Arabella: Georgette Heyer Book Club no. 16

Certainly not, mooncup, if "reducing" here is meant as the opposite of "increasing" (eek)! If not, then be assured that I shall lose the baby weight by fashionably banting - I believe Byron used to eat boiled potatoes and vinegar for this purpose.

What about The Daisy Chain, thewhistler? Are we talking coy 19th-century references to pregnancy or attitudes to social reform, both of which I seem to remember make an appearance?

I had vaguely thought Arabella was a bit anachronistic in her social concerns - I think of that sort of thing beginning in a big way in the 1830s (cf Oliver Twist, then Mary Barton a few years later). In fact though it turns out there was a major parliamentary report about the awful conditions of chimney sweeps and the dangers to the boys' health in 1817, which is about when Arabella is set - and perhaps explains her knowledge of the related laws which she quotes to Grimes. (I imagine her father would have read about the report in the newspaper and discussed it at the dinner table for the improvement of his offsprings' social consciences.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney_sweep

mackerella - if a celebrity doctor advises you to follow a strict Reducing Regime, just say no, OK?

Mackerella, yes, but an interesting thought. But what about The Daisy Chain, IIRC?

Couple more good euphemisms for pregnancy, and then I'll shut up about it! Meg Buckhaven (Cotillion) is "expecting an interesting event in the autumn", and Abigail Wendover's sister is just about to "present Sir Francis with a fourth petit paquet" - not sure I'd want to use the latter phrase, though, as it manages to be both twee and obscure!

ds absolutely refused to go up the chimney of the National Trust house we visited that had re-created one especially for small children to try out. I was most disappointed. Youth of today, huh, far too mollycoddled for their own good etc. etc. etc.

(Can't remember which house it was, I'm afraid, but I think it was Staffordshire and it might have something to do with Lord Lichfield.)

Sorry, appallingly confused sentences there and a massive x-post because I type so slowly on my phone!

Um, the comment about social reform being linked with low church people came from me, specifically in relation to Victorian (rather than Georgian/Regency) fiction - sorry if I've muddied the waters by introducing irrelevant thoughts . I was thinking about later social problem/condition of England/industrial novels, but those of course present a much more thoroughly worked out thesis than is intended in Arabella (where her social conscience is intended to show her character in a more appealing light to the readers of 1949 - who all took it for granted, presumably, that small boys shouldn't be forced up chimneys, so would consequently think that she was a good egg).

Indirect not implied. Blast.brain and phone at odds.

I sent a contribution on social reform in novels but it got lost. IIRC, really up to the victorians it was expressed either in the utopian novel, Rasselas or Candide, or via Ly Catherine de Burgh taken seriously, or the glimpses in the racier picaresque novels, tom Jones, Fanny hill etc. Mind you, I found Sir Charles Grandison so boring I never finished it. So might have missed things there. There are a couple of early RC novels but they are more about religious choices than social reform.

And so it was down to Hogarth in the arts earlier and Wedgwood in the applied arts, with Wilberforce and idc Cobbett.

One of the things I don't like about Arabella is the implied speech, which seems coy and GH hardly ever uses. That bit quoted above about and goodness it was like a sack rings false with the rest of the narrative standpoint and is less successful imv.

Once again, it has got a good aged person. Beaumaris's grandmother would have got on well with TTR's Silvester.

Rilla, welcome. BTW, I've always wanted a bronze green hat like hers.

Yes, absolutely, as opposed to whispering a little secret or saying with amusement and pride that he might have an heir.

Congratulations too. Hot toddy without the spirits is,quite nice though, 1 measure fruit juice of choice, honey, nutmeg, ginger which is the important bit to fight infection, and boiling water. Not up to Richard Wyndham's punch but not bad.

Umm, I agree about absent mothers, but disagree that Mrs Morland is really one, I think she is just forced into that to make an academic pattern.

It is pretty useless to talk about high it low church at this period because we are pre Puseyite reform. What we do have is Wesley and the non conformists, and many of them were indeed the industrialists and in some of agricultural areas though less the ones she mainly deals with, as less on large estates where they would have been expected to go to the local church and pay its tithes.

Jenny's father I would have expected to be a non conformist, especially with a name like Jonathan.

I think it's less the wording than how Jenny tells him that Adam finds funny. She is so bald in her statements, poor Jenny. She does not have the elegance of the upper classes.

Hello!

LadyIsabella pointed me in the direction of this thread - I think I saw one of the earlier ones.

I read Arabella specially to come along It was one of my first GH, & still one of my favourite. I must be lacking in sensibility as it never really concerned me that she might be caught out in her lies, although thinking about it now it would indeed be absolute social ruin.

I'm another one who likes Beaumaris & thinks that he is a good catch. Re-reading it now I was surprised that he is only 30 - there is so much emphasis on his age & wisdom, & I suppose when I read it as an early teen 30 did seem terribly old. Not so now! I also really like the lively family scenes - GH does them very well, like in Grand Sophy & the teenage bickering in The Corinthian.

I also appreciate the fact that Beaumaris isn't one of GH's cruel & masterful heroes (like Vidal! Or the one in Regency Buck). They make me a bit uncomfortable when I read them as an adult feminist but I still fancy the pants off Vidal

Interesting about the social reform. I love Arabella in the chimney sweep scene - doesn't she say "I will not be silenced!"?. I agree with the comment about priggishness. I can think of literary depictions of 19th century reformers as boring do-gooders like the Jellabys in Bleak House, but I am not sure I can think of earlier depictions... Hmm. Of course GH is writing under the influence of our decided opinion that sending small boys up chimneys is Not Good. I always think of Blake's London when I read Arabella, because we get scenes of London poverty that we don't get in all of her books.

...and it's just as well I missed out on the discussion of Friday's Child, otherwise I might have come down with the measles, like Isabella! Incidentally, it's notable how physically robust many of the heroines are, and how illness or indisposition is seen as primarily tiresome (all those younger brothers with broken limbs) or embarrassing (aforementioned measles and mumps). Habitual invalids are portrayed as malingerers, although many of the heroines make sensible nurses when someone is really ill.

I'd love a hot toddy, MooncupGoddess but fear that I shall have to decline as I am in an interesting condition (increasing? What's the right GH phrase?)

mackarella, are you planning to go down with mumps when we cover The Grand Sophy ? Your dedication to evoking the atmosphere of the book is laudable...