Why Heyer is not Austen

[girlyswot]

Since megan29 is just discovering the joys of Heyer for the first time, and also since reading this ridiculous article (HT: coughingbear) about her, I have been pondering the merits of Heyer a lot this week. Inevitably the comparison always comes, 'But of course, she's no Jane Austen.'

It seems to me that there are two important pragmatic reasons why Heyer's writing is different from Austen's. First, Austen wrote contemporary novels while Heyer is best known for her historicals. That Heyer's historical period often coincides with Austen's lifetime does not make this point any less significant. Austen wrote her world from the inside, as she lived and breathed it, for a readership who also lived at that time and in that social circle. Heyer has to create that historical reality for herself and her readers. There is a necessary consciousness of this in her work. I'm never certain with Heyer how far her depictions of various historical settings are accurate. What matters to me as a reader is that they are internally consistent and externally plausible.

And second, Heyer wrote to earn a living. I don't know how much Jane Austen earned from her books during her lifetime, but I'm fairly sure it wasn't a lot. Certainly she did not depend on them to keep a roof over her head or food on her table. Heyer wrote to support herself and her family. She had to keep to strict deadlines and to produce books that would sell. This seems to have been increasingly the case, so that her later novels are a mixed bag indeed. She matured as a writer, producing some of her most accomplished work later in life, but she also learned the tricks of writing potboilers at speed to pay the bills. For many years she wrote one romance and one detective novel every year. Other similarly prolific authors (yes, Barbara Cartland, I'm looking at you) paid for their quantity of output by sacrificing all pretensions to quality.

And yet, given these constraints, Heyer's achievements were extraordinary. She established, practically single-handedly, the genre of Regency romance (and more widely, the genre of historical romance) and the associated vocabulary (some of which she literally invented and some of which was the fruit of her research). Her books have been continually reprinted for almost 90 years with only one (The Great Roxhythe) having fallen into complete obscurity.

She's not Jane Austen, it's true. But she is Georgette Heyer and that is no mean achievement.

Comments

[bookish327.livejournal.com]

Interesting entry. I haven't read any Heyer so far, but I do love reading Jane Austen. (Like you wrote in your entry, it's not a good idea to equate the work of these two authors. However, it can be fun to try reading something new set in the same approximate time period.) I will have to look into the availability of Heyer books on audio.

Because I remembered a mention of Jane Austen's total earnings as an author on the second DVD of the BBC version of SENSE & SENSIBILITY (2008), I was curious to that amount and googled it. According to www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/shaffer/350SYL.htm, "Austen's total earnings from her novel publication: about 700 pounds, less than 2 years' worth of income on which she, her mother, and her sister lived." So, that supports what you wrote about her earnings for her writing not being a lot.

[megan29.livejournal.com]

Why did you find that article ridiculous? It contains a lot of the same facts I found about her on wikipedia. The 2nd paragraph is, indeed, needlessly superior, especially since I don't remember any heroine fainting, and I specifically noticed the absence of heaving bosoms.

To me, the main reason to say "Heyer is not Austen" is the scope of their books. Heyer's focus is usually a very narrow, 'she and he' world that is so typical of romance books. Austen is much less concerned with romance, and more with a broad depiction of society. Neither is particularly thought provoking, but reading Austen is more satisfying for me.

In terms of raw writing skill, though, I don't know that I would put Austen ahead. Heyer wins hands down on descriptions, and I give Austen a small edge on dialog and characterization.

Of course, your point that Austen wrote about her contemporaries, while Heyer had to research the period, is well made. In that light, Heyer appears quite the higher achiever. I wish, though, that she had cared less about money, and more about plotting her books (from what I read, her mysteries are generally dismissed b/c of weak plots; I haven't read any, though).

To some extent, what you say about Heyer learning tricks to produce books quickly for commercial reasons reminded me of Nora Roberts. I think she also has a strong eye for characterization, and even a good head for plots, but she only developed her writing skill to a comfortable level that allows her to write very quickly. She has several handy tricks, but that's that. And it's too bad, b/c every now and then I read a page by her that is truly beautiful - but only a page.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

The article read as if it had been written by someone who hasn't actually read her books. Heyer's heroines seldom faint (unless they are pregnant - I think Jenny might have) although other, sillier girls do occasionally. I do see why she is compared to Austen, although i agree that the comparison is unfair. One of the reasons I started reading Heyer was because A. s. Byatt said she read Georgette Heyer because Jane Austen only wrote 6 books. (The other was that I stayed three months at an Aunts in my cousin's room. Both cousin and aunt had all of them. I think it was that Katie liked them enough to buy her own copies when they were all downstairs for her to read tha impressed me.) Georgette Heyer was extremely good at what she did even if the need to keep the pay cheques coming in meant that the standard wasn sometimes uneven.

[dogstar101.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the comparison in that article. It seemed quite supportive of Heyer to me, so I don't understand why it's ridiculous. She sounds like an interesting woman, but I don't go for flashing eyes and Dukes and what-not, so I haven't (so far) read any of her books. I do like comedies of manners though, and didn't realise that was something she did well. It seemed to me the writer of the article was attempting to broaden her appeal to different markets, perhaps to people like me who are not fans of historical romances (I didn't even like Frenchman's Creek) but might be intrigued by descriptions such as 'almost parodic' and 'well-written'.

Comparing two writers doing completely different things at different times is just dense. Is Heyer obviously influenced by Austen or something? I can't see any other reason for putting the two of them together, unless it's a not-so-subtle put-down to Austen as well as Heyer. Which wouldn't surprise me, given the way she gets written off by critics who seem to me to be motivated by envy of the fact that she's head and shoulders above most writers even now, never mind what she was doing for the time she was writing...I don't like throw the word 'genius' around, but I can't think of another English novelist I'd put her alongside in terms of skill and achievement up to that point. Defoe...? Interesting, ground-breaking, but ...no. Fielding...? Maybe, although I can't say I madly enjoyed Joseph Andrews.

There may well be writers I would consider her equal from other traditions / cultures if I knew enough about those, but my degree was in English literature. /hedging

[coughingbear]

Oh, somehow I missed this!

When I was at school and 'doing' Pride and Prejudice, we once had to read a Heyer novel and write an essay comparing them. I found it very difficult - I enjoyed the Heyer (Black Sheep - I think I'd already read it, but I didn't read many more Heyers for a few years. I loved the language though, made-up or real) but it seemed so obvious to me that they were doing very different things. Partly, as you point out, one's writing contemporary novels and the other historical, but also that Austen is much more concerned with her character's moral and social growth in a way that I have always found highly relevant. Heyer's characters do grow up and develop (some of them, anyway) but the serious ethical problems that Austen's characters are confronted with aren't present. Though I've just read Instead of the Thorn, one of the early contemporary romances, and that is perhaps an attempt at dealing with a more serious issue than she tries later. Also much less humour, which I think is crucial to her characterisations, so the hero and heroine don't work so well for me.

On fainting - I think Drusilla may faint, but if so it's just after her ?arm's been broken, so I think she had an excuse!