The Last Hellion (Avon, 1998) is the fourth book in Loretta Chase’s Scoundrels Series. It had the misfortune of being the novel immediately following Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, considered by many to be one of the best romance novels ever written. The Last Hellion’s hero, Vere Mallory, the Duke of Ainswood, was introduced in all his dissolute obnoxiousness in LoS. He drinks, he whores (“the whores give me the only thing I want from a female”), he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He speaks with a “mocking baritone”, acts with “rough obnoxiousness” and is “uncivilized” and “thickheaded”. Despite being a younger son of a younger son, deaths in the Mallory family have made Vere a Duke. Alas, he has no interest in taking seriously the dukedom’s responsibilities including two wards he has sent off to live with a relative. This exchange with his valet indicates his view of women:
“God save us from bluestockings. You know what their trouble is, don’t you, Jaynes? Due to not getting pumped regular, females take the oddest fancies, such as imagining they can think.”
Seasoned romance readers will identify that passage as communicating, “what Vere really needs is a ‘bluestocking.’” And who is our heroine but Lydia Grenville, a “cynically hardhearted reporter” with a passion for social causes and no interest in marriage or men. I actually decided to read The Last Hellion because of Lydia’s sideline, writing (pseudonymously) The Rose of Thebes, a rollicking serialized adventure story on which all of London is hooked. Lydia is almost too outrageous, barreling through London in her cabriolet, wearing black bombazine, with her giant black mastiff by her side, but she’s funny and smart and determined and caring, so I was drawn to her anyway.
Vere and Lydia meet in an alley when Lydia is trying to save the life (and virtue) of a young runaway from a “procuress”, with her fists if necessary. Vere physically restrains her, kisses her impulsively, and she pretends to faint, only to make the Duke a laughingstock by flattening him with a punch to the jaw. He pretty much falls in love on the spot. Of course, Vere is too thickheaded to realize it, but he is fascinated and attracted, and disapproving and disgusted, and he can’t keep away from her. For her part, Lydia is very attracted to Vere, but mostly sees him as a cretin, and an impediment to her various plans, both of which he is.
Their relationship is very amusing and over the top, reminding me a bit of classic Hollywood romances like Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday. Early on, for example, she performs a dead on parody of Vere in a smoky club where writers congregate, not realizing Vere is there. And, in my favorite scene, Vere accompanies Lydia (actually, he follows her, by hanging on to the back of her carriage) to an estate, where he helps her climb inside a second story window to retrieve her clothes without waking the occupants of the home. For an assignment, Lydia was costumed as a man, and Vere, in the pitch black darkness, has to help her undo the back buttons of her corset. It’s a very funny and sexy scene.
Overall, I enjoyed reading The Last Hellion, especially the zip and zing of Vere and Lydia’s encounters, but it really fell apart for me in the second half. Lydia’s character, despite being billed as sensible, turned out to be all impulse, no reason. Yes, she writes fiction, very popular fiction, but she refers to it as “sentimental claptrap” and it is never clear why she does it.* She saves a young woman, who becomes her companion, but instead of getting back to saving other young women from procuresses, she becomes inexplicably obsessed with finding the young woman’s missing jewelry. She turns out to be related to the hero of Lord of Scoundrels, Dain, which she knew, but what is never clear is why she never pursued the connection, especially when Dain and Jessica show up and embrace her as one of their own.** She doesn’t want marriage, and resists her attraction to Vere, but why?
The plot just kind of meandered after a great first third, and moved from finding the missing jewels, to resolving the will-she-won’t-she marriage issue with Vere (he tells Lydia she should marry him, not for her own happiness, but because she can use his wealth to save more young women.*** Instead of agreeing on the spot to marry a duke to whom she is deeply attracted and who clearly cares for her, she challenges him to a carriage race.), to discovering Lydia’s true ancestry, to … rather randomly … a manhunt for Vere’s missing nieces.
Vere, too, had some issues. Perhaps attempting to rehabilitate the character from his turn in LoS, Chase gives us a preface in which we see Vere lose one family member after another to various diseases and accidents, including, most poignantly, a beloved young cousin. In the genre, these kinds of early losses explain (and partially excuse) the development of rakish or dissolute heroes, so that was fine (and it was a really good prologue, actually). But Vere’s turnaround was a little too 180 for me. The woman-hater ends up declaring, “We’re of one mind, Grenville and I, and the mind is hers, on account of my being a man and not having one.”
There are other issues: Bertie, Jessica’s wayward brother from LoS, appears here as the love interest of the runaway whom Lydia saved. But somehow he has become a complete idiot between books. Is there an unpublished novella that explains his brain injury? And while the issue of historical accuracy is not one that interests me much, even I rolled my eyes when Jessica, after meeting Lydia exactly once, on the day of her wedding, presents her “enough lewd underwear to dress a dozen harlots.”
Still, Chase creates very likeable characters and this is a light, fun read. Vere’s bemused and reverential attitude towards Lydia — he calls her “Grenville” to the end — is one of its chief delights. My biggest problems with it really arose after I put it down and started to write this review, thinking about the plot as a whole and who these characters are.
But the main reason I read The Last Hellion was Lydia’s sideline of writing fiction. It’s really interesting how this is dealt with. It parallels very nicely the kinds of discussion had in Romanceland about the popularity of romance, its relationship to literature, and its critical reception. Lydia refers to it disparagingly, but her editor says, “It isn’t the blasted critics, but your ‘dratted story’ that’s made our fortune”. I think Chase was trying to convey that the “wildly fanciful and convoluted” tale is really a part of Lydia which she would prefer to renounce, but shouldn’t, just as she shouldn’t renounce her messy and romantic feelings towards Vere. So it makes sense that Vere, once he learns who writes The Rose of Thebes, is delighted, and tries to convince her of its value.
On being told that an unfortunate plot turn has resulted in mobs of readers hanging a certain character in effigy, Lydia says “By gad, people do take their romantic fables seriously. Well. … Sentimental swill it may be, but it’s popular swill, it seems, and it’s mine.”
But Vere refers to Lydia as “a master storyteller”, and Dain concurs, “The gods must have given you the talent, cousin.” To which Vere replies:
“My wife holds that talent cheap,” Vere said. “She refers to The Rose of Thebes as ‘sentimental swill’ — and that’s the kindest epithet she bestows upon it. If Macgowan hadn’t let the cat out of the bag, she’d never have admitted she wrote it.”
“It serves no useful purpose,” Lydia said. “All it does it entertain. With simple morals. The good end happily, the bad unhappily. It has nothing to do with real life.”
“We have to live real life, like it or not,” Vere said. “And you know, better than most, the sort of lives the great mass of humanity lead. To give them a few hours’ respite is to bestow a great gift.”
“I think not,” Grenville said. “I begin to think it socially irresponsible. On account of that wretched story, girls take it into their heads to bolt in search of excitement they can’t find at home. They’ll imagine they can dispatch villains with sharpened spoons. They –”
“You’re telling me the members of your sex are imbeciles who can’t distinguish fact from fiction,” he said. “Anyone fool enough to try one of Miranda’s tricks is either restless by nature or doesn’t own a grain of sense. Such people will do something stupid with or without your suggestions. My wards offer a perfect example.”
…
[Vere continues] “You are a talented writer, with the knack of communcating with readers of both genders, of every age and background. I will not permit you to throw that gift away.”
…
[Vere continues] “I should be illiterate were it not for romantic clatrap and sentimental swill and improbably tales. I cut my teeth on The Arabian Nights and Tales of the Genii.
Here we have in a nutshell many of the common arguments for and against the genre. A reader could be forgiven for assuming that Chase had these things on her mind as a woman writer writing today. But in an interview at Word Wenches, Chase says:
Lydia is one of the many woman characters I’ve created in reaction to women in 19th C novels and to 19th C sexism and misogyny in general. Specifically, what set me off was critics’ reaction to Lady Morgan’s two-volume ITALY. You can read her response to some of the criticism here.
According to Paul Johnson’s THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN, “they hated Lady Morgan as a woman writer…and they were further incensed by the news that the publisher Colburn had paid her the immense sum of £2000 for the book. Byron hailed the book as ‘fearless and excellent.’” Everyone else went nuts. Here’s a sampling from Johnson’s book: “‘she spewed out of her filthy maw/A flood of poison, horrible and black. “She was ‘an Irish she-wolf’ a ‘blustering virago,’ a ‘wholesale blunderer and reviler’; she wrote while ‘maudlin from an extra tumbler of negus in the forenoon.’” This was typical “criticism” of the time–reviewers today are pussycats by comparison. What fascinated me me was the how much they hated her simply because she was a successful woman writer.
I’ve just read about a half dozen Loretta Chase interviews, and although she talks a lot about how characters come to her, and what her inspirations are for characters, settings, and plots, I actually can’t find an interview where Chase talks about herself as a writer of popular books that are disparaged by critics and the moral majority. So one lesson is for me is to try not to be careful about assuming I can get inside an author’s brain that way.
Still, would it have lessened the quality of this book if Chase gave an interview where she said, “Well, I was being interviewed by a local journalist, and the guy was such a jerk about the romance genre, that when I was thinking of reasons for Lydia to be against her own muse, these came to me”? Unless it was just awkwardly thrust in as a kind of didactic moment, not for this reader.
*************
*True, she says she agreed to write it under two “conditions” (anonymity and editorial control), but conditions are not reasons.
**Or maybe I should say her reason — sparing her long dead mother from being the subject of gossip — is hardly convincing given the disdain this character feels for the nobility.
***In a spit in the face of journalists everywhere, he actually says “you could actually do something, instead of simply writing about what is wrong.”
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My overall rating with this book is in-line with the yours. It was a good book, though maybe not great, and certainly suffers from being in the shadow of its predecessor, the great Lord of Scoundrels. However, I take issue with the premise of the review, which seems to be that if there is a contradiction in a character, then that is a flaw in the book. Not only is this not true, but this seems to diminish what makes Loretta Chase’s characters so compelling and vivid.
Vere is someone who proclaims loudly on the low value of women (no intelligence, only useful for sex), though his actions, while not necessarily heroic, do not proclaim him as an actual misogynist. I don’t think visiting whores (something which many men of the time apparently did) is enough to demonstrate true misogyny, and I at least have to be thankful for his honesty in these encounters. In his actions, he is exceedingly respectul of Grenville from the beginning (barring their verbal sparring, but she gave as good as she got) by “helping” her and the runaway. This struck me as false bravado from the very beginning, even without taking into account his sad family history.
Then we have Grenville, who proclaims very loudly on the high value of women, yet she has to eschew everything feminine in order to prove this. She takes the opposite stance, engaging only in intellectual or roudy pursuits, and refusing sex altogether, as it would somehow be insulting or reduce her worth (I don’t think she says this part, though if not for this, I’m unclear why she’d hold off on sex with anyone, and then with Vere). She claims that women are smart, but manages to disprove her own point by being smart BUT behaving completely unfeminine. She’s actually a sharp contrast to Jessica from the previous book, who I think manages to be both strong and feminine.
So, they are contradictory, but they are real (haven’t we met people like this before? I have). But most importantly, and I feel like this was overlooked in the review, they are each other’s exact opposites, making them fit together perfectly. Thus, their 180s were not jarring for me, as 1) I saw them coming a mile away, 2) them complementing each other explains how they helped each other reach that equilibrium, and 3) I believe they are both intelligent and self-aware enough characters to understand some of their hypocrisies and insecurities all along, just without the kick-in-the-pants to change their ways until they met each other.
For some reason, I don’t know how, I got it into my head that this book was about Dain’s illegitimate son. And I was so desperate to read it, to see that wild grown-up boy, to see older Dain and Jessica, that when I opened the book and found out it was about a big blond duke, I was crushed. And I don’t think I’m over that yet.
How does she disprove her point by being a smart but “unfeminine” woman? An “unfeminine” smart woman is still a smart woman, surely?
What happens when you consider the novel as a stand-alone text? Are the character flaws inherent in the story Hellion or is the problem in external serialization? The thread of interest here for me is whether Chase is simply “borrowing” characters or is she consciously developing an inhabited (episodic?) fictive world? Seems to me that most romance series (e.g., Quinn’s Bridgertons, Balogh’s Huxtables, Phillips’ Stars) borrow and spin-off individuals rather than develop the whole (e.g., Paretsky’s Warshawski series, Stabenaw’s Shugak series, or the classic, Faulkner’s Yoknawpatawpha County). The significant difference seems to be character continuity or character development.
And I think what’s interesting about Vere’s and Lydia’s “heart v. mind” debate is not necessarily the content but the speakers. Chase has inverted the argument, no?
I read this some years ago and remember enjoying it quite a lot more than I thought I would, having read some other people’s opinions first. I can’t quote favorite passages from it like I can for “Mr. Impossible” or “Miss Wonderful”, but I remember laughing a fair bit and having that elusive satisfied feeling at the end.
@Amber:
Yes, I can see this, and it’s helpful. It’s common in the genre, I think, to have a wallpaper rake. The more the text tells us how devilish a hero is, the less he is likely to be. It’s less common to have wallpaper bluestocking/proto-feminist, but that’s not terribly rare either. I guess for me, the balance between bombast and substance was just too tipped in this case. The characters felt like spinning tops on a board, just banging willy nilly into crazy scenarios, and each other. there was a lot of enjoyment in a micro sense, but when I stepped back to look at the book as a whole, there was less coherence in character or plot than I wanted.
@Maryan:
I would not have any problem with Bertie’s character change (or, for that matter, Dain’s) per se, but they felt to me like different characters. I guess I feel there is a difference between developing minor characters from book to book, versus changing them completely without explanation just so they do what you want them to do in the new book.
But you are so right that I would not have had any problem with Bertie, and would likely have thought him adorable, if I had not met him in LoS.
You mean, it is usually the women who brings the “heart”, and the man who brings the “mind”? Yes, I can see that. Is it unusual? I don’t know. Meredith Duran does something similar in Bound By Your Touch (heroine is even named Lydia). And Maybe Ivory too in Black Silk. Or maybe I am just mixing things up?
@Maya M.:
I read no reviews prior to reading the book, which was good. I noticed that AAR gave it a C the first time around, then an A grade on its re-release. I think readers who read it immediately after LoS are bound to make unfavorable comparisons.
And, it must be said, that Chase invites those comparisons. For example, Vere, just like Dain, collects keepsakes (buttons, etc) in secret from Lydia, and when she discovers them she knows how much he loves her.
Interesting. May have to read this one. I thought Jessica’s brother was an idiot in LoS so he’s continuing to be an idiot would be consistent for me.
The real problem I have with this bit is that I frequently hear this from authors today.
I was recently involved in a conversation on whether the written word was one of humanity’s most dangerous creations. Interestingly enough females reading novels in the 18th centuries came up. The speaker explained about how it was considered dangerous and frivolous, etc. Her opinion was how ridiculous that was. But then later in the same conversation she turned around and stated how dangerous young adult vampire romances were to young girls and then later still that fictional violence is all about catharsis and not dangerous at all.
Unfortunately, the question discussed didn’t allow me to inquire more directly on this tangent but I found it so very interesting how this person couldn’t see the contradictions of her statements or that there might be a gender bias present.
Which brings me back to your excepts: I have no problem with the conversations taking place. I even think that they can be important. I truly dislike the female lead’s opinion of her work. I hate to say this is a female trait but I rarely hear my close male friends talk this way about anything they are involved in but I quite frequently hear my female friends talk this way and know that I am guilty of it myself. I wonder though if there isn’t a cultural aspect here that moves beyond simple gender issues.
I am pretty sure I re-read this one at least once, which tells me I enjoyed it!
Bertie was just two brain cells away from being a vegetable in LoS…he’s actually even more stupid in TLH?!
I’ve been looking through Chase’s backlist trying to find something that sounds good. I loved Your Scandalous Ways and Silk is for Seduction, but I hate Lord of Scoundrels so much that I’m wary of all her other books. The Last Hellion sound too similar to LoS for me so I won’t read it. Thanks for the detailed review.
Someone else here who wasn’t overwhelmed w/LoS love. That said, her Perfect books enthrall me and her Regencies are top-notch. Can it be that the characters are just “too much” for me … and that I can’t believe their crawling back to an equilibrium from such far-out positions.
I’m sure “you must read” is the bane of any book reviewer’s life but you still “must” read Heyer’s Sylvester because Phoebe is proud of her book and indeed, it sounds like a book worth reading. I too don’t care for novelists of either sex dumping on their work … it’s good enough for me, the humble reader to buy/read but you don’t stand behind it? It’s not as if it doesn’t happen: I think Sunita quoted Heyer being disparaging about The Nonesuch, but I don’t want to read it.
@AQ:
It’s entirely possible I forgot how idiotic he was.
I didn’t much like it either, in terms of her character. I found her attitude towards her fiction writing very puzzling. If it’s so stupid, why do it? She is supposed to be strong and take charge. Once you become a Duchess, is it really necessary to do anything because masses of strangers like it?
In terms of it as a “real” argument for the existence of fiction (as opposed to the writing of it) I am less opposed. Lots of readers do seem to talk about romance novels as light, easy reads that give them a comforting feeling when times are tough: a way to pass the time and forget about their own troubles.
@Las: Actually, you might try Last Hellion. It’s farcical, where LoS was heavier (although still a Loretta Chase book). I didn’t much like Your Scandalous Ways, mainly for the one (probably unfair) reason that a famous courtesan heroine should (a) have actual identifiable lovers, and (b) know what she is doing in bed. I should probably give it another try.
@Janet W: No, me neither, although I thought LoS was superior to TLH.
When you put it that way , it does sound pretty condescending. I will read Heyer. I will!
@Janet W:
Great point!
@Jessica:
I’m not so sure. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I know that I short-change romance novels at times. But lately I’ve segued into thinking about whether or not the romance novel is the ultimate catharsis reading. Well, ultimate might be a bit strong but I’m trying to look at it from another angle and trying to remove my own cultural conditioning. After all, the romance novel is a very emotional read for me WHEN it works.
Given the dictionary denotation, shouldn’t we at least consider whether we’ve been short-changing these novels based on our conditioning?
catharsis
[kuh-thahr-sis]
noun, plural -ses [-seez] Show IPA.
1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
2. Medicine/Medical . purgation.
3. Psychiatry .
a. psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.
b. discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.
Origin:
1795–1805; < Neo-Latin < Greek kátharsis a cleansing, equivalent to kathar- (variant stem of kathaírein to cleanse, derivative of katharós pure) + -sis -sis
@AQ:
I would distinguish, personally, between the different uses readers may make of romance novels, and their objective value (whatever value that is — literary, ethical, didactic). So, that some readers may not value romance novels in a literary sense, to me, doesn’t mean they in fact lack literary value.
It is absolutely possible that some readers denigrate their own reading choices because they have been conditioned as women to denigrate what women produce and what women enjoy. Personally, I am a romance reader who emphatically sees romance novels as literature and not as mere diversion. I want to be careful, however, of telling another woman that her expressed preferences are not really her own, on the basis that they do not comport with mine. Answering these kinds of questions is important, but I think it’s an ethnographic or a reflective autobiographical enterprise.
@Jessica:
Interesting, however, I disagree on the reflective autobiographical nature. I do believe that the inquiry can be taken beyond a personal level if one chooses to do so. Whether the results would be interesting to those outside of oneself would be another story. Then again based on some of the utter rubbish that passes as research in corporate media, I’m not sure my results would be any worse. At least I take the topic very seriously, even with my love/hate relationship with the genre.
As to the ethnographic, I do believe it would be much more difficult but again not impossible.
Still, there’s something there in the carathsis piece that pulling me. Sooner or later I’ll unravel it because even though I pulled the denotation of the word, I haven’t pulled on the right thread yet. But I will say that when I speak of value, I’m not really looking at literary value here. I equate it more to women discounting their “sixth” sense. I know, no context for that last bit but it would no doubt be long and boring and completely off-topic.
Anyway, enjoyed the review and comments. Will try to read the book.
I, too, find the plot of this book rather all over the place, but I don’t mind. I like the characters and their interaction too much. I see Lydia here as taking the Dain position as it were: the character who thinks of herself as a monster but who isn’t really (although Vere rather endearingly, to my mind, thinks of her as a dragoness — dangerous but enchanting)…and when he actually has to challenge her to seduce her on their wedding night, I thought even more of Dain and Jessica. I like her swagger and I like that he likes it. I think she’s writing the story at least in part for the money.But in some ways she can’t admit that she enjoys these over-the-top tales she tells. She sees herself as practical, but there are other aspects of her that I think Vere encourages and appreciates, so that she is more herself with him than without him. Just as she sees that he is generous and great-hearted (e.g. heroic action at collapsing London building) but also self-deprecating and loathing his position as duke since it came to him through the deaths of so many loved ones.
And I was surprised how much less idiotic Bertie was in this book than in LoS, so I actually think the inconsistency goes the other way!
I thought Bertie was far more idiotic in LoS, and liked what Chase did with him in TLH: he’s still none too bright, but he can be quite perceptive about others and is able to accomplish things one might not expect of him by understanding other people’s needs and feelings and taking action accordingly.
TLH was the first book I read by Chase, and I have a soft spot for it. I like the crazy plot – to some degree it echoes the wackiness of The Rose of Thebes – and I found Vere and Lydia entertaining. The one part I could have done without is the revelations about Lydia’s father at the end; I didn’t feel the book needed it, really.
@AQ: Thanks, and let us know what you think if you do read it.
@mfox:
Yes, I can see this, absolutely. If there had been even one line where Jessica indicated she wrote the story for the money, that would have been fine with me (even if it was a half-truth, or even a complete lie, it would have been something). But there was no “there” there.
@Meri:
Clearly, a reread of LoS is in order for me, if only to get to know Bertie again!
I agree about the final revelations — not needed. And thanks for offering yet another positive way to look at that patchwork plot.
Enjoyed reading your review but I am not a fan of this author, period. BUT BUT BUT – I am giving her another try with another book that was gifted to me – Lord Perfect (I think that’s the title). I read LoS when it first came out and didn’t care for it at all (as if that comes as a surprise).
@Keishon:
Thanks Keishon. Of the three in that trilogy, my favorite was Mr. Impossible. Loved Rupert, love that charming, roguish hero with unexpected depths. Hope you like Lord Perfect!
Mr Impossible was my favorite too. A toss up between it and Connie Brockway’s As You Desire as to my favourite Egypt-themed-bluestocking-heroine novel.
I can see exactly why LoS is popular, it bounces expertly over the tropes, but it never really gripped me.
As regards Lydia Greville’s opinion of her work; when I read TLH I remember being reminded of a quote from a Dorothy Sayer’s biography wherein she was talking about her fiction and her own uncomfortable feelings regarding its worth. It’s something that’s explored in Harriet Vane’s thought processes, the unworthiness of entertainment for entertainment’s sake. As an aside, I believe Peter Wimsey defends entertainment in a similar way to Vere at one pint, although he also implicitly distinguishes entertaining fiction and entertaining fiction that is worthy when they are discussing ‘Death ‘twixt Wind And Water’ (Approbation being more convincing if it is male perhaps?)
It seems to me that it’s an attitude I’ve seen expressed by other female writers in the past; just off the top of my head I believe Jane Austen, at least one of the Brontes, and George Eliot all expressed similar misgivings regarding the validity of their work. When Lydia disregards her own work and art, it felt very familiar to me.
I can see why it might grate; there’s a big element of intellectual snobbery there, almost dishonesty, (if you write it, you should OWN it perhaps?) but I saw it as all of a piece as with Lydia’s rejection of trappings of femininity. To be feminine was to be disregarded, un-intellectual; to be taken seriously one had to be masculine. And she wants to be taken seriously, and yet is fearful of it. Running down her own writing is on a par with rejecting fashionable clothes; she may receive satisfaction, emotional and financial from it but it is unthinkable to her to admit it, because she has so thoroughly absorbed the notion that emotional = feminine and only masculine = worthy.
I have more vague thoughts about gender bias at play in evaluations of worth, intellectual and otherwise, but it’s rather late so I will stop here and hope this makes sense!
Although I own and have read both LOS and TLH, they’re not my favourites. From her earlier writings I much prefer her short Regencies and Captives of the Night.
Reading FD’s comments reminded that Heyer also frequently discounted her own historical romances/comedies (not just Tbe Nonesuch as mentioned above). She wanted people to value her for more serious historical work — she too saw her popular books as things she wrote that made money so she “had” to do them and has been quoted as being contemptuous of fans at times. So this looks like a not uncommon meme with women writers.
Perhaps in part Chase is playing with this idea of women writers who denigrate their own work, especially those who produce popular literature. After all not only are these “scribbling women” (to quote Hawthorne) successfully doing something that should be the purview of men, but they are producing something that gives pleasure to the masses. And pleasurable entertainment especially that which is validated in part by the love of masses and is commercially viable is often seen as being aesthetically suspect or a lesser good.
@FD:
The issue I had with Lydia was not that she disregards her own work. I completely agree with you and AQ and others that women writers have done this and continue to do it. It’s that she seemed not have any reason — be it money, boredom, a muse, anything — for writing it. Again, I don’t care if her reason is self-deceiving. So, for example, even one line in the book, form Lydia’s POV, to the effect, “her editor only agreed to let her write columns if she also wrote sentimental claptrap” would have sufficed. Without being connected internally to her character in any way, the fiction writing felt a little like a contrivance on the author’s part to give Lydia a “softer” side.
@Kathryn:
This could be. It’s interesting that Chase said she was inspired by a women writers who were denigrated, but Lydia never is. All of the people who read her and all of the men in her life praise her writing. It’s Lydia herself who doesn’t see its value. As an aside, I think this is typical in the genre, especially contemps, and, while it is a major part of the “fantasy” element, and therefore enjoyable, for me personally it can venture a bit uncomfortably close to putting patriarchy inside heroine’s heads and noplace else.
As for the value of pleasure, I agree 100%. This is kind of what I was trying to say to AQ. One strategy can of course be to point out that romance fiction (or popular fiction generally) has many fo the same values (whatever they may ne, literary and other) of literary fiction. That’s important to do. But another tack is to reject the idea that the values associated with commercial or popular fiction (like escapism, fantasy, pleasure) are suspect. I like that one too.
Back to Lydia … sure, a very sophisticated analysis along the lines several commenters have suggested could work: the text gives us a very nuanced and accurate portrayal of a woman writer who has no social script and no resources for acknowledging what she does. That lack of acknowledgement runs so deep, that even a deep internal point of view cannot tell us anything about what Lydia’s writing means to her.
I am being a curmudgeon and I apologize in advance, but I have to wonder how much of that reading is being brought to the text and how much is actually in it?
ps. this is very helpful, BTW, as I may be using TLH in my November paper.
[...] of blogging, and they continue to provide most of the value of this blog. The ongoing discussion of Loretta Chase’s The Last Hellion (where I am, as per usual, getting argued into submission) is just the latest [...]
This is my second-favorite Chase, after Mr. Impossible. I like Lord of Scoundrels just fine, but I could name a couple of dozen romances off-hand that I think are better (including this one). I think your analogy to thirties movie comedies is spot-on, and I love all those Cary Grant movies, like The Awful Truth, and My Favorite Wife and, of course, His Girl Friday. This has a similar battle-of-the-sexes sort of feel to it.
I thought it went without saying (shall I be high-falutin’ and say “implicit in the text”) that the serial story was subsidizing the other, reformist, political elements of the publication. My impression was that Lydia was very closely involved in the enterprise as a whole; she didn’t need to be told that she had to do it as a condition for getting her crusading stuff published.
I think it’s nice that both Vere and Dain (and how come we call them that? I can barely remember Vere’s title, or Dain’s given name), while rakish, never ever seduce innocents or engage in forced seduction scenarios.
I also think Bertie is at least as smart here as in Lord of Scoundrels, and is a whole lot more likeable here.
@FD: Have you read the Amelia Peabody books? Those are my favorite bluestocking in Egypt books.
I’m another who recalls Bertie as being pretty stupid in LoS, so I saw his character in TLH as being entirely consistent with what I already knew. The whole premise for LoS was that Jessica had to get her stupid, naive, easily-taken-in (gosh, how I’m channelling Stephanie Laurens) brother away from evil Dain after all. I liked, but did not love TLH – I think it suffered from not being LoS.