CONVERSATION: Where Do You Stand on Anachronisms?
Jayne: Our next topic for discussion is “anachronisms.”
Do anachronisms bother you? Or not?
Are any types worse than others? Language, culture, legal stuff, character actions, titles, anything else?
Can you tolerate a certain amount or is there a point beyond which you throw up your hands and say “No more!”
If a book is hitting all your sweet spots otherwise, can you forgive things that you know are incorrect?
Do Anachronisms Bother You?
Jennie: Anachronisms bother me…sometimes. I don’t know if it’s a “chicken vs. egg” scenario, but sometimes I’m not sure if a book starts to lose me with anachronisms *or* if I notice/care about the anachronisms because the book hasn’t fully engaged me. I don’t read nearly as many historicals as I used to, so I don’t come across anachronisms as often. If I’m really enjoying a book, I am probably less likely to notice an anachronism, and how much I care if I do notice probably depends how egregious it is or how successfully I can find a way to excuse it. The way I see it, a good book is like a good friend – you give them grace if you possibly can.
Janine: Do anachronisms bother me? I need to be able to suspend disbelief when I read a book, to be convinced that a situation is believable, and too many anachronisms get in the way of that. The definition of “too many” varies. If a book is really engaging in other ways I can enjoy it even if in another book those same anachronisms might ruin my reading experience. Julie Anne Long is an example of an author who takes liberties but whose books I have loved because of my enjoyment of other factors (depth of characterization, great chemistry, charismatic protagonists, swoony elements, pretty prose).
Jennie: I don’t want to think of the author while reading. I rarely get so immersed that the characters and plot feel *really* real (that is the ultimate, desired-for reading experience IMO), but in most books I can get absorbed enough that I don’t question the characters’ thoughts or actions. By that I mean, I accept that this character is thinking and acting this way (not that I always approve!). I don’t think of the author moving the characters around like a player with a chess board.
Anachronisms of all types threaten the illusion, however thin it is. The thicker the illusion is, the more likely I am to be able to shrug it off. But multiple examples in a book that already doesn’t feel that real to me has me in a constant state of, “what is this author thinking?” – meaning I’m thinking about the author, which as I said, I don’t want to do.
Jayne: These are excellent points about anachronisms breaking the illusion of reality that (I assume) the author is trying to create. There’s nothing better than sinking into a book and really getting lost in it. As for an otherwise fantastic book sweeping me along past things that should have made me scream, I offer The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt, which I loved but I know you DNF’d it, Janine.
Sirius: If the author doesn’t label their books as historical nothing bothers me if the author manages to build a coherent world around historical fantasy settings. Guy Gavriel Kay is one of my favorite writers and his historical research I find ten times better than many authors who claim their books are historical.
Kaetrin: I’m not usually bothered by anachronisms in historicals, mostly because I’m unlikely to notice them! If something jumps out at me I might look it up but things like titles and such I’m probably going to skip over. I know it bugs a lot of readers but it’s not near and dear to my heart so I can go with it. I’m like Jennie in that I’m more likely to notice an anachronism if the book isn’t working for me generally. If I’m bored or unhappy I tend to get nitpicky. If I’m interested and engaged I’ll generally sail right on by!
Layla: Anachronisms don’t always bother me, because I can’t always spot them! However, I do like congruence in tone in historicals. For example, in the West End Earl book I reviewed (the author is Bethany Bennett), the heroine felt very ‘modern’. It wasn’t just the choices she makes, but also how free and open she is–with her sexuality, with her emotions, with her independence. The author justifies this in her peculiar history and her choices to dress and live as a man–and this makes sense in the world of the novel. But in the world of Regency or Victorian England, I’m not so sure! I’m not an expert, however, and I haven’t done extensive research (or any!) on cross dressing women in those times. I liked the heroine, I found her refreshing and I was into the fantasy of the book. Is she a historically accurate representation of a woman of her class and her time? Probably not.
I think certain authors capture the mood and feeling of historical periods better than others. Evie Dunmore, Meredith Duran, Jo Beverly, Mary Balogh, Laura Kinsale, Elizabeth Hoyt–when they write, I do feel like I’m encountering historical figures whose lifeworlds are different than mine. They have historical detail and richness which I love.
I have read and enjoyed Tessa Dare for example, but her books read very modern to me. The heroines, the heroes, the plots–they are Disney like. I don’t read them for historical accuracy at all.
Anachronisms that are Relevant to the Plot
Jayne: Tolerating anachronisms often depends on how noticeable and pertinent to the plot it is. For instance Wulfgar and Aislinn (The Wolf and the Dove) could chow down on baked potatoes for the rest of that book and it wouldn’t really have bothered me. They could even have added a nice tossed salad with chopped tomatoes and I would have shrugged. Yes it was a “there’s no doubt about it” mistake but it didn’t affect the plot. It’s the kind of thing I would grimace slightly about and keep reading. The Substitute Bridegroom by Charlotte Louise Dolan had some howlers that also didn’t end up affecting the plot but could have if Dolan had had the hero go through with stepping aside from inheriting his Dukedom or obtaining a divorce as he so easily seemed to think he could do.
Janine: I do notice wrong titles and forms of address now that I’ve acquired some knowledge of them, but I try to forgive that because it isn’t straightforward at all. One exception is when knowing the correct title is very relevant to the plot. In Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star, Leda is supposedly an expert on Victorian etiquette. Her ability to assist them with that is one of the reasons Lord and Lady Ashland welcome her as a guest in their house even though she’s basically a stranger. But she flubs their titles, which surely even they would know! She doesn’t even stick to one title for each of them but addresses or thinks of them as Lord Ashland/Lord Gryf, Lady Ashland/Lady Tess, Lady Kai/Lady Catherine. Her mistakes undermined the marquess and marchioness’s already tenuous motivation for hosting her, and their decision to host her is a key factor in the plot. That kind of thing really does bother me. Authors: if your character is supposed to be an expert on something, get it right.
Anachronistic Language
Jennie: I probably encounter language anachronisms the most – usually slang that I’m fairly sure doesn’t belong in the period the book is set.
Janine: Language is probably the anachronism type that jumps out at me most. I have a good ear for period language and when I see authors tweet about how word X or Y isn’t anachronistic even though readers think it is, it irritates me because at least 95% of the time I know that word is true to the period. I am usually proven right even when I’m not sure and check the OED to confirm. Unless it’s qualified as “some readers” or “sometimes readers,” etc., then when authors say that I often read it as an attempt to silence the complaints of readers and reviewers.
Jayne: Anachronistic sounding language is something I’m not as confident about unless it’s really off. If a Regency character snaps, “You’re kidding me, right?” or a Restoration person mutters, “As if!” then yeah, it irritates me. Usually though I’m fine with a bit of leeway.
Sirius: Anachronisms do bother me – language less than custom and cultural stuff simply because I often don’t know if an English word is an anachronism or not, but when I do I roll my eyes and repeatedly so.
Layla: I was just reading Joanne Schupe’s latest, The Lady Gets Lucky, and something about the dialogue made me think perhaps, that she was taking liberties. But then again, because its set in America, I wasn’t sure if perhaps that was really how people talked back then!
Character Actions and Cultural Anachronisms
Sirius: Mindset bothers me way more than anachronistic language – too modern mindset that is.
Layla: Sometimes I find anachronisms slightly annoying, like in the Tessa Dare book where the heroine runs a proto animal shelter, The Wallflower Wager. I was on a tour of the Tenement Museum in NY and a kid asked the guide, did they have pets back then? And she said not poor and working class people no! Also animals were not seen in the same way that domestic pets are in the 21st century.
Janine: Ahistorical cultural attitudes absolutely can bother me, but this one is tricky for me. I’ve definitely been on thin ground there in the past and I learned years ago to look things up before saying anything in a review if I think there’s a chance I could be wrong.
Jennie: I find cultural anachronisms the most bothersome. I can glide over an “okay” or “as if” in a historical with a minor eyeroll, but messing up cultural practices bothers me. I still remember a historical I read YEARS ago where the h/h practice bundling in a time and place that I truly don’t think it was practiced (specifically, I think it was 19th century English aristocrats). Things like that, where the author just decides to throw something in to serve the plot, feels lazy to me and it makes me, as a reader, lose trust (if that’s not too dramatic a way of putting it).
Jayne: By “anachronistic character actions” I mean stuff like young, aristocratic heroines routinely wandering alone at night through the mean streets of London (such as the Seven Dials area) without a care in the world or that bundling thing that Jennie mentions. Anything that pulls you up and makes you think “Real people of the time probably wouldn’t have done that, would they?”
Kaetrin: Some things (heroines wandering around in Seven Dials late at night) are part of the necessary suspension of disbelief for me so I don’t usually get bothered by those things.
Jennie: One thing with some of the anachronistic behavior that’s come up – like a lady walking in Seven Dials – is that it’s one thing if a character does something that is unusual from a cultural standpoint. There are always outliers in any era. It’s another thing if everyone around acts like the behavior is normal. Sometimes the hero or heroine acts like unusual behavior is normal as a way of signaling (at least, this is how it feels to me) that they are forward-thinking, good people. I find this particularly irritating.
Realism vs. Fantasy
Jayne: Another thing that I’ve noticed is the number of book blurbs that hint that anachronistic behavior or plots will be taking place in a book.
Janine: You bring up a good point, Jayne, which is that a lot of readers want anachronistic plots and enjoy the fantasies. I don’t think that’s at all wrong but I wish these books were labeled as fantasy historical romance rather than historical romance so that I would be able to choose which kind of book to read–one that hews close to history vs. one that’s frothier and more fantastical–according to what I’m in the mood for.
Jennie: Yeah, I’m okay with it if it’s clearly alternate history, and marketed as such.
What about you, readers? Do anachronisms bother you? When and what kinds? What kinds of anachronisms do you happily overlook? And how important to you is realism in a novel?
Anachronisms in social attitudes (especially toward unmarried women having sex before marriage and/or acceptance of children born out of wedlock) annoy me far more than a mistake in when something was fashionable (there was a whole discussion somewhere about a corset-lacing scene in Bridgerton which as utterly anachronistic because the whalebone corset was a Victorian not a Regency fashion) or speech (although I dislike contemporary idioms and slang emerging from 19th century characters). Anachronistic names also bother me. A book set in Regency England would be unlikely to have a heroine named Skylar, but I’ve seen that, along with the requisite Hunters, Dylans, and Chases. No, just no.
@DiscoDollyDeb: It is interesting. I see Bridgerton as pure fantasy, particularly given the absence of racism and the fabrics and styles used in the costumes—and I think it totally owns its fantastical aspects, which in my case makes it easier to go along with them. However, another factor that makes it easier for me is the dialogue. It’s actually not too anachronistic — much better on that score than many a historical romance.
Since you bring up illegitimate children, I’d love to read a romance with a protagonist who was an illegitimate child who was taken in by a powerful aristocrat and raised as his own, and follow the impacts of that both on the protagonist and on that aristocratic family. At once point Laura Kinsale mentioned that she was considering writing a book about Christian’s daughter from Flowers from the Storm and I’m sad that it never happened. I also told my friend and critique partner, Sherry Thomas, that I would *love* to read a romance about David’s daughter from Tempting the Bride when she grew up, for the same reason. I think there is a way to tell such a story with some attention to historicity and it could be really dramatic and really compelling.
@Janine: well, Sophie Beckett from the Bridgerton books is exactly that, but it’s a Cinderella retelling.
Liz Carlyle had a couple of books with illegitimate heroines, both of whom first appear as children in My False Heart – The Devil You Know and Wicked All Day. It’s been years since I read these books, though, and I don’t remember the details beyond this.
The illegitimate child who clearly needs his own book is Dominick from Lord of Scoundrels. Unless Loretta Chase wrote it when I wasn’t paying attention?
@DiscoDollyDeb: Yes, if an unmarried woman, especially one without a powerful family to stand behind her, decides on “one night of love,” I want her to at least think for a moment about the possible consequences. If she then says, “Screw it. I want my hawt night of lurve” then okay.
@Rose: I’ve only read a couple of the Bridgerton books, The Duke and I (which I disliked) and When He was Wicked (which I quite liked). I heard most of them were fluffier than WHWW though so I never ventured further.
I’ve only read a few Carlyles too—My False Heart (had some charm but was way too slow), The Devil to Pay (loved it but need to reread it), and Two Little Lies (she stole 95% of the plot from Balogh’s Christmas Belle and I disliked that plot in both books)—but neither of the ones you’ve read. Maybe I should look into them.
I don’t think Chase ever wrote about Dominick and now I wonder why not. Especially given that Lord of Scoundrels was such a hit. You should write to her and request it. Authors do give weight to those kind of reader requests.
@Jayne: Good point. This technique is known as Lampshade Hanging and it often works for me too.
@Janine: The Sebastian St. Cyr series by C.S. Harris has a similar and problematic (for a boatload of reasons) relationship between father and son, which is often quite heartbreaking to read. I hope their issues are resolved one of these days.
I’m reading a WW2-set book now and one of the women has adopted Ms. as her form of address. The screeching my mind made was quite loud. I’m trying to ignore it–and maybe it was around in pre-Gloria Steinem days–but it brought me up short and does every time. So while I can live with anachronisms, I don’t enjoy being dropped out of the story.
Anachronistic attitudes are probably the biggest problem for me too. I don’t mind if the characters’ thoughts and behaviors are out of the norm for their era, but I want them to be shown as outside the norm (and having potentially serious consequences because of it). I also wish that more authors would write about characters who have 21st-century approved political opinions, but arrive at them for reasons that were more common in their historical setting, especially when that involves religion/spirituality.
I don’t get too annoyed by anachronisms because I’ve usually given up on a book before it becomes a big issue! Getting titles wrong is often an immediate DNF (I disagree that they are complicated; the whole naming system has a few simple consistent rules that always hold true). Occasional lapses into modern language are only a minor annoyance. Characters having 21st century attitudes or ridiculous occupations really irritates me but these things are usually telegraphed in the blurb so I never even start the book. Books that focus too much on social justice-type issues and feel like they’re imposing a modern sense of enlightenment onto historical people also annoy me (e.g. Courtney Milan). And I’ve often really wished a hero would say to a stupid, self-sacrificing heroine, “Well, if you’d really rather die in a ditch than marry me, I’ll leave you to it.” (e.g. Mary Balogh).
I know, I’m totally unreasonable about anachronisms. Which is why I generally give historicals a miss these days. The romance is rarely good enough to overcome the feeling of unreality.
@Janine, I believe that some of Grace Burrowes’ earliest books feature characters who were illegitimate that were raised by their natural father and his wife.
As for me, I most notice anachronistic language.
I’m really irritated by the modern-sounding names! I know it’s petty, lol. Somehow it drives me up the wall.
Overall, though, I give the books I like way more of a pass, kind of like Jennie — the likelihood of noticing and getting annoyed at too many anachronisms gets higher if the book is not enjoyable to me to begin with.
And Janine: another vote for David’s daughter’s story!! I’d love to check in on the Fitzhugh family! But also another vote for any new HR by Sherry Thomas, please!!
@Darlynne: I looked up the etymology of the abbreviation Ms. The OED below has the first use in 1901.
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/123118?rskey=K3hRL8&result=9#eid
Jo Beverly’s “An Unwilling Bride” has a similar father/son issue to the one in the CS Harris St Cyr novels, although it is resolved in a rather different way.
I don’t mind the occasional minor anachronism — for example, the presence of a joke about the Times crossword in 1923 in The Sugared Game hasn’t stopped that from being one of my favorite books — but I dislike it when people get titles or the laws of inheritance wrong. And the only book by Grace Burrowes I ever read said that most aristocratic men fired their valets when they got married and let their wives dress them. I stopped reading at that point. Also, I read a book recently where the whole plot turned on everyone’s apparent belief that gambling debts are legally enforceable — they aren’t, even in Nevada. Julia Quinn keeps doing something similar where the characters all think that you can contractually bind your heir to marry someone even before he’s born, or even if he turns out to be your nephew or your cousin — or at all, really. I’m pretty sure the Church of England wouldn’t allow you to do that.
After Dark with the Duke felt anachronistic in tone to me pretty much all the way through (and why was the wife of a lord — I think it was Lord Bolt — not Lady Bolt?). But my bigger problem with the book was that I kept wondering if it was set in an alternate universe in which Arthur Wellesley died as a child, or never existed.
Even more than Dominick from Lord of Scoundrels, I’d like to see Fenwick from the Seamstresses (or are they Dressmaker?) books get a book, or at least a romantic subplot, of his own. And I’ll add — I don’t mind the fantasy of three clever sisters from a con-artist family (on both sides!) marrying Dukes and Marquesses, because Chase gets the other stuff, like the titles and the clothes and the way inheritances work, right.
@Darlynne: I read the first Sebastian St. Cyr book and liked it but then I couldn’t get into the second one. I have sometimes thought that I should go back and reread them and see if I can get into the series on a second try.
The Ms. thing would kill me. Like you say, it may be period, but it’s so strongly associated with the 1970s in my brain.
@YF: Yes to everything you said there. I feel like sometimes authors want to have their cake and eat it too—for their characters to defy the norms of their day (which absolutely could have and did happen) and then for everyone else in the book to rally around them or even celebrate their choices so that the HEA will be extra triumphant and sweet. Which no. That would probably not have happened unless there’s some excellent reason (say if the series is structured around a group of abolitionists and then they support each other in making this unconventional-for-their-time-period choice).
The other thing you say I agree with even more. I want so much to see characters make the choices we would love for them to make, choices that fit in with our own values as twenty-first century readers—but to do it for the reasons that fit their historical context, reasons that the people of the period who made those choices were more likely to have made them for. And yes, spirituality would have been a major one.
@Kareni: Thanks!
@Claudia: We have another post on anachronisms and inaccuracies that I’m editing right now (it should be up in 2-3 weeks), and it’s a deeper dive into some sub-topics. One of those is names with strong modern associations — Jennie brought it up because it really bugs her too.
The last I talked to Sherry about it, she said she didn’t have any ideas for romances that she was excited about and she doesn’t want to write one unless she feels the concept is really strong. I will put another plug in for the idea of a book for David’s daughter. A couple of suggestions of mine have wound up in her books (the malaria in Not Quite a Husband for example) so you never know, but it’s rare.
@Susan/DC: What I think is quite common with illegitimate children of peers in romances is for them to be the wife’s child and for the peer father-figure to have a complicated relationship with them because of that. But what I would actually like to see is a loving aristocrat father who raised his biological son or daughter as his own. That’s a very different situation because it would really be thumbing your nose at society and there would be real consequences to everyone concerned. And actually I would rather see this with a daughter than with a son (though it could be interesting either way).
@Etv13: Re the valets—LOL! And I think Jane has a post somewhere here at DA on how “the will made me do it” is a terrible plot device. It’s been used in contemporaries quite a bit also.
I don’t remember Fenwick, and I read the first three books in that series. But you know which Loretta Chase kid I just realized want a book about? Pip, Charlotte’s son from Not Quite a Lady. Or even better, one of his legitimate half-sisters. I would love to catch up with that branch of the Carsingtons twenty years down the road and have a whole series about Pip and his half-siblings, actually. It would be exactly what I want, a publicly known about and embraced by the family illegitimate hero/heroine. And there would be additional complexity there because Charlotte’s past would also be in the mix.
@Etv13: I forgot to add—yes, the hero After Dark with the Duke was clearly inspired by Wellington and it took an adjustment for me to accept him as a Wellington figure. Re why Angelique isn’t Lady Bolt, I haven’t actually read her book but I had the impression from After Dark with the Duke that “Lord Bolt” was not his actual title—that he’s illegitimate and “Lord Bolt” is a nickname someone stuck on him, and one that he tried to live up, or rather down, to (since he hates his biological father). But I may have that wrong since I haven’t read the earlier books in the series.
(Actually I’m halfway through Lady Derring Takes a Lover right now but Lord Bolt hasn’t appeared in it so far.)
@YF and @Janine, I feel the same way about social attitudes. On the one hand I do not particularly want heroes/heroines to be racist/sexist jerks, but on the other hand if they just have modern attitudes with no explanation and it’s not commented on as unusual it’s hard to believe. I read The Lady Gets Lucky a few weeks ago and this bothered me a bit. I don’t want to add spoilers, but the heroine’s positive attitude towards working-class and Jewish immigrants is definitely NOT the norm for Gilded Age New York. I would have felt better about it if the book confronted this more and showed how unusual this was.
Also, I’m pretty flexible about modern language in historical books but I don’t like very obvious modern terms. I read one book where a character said “That’s what SHE said!” and it was just not working for me.
It does bother me if the book is branded as historical. I don’t really want to face how often folks actually bathed in previous centuries, but I don’t want a 2022 twenty something in a costume either. One serious historical threw me out because the hero (early 19th century) referenced change in magnetic polarity in rocks as something his tutor had taught him as a child – I’m a science geek – this wasn’t discovered until after WWII and was a key discovery for understanding continental drift. It isn’t common knowledge, but if you reference it, it isn’t hard to figure out when it was discovered.
@KR: And reading through the other comments more thoroughly (sorry), I really agree about social attitudes not matching without a reason. Our ideas about gender roles, religion and freedom to select education and jobs are based on a very individualistic society. Historically, society didn’t work that way. Until quite recently a family was an legal and economic unit as well as a group of relationships and that had profound implications about who did what that are much more complex than folks were just patriarchal, etc. Life is complicated, then and now.
I like it when an author points out in a forward or an afterword what changes, if any were made to the historical timeline. I also enjoy having the author point out information that really, truly is part of the historical record even though the reader may believe it’s an anachronism or mistake. History is far stranger (and research is much cooler) than many people think.
Authors work very, very hard to get it right. Organizations like Regency Fiction Writers (formerly RWA’s The Beaumonde) help authors of all genres get feedback and access to information on issues like forms of address and British inheritance laws.
The research and effort shows in the quality of the writing, in my opinion, but I’m picky. All too often I find myself DNF’ing books where the history is wrong, wrong, and wrong. My reading time’s too precious for that and my teeth can’t take the grinding.
@Darlene Marshall: Author’s notes is another topic we’ll cover in our upcoming post.
I’m not able to take advantage of RFW / the former Beau Monde because my manuscripts are set in the 1890s (even titles and forms of address were slightly different then from what I understand–I remember seeing Isobel Carr and Joanna Bourne discussing that on Twitter once) but I’ve heard great things about it over the years. A lot of authors of regencies clearly don’t take advantage of either, though. And you’re right, it is a cause for teeth grinding.
@YF and @Sydneysider: There’s a Mary Jo Putney book set in the medieval era (12th century, if memory serves) where Jews feature in the story. I thought she got their characterization wrong, but one of the things I liked a lot was that the earl hero would not let them settle in his domain at first (he did shelter them for a night) because he believed their presence could endanger the faith and therefore the souls of his people (he was devout and had almost taken a monk’s orders in his teens). Later in the book, they help the heroine when she is in difficult straits and he realizes he was wrong about that, humbly apologizes to them, and tells them they are welcome to settle there if they still want to after the way he treated them. I thought that was SO well handled. (For reference, I’m Jewish).
Yesterday the comment which referenced the new-to-me phrase Lampshade Hanging sent me off in a different and interesting direction for an hour.
Regarding anachronisms, ignorance may, in fact, be bliss. My knowledge of society (all, not just the people who think they’re fancy) in England is strictly that garnered through reading historical fiction. So an anachronism almost needs to jump off the page and hit me on the head before I notice.
@LML: I just noticed that the link in that comment wasn’t working (it’s fixed now). I’m glad you found the information anyhow.
Agreed re. “ignorance is bliss.” I was better off in terms of enjoying historicals when I knew less about history.
@Janine, I found an interesting article on a website called Slap Happy Larry with a straightforward and concise explanation. Great art illustrations and some additional story telling definitions.
I am enjoying these conversations. It is interesting to learn how other readers approach the same literary situation. Plus all the extra details – I’m off now to learn about magnetic polarity in rocks.
@Janine, that sounds like a good way of handling it! I still enjoyed the Shupe book overall, but having an upper class woman welcome a working class Jewish woman in an era of anti semitism and a move towards restrictive immigration laws was just not believable without explanation or background.
@Darlene, I like that as well.
@DiscoDollyDeb: yes this annoys me too! And this is such a crucial and important issue for historical romance. Especially because I think it is far more romantic ( and realistic) for an unmarried woman in a previous era to make a decision to break with social norms out of intense love and lust or feelings for the hero. For example in the Evie Dunmore book I love, the heroine is aware of the extreme irreversible consequences in having an affair with the hero. if she is ever discovered, her political future is over, her freedom will be entirely constrained, her reputation will be destroyed and her real life connections to people will be broken. She couldn’t see her friends anymore at all, or be taken seriously in her work Thar she cares about. And she does it anyway and the illicit ness of it is very sexy because it has that dangerous edge. Also because she ends up falling in love and because the hero falls in love with her.
She is indulging in the affair to satisfy her desires but she knows she can lose everything because of those desires. Meanwhile he would lose nothing. I found it romantic and historically accurate that she would have such an attitude. Also since she is a suffragette who reads letters from women all over England she is aware of how often a story do illicit affairs or fulfilling of desires for women leads to tragic ending. It’s like the flip side of historical romances is the Tess of the D’ubervilles—the Thomas Hardy heroine who is abused and harassed and ends up dead. Now obviously I read romance for the fantasy! But I’m saying that adding historical dimension or depth makes it work better. I want to see the hero respect the heroines sacrifice or love or transgression socially and protect her. And I want the romance to have that sweet edge that comes from breaking social rules that we now understand as being morally wrong and hypocritical.
@Jayne: yes you said it better than I did!!!!
I also dislike the narrowness of imagination in historicals. Why are all illicit heroes gaming club owners? I actually know nothing about this historically but surely there are are other ways to get people from two different classes to interact. Are gambling house owners really so accepted into the aristocracy? That’s why I like Elizabeth Hoyt so much. She has such interesting interactions with different kinds of characters and they seemed to have historical richness. I should say— I don’t need authenticity but I need richness or depth!
@LML: I went to that site yesterday after seeing your comment. It’s good but I like the TV Tropes site better. I have found them useful on a variety of topics pertaining to fiction. They have explanations of everything from the Groundhog Day trope to the Magical Negro stereotype and more.
@Sydneysider: I tend to agree—it would help if they had a common interest or both knew someone who had been hurt and it brought them together, something like that.
@Layla: I thought the one Elizabeth Hoyt I tried (The Raven Prince) was terribly anachronistic — men didn’t employ female secretaries in the 1700s. But to each their own.
Count me as another reader who would like to see different kinds of middle-class and working-class background characters and connections across classes that form in a variety of ways. To this I would add that with class difference romances (and I love that trope) I would rather see an upper middle class character with an aristocrat or member of the landed gentry, and a working class person with someone from the middle or upper classes, than a wider gap like a duke and a barmaid. That is a lot less likely to have happened in history. I don’t know of a single case where it took place.
@Layla: Maybe I would feel differently if I read the book, but from your description, the heroine sounds really irresponsible and foolish to me.