Fans and detractors alike often desexualize Georgette Heyer’s historical romances, setting them apart from other novels for their lack of “prurience.” Yet the text of these novels themselves presents multiple avenues through which this view can and has been challenged. To understand the persistence of this divide among readers, this article presents an analysis of the manner in which sexual activity is rendered visible and invisible in Heyer’s novels through a breakdown of sexuality and desire among the heterosexual pairings that appear across thirty-three of her historical romances set in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Contrasting points where sexuality and desire overlap against the situations in which they do not makes evident the invisible social matrix that underlies Heyer’s work. This matrix, in turn, sets the limits of desire and its visibility within the narrative. In the process, it also establishes clear outcomes for characters with respect to their potential happily ever afters, including the degree of societal approval, marital happiness, childbirth, and the pattern set for the next generation.
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the approved form of desire emerges as something that entails breaking free of unthinking sexuality. And even when this condition is fulfilled, physical attraction is subordinated to the narrative [...] in that desire may occur even in its absence. In A Civil Contract, desire in the absence of a sexual spark is a recurring theme as the male lead grows to enjoy his domestic life with the woman he marries while attracted to another. Even by the end of the novel, while his desire for his wife is undeniable, it is also markedly not sexual in the slightest in contrast to his previous courtship.
None of this is to say that sexual attraction simply does not occur between different kinds of people, merely that it is not equated with desire unless it aligns with this narrative. Kisses and affairs with sex workers may be explicitly mentioned or hinted at in the conversations of other characters, but if a man appears genuinely besotted with such a woman, it is portrayed as irresponsible behaviour. On multiple occasions, the purchase of jewellery or horses for a mistress is used to further illustrate a character’s excessive spending and carelessness, hinting at the potential for ruin. By contrast, a husband performing similar actions, such as Lord Cardoss in April Lady, is described simply as doting, although if he is the male lead he will still set some limits, albeit much higher ones, indicating his concern for the sustained prosperity of his family.
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Multiple variables—how they obtained their money, their education level, ancestry, land ownership, position within the ruling class—determine the exact place characters occupy as well as what they can feasibly aspire to. But Heyer, despite the historical accuracy of her descriptions, does tend to view these categories as static to a degree they were not in real life, given that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a transitional period for Britain’s ruling classes, with those consigned to a lower level (the bourgeoise, in her terms) demanding a share of power commensurate with their growing economic heft.
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While men may be permitted to explore sexual avenues restricted for women before marriage, when it comes to whom they may desire without being rendered objects of ridicule and scandal, they are equally bound. The prospect of a marriage deemed a mésalliance threatens both as it risks upsetting the established order.
The closest Heyer comes to a Cinderella story is in A Civil Contract, in which the adjustment period is shown to be fraught with difficulties as Jenny’s enormous wealth uneasily balances against Adam’s empty but socially valuable title, and the ever after is a matter of finding happiness in routine rather than attraction.
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Motherhood is celebrated as a step toward completing the narrative of continuity rather than the more conventional pregnancy arcs seen in category romances, which portray pregnancy and child-rearing as a stand-in for wedded felicity with children that complete and strengthen the sexual bond at the heart of the heterosexual couple’s family life (Roskanwoski 1; Boswell 9–12). Mothers and fathers in Heyer’s novels are rarely involved in actually raising their children.
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