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My husband was under the impression that public school — by which I mean, all children within a society can go to school, without paying (excessive) fees to do so, are expected to do so for at least a few years, and the cost for this education is borne by the local community / country / wtf. He seemed to think that public school had been a Thing locally since the 17th century, and pointed to Boston Latin. I just looked at him and said, okay, let’s go there. You know about public schools in England, right? Yes. Are those “public schools” for the purposes of this discussion?” Pause. No. OK, then. Is Boston Latin a public school? Longer pause. I guess not.
Yeah, I guess not, too. There are a lot of things called public school, but we weren’t talking about everything called public school. We were talking about the definition that I put up front.
Anyway, I’d had a really nice glass of Enroute Pinot Noir (this was Wednesday at the Forge and Vine), which is Russian River, my Second Favorite region, and I was feeling expansive, which is to say, I was being a pompous ass, so if you are reading this and thinking, my, walkitout is being a bit Extra right now, you are not wrong. I explained to him about Dame Schools and Cathedral Schools and abaco and the definition of literacy, and how when the daughters of the NarcoLords of Boston decided they needed to scrub the reputation of their family so their Wealth Could Shine More Brightly and engaged in job lots of philanthropy to do so, they also invented Public School more or less as we know it. Now, they needed this thing to look less rickety and Nouveau than it actually was, so they invented a bunch of traditions and such like so that it looked old and hoary right from the beginning.
Yes, you can blame T-weekend on them, too, feel free.
Mind you, the thing didn’t really take off — like everything else we take for granted — until we nearly lost it all in the 30s because of that never-to-be-sufficiently-derided Herbert Hoover, and everything got industrialized under FDR. At that point, public schooling went from being, OMG, the Poors, We Must Do Something About the Poors, to, Here’s the Deal: Stop Talking Up the Old Country to the Kids, Send Them to Public School Where We Will Teach Them to Be American and by the time they are adults, they will be free of whatever bullshit political garbage you left your country of origin to protect them from and we’ll all go forward from there.
So, what has any of this got to do with the book I’m reading for my planned monograph on how a particular prolific writer of popular romance fiction / commercial fiction manages to be prolific in a way that her audience is willing to consistently pay for? Ah, because of that need to make it look less rickety and Nouveau than it actually was.
And that’s exactly what is going on in all these books about “the Romance Novel”. Everyone wants to say it started with Austen, or Richardson, or Trollope, or Congreve (!!!), or, marginally more realistically, Georgette Heyer (I personally love this theory, but also, I’m not 100% sure I really agree with it). Saying it started Back Then makes the whole enterprise of the Romance Novel instantly more respectable and supplies a lot more territory to mine academically, in much the same way that pointing to Boston Latin and that Massachusetts Bay Colony law that communities were required to establish schools makes public schooling for the masses — a brand fucking new idea in the mid 19th century — seem like maybe it wasn’t that new, or that revolutionary or that crazy of an idea.
I don’t actually have any kind of personal stake in When the Romance Novel Was Invented, because what I’m interested in is How Prolific Authors (Specifically, one particular author of popular romantic fiction) Become Reliable Brands Their Customers Repeatedly Buy. I think the thesis I’m putting together works for the author I have in mind, and talking to people it also works for a number of other authors. It tends to be much harder to spot in authors whose published works number under twenty or so, which more or less purely for technical reasons, limits us to the 19th century and later, and, realistically, to the second half of the 20th century and later.
Nevertheless, I really feel like this backdating of the beginning does none of us any favors if what we really would like is for more academic attention to be paid to what we _actually_ mean when we say, “popular romance novels”. And sure, P&P may be romance, and a novel, and popular, but it is NOT “popular romance novels”. Period.
Also, has anyone seen an analysis of P&P focusing on the mothers? I feel like it comes across super different if you think about it that way. In the normal analysis, Mrs. Bennett (Elizabeth’s mum) comes across as incredibly stupid, dangerous to the chances of her offsprings, etc. Catherine de Burgh comes across as a problem, but not necessary the Big Problem. And we don’t really think about Mom Darcy at all. But what’s actually going on in the book is a chess game of Who Gets the Money — remember, Darcy is _insanely_ wealthy. This is the prototypical Billionaire Romance (see how unappealing it is when you put it _that_ way? Makes P&P look bad, and honestly, makes the Billionaire Romance subgenre look bad, too), but in the modern Billionaire Romance, it is NOT about mothers conspiring to improve the marriages of their offspring, and the success of the family. (In Georgette Heyer, this _is_ foregrounded, and yes, I will be using that as an excuse to reread those some day.)
Anyway. P&P thus becomes: Mom Darcy does not want all this money to go to waste. She is trying to increase the respectability index, since the Darcy clan has maxed out the money index. She is friends (more likely frenemies, if we are being honest) with Catherine de Burgh, and cuts a deal: I’ll cut you in on the money, if you cut me in on the respectability. Mrs. Bennett is an interloper on this deal. _And Mrs. Bennett wins!_ What’s really amazing is, I don’t think the Lydia / Wickham thing was anywhere near the Bad Judgment Every Critic Ever presents it as! There was _such_ a history of honey trapping money, and really, this is just a much more sophisticated way of honey trapping Darcy. Darcy has a loooooonnnng history of bailing Wickham out and covering for him. Mr. Bennett likely knew — and dialogue in the book indicates Mrs. Bennett definitely knew. I doubt Mrs. Bennett really thought Elizabeth could snag Darcy himself — that was a reach, but for sure, she was fishing in that pond when it showed up in town. _That’s what the first sentence of the book is!_
Under this construction, Mrs. Bennett becomes a really complicated protagonist, fighting via various proxies against Catherine de Burgh, the ghost of Mom Darcy, and Elizabeth is a huge problem for Mrs. Bennett. Elizabeth threatens her stable perch at home by refusing Mr. Collins, and then gets into a fight with Darcy disrupting Jane’s chances. Occasionally, Elizabeth’s actions aid Mrs. Bennett, but more often than not, she busts up Mrs. Bennett’s plans. _Elizabeth_ is the main plot impediment to Mrs. Bennett accomplishing her goals. And then, deus ex machina, Mrs. Bennett gets all she ever wanted and way more, when this main obstacle pulls Darcy out of a hat at the end.
Look, I’m not saying that’s what this book is about. It’s obviously not! But there are tons of litcrit analyses that are _definitely not what the book is about_. I wanna read someone write this one in a respectable fashion with relevant quotes. I will not, however, be writing it.
ETA:
Oh, yeah, more to say!
First, SMH at the belaboring (by this author, and by the authors quoted, all academic assessments of P&P of one sort or another) the “poverty” of the Bennett family. LOL. But then this! “Given the possibilities open to women, marriage is her [Elizabeth Bennet’s] best choice. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, it was still women’s lot, still a fact of female life. We can regret this fact, but expecting Austen to do so as well is both unreasonable and anachronistic.”
!!!
Austen never fucking married! Come on!
If we _really_ want to treat P&P as a forerunning of romance novels, then _this_ _is_ the Billionaire Romance, V1. Nothing about a Billionaire Romance is realistic. The richest dude in WTF radius / the planet / the known universe has nothing better to do than to verbally spar with the comfortable, intelligent, sparkling witty woman who wants nothing to do with him and/or marriage. _This_ _Is_ _Not_ _Realism_. This isn’t about best choices. This is what _Mrs. Bennet_ wants. This is what a lot of readers want. “Unreasonable” and “anachronistic” are NOT relevant commentary on Elizabeth marrying Fitzwilliam.
Yeah, I guess not, too. There are a lot of things called public school, but we weren’t talking about everything called public school. We were talking about the definition that I put up front.
Anyway, I’d had a really nice glass of Enroute Pinot Noir (this was Wednesday at the Forge and Vine), which is Russian River, my Second Favorite region, and I was feeling expansive, which is to say, I was being a pompous ass, so if you are reading this and thinking, my, walkitout is being a bit Extra right now, you are not wrong. I explained to him about Dame Schools and Cathedral Schools and abaco and the definition of literacy, and how when the daughters of the NarcoLords of Boston decided they needed to scrub the reputation of their family so their Wealth Could Shine More Brightly and engaged in job lots of philanthropy to do so, they also invented Public School more or less as we know it. Now, they needed this thing to look less rickety and Nouveau than it actually was, so they invented a bunch of traditions and such like so that it looked old and hoary right from the beginning.
Yes, you can blame T-weekend on them, too, feel free.
Mind you, the thing didn’t really take off — like everything else we take for granted — until we nearly lost it all in the 30s because of that never-to-be-sufficiently-derided Herbert Hoover, and everything got industrialized under FDR. At that point, public schooling went from being, OMG, the Poors, We Must Do Something About the Poors, to, Here’s the Deal: Stop Talking Up the Old Country to the Kids, Send Them to Public School Where We Will Teach Them to Be American and by the time they are adults, they will be free of whatever bullshit political garbage you left your country of origin to protect them from and we’ll all go forward from there.
So, what has any of this got to do with the book I’m reading for my planned monograph on how a particular prolific writer of popular romance fiction / commercial fiction manages to be prolific in a way that her audience is willing to consistently pay for? Ah, because of that need to make it look less rickety and Nouveau than it actually was.
And that’s exactly what is going on in all these books about “the Romance Novel”. Everyone wants to say it started with Austen, or Richardson, or Trollope, or Congreve (!!!), or, marginally more realistically, Georgette Heyer (I personally love this theory, but also, I’m not 100% sure I really agree with it). Saying it started Back Then makes the whole enterprise of the Romance Novel instantly more respectable and supplies a lot more territory to mine academically, in much the same way that pointing to Boston Latin and that Massachusetts Bay Colony law that communities were required to establish schools makes public schooling for the masses — a brand fucking new idea in the mid 19th century — seem like maybe it wasn’t that new, or that revolutionary or that crazy of an idea.
I don’t actually have any kind of personal stake in When the Romance Novel Was Invented, because what I’m interested in is How Prolific Authors (Specifically, one particular author of popular romantic fiction) Become Reliable Brands Their Customers Repeatedly Buy. I think the thesis I’m putting together works for the author I have in mind, and talking to people it also works for a number of other authors. It tends to be much harder to spot in authors whose published works number under twenty or so, which more or less purely for technical reasons, limits us to the 19th century and later, and, realistically, to the second half of the 20th century and later.
Nevertheless, I really feel like this backdating of the beginning does none of us any favors if what we really would like is for more academic attention to be paid to what we _actually_ mean when we say, “popular romance novels”. And sure, P&P may be romance, and a novel, and popular, but it is NOT “popular romance novels”. Period.
Also, has anyone seen an analysis of P&P focusing on the mothers? I feel like it comes across super different if you think about it that way. In the normal analysis, Mrs. Bennett (Elizabeth’s mum) comes across as incredibly stupid, dangerous to the chances of her offsprings, etc. Catherine de Burgh comes across as a problem, but not necessary the Big Problem. And we don’t really think about Mom Darcy at all. But what’s actually going on in the book is a chess game of Who Gets the Money — remember, Darcy is _insanely_ wealthy. This is the prototypical Billionaire Romance (see how unappealing it is when you put it _that_ way? Makes P&P look bad, and honestly, makes the Billionaire Romance subgenre look bad, too), but in the modern Billionaire Romance, it is NOT about mothers conspiring to improve the marriages of their offspring, and the success of the family. (In Georgette Heyer, this _is_ foregrounded, and yes, I will be using that as an excuse to reread those some day.)
Anyway. P&P thus becomes: Mom Darcy does not want all this money to go to waste. She is trying to increase the respectability index, since the Darcy clan has maxed out the money index. She is friends (more likely frenemies, if we are being honest) with Catherine de Burgh, and cuts a deal: I’ll cut you in on the money, if you cut me in on the respectability. Mrs. Bennett is an interloper on this deal. _And Mrs. Bennett wins!_ What’s really amazing is, I don’t think the Lydia / Wickham thing was anywhere near the Bad Judgment Every Critic Ever presents it as! There was _such_ a history of honey trapping money, and really, this is just a much more sophisticated way of honey trapping Darcy. Darcy has a loooooonnnng history of bailing Wickham out and covering for him. Mr. Bennett likely knew — and dialogue in the book indicates Mrs. Bennett definitely knew. I doubt Mrs. Bennett really thought Elizabeth could snag Darcy himself — that was a reach, but for sure, she was fishing in that pond when it showed up in town. _That’s what the first sentence of the book is!_
Under this construction, Mrs. Bennett becomes a really complicated protagonist, fighting via various proxies against Catherine de Burgh, the ghost of Mom Darcy, and Elizabeth is a huge problem for Mrs. Bennett. Elizabeth threatens her stable perch at home by refusing Mr. Collins, and then gets into a fight with Darcy disrupting Jane’s chances. Occasionally, Elizabeth’s actions aid Mrs. Bennett, but more often than not, she busts up Mrs. Bennett’s plans. _Elizabeth_ is the main plot impediment to Mrs. Bennett accomplishing her goals. And then, deus ex machina, Mrs. Bennett gets all she ever wanted and way more, when this main obstacle pulls Darcy out of a hat at the end.
Look, I’m not saying that’s what this book is about. It’s obviously not! But there are tons of litcrit analyses that are _definitely not what the book is about_. I wanna read someone write this one in a respectable fashion with relevant quotes. I will not, however, be writing it.
ETA:
Oh, yeah, more to say!
First, SMH at the belaboring (by this author, and by the authors quoted, all academic assessments of P&P of one sort or another) the “poverty” of the Bennett family. LOL. But then this! “Given the possibilities open to women, marriage is her [Elizabeth Bennet’s] best choice. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, it was still women’s lot, still a fact of female life. We can regret this fact, but expecting Austen to do so as well is both unreasonable and anachronistic.”
!!!
Austen never fucking married! Come on!
If we _really_ want to treat P&P as a forerunning of romance novels, then _this_ _is_ the Billionaire Romance, V1. Nothing about a Billionaire Romance is realistic. The richest dude in WTF radius / the planet / the known universe has nothing better to do than to verbally spar with the comfortable, intelligent, sparkling witty woman who wants nothing to do with him and/or marriage. _This_ _Is_ _Not_ _Realism_. This isn’t about best choices. This is what _Mrs. Bennet_ wants. This is what a lot of readers want. “Unreasonable” and “anachronistic” are NOT relevant commentary on Elizabeth marrying Fitzwilliam.