The Civil Contract Georgette Heyer

Islandgirl2 · Joined: 14 Nov 2010 Posts: 270

Where do I begin. I have always loved each and every regency romance from this author. Even ones I found a little bland still left me satisfied on some level. Sadly The Civil Contract I'm just surprised this is a regency romance...

Some spoilers included in the below:

Frankly the hero and his mopy attitude throughout for being married to Jenny; someone he most of the time finds ugly and has revulsion upon looking at and comparing her to his beautiful lost love Julia was tiresome. I was ok in the beginning with him being upset and viewing her in this light as perhaps on some level he felt her to be the effect to his fall as he is now in ruin and had to marry to hold onto his home and provide for his mother and sisters. But my issue is that this continues throughout. I kept waiting for him to rise above and finally get past this but he doesn't until what the last few pages...

I was completely frustrated with Jenny playing the doormat to keep him comfortable. Frankly his illusions of the great Julia had me thinking of him as the worst possible slowest in the head hero to exist.

The times where Heyer tried to show him to be this upstanding character to overcome and still manage to treat Jenny with light hearted humor and look to cheer her meant nothing to me.

Midway when he teases her as being a crosspatch I wished Jenny would yell out that it looks like she got the luck to be married to a crosspatch. It felt as if all he did was whine about the gifts his father in-law tried to give him and the constant show of insecurity over his fortune and Jenny playing carpet for him to wipe his feet on was sickening.

Nothing sadly here gave me joy for this couple. The last chapter or pages frankly when he comes to his realization of Julia is too little too late. And in the end I got the feeling that they will live in comfort but even Jenny lives with the fact that she will never have his ardent love the way Julia did.

Well if Adam couldn't come to look at her the way he once did Julia after seeing the person Julia really is and can only find happy comfort with Jenny then I'm sorry poor Jenny seems you got the short end of the deal.

Really surprised to have read something like this from Heyer in all honesty. And surprised in the amazon reviews that some even thought this frankly was one of her best regency romances. Not something I recommend.
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Jane A · Joined: 23 Mar 2007 Posts: 714 Location: So Cal

I've read all your objections to this book before. At this point I'm afraid to pick it up, despite being a big Heyer fan! It sounds quite sad and not at all fulfilling. To be fair, I've read reviews from those who really like this book, but I can't imagine it would work for me.

KayWebbHarrison · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 1206 Location: SE VA. USA

Islandgirl2,

I felt the same way you did when I read the book back when I was a teenager. I was used to Heyer's romantic romps and farces. I kept waiting for Jenny to die so that Adam and Julia could be together.

I re-read the book in my thirties and came to a better appreciation of its merits. There are comedic elements, but it is more a story of characters and social mores. Adam's life has turned upside down--he has to give up his career; he cannot marry the girl he loves; he has to swallow his pride to support his family and keep their home; he chooses to enter into a marriage of convenience to do so. Jenny CHOSE to marry him, because she fallen in love with him. Remember, the actual chronological length of the story is not much more than a year or so. Even in the 21st century, it takes time to change patterns of thought and behavior, to adjust to new people and situations. That period of adjustment is what A Civil Contract is about. As the book ended, I believed that Jenny's future happiness would surpass the pain of her first months of marriage.

Kay

Islandgirl2 · Joined: 14 Nov 2010 Posts: 270

Kay I completely got all of that. I understood the social impact and how Adam had to give up his happiness. For sure I didn't expect him to come to terms with it over night. I knew from the get go that soon Adam would realize he didn't truly understand Julia as Heyer did show some detail how the rest felt they were too different but Adam was just stuck on the idea of a beautiful woman and a boyish ideal of what his life with her could be.

I understand about the time frame as well it's just again not what something I would catetgorize as a romance. If I thought I was reading just a novel about two people coming to terms with having a convenient marriage then I probably could have enjoyed this a lot more.

But the fact is when I purchased this I truly did expect to read a regency romance and nothing in this was romantic.

It was upsetting that he constantly throughout looked at her with revulsion. The comparisons of how beautiful Julia was in comparison to plain Jenny was really disturbing to me. I could understand it once but even more than halfway through the book this continues. It was sad that in the end Jenny realizes he still will never quite look at her the way he did Julia. I think if I had read about a gleam of true passion of love for his wife maybe I could have forgiven his constant disgust with his situation and his wife throughout the book. Perhaps that would have given me this idea that he didn't just settle but found his true happiness with Jenny.

There just wasn't anything humorous about them for me. I felt sad all through for Jenny and tired of Adam. When a couple does that for you through the book as a romance it's just not enjoyable. Not once did it make my heart pitter patter like I wanted it to. And that's what at the end I read romance for. Frankly I can tell you that i was hoping Jenny got to escape from Adam through some accident to him and that she'd find someone like Rockfield for herself. Julia could have gladly kept the sourpuss of Adam so that Jenny the pleaser could find someone that would offer her a lot more.

I can't see myself ever looking back at this with any enjoyment.
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Romance my favorite reading pastime.

Lillian Sulivan · Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 233

I did rather enjoy Rose Lerner's In for a Penny on the same theme.

Best,
Lilly
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"Or perchance when the last little star has left the sky,
Shall we still be together with our arms around each other,
And shall you be my new romance?"

JulieR · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 179

I haven't read this in years and years, but my memory has it as my favorite Heyer. I'd read many before this one, and most of them are fairly light and happy as far as the romance goes. This one, not so much. However, the reason I remember liking it is that it seemed more real, less of a fantasy, than the previous romances I'd read, by Heyer and others.

I thought Adam grew up during the story. And even when he was still struggling with a certain amount of resentment toward Jenny's father (and by extension, toward Jenny), he was still unfailingly polite to her. He eventually sees Julia for what she is, and realizes there's no way he could have done the work needed to repair his estate/fortune if he'd had to dance attendance on her. (Julia always struck me as the definition of "high maintenance" and I always wondered how long after her marriage her Marquess waited before he cheated on her.)

Jenny went into the marriage with her eyes open. She was willing to accept that Adam didn't love her, so earning his affection and caring by the end probably counted as a win in her mind. She had moved to a different class of society through her marriage, and while she was not a social climber, she was sensitive enough to feel some unworthiness, or perhaps of less importance than her husband. That struck me as very realistic for that place and time, but I never thought she was a door mat.

Both Jenny and Adam are repressed personalities. He struggles with his pride and sense of failure/loss, and she struggles with her negative self-worth and a certain amount of embarrassment about her father. By the end of the book, I thought they both had come to terms with their issues, he more than she. For me, that was happy ending enough, even if there wasn't a big "I LOOOOOVE YOU" scene on either side.

I also have to admit that I loved Jenny's father. Most of us have relatives who embarrass us to some extent, and he made me grateful for mine! One scene that sticks most in my mind is one near the end where Jenny's father is admitting that he gave Adam bad financial advice; I always thought he was more concerned with how that might impact the relationship he'd begun to develop with Adam than with the loss of the money itself.

I'm curious, Islandgirl2, might you have liked this better if it was labeled as women's fiction instead of regency romance?

Thanks for starting up this thread and reminding me of this book; I feel a re-read coming on!
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JulieR

Islandgirl2 · Joined: 14 Nov 2010 Posts: 270

Julie I absolutely would have liked it if it was labeled women's fiction. When I read a romance I want fantasy. I want unrealistic because if I wanted real life scenario I wouldn't choose romance for my escapism.

I guess that's just my reading preference in my romance genre. I don't mind heart wrenching and struggle and a realistic vibe in them. I do read novels that are very much closer to real life. But in romance I want the feel that the couple are it for each other and in the end they know and believe that.

When I pick up a romance or what I've been told is one I want a satisfying ending where I know and believe that the couple views each other as the love of their lives no room for doubt.

Jenny stating that he'll never look at her the way he did Julia for me set the tone while yes they'd be ok and get along fine. It wasn't going to ever be a love match. More of making do with what was and being "satisfied" just left me unsatisfied.

Sad

Just not my cup of tea again when I set out to read a romance. I think that's the key reason I was a bit miffed when I finished.

However taking all of the above you mentioned and going into it as yes a women's fiction novel I think I would have been prepared and been quite fine.
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Islandgirl2 · Joined: 14 Nov 2010 Posts: 270

kari · Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 29

A Civil Contract is actually one of my favorite of Heyer's books (along with about twelve or thirteen others!) Not everyone loves it, since the romance is quiet and understated. She actually put in the lightly-sketched secondary romance of Lydia and Brough as "a sop to the fans," according to biographer Jane Aiken Hodge. It is also tightly plotted, and took much longer to write than many of her other more "romantic" books.

I believe that it also speaks to Heyer's own romantic POV. Despite the fact that she made her living writing romances, she wasn't really a very romantic person. She was also the main breadwinner in the family. Her husband was a lawyer (a career that took time to build) and they had expensive tastes. She routinely came up with a new "potboiler" every year (though this one was late) and she was also the head of family for her widowed mother and a number of other relatives that she had to "support" emotionally (and sometimes financially) from a very young age - 23 - when she was already a published writer. I think that this book echoed her own view of a "real" marriage (her own lasted nearly fifty years) and it is a more realistic romance than many of her others. I know at least one fellow-fan who prefers it above the rest.

So, I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy this one. Probably it wasn't one of my favorites in the beginning. At first I found her more adventurous Georgians (such as Devil's Cub and These Old Shades) more to my taste as a teen when I was introduced to her books. Later I grew to appreciate the more subtle stories and the heroes like Hugo, Jack and Sir Gareth (reasonable, even-tempered and intelligent men), rather than Alphas who were bad-tempered and hard to live with. (Heyer really invented the type, calling him her Mark I hero, "The brusque, savage sort with a bad temper.")

These are my absolute favorites: Arabella, The Civil Contract, The Corinthian, False Colours, The Foundling, Frederica, The Grand Sophy, The Quiet Gentleman, The Reluctant Widow, Sprig Muslin, The Talisman Ring, The Toll-Gate, and The Unknown Ajax. (The only Mark I in the bunch is in The Grand Sophy.) If you haven't read any of them, I urge you to do so. Don't let one disliked book by a truly great writer spoil you for the rest.

Adam is more like Gilly from The Foundling, another of my favorites. Both have to propose to women who weren't necessarily their first choice as a bride. For Adam it is worse because he was already in love with Julia. It takes time to recover from a broken romance. Jenny was not his choice, but he gives her his respect and protection (even from her father!) and slowly realizes that it is possible to love his wife. I will quote from The Private World of Georgette Heyer:

Adam and Jenny have both learnt that there is more to life than dreams. They will "have many years of quiet content: never reaching the heights, but living together in comfort and deepening friendship." People who like Emma best of Jane Austen's books may well prefer this one among Georgette Heyer's.[/b]

Islandgirl2 · Joined: 14 Nov 2010 Posts: 270

Hi Kari,

I'm actually a huge Heyer fan myself and have read most of her regency romances including:
Arabella, The Convenient Marriage, Frederica, The Grand Sophy, The Talisman Ring, Devils Cub, Sylvester,The Grand Sophy, Black Sheep, Venetia, Lady of Quality to name a few as I also have many on my Kindle to be read.

Thank you for sharing that tidbit of her life that is very interesting to know.

I think you just named the problem once again what I did not like about this read. I understood the issues with Adam I didn't expect an overnight transformation. However again I don't want comfort, realistic, reflection of authors life and view on "real" love. I want her fantasy story that she brought to her readers with the above titles. I don't like that feeling of depressed contentment. I found it so sad and not at all uplifting truthfully. Not elements I want in my romance. A realistic romance doesn't mean for me settlement/contentment.

Georgette Heyer is a wonderful author and one miss for myself doesn't mean I'll be vanquishing her off my list believe me. Wink

I don't neccessarily think that you have to have a sophistication to "get" this read and enjoy the subtle romance with it's realistic elements. I've been pretty open with my romance reading and have read things from Jane Austen classics down to Catherine Coulter...

My issue is that I just don't think it had romance truthfully to call it one. I'm surprised that others saw it but of course we are different readers and look for different likes in our reading.

Again thank you for sharing Heyer tidbits. Very Happy

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Romance my favorite reading pastime.

mirole · Joined: 06 Aug 2010 Posts: 257 Location: Toronto, Ontario

kari · Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 29

In many ways, I guess, The Civil Contract is NOT a true romance, by current standards. It was published in 1961 and I doubt that it was ever given the label the way we label fiction today. Many of Heyer's readers were men (!!) just as many of Jane Austen's readers are men. My ex-husband certainly read some of Heyer's books and enjoyed them for their humor and plotting, if not for the romance. Hodge's book The Private World of Georgette Heyer is really a must-read for Heyer's fans, and I recommend that anyone interested in the books should track it down. She says about The Civil Contract: "It is a delicious, human, unromantic book and some of the fans were disappointed."

So, your reaction is not unique. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that Heyer's books have almost all been labelled Romance today, except for the mysteries and the historicals written about any period other than Regency and Georgian. Although those are pretty dreadful. She couldn't write about the Medieval or Renaissance world at all, since she had no understanding of religion, but she considered her straight historicals her "real" fiction. The Regencies were fluff, and had lesser value in her eyes. Isn't that sad, when she did them so well? I reread my favorite Heyers at least once a year!

I'm glad that this disappointment has not made you disgusted with all of Heyer's work. I do recommend my favorites to you if you haven't tried them all yet. I completely disagree with Jean's 2009 "C" review of The Quiet Gentleman, which is on my list of favorites. And I must be clear - even though I have a list of favorites, that doesn't stop me from rereading almost all of her Regency and Georgian backlist on a regular basis. The only ones that I don't care for at all are Cousin Kate and Charity Girl, and I don't really enjoy her other "marriage of convenience" stories The Convenient Marriage and April Lady. (Which is odd, because I do like the marriage of convenience as plot device most of the time.) I have also read all of her mysteries, and enjoyed them all with the exception of Penhallow (1942).

Apparently the four books she wrote very early (Instead of the Thorn, Helen, Pastel and Barren Corn) that were straight "modern" novels aren't much good at all, so I don't recommend trying them, either. (I'm not basing that on Hodge's opinion alone - a good friend and fellow Heyer fan found them at the library, and did not enjoy them.) However, Jane Aiken Hodge found some interesting tidbits in them that she feels recalls Heyer's own (very young) view of a desirable relationship, when describing the conclusion of Helen:

"In the end he comes to her not as an admirer, begging, but as a master, demanding. And she realizes that he stands for, 'love, and for friendship, and for security; she thought that she had come through storm and sorrow, to a haven, and to happiness.'" (Taken from Helen, 1928, published by Longman, quoted in The Private World of Georgette Heyer, 1984.)

Something to think about when reading about one of her Mark I heroes, isn't it?

Mark · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 1240

I consider Heyer’s “A Civil Contract” an anti-romance. It is a story about marriage, but not romance. Heyer wrote before the modern romance genre was defined as it now is, and several of her books are now given the "romance" label even though it isn't appropriate. Here were some genre labels I gave in my essay some time ago (note that several don't say romance):
Heyer, Georgette: The Black Moth (1921): Adventure-Romance – Accepted Georgian England
Heyer, Georgette: These Old Shades (1926): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Georgian England & France
Heyer, Georgette: Devil's Cub (1934): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Georgian England & France
Heyer, Georgette: The Spanish Bride (1940): Fictionalized Biography-War Story – Hidden Regency Peninsular Campaign
Heyer, Georgette: Regency Buck (1935): Mystery-Historical Fiction – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: An Infamous Army (1937): War Story-Romance-Historical Fiction – Accepted Regency Belgium
Heyer, Georgette: Arabella (1949): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Black Sheep (1966): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England (Bath)
Heyer, Georgette: The Convenient Marriage (1934): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Georgian England
Heyer, Georgette: The Corinthian (1940): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Cotillion (1953): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Cousin Kate (1968): Gothic Historical Mystery – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: False Colours (1963): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Faro's Daughter (1941): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency London
Heyer, Georgette: The Foundling (1948): Coming of Age-Comedy of Manners-Historical Fiction – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Frederica (1965): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Friday's Child (1946): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: The Grand Sophy (1950): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Lady of Quality (1972): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England (Bath)
Heyer, Georgette: The Masqueraders (1928): Adventure-Romance – Accepted Georgian England
Heyer, Georgette: The Nonesuch (1962): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Powder and Patch (1923): Comedy of Manners – Accepted Georgian England
Heyer, Georgette: The Quiet Gentleman (1951): Romantic Mystery-Historical Fiction – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: The Reluctant Widow (1946): Comedy of Manners-Romantic Mystery – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Sprig Muslin (1956): Comedy of Manners – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Sylvester (or, the Wicked Uncle) (1957): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England & France
Heyer, Georgette: The Talisman Ring (1936): Comedy of Manners-Mystery-Romance – Accepted Georgian England
Heyer, Georgette: The Toll-Gate (1954): Comedy of Manners-Mystery-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: The Unknown Ajax (1959): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England
Heyer, Georgette: Venetia (1958): Comedy of Manners-Romance – Accepted Regency England

kari · Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 29

Hi Mark,

I only have one little quibble - Faro's Daughter is late Georgian, not Regency. Otherwise the heroine would not have been acceptable to the hero (or, more importantly) his family since she would have been considered a "fallen" woman. Yes, A Civil Contract is the story of a marriage. I don't know that I would consider it "anti" romance. Why do you say that? After all, Adam does grow to love Jenny.

I'm not quite sure why you don't consider The Foundling or Sprig Muslin romances. The heroes do realize that they love the two heroines. Also, even if the hero of Regency Buck is insufferably rude to the heroine, they do manage to fight their way to a happy ending. I am not disagreeing with you strongly, but I would love to hear your point of view.

Where were you presenting this paper?

Islandgirl2 · Joined: 14 Nov 2010 Posts: 270

Thank you Mark your listing is extremely helpful. I appreciate it and will certainly use this as my direction when I'm in the mood to read a Heyer romance and don't want to be deceived as Kari stated the sellers just labeling all her books as romance.

Indeed it wasn't romance and if again I hadn't had that labeled for this book I probably would have read it differently then what I actually purchased it for.

I believe Adam coming to comfortably love Jenny isn't quite the same as being IN LOVE with her.

Kari I just have to ask how do romance standards change? Even older romances for me still carry the same elements. I don't think this was romantic by old standards or new.
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Romance my favorite reading pastime.