Are You Smarter Than A Romance Reader?

brain

So, you want to read some historical romance? You’ll have to take this qualifying exam.

To get the most out of your reading experience, you will have to know…

1. Some French

baignoire
plus qu’il n’en faut
c’est barbare, c’est vil!
perruque

2. A fairly wide range of literary references

Browning
Fieldingesque
Rabelasian
Hester Prynne
Turgenev
deus ex machina

3. A bit of the history of the material culture of Victorian Britain

Brougham
Burger
Drabbet
Phlegmatic
Camphor
Cravat
Furbelows

4. Familiarity with the flora and fauna of the English countryside

cob
tors
cowslips
speedwell
gorse bush

5. And some uncommon words

avidity
unguent
crenelated
raillery
desultory
scabrous
sybaritic

Got that? Ok, now you’re ready to read Patricia Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold.

Of course, this is a joke. But I am sitting here reading Gaffney while thinking about claim that romance is “dope for dupes”, and it’s just striking me how utterly untrue that is. You don’t even have to get into plot, characterization, style, and all the other things that make good fiction good.

You just have to open the damn book and look at the words.

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Tags: Patricia Gaffney, to Have and to Hold

This entry was posted on November 30, 2009, 10:30 pm and is filed under Genre musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

39 Comments

#1 by Sherry Thomas on November 30, 2009 - 11:01 pm

plus qu’il n’en fant

I am pretty darn sure there is a typo in there–not yours, think it was misprinted in the book itself.

Should be “plus qu’il n’en faut,” meaning “more than enough.”

And what Sebastian did with the unguent, heh.
#2 by Janet W on November 30, 2009 - 11:07 pm

Heh heh indeed: don’t make me re-read!

And French sputtered by a coquette with an unerring sense of how to catch a flying bit of jewelry, hmmm

What’s the word for people who deconstruct each and every word of a favoured novel … does Patricia Gaffney know we’re out there?
#3 by Phyl on November 30, 2009 - 11:36 pm

LOL! Maybe this explains why I am one of the ones who did not love THATH. It had nothing to do with Sebastian, it just made me feel stupid
#4 by Jessica Kennedy on December 1, 2009 - 12:15 am

Awesome post!
#5 by Niveau on December 1, 2009 - 12:19 am

I’m with Sherry on the fant/faut thing. I read it and went huh? I must now check my version to see if it has the same typo. Also: heh indeed.
#6 by heidenkind on December 1, 2009 - 12:23 am

I feel so much smarter now!
#7 by Marianne McA on December 1, 2009 - 4:16 am

I feel so much smarter now!

I think I feel stupider…

I’d recognise a gorse bush if I fell into it, and I know Fielding wrote Bridget Jones, though frankly I’m a bit surprised that Jessica didn’t spot that that was a bit of an anachronistic reference: but I’ve no idea about drabbets and I suspect burgers aren’t fast food in this context. Burghers, I know, but not the other.
And Hester Pyrnne and Turgenev don’t ring even the faintest of bells…

Which all begs the question, if I’m too thick to read romance, what genre can I retreat to? (This is possibly my problem with Black Silk! Probably I’m not bright enough to read it. I haven’t touched the book for a week, because the hero has just been handed the babies, and I’m scared that if I read on, it’ll only give him the opportunity to adopt them. I’m hoping he packs them off to an orphanage, patents the idea of flash photography, and retires to a life of sybaritic ease in the colonies on the proceeds.)
#8 by Vivian on December 1, 2009 - 5:01 am

and I know Fielding wrote Bridget Jones, though frankly I’m a bit surprised that Jessica didn’t spot that that was a bit of an anachronistic reference

I think Fielding refers to Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones. Unless I’m completely off.

Unlurking because I love this post And that book. Awesome!
#9 by Jessica on December 1, 2009 - 7:08 am

@Sherry Thomas: (and Niveau) You know, I stared at that and stared at it. I had to translate a large chunk of Descartes’ Les passions d’lame, in a windowless room that kind of reminded of Rachel’s jail, to get my PhD, so I do know a bit of French. But I bowed to the text! Thanks for the correction.

@Marianne McA: Oh please plow ahead with Black Silk, You do NOT have to love or even like the book to participate in the discussion.
#10 by Laura Vivanco on December 1, 2009 - 7:47 am

Marianne, are you from the UK? I just ask because I am, and I hadn’t heard of Hester Prynne or The Scarlet Letter (1850) until I read about it in one of Jennifer Crusie’s essays. Now admittedly I did not study English at university, but we were given quite a few works of American fiction to read at secondary school. The Scarlet Letter wasn’t one of them. I’m sure some other UK schools must have had it on their curriculum, and things may have changed since I went to school, but I have the impression that it wasn’t as well known then in the UK as it seems to be in the US.

There were a few others items on the list that I didn’t know, either.
#11 by Magdalen on December 1, 2009 - 9:16 am

When I was in high school, I had a test in History that somehow referred to Praxiteles’ Aphrodite — and I was the only one who got that question right, because I’d read a reference to Praxiteles (a sculptor) in a romance novel. That was over 35 years ago, and I’m still learning new things from romances every day.
#12 by Sherry Thomas on December 1, 2009 - 9:22 am

@Jessica:

I had to translate a large chunk of Descartes’ Les passions d’lame, in a windowless room that kind of reminded of Rachel’s jail, to get my PhD

Reminds me of landing in the US of A and trying to learn English by reading the King James Bible–after all, I’d read the Bible in its entirety in Chinese, can’t be so hard, can it?
#13 by Maili on December 1, 2009 - 10:46 am

Burger — shouldn’t it be burgher (a person living in a burgh, as in Edinburgh)? Otherwise I don’t know. What is it?

@Laura Vivanco & Marianne

Jumping in shamelessly: I never read The Scarlet Letter at school either, but heard of Hester because of a TV film with Meg “Weird Ice-Blue Eyes” Foster as Hester.
#14 by Marianne McA on December 1, 2009 - 11:32 am

Marianne, are you from the UK?

Thanks, Laura. Good to know where it comes from. And yes, I’m from Northern Ireland. I have heard of The Scarlet Letter, but haven’t read it. But, Turgenev, still a man of mystery. What did he write?

I’ve looked up drabbet – it’s a coarse linen – but my dictionary only has the modern fast food defintion of burger. I think it might be a misprint for burgher.
#15 by Laura Vivanco on December 1, 2009 - 11:56 am

Marianne, I went and Googled and he’s got an entry at Wikipedia . I’d vaguely heard his name but didn’t know what he’d written. In the notes to one of his novels, Fathers and Sons, it says

Turgenev: 1818-1883. Russian author of many novels and some plays and poems. After publishing this novel, lived mostly in France and the West, following opera singer Mme Viardot, her husband and children. Turgenev’s works were translated into French but it was not until about 1894 that Constance Garnett first translated them into English. Turgenev’s style had a great effect on those writers who followed the banners of naturalism or realism. He was praised by Flaubert and Henry James and William Dean Howells.

So who in To Have and To Hold had been reading Turgenev, and did he or she read Garnett’s 1894 translation or the original Russian version?
#16 by Sherry Thomas on December 1, 2009 - 12:02 pm

@Marianne McA:

Turgenev, still a man of mystery. What did he write?

Russian stuff.

The name is familiar to me–for a while the Chinese read a lot of Russian literature, people of my mother’s generation studied Russian during their secondary education–but I’d have to check Wikipedia to see what he wrote exactly.
#17 by Sherry Thomas on December 1, 2009 - 12:10 pm

@Laura Vivanco:

That’s what I was wondering. I did wiki old Turgenev too and then immediately had to go online to try to find out the exact year in which THATH was set. I always thought it was mid-Victorian, as in the 1850s or perhaps very early 1860s.

There are earlier French translations of Turgenev’s works and of course any Victorian of a certain class and above could read French. But if the book took place in the 1850s, we might be cutting it slightly close.
#18 by Lusty Reader on December 1, 2009 - 12:14 pm

love this! mainly because i aced the test! when i was a lone romance reader (before i found blog-romancelandia a year ago) i had never used the word Ton, or hackney, or spencer with another person, but i knew what all of them meant! and the proper dosage of laudanum!

i seriously think i did better in my history classes because of historical romance novels.
#19 by Jessica on December 1, 2009 - 12:24 pm

1856!
#20 by AnimeJune on December 1, 2009 - 12:51 pm

I’m getting the same vibe while reading These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer – I’m fluent in French thanks to an immersion education but I wonder how unilingual anglophones read and understand Heyer?
#21 by Marianne McA on December 1, 2009 - 12:51 pm

Okay. Thanks again, Laura. In a moment of enthusiastic self-improvement, I’ve ordered ‘Fathers and Sons’ from Amazon.

“Set in 1859 at the moment when the Russian autocratic state began to move hesitantly towards social and political reform, the novel explores the conflict between the liberal-minded fathers of Russian reformist sympathies and their free-thinking intellectual sons whose revolutionary ideology threatened the stability of the state.”
Sounds like Fun, doesn’t it?

[And then I can stage a Harry Hill-type fight between Victorian set novels: 'Black Silk' v. 'F&S']
#22 by Laura Vivanco on December 1, 2009 - 1:10 pm

I took a closer look at the Wiki entry, and if THATH is set in 1856, that rules out Fathers and Sons because it was published in 1862. So which of his works had the character in THATH read?

Oh, and I feel compelled to share more of the results of my Googling. Here’s a bit about Constance Garnett:

Constance Clara Garnett (née Black) (19 December 1861, Brighton, England — 17 December 1946, The Cearne) was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian Literature. Garnett was one of the first English translators of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov and introduced them on a wide basis to the English and American public.
#23 by Laura Vivanco on December 1, 2009 - 1:23 pm

Sounds like Fun, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’ll have some bits which are more fun? I very, very vaguely remember reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and have a vague impression of romantic entanglements. I don’t think Tolstoy would be very impressed with either my vagueness or the particular aspect of his work I’ve remembered. Clearly I started focusing on the romance plots in novels long, long before I actually started reading modern romances.
#24 by azteclady on December 1, 2009 - 1:44 pm

I’m with Marianne, feeling rather more stupid right now.

The good news is, the feeling won’t last

I read my first ever Gaffney yesterday–her short story in the The Lost anthology–and realized I have a huge, humongous hole in my romance reading to fill, asap.
#25 by Sherry Thomas on December 1, 2009 - 2:04 pm

@Laura Vivanco:

I found out that Turgenev was first translated into French in 1854, so we are safe there, no research mistakes on Gaffney’s part.

I can only read the first page of the paper, so I don’t know what the Gaffney character would have read. But by 1854 old Turgenev had already written a bunch of plays and a couple of volumes of stories.

So whichever character was reading Turgenev was not only well-read, but on the forefront of literature!

Not surprising, I guess, since Gaffney’s degree–I just had a look–was in English.

(This is so much fun. I feel like a literary detective.)
#26 by Kate on December 1, 2009 - 2:43 pm

Reminds me of landing in the US of A and trying to learn English by reading the King James Bible–after all, I’d read the Bible in its entirety in Chinese, can’t be so hard, can it?

Sheri, this reminds me of David Sedaris’ story of trying to learn French from medical textbooks

I too feel a bit stupider, and I thought I was getting better versed in the vocab! But I’ve got THATH in my hot little hands, waiting for a good opportunity. I’ll see if I can correct my ignorance.
#27 by Jill Sorenson on December 1, 2009 - 3:32 pm

Ha! This is why I don’t write historical romance. Clearly, I’m not smart enough. Have no idea what most of that stuff is.

Unguent, heh. I know that one. Now I want to read the book even more.
#28 by katiebabs on December 1, 2009 - 3:38 pm

Even with the amount of romance I read, my French is still horrible. I can proudly say I learned what deus ex machina is from romance books
#29 by KristieJ on December 1, 2009 - 9:14 pm

I’ve challenged my son to a vocabulary word off and I know I’ll wipe the floor with him – he’s ducking me so far – and most of what I know, I’ve learned from romance books.
I can hardly wait to trash talk him on that!!
#30 by Sherry Thomas on December 1, 2009 - 9:47 pm

@Kate:

Sheri, this reminds me of David Sedaris’ story of trying to learn French from medical textbooks

Hee, I wonder what he learned. I learned “firmament.” I don’t think I even managed a whole page of Genesis. Imagine you know about 200 words of English and your 201st is firmament.
#31 by Sherry Thomas on December 1, 2009 - 9:48 pm

@KristieJ:

I’ve challenged my son to a vocabulary word off and I know I’ll wipe the floor with him – he’s ducking me so far – and most of what I know, I’ve learned from romance books.

Me too. And proud of it!
#32 by SonomaLass on December 1, 2009 - 11:51 pm

I feel smart now. It’s nice when the education comes in handy!

One of the earliest reading/education experiences I remember is when I learned how hors d’ouevres was pronounced. I knew the word in spoken language, and I knew it from reading, but I really didn’t know they were the same thing! I thought hors d’ouevres were a kind of canapé, from context clues, but I hadn’t had any French lessons yet.

All my kids have amazing vocabularies; I love to listen to them talk to each other. Some of that is from being around adults who use the words they know, but a lot of it is from reading.
#33 by RfP on December 2, 2009 - 12:59 am

You just have to open the damn book and look at the words.

Good words, used well = fabulous.

OTOH there’s, say, Cheryl Holt. Perfectly good words, swapped around without rhyme or reason. I honestly suspect there’s an automated thesaurus involved, with one simple rule: always add syllables.

@Sherry Thomas: Tsk! *Everyone* knows what a ‘fant’ is.

@Janet W: The word is ‘pedant’. I for one will proudly own it.
#34 by Janine on December 2, 2009 - 1:54 am

I remember having to look up “sophistry” and one or two other words the first time I read THATH.

Jill, if we all had to be as brilliant as Gaffney to write historical romance… there’s a scary thought.

As for which of Turgenev’s works Sebastian purchases for Rachel, it’s not specified in the book.

“Look.” He’d prized open one of the smaller crates and was lifting books out by the handful. “Turgenev, Trollope, Thackeray, Tennyson–this must be the T box. No, it’s not, because here’s Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and here’s Browning and Balzac. Have you read them all, my little bluestocking? You couldn’t have read this– Little Dorrit, Dickens–because it’s only just come out. Do you like plays? Poetry? We have Ibsen, we have Dostoevsky, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell. I know you think I’m an illiterate, but here’s one I’ve actually read myself–La Dame aux Camelias. Great pathos; reduced me to tears, I don’t mind admitting.”
#35 by Janine on December 2, 2009 - 1:58 am

The Elizabethan English of the King James Bible “Old Testament” feels off after you’ve read the original in Classical Hebrew. So may double meanings and sound effects are lost in translation. Not a feat I could easily repeat today, however.
#36 by Kate on December 2, 2009 - 12:03 pm

Imagine you know about 200 words of English and your 201st is firmament.

I bet that came in handy (rolls eyes.)

And sorry for misspelling your name!
#37 by Nicola O. on December 2, 2009 - 2:30 pm

@Marianne McA:
if I’m too thick to read romance, what genre can I retreat to?

Twilight?
#38 by Lynn Spencer on December 3, 2009 - 7:39 pm

Love this post! I majored in history in college, and I’m pretty sure I learned a lot of it from romance novels and mysteries. I still remember writing papers and trying to find sources for things I’d read in historicals because I knew if I cited Harlequins or HarperMonograms, my professors probably wouldn’t go for it.
#39 by Aleena on December 5, 2009 - 10:28 am

Hi.. Nice blog =)
I havent read To Have and To Hold but I absolutely love reading historical romances