Seducing Readers
—from the Quizzing Glass, Vol. 3, Number 7
Can a Jane Austen fan become a reader of the modern Regency novel? I think so. I came to Regencies myself through a love for Austen's books. What I find in the modern Regency is not Austen, but some of the elements of her world that are fascinating in themselves.
Austen's world is a world of striking contrasts. One of the most moving or interesting of these is the contrast between the handsome, comfortable civilization of the English country house and drawing room and the chaotic turbulence and barbarity of the Napoleonic wars. The image is a bit like the image of rich Troy with the restless, ruthless Greek warriors camped on her shores. In Austen's lifetime England was at peace only a few months. Jane's naval officer brothers were involved in the wars in such actions as Trafalgar and in ferrying troops to Spain for Sir John Moore.
In her novels, Jane almost always has a military presence. In Pride and Prejudice the militia are the downfall of Lydia Bennet, who sees herself "the object of attention to tens and scores of officers at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp--its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet." In Persuasion, the hero himself is Captain Frederick Wentworth.
Men of Wentworth's stamp are common in the modern Regency--Adam Deveril of Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract or Captain Thorne of Elizabeth Mansfield's The Phantom Lover or Major Jack Amberly of my own The Mercenary Major are just three of the many. The grand scale and human drama of the Napoleonic wars have made them a subject for many writers, including Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O'Brien, not to mention Tolstoy.
In Austen's lifetime, the first possibility of defeating Napoleon appeared in the summer of 1813; in three years Jane would be dead.
Nearer to home in Austen's world is the possibility of revolution. The English countryside is less tranquil than it appears from the windows of Pemberley. Riots, machine-breaking, and protests of various sorts were frequent in Jane's lifetime.
Austen shows her awareness of this social upheaval in a scene in Northanger Abbey in which Catherine is describing to her friend Elinor Tilney the "latest horror" to come out of London. Elinor believes Catherine is talking about some riot when, in fact, Catherine is anticipating a new gothic novel. In the face of such threats to order and to "civil"ization in the broadest sense, Austen focuses on women and men choosing marriage partners wisely. Civilization begins at home; it begins with partners who can be civil to each other and teach their children the virtues of civility.
The modern Regency also emphasizes choosing a marriage partner wisely and allows the reader to enter a world where civility is valued. The reader can leave the rudeness and easy familiarity of daily life in À the twentieth century for restraint, discretion, and of course, irony, one of the chief charms of the Regency. The hero and heroine can laugh at themselves, as Elizabeth Bennet was fond of doing. They are, after all, upright and clothed on the cover with no winds of passion blowing their locks.
Modern Regencies, like Austen novels, are part of the long tradition of heroine-centered fiction. The modern heroines are perhaps Austen's nieces, once-removed. Most, like Austen herself, have an interest in fashion, but little vanity of person. Most have some claim to wit, an eye for the pretensions of others, and a willingness to do their duty with self-sacrificing grace. They can't be intimidated by the Lady Catherines of the world; they can't be deceived forever by the Willoughbys and Wickhams; and they will come to know themselves through their conflict with the hero.
The secondary characters in the contemporary Regency may also delight Austen fans, as there are some great eccentrics among them; both Heyer and Marion Chesney excel at these portraits.
Though not all Regencies will offer the heights or complexity of Austen's style, with a bit of browsing, Austen fans will find those titles and authors that allow them to enter anew a familiar and fascinating world. The great issues of the day were no less apparent in the ballroom than on the battlefield. Two scenes from the PBS Sharpe series and one from the PBS Northanger Abbey make this point clear. Sharpe explains to the South Essex recruits what they will face in battle: Wellington explains to Farthingdale the supreme virtue of "order;" and Henry Tilney combines the two in his explanation of the virtues of marriage through an analogy to the country dance. Just as the mystery fan craves the order that the rational mind imposes on the facts, the Regency fan craves the order that's achieved when a true partnership is formed between hero and heroine.
