The nationalities of the heroines and the heroes are crucial, then; in this case, they lend a particular significance to the setting. The high society of the Regency period, in the form it is depicted in historical romance, is ordered by the aristocracy with strict rules of conduct. There are double standards everywhere: the rules are stricter for women than men, and the control the older women ostensibly have in the ballroom wavers under the influence of high-ranking men. This patriarchal set-up is upset by the entrance of Americans, who subscribe to a different ideology altogether. (38)
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the novel connects Amelia with the theme of rebellion and reminds the reader of the American revolt against English rule and, subsequently, the American Revolution: the American heroine rebels against the social code imposed on her by a foreign society that seeks to curb her autonomy. (43)
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Bridget’s response to Lady Witchcraft ties her firmly to rebellion: money and rank mean nothing to her, an alarming notion in post-French Revolution England. That revolution had, after all, been founded on disregard for these very aspects of society and therefore dramatically overhauled the political core of a nation by rendering monarchy and social ranks meaningless. Moreover, Bridget knows ‘who won the war’, bringing up the American Revolution explicitly: she knows that rebellion, in the right cause, will prevail, and as an American she believes in it. She and her sisters are a threat to the already unstable Englishness, with their disregard of wealth and status, and in their refusal to adhere to the behaviour deemed suitable for young, genteel women. (47)
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Rebellion and revolution are themes that run through the Cavendish series and they are central to what these novels, and the romance genre more broadly, are about: changing society. In romance novels, the purpose is not to return matters to the status quo presented at the beginning of the novel but to reach a new and better situation. The courtship plot must lead to a new social order, more gender-equal than the one seen at the beginning of the novel, if only for the individual heroine of the work. (47-48)
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