These are the slides for the latest #romancingthegothic class on Georgette Heyer and the Gothic

1. Rethinking the Gothic
Romance: Georgette Heyer
@RomGothSam
#romancingthegothic

2. Introducing the Author
• Georgette Heyer (1902 – 1974)
• ‘The Queen of Regency Romance’
• 55 Novels
• 4 modern novels
• 6 historical novels
• 12 detective novels
• 32 historical romances (16th – 19th
century)
• At least 26 short stories
• Blue Plaque - 2015

3. Introducing the Author
‘Historical romance has been shaped in
Heyer’s image’ (Cat Sebastian)
‘Although the Regency world she created
was faithful in its historical detail, it was also
a carefully constructed entity which
reflected the Edwardian values, ideas and
social mores with which she had grown up.’
(Jennifer Kloester)
• Over 2000 volumes in her personal
reference library
• Contemporary texts, reference guides,
histories, fashion magazines, dictionaries,
biographies
• Alphabetical lists of slang terms and
period vocabulary

4. Marketing and Misconceptions
‘The cover illustrations of Georgette Heyer’s books, whether for her
original hardcovers or for subsequent paperbacks, typically show
slender young women in long gowns, often holding a parasol or fur
muff, with stately Georgian architecture in the background.
Occasionally, a spruce and well-turned-out young man with Byronic
good looks lingers nearby. There’s no question about the nature of
these novels – they are love stories, marketed for female readers.’
(Michael Dirda – Classics for Pleasure – 2007)

7. Gothic recipes
• 1 inexperienced, innocent Heroine
• 1 ‘large lonely brooding House’ in exotic Country
• 1 absent (usually deceased) or wicked mother figure
• 1 absent/dead father
• 1 ‘dark, magnetic, powerful, brooding, sardonic Super Male’
• Another Woman
• 1 or more Buried Ominous Secret(s)
• 1 Young Girl
• A possible Shadow Male
• Ominous Dialogue
• The inevitable Untangling
Joanna Russ, ‘Somebody’s Trying to Kill me and I think it’s my husband’

8. Gothic Intertextuality
The Quiet Gentleman and Horace Walpole
‘His heir, one of Mr. Walpole’s
more fervid adherents, reverted
to the Gothick, and by the time an
unlucky fall at a regular stitcher,
when out with the Old Club, put a
period to his career, nowhere in
England could have been found
such massive doors of oak, such
ponderous iron latches, so many
pointed, narrow windows, as at
Stanyon.’ – The Quiet Gentleman

9. More than just a reference…
Secret Stairs and the
permeable domestic
space
Usurpation, inheritance
and intergenerational
trauma
‘Martin achieving a decided
success with a very horrid
monkish apparition, which, when
it raised its head, was seen to
have only a skull under its cowl.’
A Recurring Motif
Romantic
Misdirection

10. Gothic Intertextuality
The Reluctant Widow – Setting up a Gothic Parody
‘She took out a promising, but not so well-worn, novel by the same author,
entitled The Old English Baron. With this in her hand she retired again to her
chair, put another log on the fire, and settled down to be lost for an hour
before retiring to bed… Not even the desponding tone of Miss Clara Reeve’s
story, or the lachrymose behaviour of her heroine had the power to disgust
Elinor. She read on, heedless of the time, alternately amused and interested
by the exploits of the perfect Orlando, and very wisely skimming over his
Monimia’s all too frequent fainting fits.’
Clara Reeve – The Old English Baron - 1778
Charlotte Smith – The Old Manor House - 1793

11. Gothic Intertextuality
The Reluctant Widow – Setting up a Gothic Parody
“How forcibly it puts one in mind of all one’s favourite romances!”
remarked Mrs Cheviot affably.
“The house is clearly haunted. I have not the least doubt that that is
why only two sinister retainers can be brought to remain in it. I dare say
I shall be found, after a night spent within these walls, a witless wreck
whom you will be obliged to convey to Bedlam without more ado.”

12. Gothic Intertextuality
Regency Buck – Northanger Abbey
‘Lord, Ju, you’ll be the death of me! Do you think
I am being poisoned?... I never heard such a pack
of nonsense in my life. This is what comes of
reading Mrs Radclyffe’s novels! It is a famous
joke, I declare.’
An Austen Technique
‘Radcliffe has helped her perceive the General’s
nature more accurately than anyone else,
including his son.’ (Thomas Keymar re.
Northanger Abbey)

13. Gothic Intertextuality
Regency Buck – Northanger Abbey
‘It seems all to be written about ordinary people,
and, do you know, I am quite tired of Sicilians and
Italian Counts who behave in such a very odd way.
Sense and Sensibility! Well, after Midnight Bells and
Horrid Mysteries that has a pleasant ring, don’t you
agree?’
The ‘Horrid Novels’
Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and
when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the
Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or
twelve more of the same kind for you.
Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?
I will read you their names directly; here they are, in
my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach [Eliza Parsons],
Clermont [Charlotte Smith] , Mysterious Warnings
[Eliza Parsons], Necromancer of the Black Forest [Karl
Friedrich Kahlert/Ludwig Flammenberg], Midnight
Bell [Francis Lathom], Orphan of the Rhine [Eleanor
Sleath] and Horrid Mysteries [Karl Grosse]. Those will
last us some time.
Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure
they are all horrid?

14. Gothic Intertextuality
Regency Buck – Meeting Gothic Greats
‘Do not on any account look to the right, Miss
Taverner! Monk Lewis is eagerly awaiting his
opportunity to approach you, and once he
succeeds in engaging your attention you will
not be rid of him under half an hour. I never
knew a man to talk so much!
‘His poetry! I could listen to that for ever but
pray do not confuse my admiration for that
with a partiality for his lordship… He came late,
refused every course that was offered, and
ended by dining on potatoes mashed up with
vinegar, to the astonishment, as you may
imagine of all.’

15. Gothic Intertextuality
Sylvester and Glenarvon
‘The Lost Heir is no more foolish than Glenarvon,
and you can’t say that bore no relation to real
life!’

16. Break
Let me rescue you from your questions!

17. The Gothic and Heyer
‘Heyer wrote not only romances
but detectives, psychological
studies, historical novels and
contemporary fiction and her
work showcases the multivalent
ways in which popular fiction
deployed the Gothic beyond a
superficial appropriation of Gothic
tropes.’ (Hirst)
• A detective of the ‘supernatural
explained’
• A psychological thriller/family
saga/murder story combo
• A tonally discordant tale
• Rewriting the Gothics
• The Austenesque Gothic parody
• A Gothic strain

18. Footsteps in the Dark -1932
‘The plot is indescribably
ridiculous. Four young things
inherit an ancient, rambling
manor house in the country,
complete with ruined gothic
chapel, secret passages, ghosts,
master criminals, drug-crazed
French artists, bumbling local
policemen and mysterious clean
cut hero.’ (Binyon)

19. The Usual Suspects
• Charles
• Cecilia
• Margaret
• Peter
• Aunt Bosanquet
• ‘Mr Strange’
• Mr and Mrs Bowers
• Duval
• Flinders
• The superstitious heroine
• The plucky heroine
• The anti-Gothic heroine
• The cowardly superstitious servant
• The ‘redoubtable’ Mrs Bowers - ‘I just wish
that Monk would come in, that’s all! I’d
Monk him!
• The Foreign Other
• The Mysterious Stranger

20. The Benefits and Perils of Genre Competence
• Bowers is a ‘life like imitation of
the mysterious butler of fiction’
• Peter’s unthinking heroics make
him resemble ‘the hero in a
popular thriller.’
• ‘What’s all this bilge about
noises and hauntings, and
footsteps in the dark.’
• ‘No ghost, or pseudo-ghost is
going to frighten me out of this
place.’
• Misplaced suspicion
• The villains eyes… aren’t a dead
give away - ‘twinkle’ with humour
• Taking advantage of expectation
• Mrs Bosanquet ‘remember[s]
reading a most unpleasant story
about someone walled up in a
monastery… I never could bear the
thought of them, for they seem to
me most unnatural.’

21. Gothic Parody
Anti-Gothic Heroines
‘Mrs Bosanquet lay down again,
sternly resolved to think of
something else. But it was no use.
Biscuits, very crisp and sweet,
would not be banished from her
mind, and at the end of another
ten minutes Mrs Bosanquet
would have faced untold dangers
to get one.’
Bathetic Ends

22. The Gothic Beneath
“My dear kid, people don’t get
buried alive in the 20th century!!
‘Thought he spoke optimistically to Margaret he was less certain in his
own mind that the Monk would not leave them to starve. He
remembered Duval’s fate, and the cold-blooded way in which the
murder had been carried out.’

23. The Gothic Beneath
The creation of terror
‘The leap of her heart was choking her; she felt as
though she might faint if she went on like this. She
stopped, and very cautiously peered over her
shoulder. There was nothing. Yet what was that
vague, dark figure by the fireplace? Only the tall-
backed arm chair, of course. She was so sure of it
that she took a step towards it, and lifted her
candle to see more clearly. The dark shape grew
distinct in the tiny light. A cowled figure was
standing motionless by the fireplace, and through
the slits in the cowl two glittering eyes were fixed
upon Mrs Bosanquet.’
An irreducible
horror
‘There, in the centre of
the squalid little room
was Louis Duval, quite
dead, and hanging
from one of the hooks
in the beam that
Charles had noticed.’

24. Penhallow (1942) or ‘‘Why on earth did I have
to write this disturbing book?’
‘As a detective novel, it is objectively bad.’
(Paschen)
‘It doesn’t just go against the rules of the game,
it violates the nature of the game.’ (Wingate)
‘The murderer’s well-laid plans all go awry and
gothic horror is piled upon horror.’ (Review by L.
S. M.)

25. Gothic Preoccupations
‘Certain characteristic preoccupations will be aired. These include the
priesthood and monastic institutions; sleep-like and deathlike states;
subterranean spaces and live burial; doubles; the discovery of obscure
family ties; possibilities of incest; unnatural echoes or silences;
unintelligible writings and the unspeakable; garrulous retainers; the
poisonous effects of guilt and shame; nocturnal landscapes and
dreams; apparitions from the past…civil insurrections and fires; the
charnel house and the madhouse.’ (Sedgwick)

26. Up at Dozmary Pool… All Alone
‘The secret, while gleefully revealed by Adam in a
moment of rage, remains essentially an ‘unspeakable’
truth. Raymond takes his own life precisely so that his
secret would die with him and ‘it would be as Raymond
Penhallow that he would be remembered.’ His suicide
letter is silent on everything but instructions for the
estate. His mother when confronted is unable to
vocalise their relationship.’ (Hirst)

27. A polyphonic despair
FAITH
• Occupying her place in the text
• The interloper
• The search for a solution
• Mental breakdown
• The inability to control
consequences
RAYMOND
• Focalisation
• Shared revelation
• The search for a solution
• A journey through futility
• Incomplete access
• Defeat

28. A Night at the Inn - 1950
• Mr Cranbrook
• Miss Gateshead
• Mr Waggleswick
• Gothic set-up: creeping claustrophobia and covering
fog; dark passageways; feeling of unease.
• Gothic Misdirection: Waggleswick and his moleskin
jacket
• The jolly innkepper and his wife ‘chop up the bodies
of their victims, and to boil down remains in the
copper.’

29. A Night at the Inn – Gothic Tone
Shifting
Light Hearted Romance Gothic Tension

30. A Night at the Inn – Tonal Shifting
and Blurring the Lines
‘John had heard tales reminiscent
of this gruesome disclosure, but he
had imagined that they belonged
to an age long past.’
‘Remember the country and the
age in which we live.’ (Northanger
Abbey)
‘There’s plenty of willains alive
today!’

31. Night at the Inn and Tonal
Shifting
‘The hero’s unsettling realisation that evil is era-less, that modernity and
barbarity, progress and monstrosity exist simultaneously in his world is not
only key to the thematic intent of the tale, as in Footsteps, but to its
structural affect. The narrative jumps, sometimes within the space of a
paragraph, between scenes with wildly different tones: from wryly observed
romance to scenes of nerve-shattering suspense or terror…constant jumps in
tone reflect and reiterate the central discovery of the tale: the reality of
living in a world whose dangers lurk beneath the surface of a reassuring
modernity, a world which is simultaneously not what you had thought it to
be at all and exactly what you had thought it to be, where shy flirting and
cannibalistic serial killers exist incongruously in the same space. Heyer
employs both misdirection and a tonally fragmented narrative structure to
create a Gothic affect of disorientation and creeping terror.’ (Hirst)

32. Romancing the Gothic
‘Between them [Georgette Heyer and Daphne Du Maurier], they have
spawned yet another sub-genre of the modern romance novel, the
Gothic romance.’ (Anon., ‘Vacuum Packed Passions’)

33. Cousin Kate (1968) – A Failed Gothic or a
Gothic Critique?
‘Miss Heyer serves up a very
different sort of tale in the same
period setting, nothing less than a
full-fledged Gothic.’ (Bannon)
‘Was Georgette Heyer
intentionally trying her hand at
the contemporary Gothic, or did
this simply reflect her own state of
health.’ (Hodge)

34. Cousin Kate (1968) – A Failed Gothic or a
Gothic Critique?
‘The sun was setting
redly’ which ‘drew a
gasp from her, not of
admiration but of
dismay, since it seemed
to her … that the
building was on fire.’

35. Cousin Kate (1968) – A Failed Gothic or a
Gothic Critique?
•Jane Eyre
•Rochester
•Rochester
•Rochester
•Rochester
•Adele
•Bertha
•Cousin Kate
•Minerva
• Sir Timothy
•Torquil
•Phillip
•Torquil
•Torquil

36. The Quiet Gentleman – The
Austenesque Gothic
Parody has always been a mode of the Gothic
Zlosnik and Horner also point to the existence of the ‘comic gothic’ (like
Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey [1817] or Thomas Love Peacock’s
Nightmare Abbey [1818]) in which gothic elements are used ‘not to
frighten or appal, but to amuse, to stimulate and to intrigue.’ (Horner
and Zlosnik)
In a ‘comic gothic,’ gothic perceptions are mocked and its excesses
ridiculed but a ‘gothic’ threat is also revealed.

37. The Quiet Gentleman – The Austenesque Gothic
• Intertext and Gothic
expectations
• The anti-Gothic heroine
• ‘Here had been an opportunity for
spasms, swoonings, and a display
of sensibility utterly neglected!
• Tonal shifting
• ‘The howl of the gusts, sweeping
round the many angles of the
Castle, rose sometimes to a shriek
which could be heard through the
loudest peals of the thunder.’
• An unbearable reality
• ‘I found it impossible to believe
that the one person at Stanyon
whom I had thought to be my
friend could have all the time been
plotting my death’
• ‘I was acting only on a suspicion I
would, God knows! have been
glad to have seen refuted.’
• Trauma for all
• ‘My father did you an ill turn, did
he not?'

38. The Reluctant Widow
‘The book is entirely a Regency Thriller, a Regency Gothic, perhaps.’
(Dan Crawford)
‘An affectionate parody of the Gothic novel.’ (Mari Ness)
Secret Stairs!
Marauders in the house!
Family secrets!
A hidden Secret!
An amoral villain!
A heroine in peril!
A hero in peril!
A mysterious Frenchman!
The FRENCH!

39. Break
Don’t be afraid… ask me a question

40. Georgette Heyer and Rethinking the Gothic
Romance
‘Gothics’
≠
The intersection of the Gothic
and the romance in the 20th
century

41. What makes a romance, or just a novel,
Gothic?
• Fear and Terror
• Affect and Aesthetic
• The feel of fear
• Imagery
• Ur – plot
• Tropes
• Sombre
• Melodrama
• Genre
• Threat and uncertainty
• Tonal shifting – revelation and
discombobulation
• Narrative strategy
• Intertextuality
• Reimaginings
• The deployment of humour
• The unspoken yet revealed
• Mode - borrowings, subplots
and interventions
@jibunsenki

42. The Austenesque Gothic
• Parody
• An unveiled Gothic world
• Intertextuality
• Gothic Expectations
• Recasting and refashioning
• The elimination of sensibility
• Bathetic reveals
• Anti-Gothic heroines
• Alternative Gothic masculinities

43. Heyer’s Heroes
• Mark 1 - “The brusque, savage sort with a foul temper”
• Mark 2 - “Suave, well-dressed, rich, and a famous whip”
• New heroes – Freddy, Miles…
• ‘Mr Rochester was the first, and the Nonpareil, of his type. He is the
rugged and dominant male, who yet can be handled by quite ordinary a
female: as it might be, oneself! He is rude, overbearing and often a
bounder; but these blemishes, however repulsive they may be in real life,
can be made in the hands of a skilled novelist extremely attractive to
women.’ (Heyer)

44. Gothic Masculinity
Gothic Villain Byronic Anti-Hero Dark Hero

45. The Gothic hero?
• ‘Byronic super-male’ -‘an older man, a dark, magnetic, powerful, brooding [and]
sardonic’ (Russ)
• ‘Grand, Dark Man,’ a ‘redeemable, Byronic, romantic hero.’ (Joseph Crawford)
‘It occurred to Martin for the first time that he was
indeed a damnably handsome man – if one had a taste
for such delicate, almost womanish features.’
. He never had a troubled or sinful past or a dark secret and he
never posed a threat to the heroine (or anyone else). We
instead find that he is dependable, patient (particularly with
Torquil), lovingly attentive to his elderly relative, intelligent,
quick to laugh, supportive, ‘warm and appreciative’, sensible,
‘deeply reticent,’ and prosaically practical.

46. An alternative history of Gothic
Masculinity
Heroes of sensibility + servant heroes + brother protector + rational hero

47. Gothic Masculinity
Dark Heroes
Represent the threat
Redeem the threat through their
own redemption
Render the temptation of the
threat into flesh
Quiet Heroes
Oppose the threat
They embody its opposite
They literally oppose or combat it

48. Break
Ready to take my parting bow! Any questions?

49. Bibliography
Primary Sources
Jane Austen – Mansfield Park - 1814
Jane Austen – Northanger Abbey – 1817
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre – 1847
Carl Gross – Horrid Mysteries – 1796
Georgette Heyer - The Black Moth - 1921
Georgette Heyer - Cousin Kate – 1968
Georgette Heyer – Footsteps in the Dark – 1932
Georgette Heyer – ‘The Night at the Inn’ - 1950
Georgette Heyer – Penhallow - 1942
Georgette Heyer -The Quiet Gentleman – 1951
Georgette Heyer – The Reluctant Widow - 1946
Georgette Heyer – Regency Buck - 1935

50. Bibliography
Georgette Heyer - Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle – 1957
Georgette Heyer – The Talisman Ring – 1936
Georgette Heyer – The Toll Gate - 1954
Georgette Heyer - These Old Shades – 1926
Lady Caroline Lamb – Glenarvon - 1816
Francis Lathom – Midnight Bell – 1798
John Polidori – ‘The Vampyre’ – 1819
Ann Radcliffe – The Mysteries of Udolpho - 1794
Ann Radcliffe – A Sicilian Romance – 1791
Clara Reeve – The Old English Baron - 1778
Charlotte Smith – The Old Manor House - 1793
Horace Walpole – Castle of Otranto - 1764

51. Bibliography
Secondary Sources
Georgette Heyer – A Critical Retrospective ed. by Mary Fahnestock-Thomas – 2001
Anon. – ‘Vacuum Packed Passions’ in The Times Literary Supplement – 30th August 1974
Barbara A. Bannon – ‘Forecast Fiction’ in Publishers’ Weekly – 1968
T. J. Binyon – ‘Criminal Proceedings’ in The Times Literary Supplement – 25th April 1986
Dan Crawford – ‘Crimes of the Heart’ – The Armchair Detective – Summer 1992
Joseph Crawford - The Twilight of the Gothic: - 2014
James P. Devlin – ‘The Mysteries of Georgette Heyer. A Janeite’s Life of Crime’ in The Armchair Detective – Summer 1984
Michael Dirda – Classics for Pleasure – 2007
Joan Forbes - ‘Anti-Romantic Discourse as Resistance: Women’s Fiction 1775-1820’ in Romance Revisited - 1995
Holly Hirst – ‘Georgette Heyer’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic – 2020
Jane Aiken Hodge – The Private World of Georgette Heyer – 1984
Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik, ‘Comic Gothic’ in A Companion to the Gothic – 2001
Jennifer Kloester – The Biography of a Bestseller – 2011

52. Bibliography
L. S. M – ‘Georgette Heyer’s Penhallow’ in Springfield Union – 1943
Mari Ness – ‘Bonapartist Spies: The Reluctant Widow’ – Tor.com – 2013 https://www.tor.com/2013/04/09/the-reluctant-widow-
georgette-heyer/
Mari Ness - ‘Regency Gothic: Cousin Kate’ – Tor.com - 2013 https://www.tor.com/2013/11/26/regency-gothic-cousin-kate/
Madeleine Paschen - ‘The Mystery of Penhallow’ in Essays on the Literary Genius of Georgette Heyer - 2018
Lillian S. Robinson – Sex, Class and Culture – 1978
Joanna Russ - ‘Somebody’s Trying to Kill Me and I Think It’s My Husband: The Modern Gothic’ in Journal of Popular Culture - `973
The Heyer Problem – A History of Privilege’ in Essays on the Literary Genius of Georgette Heyer, edited by Rachel Hyland – 2018
Eve Sedgwick – The Coherence of Gothic Conventions – 1980
Catherine Spooner – Post-Millenial Gothic: Comedy, Romace and the Rise of Happy Gothic – 2017
Peter L. Thorslev - Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes – 1962
Laura Vivanco - ‘Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch of Regency Romance’, in JPRS
http://www.jprstudies.org/2013/06/georgette-heyer-the-nonesuch-of-regency-romance-by-laura-vivanco/
’ Nancy Wingate - ‘Georgette Heyer: A Reappraisal’ - 1976
English Heritage - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/search-news/georgette-heyer-receives-blue-plaque/

53. Byronic Heroes
The Byronic hero is, in reality, a complex and fairly specific figure. In his Byronic Hero: Types and Prototypes,
Peter Thorslev identifies the many fore-runners of the Byronic hero.
• The ‘man of feeling’ is ‘distinguished … by his capacities for feeling’ which offer him access to other realms
of meaning and make him a man of extreme emotions.
• The ‘gloomy egoist’ has an ‘intense concern with personal grief’ and is prone to ‘long pessimistic self-
analyses’ and extreme world-weariness.
• The ‘noble outlaw’ who is a ‘Romantic rebel: remorseful, perhaps, but largely under the judgment of their
own consciences - defiance toward traditional social codes and morals and toward orthodox theology
becomes their dominant characteristic’ but ennobled by love.
• There is also the influence of specific figures like Prometheus, Cain, Milton’s Satan and Faust who are all
defiant over-reachers with ‘the air of the fallen angel, the air of Satanic greatness perverted.’
• The Byronic hero’s ambiguous appeal – that combination of power, attraction and dark deeds connects him
to the gothic villain.
• It also influenced his physical representation so the Byronic hero is ‘a tall, manly, stalwart physique, with
dark hair and brows frequently set off by a pale and ascetic complexion. Aside from this, the most noticeable
of his physical characteristics are his eyes.’ The term ‘Byronic’, as we can see, comes weighted with a wealth
of specific inherited characteristics many of which are absent from most gothic romance heroes, including
Sylvester.