Here’s my cover! Hmm…does anyone want to talk about covers? Good covers? Bad covers? How you can have a cover that all your author friends tell you is really good, and you should be really grateful, but somehow you still whine about it? (Aw, come on, don’t say I’m the only one!) 🙂
Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — Signet Regency, 11/05
What is a Risky Regency? Who writes
Risky Regencies? What are the challenges,
pitfalls, and benefits of writing Risky
Regencies?
That’s what this blog is all about! We have
a great bunch of Regency writers (including
Amanda McCabe, Elena Greene, Laurie Bishop,
Megan Frampton, Janet Mullany, and me,
Cara King) who will all discuss this subject,
plus our writing lives, our research,
and anything else pertinent to the life of
a Risky Regency Writer!
Have a comment? Please join in!
Cara
(Cara King — author of MY LADY GAMESTER,
debuting November 2005 from Signet Regency!)
Of course, if she is not a gently reared young lady, we have a different bucket of peas. She will have the perspective of a farmer’s daughter, a soldier’s daughter, or what have you. And that can be quite different. Even middle class daughters were different than the daughters of the highest peers. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, the Bennett daughters walked to town alone. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s daughter would never been allowed to do such a thing.
In my first Regency, THE BEST LAID PLANS, the heroine was a very independent-thinking American heiress who was not raised in high English society. She was therefore allowed to be a little outrageous—and was a ball to write!
Laurie
Sometimes as a parent, I need to read books like this one: Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons, which addresses the covert bullying many girls partake in lieu of more overt, physical bullying which is more common in boys. Simmons explains that in many segments of our society where girls are still expected to be “nice” (while boys are encouraged to be competitive), girls do not develop healthy ways to be competitive or healthy and straightforward strategies for resolving conflicts. Instead, they develop alternative forms of aggression: manipulative “friendships”, shunning, gossip, etc.., often carried out under a veneer of “niceness”.
Although many of the cases described are saddening, Simmons doesn’t demonize the aggressors, pointing out that roles often change and that the aggressors’ behavior is rooted in insecurity and the fear of being excluded themselves. There is a high price paid by those who are part of the “in” clique.
On a personal level, I found Simmons’s insights useful, along with some of her suggestions for parents and schools. It also shed some light on behaviors I’ve seen in adult groups that are predominantly female. Not everyone outgrows this stuff.
As a writer, I also found the book interesting in light of fiction and character development.
Diane’s recent post, Mansfield Park Revisited had me thinking about how Jane Austen depicted alternative female aggression in her books. Clearly, it’s not a new phenomenon. Ladies of the gentry and aristocracy were certainly expected to be “nice” so alternative aggression likely flourished. One can see it in the relationship between Caroline Bingley and Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, in the friendship of Catherine and Isabella in Northanger Abbey and definitely between Fanny and Mary in Mansfield Park.
Here’s an image from the infamous scene with lesbian undertones in the 1999 version of Mansfield Park. Although I’ll agree with critics that I never saw anything like that in the book, it does fit in with the model of manipulation, the pressure for the victim to tolerate behavior that makes her uncomfortable, with the underlying threat of loss of friendship.
My second full length Regency romance, The Incorrigible Lady Catherine, was the beginning of my “Three Disgraces” trilogy with heroines who met at boarding school and who, for various reasons, didn’t fit in and formed their own defensive alliance. So I’ve played with this issue before in my writing, although at the time of writing, I certainly didn’t understand the aggressors as well as Jane Austen must have.
Have you read other books, romance or not, where the concept of alternative aggression was used effectively?
To celebrate the recent release of The Incorrigible Lady Catherine in paperback, I’ll give away one copy to a random commenter. Comment by next Thursday (1/17) and I will announce the winner on Friday (1/18).
Happy Labor Day, everyone!
Today the USA celebrates Labor Day, a national holiday that celebrates the American worker.
In the late 1800s several states celebrated Labor Day, but it was only after a number of workers were killed by U.S. military and U.S. marshals during a Pullman Strike, that congress made Labor Day a national holiday.
Worker unrest was not unusual during the Regency, of course. I’ll bet you’ve come across mention of the Luddites more than once when reading Regency-set historicals.
The Luddites were also protesting workers. They were English textile craftsman who protested by destroying the mechanized looms that were operated in factories by unskilled workers. Their name came from a young apprentice loom worker named Ludd or Ludham, who, when chastised by his superior, smashed his stocking frame with a hammer. Twenty-two years later, in 1811, Ned Ludd or Captain Ludd, or King Ludd, appeared in Nottingham, the leader of a protest. Soon he was reported to be on the move from one industrial center to the next, inspiring protesters, drilling secret armies at night, his face ghostly white, carrying a pike in his hand.
Problem was, Ned Ludd was a fiction. He was not a real person at all but a symbol. The officials believed in him; a militiaman reported actually seeing him.
Besides having a fictional leader, the Luddites poked fun by producing officious-sounding dispatches. They invoked the name of Robin Hood in their quest for social justice. They also marched as “General Ludd’s wives”wearing women’s clothing.
The Luddites, though, were serious about their protests. Unlike how their name is used today, their complaints were not that the mill owners were replacing hand looms with more more advanced technology. The Luddites wanted those advanced machines to be run by skilled workers earning a fair wage, not unskilled, low-paid workers producing shoddy goods.
With some exceptions–the killing of a mill owner, for one–the Luddites confined their protests to damaging looms. Far more violence was inflicted upon the Luddites than they caused. Several were hanged, however, and more were transported to Australia. The last protest was in 1816.
Today when you are watching your parade or eating your hot dog, remember the Luddites and drink a toast to Ned Ludd!
What’s your favorite Labor Day activity?