How NOT to write a "Victorian" Romance, Part I

Or, Why Sunny is a Brat.

[UPDATE: please, please read aneelirh's comment on this post. It's the best piece of summarisation I've read on the subject.]

Dear readers, be not irked. This is a re-post from a Facebook note, because snooty little (or snooty tall) Sunayana Roy--Sue to you and Sunny to me--evidently considers writing on social networking sites beneath her, and what with one thing another (namely, that I shall see her soon and therefore wish to keep her in good humour) I have decided to give that note pride of place on my blog.

There are certain books people read for the sheer smug pleasure of deriding them, and most stereotypical romance novels fall firmly in this category. As a friend and I agreed, the narrative usually is about " a stupid bint who is pointlessly stubborn, idiotically aroused by a boorish hero, tries furiously to repress it, and spinelessly forgives everything he or anyone does to her". However, when this mess is compounded such basic lack of research as chronicled below, it's very hard not to want to hunt the authors down and make them write "I shall consult at least Wikipedia before I put pen to paper again" a hundred times. In their best handwriting.

And while we're at it, can we also please sign a petition to stop all romance novel heroes from being millionaires? Money is not particularly attractive, and such ostentations as private jets and private islands are quite repulsive. I had once read a rather nice Mills&Boon about salvaging the failing marriage of an architect and his photographer wife in a receeding economy, their three children and his extramarital affair included. Would writing stories about people who hover a leetle bit closer to our own reality kill these author-women?

***

1. The younger brother and elder son of Lord ABC cannot also be Lord ABC. A title is not a surname. Please get this imprinted on the inside of your doubtless thick skulls. I shall cheerfully volunteer my assistance to the endeavour.

2. A young debutante is unlikely to wear gowns "in flaming red silk with jewelled fronts". The preferred colour for demure young virgins on the market was white, and while they certainly were deviations, I rather suspect bright red jewelled silk would advertise quite a... different... sort of social function.

3. It is quite unecessary to describe how the legs of the table gleamed in the late spring sunlight and reflected the glow on the heroine's cheek, because only a lady very careless of her reputation would leave the legs of her furniture uncovered.

4. The entire point of the female emancipation movement was that it was absent in earlier times. A heroine described as shy and demure is VERY unlikely to "quietly creep out of her house" to meet the "darkly" and "dangerously" attractive stranger who had slipped her a note that evening at a ball. Besides, a young lady's apartment in a house full of servants is not very easy to creep out of. And finally, I am certain "Victorian" young ladies did not creep.

5. Only a woman born to a titled family is Lady [First name]. The peasant girl who marries a nobleman shall not, no matter how virtuous, ever be called "Lady Mary" by her domestic staff. Her son's nursemaid, however, would call him Master [first name], not Mr. [surname]. She isn't a schoolmistress from a later period. Do pay attention to your cultural history.

I wish to god people would stop writing period romances just because it tickles them to have their virtuous heroine address her romantic tormentor as "My lord". A little learning is a most annoying thing.