The Historical Romance

The Google Books link is to a more recent edition.

In the acknowledgements it is stated that "The material which formed the basis of this book was originally presented in the form of a thesis for the Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Bradford" (ix). I have given details of that thesis in a separate entry.

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it can be said that there are differences of effect, even within the genre of historical romance, and that the author's materials are ordered according to his or her view of the function of history. Romantic writers use the past as an exotic setting to add to the 'escape' value of their stories; but it also functions as a mirror for the present. Partly because of their very difference from that of the reader's familiar world, forms of past society can be represented as ideal in some of their aspects without losing their verisimilitude. Equally, features of present-day society may be presented for criticism if they are shown, appropriately modified (in embryo, perhaps), embedded in a historical context. The effect is to defamiliarize them, encouraging a stricter scrutiny. [...]

For other writers, the circumstances of a past society produce what is virtually a different kind of human nature, so that historical periods are seen as self-sufficient with no overt link to the present. This more holistic approach has usually been favoured by writers in the tradition of Scott - Conan Doyle is the most obvious example among the texts covered here - whose aim is to enable the reader to reconstruct the past as accurately as possible. (5)

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In the historical romances written between 1890 and 1990 which are the subject of this book, a move from presenting the past as progenitor of the present to presenting it as self-enclosed and different from the present can be detected. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stanley Weyman, and, to a lesser extent Rafael Sabatini, show history as a process of change, leading towards a present which, seen in the light of these historical processes, may be viewed favourably.

The appeal of a writer such as Jeffrey Farnol or Georgette Heyer is different, however. A sense of a development towards the present is irrelevant in reading their books: they create a self-sufficient past world whose attractions are seductive, drawing the reader into an uncritical experience of history as real life. The ingredients of this world may be familiar everyday events but they are heightened and sanitized by the imagination. None the less, they do have a base in the real world, in being an expression of real hopes and fears. When what that base is and how it has been modified are seen, the messages of the text - which thus concern the contemporary world of author and reader - can be understood. (8-9)

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The 'manly' hero of the adventure stories of the 1890s - a young and ingenuous boy or a man of action with few social graces - gave place, after 1926 (the date of Heyer's These Old Shades), in the work of Heyer and her followers, to the man of the world who hides his sensitivity under a cynical, even brutal, exterior. Heroines changed less in character, but their function - of challenging the rules of society, in particular the gender roles allotted to men and women - became more important. Cunning and love of power, at first the property of the villain, became associated with the heroes of later romances. These changes were associated with a change of perspective in which the hero moved from object of identification to desirable other. The winning and taming of such a figure were the heroine's triumph, even though his behaviour represented a display of patriarchal power at its most extreme.

The heroine's own pattern of behaviour - to overthrow masculine power in one way, while succumbing to it in another - can be read as a traditionally romantic one, at first denying and then being overcome by the power of Love, personified and seen as godlike. In comparison with medieval and Renaissance romances, however, relatively little attention is paid to the actual falling in love in contemporary romances, much as it may seem a central concern. The behaviour of hero and heroine is used as a signifier for those values of 'private' activity already mentioned: the importance of a particular kind of family life, self-fulfilment and the distribution of power and wealth in society. (17)

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In Chapter 4 it was argued that the political values implicit in the historical romances of the 1890s and 1900s were favourable to a state which remained firmly in the hands of 'natural' leaders from the upper or upper-middle classes. These political values, incorporated into the descriptions of characters [...], are closely associated with images of 'the gentleman' and of 'Englishness' which help to support each other. In this chapter I should like to explore ways in which the 'Englishness' presented in the work of Conan Doyle, Stanley Weyman, Baroness Orczy, Rafael Sabatini and Jeffrey Farnol supports a favourable image of the English state as free and democratic, yet firmly led, to the benefit of all, by the upper and upper-middle classes. Feminine historical romance of the kind initiated by Georgette Heyer is not likely to show links of this kind, yet I should like to argue that this too draws upon the concept of 'Englishness' and that this became one aspect of the female construction of the romantic hero. (65-66)

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in the 1970s and 1980s, a number of romances have begun to give approving portraits of upwardly mobile characters, especially when they can be seen to rise through their own efforts. [...] The typical values of the aristocratic world of the romances are thus overlaid in these books by others, more suited to their times, of hard work, competitiveness and honesty: a trinity which is seen to succeed in a society which is essentially fair. Rewards go to those fittest to survive in the economic jungle, but the fittest are also the most virtuous and deserving. [...] Such features, and their contradictions, can be seen in an analysis of two books by Mira Stables, an author particularly concerned to promote the virtues of hard work. (95-96)