've known about her for years and have always been intending to check out her books, i just haven't got around to it until now! Thanks for the recs. : )

[oursin]

The thing about Moll is not just difference of time-period, it's that she is not bound by the class constraints that fetter Clarissa (actually, Pamela would probably be the better parallel, in terms of placing socially, but - years since I read it - I don't think Moll is ever actually in service?).

You can tell in a way it's not very much later than Restoration comedy though, with the episode where she and I forget which number of husband are both running a con on one another, and it all comes out on the wedding night, and they go, eh, well, them's the breaks, and go to bed.

[luzula]

That's interesting about class--she always aspires to be a gentlewoman, or at least give the impression of being a gentlewoman, but of course she isn't one. No, she's never in service, and only rarely does any actual paid work (aside from being a kept mistress). She does take in a little sewing sometimes.

Ha, yes, I do remember that scene! That's actually the husband she gets her happy ending with later on.

[scintilla10]

I've really enjoyed Rose Lerner's romances! This is making me realize there's a few newer ones that I haven't picked up yet, yay!

[luzula]

I've always been intending to check out her books, but haven't gotten around to it until now!

[chestnut_pod]

Ah, I think Rose Lerner's writing has improved greatly since those early days! I like Listen to the Moon very much. It has a butler and a maid-of-all-work entering into a marriage of convenience.

[luzula]

Oh, that's good to hear! Marriage of convenience between servants sounds fun.

ETA: I had a dream last night where you appeared, or rather, some dream version of you. I (and some other fannish(?) people) were visiting you where you live, which was a huge house, not a fancy one but a rambling place full of various artistic endeavours. I don't think you lived there alone. It was on the top of an enormous hill with steep wooded sides, which was a little difficult to get up and down if you didn't know where to go (although you could also go round a circling road which was flatter). I chopped some wood so as to contribute something to the household. We all went out for a walk, and one of your horses allowed me to ride it. But then when we came back I had forgotten the horse tied up to a tree. You looked down at the bottom of the hill and said, no, that horse is too worked up now for you to get him, so I'll have to go myself. Also I was not sure I could find my way down the steep hill myself. And I felt bad for forgetting the horse down there.

Yep, that's it. At least I got your association with horses right!

[chestnut_pod]

Amazing! Thank you so much for granting me an artistic country estate and my own horses in your dream! My circumstances are, alas, more straightened than that, but you would be welcome if you ever end up in my neck of the metaphorical woods :)

[luzula]

It's unlikely I would, since I stopped flying ten years ago, but thanks for the invitation! (Perhaps if I had a flying horse like Halla.) And I hope a horse of your own, should you want one, is in your future.

[garonne]

Ooh, yes, I loved Moll Flanders! (And also wondered about the children... I guess I assumed they were left with in-laws, or apprenticed out at a young age, or that kind of thing.)

I haven't read In for a Penny but I have read the very enjoyable All or Nothing by the same author. Also The Wife in the Attic, which is an excellent F/F Jane Eyre retelling. (I would not call that one a Romance, though, by the way. It goes to some very dark places, and I would like to cover it in content warnings, but it's difficult to do that without major spoilers.)

[luzula]

I did have a vague memory that you had mentioned Moll Flanders!

Yes, I'm definitely going to check out more of Rose Lerner's books.

[selenak]

Moll Flanders is great fun, and yeah, Defoe very much is an early Georgian in his attitudes. I haven't read his other wild lady, Roxane, but I osmosed she also has a happy ending. (BTW, there's a BBC tv adaptation starring Alex "River Song" Kingston as Moll, which was the first thing I've seen her in, long before her appearance in Doctor Who, and which I thought was inspired casting.

Having just listened to an audio adaptation of Simplicius Simplicissimus, which was THE baroque novel by Grimmelshausen, I think it's also evident Defoe must have been familiar with it (and its spin-off; Grimmelshausen wrote a whole separate novel about one of the bad girls showing up in Simplicissimus, Bekenntnis der Landstörzerin Courage, and yes, that's where Brecht took the name of the (anti)heroine of his play Mother Courage from, though not the plot. The difference between these 17th century novels and the one from the later 18th century (let alone the 19th) isn't just attitude but genre: I'd classify Simplicius Simplizissimus and Moll Flanders as what we call Schelmenroman in German, whereas Clarissa Harlowe et al are Empfindsamkeitsromane. Not sure there are true English equivalents for those terms - Trickster novel for the first one? Anyway, as far as I recall from Uni, going theory is that the whole trickster novel genre is very much connected to the Thirty Years War, the juxtaposition of horrendous death - throughout all the classes and the breakdown of social rules and conventions where after thirty years reducing the population to one third, there are no good guys visible on any side. (Granted, GB did stay out of the 30 Years War, but it had a very long Civil War of its own and later post Restoration the Plague and the Great Fire, so...) Now Moll and Simplicius have their religious repentance phases as well, but even in their virtuous phases, they don't embody middle class morals in juxtaposition to the decadent aristocracy the way Clarissa and friends would in the late 18th century just a minute before the Revolution.

[luzula]

Thanks, that's interesting with the comparison to German works! There may not be an English equivalent of Schelmen, but there certainly is a Swedish one: skälm. It's an old fashioned word which immediately gives me a (hopefully accurate) sense of what you mean. Can't parse the other word in terms of Swedish, though. And that's quite interesting about the historical context of the genre. I might read Roxane at some point, too.

[regshoe]

Funnily enough, the 'odd lack of mention of children' thing is also something I noticed about Christian Davies's autobiography: she mentions leaving the ones she had at the time with relatives when she first joined the army, but she had others later on, and while there are some mentions of them (and the later lives of the elder children), there's really not much about them as part of her life, her relationships with them, etc. Maybe just something about period priorities?

[luzula]

Maybe just something about period priorities?
Perhaps! Or it could be Defoe's own priorities, if he was indeed the author of the Christian Davies book? Hopefully I'll read that one too some day, and perhaps also Roxane, another of his books with a female main character.