Devil's Cub: Georgette Heyer Book Club Part 3

[DilysPrice]

My calendar has reminded me that we are back from half term and it is Devil's Cub day.

Avon is still omnipotent and omniscient (and GH still totes has a crush on him even though he's 60-something). Leonie is still mad as a box of frogs. Rupert is still good value. And Juliana's unfortunate fiancé performs the Hugh Davenent role of sane observer making dry quips at the craziness around him (but doing it much better IMO because he has an actual plot function).

Which leaves us with the romantic leads. Mary is brilliant - one of my all time favourite GH heroines. Dominic has his moments but although GH thought his actions were forgivable, can we ever accept him as a "happy ending" from our 21st century perspective? GH is clearly aware (from the other characters' comments) that she's pushing the "girls love a bastard" angle as close as possible to its limit, and the fact that she never went that far again in her later books I think shows her awareness that she'd crossed the line.

But the plotting - oh how I love the plotting.

Thoughts? Can we accept Dominic as a romantic lead? Did you swoon over him as a teen?

presumably she was still a teenager when she wrote this one, so would still have been caught up in the "my love for him will be enough to stop him being a wanker/evil sod" teen thinking. Think of the Twilight stuff for example(or rather don't ). DD2 (14) likes Vidal, which says it all really. She does think Mary is great though, which redeems me as a mother a bit .

Do we think she was aware of how far she was pushing it, or just still young?

She's far better at the supporting characters generally than the heros/heroines, unless she's doing the unconventional ones (Gilly in the Foundling, Jenny in a Convenient Marriage).

Wonder which character(s) she identified most closely with? Were any of them her, or her as she would have wanted to be?

I wonder whether Vidal would have actually carried out the rape though.

Mary ALWAYS held the trump card - she was the grand-daughter of Sir Hugh Challoner. Avon was sufficiently concerned about Sophia's perceived "bourgeoise" background to warn his son off the relationship - a subtle reference to his youthful attempted abduction of Jennifer Merivale (Diana Beauleigh in The Black Moth) - and the family "code of honour" (twisted as it was) would have made it unthinkable to dishonour a young woman with aristocratic connections. Mary may have been unaware of the relationship between Avon and her grandfather, but in the absense of a gun up her sleeve, I reckon she'd have defended herself with any weapon available, including information about her own family background.

It is only Mary's newly-revealed elevated social status which allows Vidal to take her seriously and treat her with respect, thus paving the way for him to fall in love with her.

And yes, I DID swoon as a teen. I swooned oodles.

I've been trying to remember how I felt about Dominic when I first read this, and indeed how old I was - I think later teens. I don't think I had a crush on him, I do remember thinking how nice it was that the heroine was a girl I could imagine liking rather than the usual empty headed bimbo - I was reading loads of different romances by different authors at that time. I remember feeling rather sorry for Frederick Comyn who would definitely be a nicer husband than Dominic, and who was going to continue to have the devils own job managing the wilful baggage Juliana for the rest of his life. In fact, I ended up feeling rather exasperated with the entire Avon family, especially their cavalier attitude towards tradesmen's debts.
I don't think Dominic would have raped anyone really.
Although there are a few stereotypical inn keepers etc, the minor characters are definitely getting more interesting and the humour more like the later books.

Oh I felt sorry for Comyn too jubi - couldn't quite see why he liked Juliana, who was a right pain.

leonie I agree Vidal is really nothing like as bad as Avon - Avon's more out-and-out wicked whereas Vidal is just not very good at obeying the rules. But then, doesn't Avon say to Mary that Vidal's morals are rather better than his? So clearly GH intended the contrast.

I do wonder what would have happened if Leonie had had a daughter. I can't really see her with a daughter.

duh, I forgot we were reading out of order . Revised theory is that she was a young 30 then .

I reckon Leonie would have been OK with a daughter, she'd have brought her up to be exactly like herself, although Avon would have wanted to lock her away to keep her safe from men like himself.

I missed the These Old Shades thread due to rl interfering so I shall jump in here.

I first read this in my mid teens and thought Domonic was thrillingly sexy and would give my teen self a bit of a slap if I could, but as we've all said it's of it's time. I agree with Justin when he says Mary can do better (he did say that didn't he? I haven't got the book to hand and might be mixing things up), but he is the sort of bloke you have a dreadfull crush on as a yoof who if you're lucky never notices you're alive (I'm remembering mine from my early teens, a serial seducer at 15 with two pregnant girlfriends under his belt he didn't notice me, lucky escape), so I can understand that he might appeal as Mary is still quite young and had a dull life. I could see them working as a couple in the countryside with him shooting and riding and her visiting the sick, I can't see her being happy with him rolling in drunk and gambling in town.

LeoniedeSaintVire "Does anyone else wonder whether she does find Sophia a husband later or if they fall out irrevocably?" I think I wrote some dreadfull teenage fanfic on the subject of her doing that and the decendants I made up for them, not realising that the family reappears in "Infamous Army".

Agree that Julianna, like Fanny before her is a pain in the bum and why any man would saddle himself with either of them is beyone me but that's all part and parcel of the style GH was doing at the time.

I love Rupert in both books, he's still endearing to me, lazily goodnatured as far as his familes interests are concerned and otherwise completely self absorbed, he's a nice foil to Leonie wizzing off in all directions.

Really enjoyed reading it again.

I do love the denouement - it's just hilarious, everything the denouement of The Black Moth wanted to be but couldn't quite pull off (he abducted the woman you love and tried to rape her - you duelled to the death and now you'll stay for supper? ).

In any other circs Avon would be the most transparently rubbish deus ex machina but because he's been built up in the previous book as this brilliant Machiavelli then I totally buy it.

And because we believe in him we totally believe that he would sort everything out for Mary if she didn't want to marry Vidal, that she really can walk away, and that she and Vidal have a free choice. It's a classic romcom trope, that a couple are stuck together for the wrong reasons, they fall in love and are separated before they make the conscious decision to get together for the right reasons (twoo wuv).

I only discovered GH last year, as a 30-something year old and I've been contemplating what my teenage self would have thought of Vidal. I was never into BAD bad boys so I don't think I would have been that taken with him, there's far too much high drama about him.

I couldn't decide whether the attempted rape scene was more of a ploy to show Mary's true colours - her courage, her ability to stay calm - rather than an example of how bad Vidal is.

I don't know much about morals in the mid-1700s but would rape have been seen as seriously as it is now? It was an age when women were more possessions than equals and even in the 1930s when GH was writing, the feminist movement wasn't as enlightened, was it?

The attempted rape scene went too far for me to accept Vidal as a romantic lead. Bit too much of a bastard for my liking.

And I bet that in the mid-1700's, it'd have all been painted as Mary's fault for running off with him in the first place. Lucky for her that she had a loaded gun.

I think, horribly, that Mary's behaviour and the fact that she led Vidal to believe she was a "bad girl" allows GH to distinguish Vidal's behaviour, which is appalling but redeemable, from Andover's behaviour in The Black Moth which puts him beyond any hope of a happy ending.

I think rape of a "good girl" is a big deal in the 18th century - judging from what I remember of Clarissa and Les Liaisons Dangereux. Virginity is such a huge deal that rape is an iconic crime.

Changing the subject somewhat, back on the previous thread someone asked if the contemporary detective stories were any good. I haven't read all of them, but they are like her romances - the earlier ones are a bit over the top, the middle ones are actually quite good, and there's at least one, which I think was written later, which is pretty dark and depressing.
Some of her favourite characters make clear reappearances, obviously with new names - there is a re-run of Beau Lavenham for instance, and another version of Horry Winwood.
She tried to have her lunatical bucks as heroes a couple of times, but what is funny in an 18th century setting grates in 1930's London.

Had forgotten it was Devil's Cub time!

I find the plot a bit preposterous, I must say - first Mary pretending to be Sophia and then all the capering around at the end as Mary runs off with Frederick then runs off alone. I prefer the later books when she calms down a bit and lets the narrative be more character-driven.

But she is really developing her style - it is the first really witty one I think, and she's left the silliness and arch writing of The Black Moth, The Masqueraders etc well behind her. Fascinating transitional point in her career.

I've been trying to put myself into the mindset of my own parent's generation, and thinking about the way dear Mama talks (she is a Daily Mail reader) I think the 'she was asking for it' mindset is still alive and well in at least some of the over seventies. Rather depressing.

...haven't noticed. But I'm not reading this one right this minute as I read it only about three months ago, now I'm going to have to check it, and I've got visitors in less than an hour - arrgh!

"Wild" Bab Childe is Leonie's granddaughter, isn't she?

No, Bab is Dominic and Mary's granddaughter and Leonie's great-granddaughter. Barbara's father (Dominic and Mary's son) is vaguely referred to as being a bad lot who is now dead.

As previous threads have pointed out, the dates don't work (Devil's Cub is set in c.1780), but clearly GH wanted to present Barbara and her brother George as damaged by their poor upbringing, and couldn't depict Dominic and Mary as bad parents so invented another generation between them.

Of course

Oo how exciting, a GH thread!

I love Mary, she's one of my favourite heroines, although the one thing that let her down was her "oh I could manage him" attitude to his "bad boyness".
But then in the world of romantic fiction, they did tame down for the love of a good woman - unlike in RL.

Vidal though - no, I never swooned over him. Not a fan of bad boys. Wasn't ever that keen on Avon either.

My favourite hero (apols for going off piste) is Freddie Standen in Cotillion - despite being apparently gay as anything, he's just lovely.