Recent reading

Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1856). I had two reasons for wanting to read this: firstly, in order to remember the difference between it and Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; and secondly, so I could see what D. K. Broster, who quotes from it at some length in The Yellow Poppy, liked so much. It's a novel-length narrative poem, a kind of work I have not read very much of, which made for an interesting and not always very easy reading experience. Anyway, it's presented as an autobiography by the poet Aurora Leigh, who describes her early life, the beginnings and development of her writing career, and the relationships between Aurora, her cousin Romney Leigh and Marian Erle, a working-class girl whom Romney meets in the course of his philanthropic work. Romney proposes marriage to Aurora, who refuses him because amongst other things he is a condescending, sexist ass about her literary work; then Romney meets Marian and falls in love with her, but a jealous rival sabotages their relationship before they can marry; later Aurora and Marian meet again, and finally, after they've all been through a lot, Aurora is reunited with Romney. Aurora has a lot to say about art, poetry and women's place in the creation of it, in her arguments with Romney and in her own musings, which was good. The poem also handles the subject of sexual assault in a surprisingly frank and progressive way for anything from the 1850s. Unfortunately I disliked Romney too much in the early part of the book to buy the reconciliation at the end, lovely as the romantic bits that D. K. Broster quoted are; I thought Aurora and Marian should have gone on living happily together instead.

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer (1928). I read one Heyer novel, Regency Buck, some years ago and it was so appallingly bad that I've been rather boggling at her popularity ever since. But of course that's not fair—all authors have their bad days, I wouldn't want someone to judge D. K. Broster by Almond, Wild Almond, and when I learnt recently from muccamukk that Heyer had written an at-least-tangentially Jacobite novel, I decided to give it a try. Anyway—this book is about a sister and brother named Prudence and Robin who had the misfortune to take part in the '45, and escape through England in disguise as, respectively, a brother and sister. Their plan is to lie low in London until they can meet up with their father, a rather formidable schemer, and thence probably escape to France; but of course things don't go that smoothly... I did like the crossdressing, which is handled in a light-hearted and playful way. Prudence is rather sensible and somewhat cautious about the 'masquerade' and yet at the same time actually very good at pretending to be a man and getting into daring adventures; meanwhile Robin, a consummate actor and a lover of mischief in general, has a great time going around balls and so on breaking hearts as the lovely Miss Merriot. I liked them both individually and as a pair!

Robin's love interest is the ingenuous and romantic heiress Letty Grayson, whom he courts in disguise at a masked ball while befriending her as Miss Merriot; their relationship is pretty cute in a 'self-aware enjoyment of Dashing Romance' sort of way, and was only spoiled for me by continually thinking how much better I'd have liked it if it was really f/f. Unfortunately Prudence's love interest, Sir Anthony Fanshawe, is awful, and in pretty much the same kind of way—albeit a much less extreme form of it—as I remember the love interest in Regency Buck being. He must domineer and dictate to Prudence in everything, because he loves her so! The plot in the later part of the book involves the question of Prudence's and Robin's real identities; she agrees to marry Sir Anthony on condition that she turns out to be of a suitably respectable family, a condition to which he responds by basically laughing at her and going on about how he will marry her regardless of what happens or what she decides. He can't even let her get down from a horse on her own without 'masterfully' lifting her down. And of course Prudence, otherwise a fairly sensible and interesting person, likes all this, having 'an odd delight in this masterful treatment'. Eeeurrgh. I also found a few more minor things to dislike: I find Heyer's authorial attitude unpleasant (in the way that she seems to enjoy a joke at the expense of the characters and the readers a little too much), and she has a few annoying prose habits (using verbs that don't describe speech as dialogue tags; virtually no setting description anywhere; etc.) Anyway! The Jacobitism is not prominent, but interesting where it does appear; I liked Robin's grief over the lost cause in particular. And an unexpectedly fun element of the book is Prudence's and Robin's father, an amazing 'masquerader' whose schemes play out in spectacular fashion—actually all the romances aside, I think by far the most interesting aspect of this book is the family relationships. So on the whole there was a lot to like in this one, but I am afraid Heyer and I have unresolvable differences in taste and I don't plan to read any more of her books.

I'm going to count novel-length fics as books from now on, so: I also read A Walk in the Karakorum by Daegaer, a sequel to Fix Bay'nets with slash, lost soldiers of Alexander the Great and dinosaurs—which in all these things was good fun!