Sylvester: Georgette Heyer Book Club no. 24

How maternal were women of that class and time actually encouraged to be? Kids were whipped off to wet nurses and relegated to the nursery upstairs, only to be brought down in to pose for the family portrait in their best frocks.

Actually, it is an interesting thread to explore - GH's portrayal of motherhood. We have:

Mothering of older children - Sylvester's mother, Arabella's mum, False Colours, The Quiet Gentleman

Absent/dead mothers - Venetia, Frederica, Lady of Quality, Black Sheep, Talisman Ring, Grand Sophy (Actually there are a large number of Mother-Stand-Ins - guardians or aunts! Even Miss Beccles in the Reluctant Widow might be seen as a mother-substitute.)

Loopy mad mothers - Cousin Kate.

I am trying to think how many mothers-of-young children we see - maybe there are so few because of the romance element of the novels - romance usually dies a death at the birth of the first child.

Jenny is touching with young Giles and is even seen BFing. Ianthe couldn't give a monkeys. Is there a reference to an offspring for Miles and Molly O'Hara in the Black Moth? There is the illness of Amabel in TGS but her mother doesn't really shine there.

Hmm... might need to do some more thinking.....

I agree about Ianthe. She is young - 24 or so - and very sheltered. And what other choice does she have, in a society where children are the property of the father (or male guardian) who can prevent them ever seeing their children on a whim, let alone from living with them.

Can I join in? I've recently discovered all the GH threads and have been reading through them. I haven't actually read Sylvester for a while, but I've read it several times, so hopefully can remember enough to comment! I do like it - though I agree with others that the ones with older heroines are better.

The P&P comparisons are interesting, though I can't see much comparison between Lizzie and Phoebe except superficially.

For me, the big problem with this book is Sylvester's treatment of Ianthe. Ianthe is made to be so ludicrously silly and self-centred that the reader is - I think - supposed to understand that it really isn't a hardship for her to have her child taken away, but I find that pretty unconvincing. It was a terrible fate for such a young woman - to spend her whole life as a lonely widow living with her in-laws, or to lose her rights to her child. I know this is true to life for the period, and that it is essential for the plot both that this happens and that Sylvester - who is really creating the situation - is seen to be in the right, but I find the presentation of the whole thing - as if there's really no problem - a bit jarring. In other books, GH is quite good about presenting the helplessness of women of the period and the terrible situations it can place them in, but here I feel we're supposed to follow the early-19th-century line of "it's really for the best to have the men in charge because the silly women are only really interested in dresses and shopping". Phoebe's early sympathising with Ianthe is shown to be naive and misplaced. A devoted mother who had to choose between her child and any kind of life of her own would have made an interesting story - but a completely different story!

I also don't really like the way Phoebe gladly abandons her writing career because Sylvester didn't like it - again 21st feminist attitudes coming into play, but I feel other heroines remain much more true to themselves. But I suppose she wasn't a very good writer, and she did kind of owe him after what she did to him in her first book!

My favourite bits are the early scenes when Sylvester comes to visit.

whoops...

My first thoughts:

One of my favourite ever minor characters is in this book, Alice Scaling "I'll go if I bust!" - the episode with the gobblecock and the overpriced pig is exquisite.

Phoebe I find unconvincing. Heyer again uses the road as a liminal space where conventions are relaxed, coincidences abound, and magic happens - here she does it once in the snow and once in the Forrin. Phoebe unbends to Sylvester too fast; she relies on him too soon. My 25% would be a longer resistance and slower capitulation by her and by Tom. They both seem by far too young for their undertaking - Sylvester comments on it IIRC but it makes her London confidence/independence the less credible. Ianthe is scarcely older but is made to seem so by her town polish. I think she is much more of a realistic character and it jars that Phoebe is both less and more mature than her at once.

I like that The Lost Heir is rubbish but popular anyway, because of its accuracies. I'm sure that that was a charge levelled at Heyer in her time (and forever since)! so I feel it is a kind of tongue out at the critics.

Hope to come back with more.

My first thoughts:

One of my favourite ever minor characters is in this book, Alice Scaling "I'll go if I bust!" - the episode with the gobblecock and the overpriced pig is exquisite.

Phoebe I find unconvincing. Heyer again uses the road as a liminal space where conventions are relaxed, coincidences abound, and magic happens - here she does it once in the snow and once in the Forrin. Phoebe unbends to Sylvester too fast; she relies on him too soon. My 25% would be a longer resistance and slower capitulation by her and by Tom. They both seem by far too young for their undertaking - Sylvester comments on it IIRC but it makes her London confidence/independence the less credible. Ianthe is scarcely older but is made to seem so by her town polish. I think she is much more of a realistic character and it jars that Phoebe is both less and more mature than her at once.

I like that The Lost Heir is rubbish but popular anyway, because of its accuracies. I'm sure that that was a charge levelled at Heyer in her time (and forever since)! so I feel it is a kind of tongue out at the critics.

Hope to come back with more.

And I too have not read Glenarvon - not my idea of fun!

Lovely analysis so far - I can't believe the P&P parallels had escaped me to date

What I like about this one is the absence of any villain. The tension comes from the restrictions of the social niceties and polite mores of the day. It may be that I generally prefer a more domestic-based drama anyway, but all of my favourite GH novels are of this ilk. I think it gives room for her light-touch humour and her affectionate portraits which I value more than the mystery driven plots (all those chuffing missing necklaces).

I agree that we see far more female relationships then hitherto - and there are more female characters than many of the novels that we have read so far. Lady Ingram and the Dowager make a lovely pairing, as do Georgie and Ianthe - two very different sides of the society coin. I find them all believable women - and have know variations of them in real life. I also think that Tom & Phoebe's friendship is warmer and more real than the adolescent boy/girl friendships we have seen to date.

I like the tongue-in-cheek melodrama of the The Lost Heir sub-plot and she makes Edmund a sufficiently-believable child that his predicament is genuinely touching.

Phoebe is still too much of an ingenue to make this one a top-flight favourite - I prefer my heroines with a bit more savoir-faire. And try as I might, I can not picture those eye-brows or imagine them ever bring attractive.

There are bits of Silvester I love, some I find touching, and bits I find frankly tedious. It is a funny mix.

What would my 25 per cent be? A bit more of the social scene, probably, a longer session at the beginning with her father.

I would have less of Phoebe's thoughts in the first proposal, which change the authorial stance uncomfortably, less of her dreadful squabbling.

It is not one of my favourites, despite wonderful moments, because I find it too bitty and fragmented. I suspect that is because they keep going to a different place.. and I suspect it detracts from the concentration on the comedy.. there are probably more changes of scene than we have had since Gilly went on his travels and I find it uneven.

And while I can see the Darcy comparison, it does not really strike a chord with me.

The Dowager, now, I want more of her. It is rare to find a sympathetic intelligent well read ill person in GH. There is an element of tenderness about her, and a fondness. In fact, I can't think of another. So I am interested in what was going on in GH's mind.

No, not read Gkenarvon.

Excellent opening, Isabella, and I am v. impressed by your scholarly references!

I've always felt that Sylvester and Phoebe embody pride and prejudice just as much as Darcy and Elizabeth do. As in P&P, there is a disastrous first meeting, they're thrown together against their will, and the hero totally muffs up his first proposal.

And yes, they are both unusually vulnerable. When we meet Sylvester he is thinking about his dead brother, and although Phoebe's mother died soon after her birth, her loss is felt throughout the book, by her own mother (Phoebe's redoubtable grandmother) and her dear friend the mother of Sylvester; it's made very clear that Phoebe would have been much happier and more confident had she grown up under her mother's care rather than with her horrid stepmother. (Female friendship is not a major theme in GH, but in Sylvester we have not only the friendship between Phoebe's and Sylvester's mothers but that between Phoebe and Sylvester's nice cousin Georgie - and of course the more complex relationship between Phoebe and Ianthe.)

Phoebe is an unusual GH heroine in that she is not remotely beautiful and thoroughly lacking in social skills. (Jenny in A Civil Contract is the only other heroine of whom this can be said, and for various reasons she is a special case.) Her relationship with Sylvester develops through a mutual sense of humour - a common theme in later GH, but particularly touching here.

Sylvester himself, though he pretends to be suave, is actually dreadful at dealing with his emotions - the scene in which he loses it with Phoebe on the dancefloor because he is so hurt and miserable is agonising to read, but utterly convincing. GH spends much more time analysing Sylvester and Phoebe's emotions than she usually does that of her heroes' and heroines' feelings, and the book is the better for it.

Finally, of course, it is very funny. GH is always good at small boys, but Edmund is particularly convincing, and the scenes between him and Sir Nugent are pure joy. The Ghastly Family Dinner scene, a GH favourite, is as good as the one in The Quiet Gentleman, and there are innumerable wisecracks and moments of beautiful irony.

If only we could find the lost 25% in GH's papers!

Marking place, ridiculously excited.

Great start!