Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

[lightreads]

Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Oh God, this was so uncomfortable. It's one of the ones that starts with a marriage of convenience, and then the romance slowly develops after. Which first of all is not my kink (and if anyone who digs it can dissect the appeal of the kink for me, I'd love to hear it, because several people have tried and it has never worked). But also, this heroine is so sheltered and young and naïve, it is just *twitches*.

It's supposed to be about them growing up together -- she's young and unworldly, he's young and self-centered. And it's about them being the making of each other -- she learns to be smarter about people . . . ish? And he learns, uh, not to gamble irresponsibly or something. Except he learns this because it's so important for him to be responsible so he can take care of her, you know the little woman, she needs so much looking after, and the romance mostly consists of her slavish devotion to him, and it's just. The whole thing. So fucking uncomfortable.




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Comments

[cahn]

Ahahahaha. Did I mention this was the first Heyer I ever read? And it almost made me give up on the entire idea of Heyer. Even though I don't mind -- well, I'm not a marriage-of-convenience gal, exactly, but a) my parents had what boils down to essentially an arranged marriage, which, well, I would not for a billion dollars exchange my marriage for theirs, but my parents have certainly identified marriages of "love" that they wouldn't for a billion dollars exchange for theirs, so there's that -- all that is to say that I have some sympathy for the situation; and b) what my kink is, is partnerships that turn into romance, and sometimes marriages of conveniences can play into that (and those are the ones I enjoy more -- the "we're all wrong for each other, but look, now we're right!" are not really my thing) -- hm, this explains why I love Blue Castle and you don't.

Anyway, that long sentence was to say that while the marriage-of-convenience thing is not my kink exactly, it's a story that I enjoy. But yes, young-naive-sheltered *twitch* and slavish and taking care of her and uggggggh.

[lightreads]

Wow, yeah, that would have put me right off Heyer, too.

Interesting about partnerships -- that does make a sort of sense. And i like that kind of thing too, though in a professional/competence setting. I guess I just never glossed arranged/convenient marriages that way.

One of the most interesting conversations I ever had about it was with an Iranian friend. Her parents had an arranged marriage, and the expectation growing up was that they would arrange hers as well. For context, she is a college-educated engineer who works for Google and identifies largely as a Canadian. And I found it so fundamentally shocking when she said she might be willing to go along with it. Until she explained her reasoning to me. That being that her parents knew a lot about her, and about being grown ups, and about weathering hard times as a couple, and she actually thought they would make a very wise choice for her. She ultimately never went through with it, and is now a tragic old maid at the desperate age of 28 -- how shocking! -- but it was one of those 'huh...yeah, okay, that does explain the framework that makes this work' moments for me.

She would not be a shrinking miss though, thank you very much.

[cahn]

Yeah-- I come from a family where my parents don't, in fact, know much about what makes me tick -- and still, your comment there makes me remember that my first two tries at serious relationships that got this close to marriage (to the point where I feel it was pretty much luck that I didn't end up married to either of those guys) were complete wrecks, and my parents would have done a lot better than I did either of those times. Your Iranian friend actually sounds much wiser than I was, as an adolescent.

[ella404]

I love marriage of convenience stuff- though not as much as I love accidentally married in Vegas and for some strange reason cannot get a quicky divorce- mostly because of the ways it lets you play with intimacy, and affection, and the ways knowing someone can bleed into loving them.

It's like being marooned on an island with someone, or forced by some weird ancient tech to stay within a few meters of each other, except the prison is social as well as physical and the sexual potential of the situation is really bizzare. Obviously in real life forced intimacy with strangers(I'm thinking college roommates) frequently leads to nothing more then really intense hatred, because you can never get away from each other and there are very few people most of us can stand 24/7.

I love the progression from awkward strangers to the moment when Alice looks at Bianca and realizes that she knows what kind of toothpaste she uses and what book she's reading right now as well as how she thinks about herself and her job and that she's goofy when she dances and deathly serious about kickboxing and *holy shit she loves her wife*. If this moment comes right at the moment one of them is rescuing the other from a nefarious kidnapping preceded by a huge fight about how legitimately fucked up their situation is, then so much the better for my id. That said, I would totally classify this kind of thing as a bad thing/non-optimal thing happens to characters, see how they cope narrative.

[lightreads]

So the funny thing is, in the process of explaining this, you've finally clarified for me why I don't like it. Forced intimacy! Aaah! That's, like, my worst nightmare. I don't even like sharing an elevator with strangers.

...Wow. It all makes sense now. Thanks!

[ella404]

Ahaha- yeah, forced intimacy in real life makes me spend lots of time hiding in the library, or on park benches, in -25 weather (thank you Montreal).