The psychoanalyst Amy Street unpacks the potential guilty pleasures of reading Heyer in a feminist age. (11)
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Heyer’s books reflect her culture, her historical period and her own belief system: implicitly and explicitly, the books are hetero-normative. She also reveals herself to be homophobic, racist, classist, a eugenicist, an upholder of gender-based double standards and of the inequality of the status quo. Much of this goes against the grain for a modern reader. If we consider ourselves to be any or all of the following: feminists, vaguely left-leaning, liberal, sexually liberated, independent, working, cynical and/or worldly-wise; if we abhor racism, violence against women or inequality in its many social forms, how are we to reconcile Heyer’s views with our own? More importantly, how are we to keep on reading and enjoying her? (242)
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We all have to find our own way to negotiate these displeasures – just as we negotiate them in our daily lives, ignoring them for the sake of something else that feels more important to us. The aforementioned anti-Semitic scene, for example, is also in my opinion one of Heyer’s funniest, most brilliantly staged set pieces. Despite my own Jewish background I cannot give it up, even though I have chucked many another novel away from me in disgust for similarly nasty and clichéd portrayals of Jews. (243)
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Romance novels can be too sweet, too much, without enough aesthetic or intellectual pleasure. Heyer works hard to avoid the hobnob effect. She generally manages to allow us both to have our cake and eat it – we get to indulge our deepest fantasies for a moment, the lost love contained in the unit of mother-and-baby, as well as the lost idealised father of the oedipal period. By expressing it in a form which is clever, learned and funny, sharp as well as sweet, she aims to make our forbidden fantasies acceptable to our adult selves, to gratify our realistic, humorous and even cynical side. (247)
From the introduction to the volume:
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