The painting above is The Ladies Waldegrave by Joshua Reynolds and it hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. The real-life painting is quite large and those white dresses and snowy complexions are luminous.
They are quintessentially Georgian, aren't they? The powdered hair, the darker eyebrows, chalk-white skin with roses blooming on their cheeks. Their silhouettes too: the towering hair, the rounded shoulders, deep bosoms, wide skirts. All in white, three unmarried sisters, apparently 18, 19 and 20 when this was painted.
I was watching Amanda Vickery's new series At Home with the Georgians the other night (I love BBC iPlayer!) which was full of interesting facts about Georgian life, such as the fact that one in three aristocratic girls would never marry (though all of the three lovely ladies above did). One in three! The programme gave an interesting perspective on love and marriage. This first episode was entitled "A Man's Place" and argued that far from being trapped into domesticity by women, Georgian men longed for it. To marry and set up a house was a mark of maturity and success. Vickery read from the diaries of numerous men to illustrate her point, some of whom positively yearned for marriage with some as yet unknown woman. She also read from the diary of a dissolute rake of a (single) man who was tormented - when sober - by the 'sinful' sexual behaviour he kept falling into when drunk. A reminder that this was a broadly observant Christian society.
The point that really caught my attention though was little more than a throwaway remark. At one point, Vickery spoke about marriage as a "career" for a woman. Not a surprising comment as such - marriages were, of course, standardly brokered on the basis of status and wealth. I suppose the comment made an impact on me because of the sense it gave of the woman herself setting her sights on a particular man and targetting him as a good prospect in a reasoned way. Not so much a pliable virgin, being moved around a chess board by her parents, as a young woman planning her future in the same way a woman today will plan to attain skills and achieve economic independence. Characters who seek out arranged marriages in romance novels are often portrayed as cold-hearted and ambitious, aren't they, seen through the 'companionate marriage' lens? But such girls would have been following the generally travelled path of her peers. And of course, measuring their successes against one another.
This sort of brokered marriage is great stuff for a romance: the immediate, strained intimacy of marriage with a stranger, the growth to knowing the other and eventually to love. It's one version of the much-loved marriage of convenience trope and a great favourite of mine. What about you?
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10 comments:
I love this post, and this trope, too. I think it's because the conflict and emotions are so real, not manufactured to create a plot. I can't imagine the risk of marrying a virtual stranger at a time when women had no legal power within a marriage--and essentially no power to leave it. It could so easily be tragic, but in a romance I can trust it won't be.
Do you have favorite books with this plot? I confess I'm not a great Balogh lover, but she does it well, I think.
I like arranged marriage and marriage of convenience plots. They seem more realistic than some other romance tropes. Heyer's "A Civil Contract" is about a brokered marriage. I really liked it, but it gets mixed reviews, probably because it's not a typical Heyer.
Elizabeth - excuse my tardiness. Yes, I think Balogh excels at these. I do particularly like The Christmas Promise and The Obedient Wife in both of which the husband's poor opinion of his wife has to be radically revised. In the first he realises she is a warm person despite her apparent haughtiness and in the second, he comes to see a drab-seeming woman as beautiful (a much repeated theme in Balogh's novels).
Holly, I adore A Civil Contract. It really divides, that book. I think because it's a careful, bittersweet ending.
I'm going to watch this right now!
But I love thinking/reading about arranged marriages, not in fiction, but in real life, because as a single gal, I am utterly fascinated by the concept and reality of marriage. Plus, as an anthropologist, culture and how it shapes and molds our thought processes and outlook on life is very thought-provoking.
Today, we have a knee-jerk reaction against arranged marriages because post-Victorian American culture has hammered the concept of marriage+romantic love+choice into our heads, but at some point in our (shared) history, people expected and accepted that their lives were to be arranged for them by others--which included marriage.
Though, in romance novels, American writers bring their modern sensibilities to the concept of an arranged marriage, so the tug-of-war between family/society versus the individual is a very common theme.
Janet W: No lover of Balogh, Heyer and Beverley could not love brokered marriages. What about the ultimate brokered marriage: An Unwilling Bride by Jo Beverley. That packs such a powerful punch. Or April Lady by Georgette Heyer where the heroine is almost clueless about why the hero married her ... but love never enters (from his perspective) her pretty head. Balogh ... ah well ... so many examples, too little time :)
Evangeline - good points - though the romance novel as we know it did begin to emerge at the same time that the idea of companionate love began to spread as a dominant cultural ideal, at least in western culture.
Janet - you are a fount of knowledge. Do you know, I don't think I've read April Lady!
Janet W: Ha, I woke up this morning thinking I blew it BIG time! A brokered marriage implies (insists?) ... what's the legal phrase ... that each party recognize what they'll get from the other. So this most famous brokered marriage would be Duncan's Bride by Linda Howard. They had a contract, right? Another one, A Masked Deception by Mary Balogh. She was a wife like Heyer's in A Civil Contract, always making sure that Richard's life ran on smooth wheels. [Ask yourself, was Balogh's Obedient Wife a contracted or brokered marriage? Of course -- but the heroine actually believed the marriage vows. Naive for the time? One more, His Bride by Gayle Callen. Sadly not a lot of sexing it up at the beginning but she sure got rid of the mouldy rushes in his medieval castle! Lastly, The First Snowdrop. I'm sorry, Alex was just a prick for so much of the marriage but his reluctant bride (as in he married her reluctantly) was one of Balogh's most Martha Stewart heroines. She transformed the gardens, herself and the house. A story of transformation.
I love marriage of convenience stories just for the reason(s) you described above. Mary Balogh wrote a few of them that I enjoyed. I read this type of trope mostly in westerns - with the mail order brides? Loved them. I've never read Heyer but I want to one day soon.
Oh, Tumperkin, you need to read April Lady. It's one of my favorites.
I used to love A Civil Contract (for years and years and many re-reads) until I listened to it on audio this year. The narrator was good, that wasn't the problem.
Some words that you can overlook while reading you just cannot escape when listening and Heyer went a bit too far with the 'revulsion' so ACC is off my favorites list.
As far as other MoC stories, I love The Convenient Marriage as well.
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