to wonder if period dramas have ruined real men for me?

[olivebee]

I grew up on a diet of period dramas. Pride and Prejudice, Wives and Daughters, North and South, Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Tenant of Wildfell Hall - the works. I loved them, watched them over and over again. Read all the books until the pages fell out. I fell in love with the morally courageous, dynamic, flawed men who leapt off their pages.

I have just come back from a date with a bloke who told me repeatedly and at length about being chased by a grizzly bear whilst on holiday.

He then informed me that his cat wakes him in the morning by licking his nipples.

Clearly, he isn't the one. I get that real men cannot live up to literature. I am not looking for perfection, but I would like someone who is just a teensy weensy bit like John Thornton. AIBU?

I don't think I could bring myself to tell ask Captain Hastings to do the washing up and change the beds ....

You have forgotten the ultimate passion-killer, Angel Clare.

That awful mixture of mean-spirited possessiveness, exacting high standards, hypocrisy, jealousy and the stubborn inability to change his mind until it is sadly too late.

:( poor Tess.

However, I would let the Vicomte de Valmont under my petticoats more than once...

OP, have you seen Lost In Austen? You remind me of the heroine of that.

Go and look in your bathroom to see if there's a secret door into the Bennetts' attic.

uuurrggghhhh, yes, Angel Clare, what a sanctimonious little shit he turned out to be.

completely agree with frances re: Heathcliffe and Cathy, ghastly pair totally made for each other.

to be honest I wouldn't want to be married to any of them, even Mr Thornton, but I wouldn't say no to a damn good shag.

Yes ultimately they're all arses and Women's Aid didn't exist...

... but think of the money, darlings.

Actually it's Heyer heroes who have me weak at the knees - because even the beastly ones are transformed by the love of a good woman except possibly Dominic Alistair and they're also sexy in breeches and filthy rich.

You would never have to nag Marcus Drelincourt to unroll his socks and put them in the washing basket, because it wouldn't be your job either!

When you read Wuthering Heights with a clear eye, and don't imagine Heathcliffe as handsome, this is a terribly insightful story of an emotionally abused and neglected boy who forms an unhealthy relationship with the daughter of his abusive fosterers.

Frankly I preferred Alec in Tess - although I certainly want to marry him or any of them to be honest.

Thanks....

Oh I don't know why I wrote Thanks.

RiverTam,

I think Sayers must have meant Wimsey's flat to overlook Green Park. Perhaps she disguised the number to protect his privacy?

I always imagined Wimsey living in the Albany. Perhaps I will have to reread them for the 99th time to doublecheck.

The irony is that there are actually lots of nice heroes in Victorian fiction - the heroes of The Professor, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley etc are all rather lovely, kind and responsible. But because they're not all flashing dark eyes, brooding and attention seeking we never remember them.

Isn't it amazing how much influence over us that three daughters from a parsonage had? I know it's stating the obvious, but it suddenly struck me how every single title in Mooncup's second paragraph is by a Brontë!

I think Charlotte, Emily and Anne would be appalled by Heathcliff being seen as a romantic hero!

For a moment of shallow enjoyment - because who am I kidding, I'm not immune....

I thought it would be closer to Green park station, don't know why, she never mentions it, but it's way down at the Buckingham Palace end, above a car showroom if memory serves.

"I thought it would be closer to Green park station, don't know why, she never mentions it, but it's way down at the Buckingham Palace end, above a car showroom if memory serves."

That whole area was massively redeveloped after the Blitz, though, wasn't it? It may have been quite different in Lord Peter's time.

YY to the Brontes.

And he put a net over a nest of chicks so their mother couldn't feed them because there was no point them living if Cathy wasn't with him to see them.
I still fancy him though.

Heathcliff, that is!

The second time Heathcliff hangs a dog, it's Isabella Linton's spaniel, and he does it in the middle of actually eloping with her, presumably in front of her. How sexually besotted (as clearly poor, dopey, sheltered Isabella is) would you have to be to find that OK, and continue to run off with the guy, marry him and have his child?

Setting aside entirely the oddities of Heathcliff's relationship with Cathy, Isabella's attraction to him (clearly based on her liking the idea, if not the reality, of a bit of rough), and what he says to Nelly about wanting to paint I's mawkish white face with bruises and black eyes is pretty alarming.

And Rochester is of course a monumental shit - at least awful, sanctimonious St John 'I don't love you but think you would be a useful missionary's wife' Rivers doesn't try to seduce his friendless, powerless teenage employee, and then, once she proves a tougher nut than he thought, bamboozles her into a bigamous marriage, from which she is saved only by a fairly unlikely plot device.

And don't get me started on the Moore brothers in Shirley, or Dr Graham 'Smug' Bretton in Villette.

I still love Rochester...

I am reading Daniel Deronda. Am a grindingly, unremittingly, LONG 60% in but Dan still seems like a nice chap. Clearly popular with the underage prostitutes ladies.

Haven't got to the fairly bloody obvious revelation yet though, which would have seen him persona non grata in Victorian times I'm sure...

Hmm. I've had a half-read copy of Daniel Deronda beside the bed for months. Maybe I should pick it up again?

Join a drama club?

Think about where else men like this may work, have hobbies etc

The Georgette Heyer heroes are the ones to go for...all brooding and gorgeous but won over by a good woman. They have iron thighs in breeches and many caped coats and muscles which twitch in their manly jaws!

I think that one of the famous critics once said that there was a decent book inside Daniel Deronda - and it was called Gwendolen Harleth...