Of the Regency but not a Regency
Jerome Weeks of the Dallas Morning News writes an article about romance novels, including Regency romances, and their relation to the work of Jane Austen:
Jane Austen actually lived during the Regency – and invented the witty romance with her masterpieces – but she didn’t write Regencies. She wrote what, for her, were contemporaries.
The distinction, Pamela Regis says, is that Austen didn’t use her era the way Regency romances do. Dr. Regis, who teaches English at McDaniel College in Maryland, is the author of A Natural History of the Romance Novel.
The setting, she argues, is more than coach and candelabra: “The Regency is an era of glittering corruption.” The novel’s love affair typically involves an aristocratic rogue (who, of course, is never really a rogue and therefore gets suitably cleaned up for the wedding). But by the end, the emotional values of the couple stand in contrast to the era’s dissipation.
“When romances can explore a setting,” Dr. Regis says, “and set the lovers against the values of that setting, they get stronger.”
