Origins of the Regency Romance, Silver Fork Novels

[sartorias]

There were two things going on with silver fork novels: the unrepentant glorying in the wealth and exclusiveness of rank, and the stories of marriages. They were not always romantic by today's standards. Pelham, the granddaddy of them all (especially the 1828 edition, before Bulwer hyphenated his name and toned down his cheerfully impudent

Comments

[asakiyume]

What Austen novels do prostitutes get mentioned in? Is it more than a passing reference

[sartorias]

I remember in specific Lizzy and Jane worrying about Lydia, that running away with Wickham would ruin her chances of marriage and she'd end up 'on the town' which was prostitution. There is more about it in S&S with the unfortunate that the Colonel protects, and I think there may be a slight reference in Mansfield, but I can't remember the exact place or instance. There may even have been a careless reference in Northanger, when Captain Tilney is dissing Isabella Thorpe. And Lady Susan is all about a high class lady on the town.

[asakiyume]

Okay, I thought maybe the worries over Lydia stretched to that, but I wasn't sure.

Lady Susan? (Is there a novel by that title, or is that a character in a novel?)

[sartorias]

This is Austen's naughty novel. It's early, and many Austenites don't know what to do with it, so they pretend it doesn't exist. It was never published during her time.

[randwolf]

& yet, we live in a time when form has triumphed over substance in human relations. Perhaps we know better than we know we know. IIRC Austen was an abolitionist, from a family of abolitionists. (Saïd missed this in the research for his much-disputed essay on her.) She had little cause to respect the ruling class of her day, though she was not above a folk-song marriage for Elizabeth Bennet. There is, I think, an edge that drove her novels. The class system of her day formed the dark background of the bright foreground figures of her characters and their manners. Americans generally do not grasp what it is like to live in a world where everyone has their place, and it is always either above or below that of someone else. One wonders what was in her diaries that did not survive; I rather suspect a radicalism which embarrassed her family.

[sartorias]

It looks like she might have gotten more radical in her last novel, Sanditon, with the mixed-race young lady who has all the earmarks of a heroine. She didn't actually keep a diary, but she did exchange frequent letters. I don't know why Cassandra burned them (and burned all her own); I suspect that there were personal opinions expressed about people that the sisters never wanted other eyes to see. Austen was also devout, and wouldn't want to cause pain even after death.

[randwolf]

The Wikipedia entry on Sanditon does not mention the mixed-race young lady. Ah, the mass consciousness. Austen would have been 41 when died. It would have been a likely time in her life for a turn towards broader public subjects.

[sartorias]

Miss Lamb, from Jamaica, dark skin.

[breathingbooks]

You've certainly convinced me that I want to read Gore!

[sartorias]

:-)

[sartorias]

I think the turning point was Georgette Heyer, who resurrected and reinvented the silver fork novel. The silver forkers were so old and trite by the 1920s that PG Wodehouse makes fun of them in one of his novels; Heyer in essence created a new Regency, inspired more by the silver fork novels of earlier years than by Austen, in the belief that blood will always tell, and the glorying in elitism and the consumerism available to the rich and powerful. Her heroines always marry up

[sartorias]

I still didn't finish my thought re today's readers and modern Regency romances. I don't want to imply that they are in any way faulty. If readers like them, then readers like them. Would readers like the old stuff if they could get it?

Perhaps part of the answer is in their very inaccessibility. Though I've long been a champion for Gore's being republished, I don't know how well those long novels would do with today's readers. Regency romances are in part full of vampires and smugglers and the like because readers now tend to like action. In the old days, women (and a lot of men) didn't see action. Nor did they particularly want to: men with a craving for action could find their way to the navy or army.

The thing is, conversation was the order of the day. I suspect a lot of modern readers would find those old novels claustrophobic as there are long scenes of nothing but chat, and a lot of it is cram packed with French sophistications of the time, and references obscure to today's reader.

[kalimac]

Are the early silver fork novels to Jane Austen what the Tolclone trilogies are to The Lord of the Rings?

[sartorias]

No--see above for a quick definition. Austen was writing about her time, except that she gave her females agency though strictly according to the rules. Her heroines, as I said, marry well, not always "up"--well being defined as finding a partner worthy in all the right ways, not merely someone with wealth, looks, and social power. Austen's females don't always make the right choices, but they are able to make choices, and they have influence and power in her novels. Men don't decide for them, and nowhere do we see her intimating that they should.

The silver fork novels had a different aim. They were about high society. Some of the novels worshipped it, and were used, like Madame de la Fayette's, as social manuals for climbers (the novels themselves are pretty unreadable now), others, like Gore, both reveled in rank and made fun of the hypocrites and the toadies, while holding up good principals by rewarding heroes and heroes with happily ever after . . . and yet the worst criticism was reserved for the social climber.

[kalimac]

That was kind of what I meant, actually. Later writers who copy the surface characteristics of the original, while totally Not Getting what the earlier author is trying to say.

[sartorias]

Yeah . . . but they aren't copying Austen so much, as her novels are mostly about the country gentry, with a few brief references to London High Society (and those references are anything but admiring, especially in Mansfield).

Novels about life in high society didn't originate with Austen--they go back to Richardson--what Austen did was get rid of the stereotypes, blending real traits (also actions and consequences) with satire in a totally new way.

Satire also isn't new--check out Humphrey Clinker for typical period satire, with a heavy hammer.

Therefore I don't see silver fork novels descending from Austen's work in the way you suggest with Tolkien's LOTR and such works as Eddings and Shannara, etc. I think they bypass it; Pelham is the originator, and if anything, the mores in that novel are as far from Austen's as you can get. About the only contact point is how much agency the women have.