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The Clothes Make the Heroine?

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Recently, I played the character of Celia in a production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Celia and her cousin Rosalind are both daughters of dukes who, at the beginning of the play, live in luxury in a palace….until Rosalind is banished. Then Celia and Rosalind run away to the Forest of Arden — Celia disguised as a shepherdess, and Rosalind disguised as Celia’s little brother. Due to Celia’s smart thinking, they’ve brought their “jewels and their wealth” along with them, so they take care of sheep the same way Marie Antoinette did, and have a lot of fun along the way.

So, you’re thinking, what does this have to do with writing Regency romances? I’ll get to that in a moment. 🙂

I wore two costumes in this play. In the first picture here (photo credit: Jesse Sheldon), you see me in a very tight, binding, ouch-my-back-and-shoulders-hurt pale blue gown with a train, a gauze overskirt, trailing sleeves that almost reach the ground, (fake) fur trim, and (fake) pearls sewn all over the gown. I also have a heavy necklace, and a headpiece with a back veil that’s so long it almost touches the floor.

In the second picture here (photo credit: Jesse Sheldon), I am royalty pretending to be common. My green dress still has some trim, but it’s much simpler, and much more comfortable. I skip, I run, I lie down under a tree at one point. I can do pretty much anything but bend forward too far (this dress has a pretty low neckline). 🙂

What I found right away was that the first dress very much changed the way I moved. It kept me upright. It kept me from walking backwards (unless I carefully handled my train while doing so.) It very much restricted how I could move my arms (which I could hardly raise). And sitting on anything was problematic — the “pearls” which adorned the dress are everywhere, so sitting involved sitting on a lot of large beads — rather uncomfortable!

Once I got used to the restricted movement of this gown, I learned its advantages. The long trailing sleeves made smooth, graceful arm movements very dramatic, and highlighted any hand gestures beautifully. The train, sleeves, and long veil clearly stated that this was an important person — and a wealthy one. It was true conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure in one costume.

This leads me to think about the aristocratic ladies of the Regency period. I think one’s first impulse is to assume that all of those empire gowns were just so comfortable. But if you think about it, some of them were fussy…some had trains….some had huge headpieces with feathers…some were probably quite tight…and the stays certainly would have kept things like bending at the waist, and certain sorts of twisting, to a minimum…

So our heroines, particularly when dressed up for balls and such, probably moved and stood in a very different way from women who were servants or shopkeepers. Our elegant heroines would know that a small hand gesture or a graceful inclination of the head would speak volumes. Our young, tomboyish heroines might chafe against such restrictive clothing, and keep trying to do things they really shouldn’t (and getting in trouble.)

I’m sure none of this is new to most of you — but it’s the sort of thing that wearing a costume can make one ponder yet again! So what do you think the advantages and disadvantages of Regency costume were? What character or plot elements might a heroine’s costume cause, or reveal? Can you think of any dress-related plot points in Regencies that you’ve read?

All comments welcome!

Cara
Cara King, www.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — out now!

The Hotness Factor

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Warning–today’s post will be Very Shallow and Not At All Edifying. Mostly because my spring allergies have kicked in, and my medicine has me even fuzzier-headed than usual. But also because of a book I just finished reading.

The book was “Kiss and Tango” by Marina Palmer, a memoir that had not a single thing to do with the Regency, but was a tale of the author quitting her dull advertising job in New York and taking off to dance the tango in Argentina. (Can this be my new career ambition, too???). She also had hot sex with many hunky tango guys, which leads me to this.

Palmer says “…this city [Buenos Aires] contains the most beautiful men per capita (we’re talking both quantity and quality). To that end, I have devised an index that will hopefully enable others to draw their own conclusions.
The Beautiful Men Index Per Square Mile:
Athens 0
Rio 4
New York 8
Paris 15
London 17
Venice 79
Buenos Aires 86”

She then goes into her reasons for these numbers, which makes me really want to go to South America. I then got the idea (this was excellent time wastage, BTW) to scan my romance “keeper” shelf and devise my own hot guy index based on favorite heroes. here goes:
Medieval/Renaissance 16
Regency 26
Victorian 9
Misc. 11
Paranormal 6

I will have to analyze these statistics as soon as the Benadryl wears off.

In the meantime, what are some of your favorite “great hero” books? Or “beautiful men” cities? (I’m especially interested in hearing about THAT…)

As for the Orlando picture–well, it’s Monday, and I just felt like it. 🙂

Forgotten Regency

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It seems puzzling to me that the English Regency period is so neglected in popular culture. Certainly it has been celebrated in the movies based on Jane Austen’s books, and there are also the modern Regency romances to consider. But I can rarely find the English Regency represented in other forms, while the Victorian era is everywhere.

A few years ago I became interested in collecting figurines. I wanted to find porcelain ladies dressed in Regency fashion. I have found a few, but for the most part current collectable “lady figurines” are of the Victorian era. The same goes for collectable dolls. The odd thing is that if a Regency figurine or doll appears on the market there is a high interest in it—if my experiences on eBay are of any significance. Believe me, you need your Big Girl panties on (or Big Boy boxers) if you are going to join the bidding!

Another area that demonstrates the popularity of the English Regency and the French Empire period is old fashion prints. Again, the most sought after seem to be those of the English Regency/French Empire era. There are many listings of Victorian fashion plates, but as far as I have been able to see, it is the Regency era prints that generate the most interest.

But still, the Victorian era rules in promotion. Romantic decorating? Magazines seem to equate romantic with Victorian. If a photo of a room with Empire influences is shown, I usually miss seeing a mention of the era. Often the antiques used in a room otherwise decorated in Victorian style are pieces that were also used in the Regency period—Queen Anne, Hepplewhite, Chippendale, and even Regency style.

I admit that this is all my unstudied opinion, and I know the English Regency was short—but it seems to me that there is more interest in it than marketers realize. It is more than our traditional Regency romance novels that seem to be overlooked by those in the business of deciding what we want to buy and bringing it to market.

Opinions?

Laurie
LORD RYBURN’S APPRENTICE
Signet, January 2006

Go With The Floe

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Over the past few weeks, my fellow Riskies have discussed research, historical accuracy, and how nitpicky is too nitpicky (or not), as well as how easy it is to get swept away by research. I am in the middle of writing a Regency-set historical, and am having some of the same problems, but from another angle: I don’t want to do the research.

It’s not that I’m not interested, because I am terribly interested in all the stuff I should be researching, it’s just that time is at a premium, and any time spent away from writing is . . . time spent away from writing. I already have a procrastination issue, I know how easy it would be for me to dive in to do the required research, not to surface for several weeks. Since I don’t plot in advance, and I always forget to take notes when inspiration strikes, I panic at the thought I might lose a thread of the plot, or a really good idea for the next conflict. Time spent away from the writing–well, you get the idea.

In my opinion, the best historical romances are those that are imbued with the whole world of the time period, not necessarily the ones that reveal the most knowledge. My favorites are those that only show the tip of the research iceberg–going with the floe, so to speak. I feel fairly confident I get the historical tone right in my writing, but I know I have fallen down on the research job (my dad is my research partner, and he put in all the work on A Singular Lady, but I did not double-check his notes when it came to titles and special licenses, my two most egregious errors. Definitely my bad, sorry Dad).

Right now I have to spend some time finding answers to some of these questions:

What were people who came from the Ottoman Empire called during the Regency? Turks? Ottos? Footstools?

What were relations like between the Ottoman Empire and England during the Regency? Did the government take any official stand on the Ottoman Empire’s holding of Greece?

What was banking like? The stock market? (I read A Conspiracy of Paper, but that is about sixty years too early, and I don’t recall the details, just that it was a good story).

If there was a public ruckus, who came in to break it up and haul the miscreants off to be punished?

Could a man unbutton a lady’s gown if he were standing in front of her? And if he could, could he do it with one hand?

What did practicers of The Fancy (boxing) wear to practice?

And now? I have stalled enough. Before I get back to writing, I have to–darn it–go do the research.

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Round and about the weather

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Originally this was going to be a post about weather during the Regency weather, something I was determined to blog about before the official arrival of spring, although here (near Washington DC) it’s warm and sunny and daffodils are blooming. I did however do some digressions, some of which turned out to be more interesting.

England in Jane Austen’s time was in the grip of a minor Ice Age that had begun in medieval times and lasted up until the mid-nineteenth century–hence the snowy cold winters of A Christmas Carol and the Pickwick Papers. It was cold enough for the river Thames to freeze over completely, which it did for several months in some particularly cold years. In the sixteenth century Henry VIII traveled from London to Greenwich along the Thames by sleigh. What better opportunity for the enterprising merchants of London to set up shop on the river, thus creating Frost Fairs, the most famous of which (featured in Orlando by Virginia Woolf) was held in 1608.

The Frost Fair of 1814 was the last of its kind, and featured an elephant being led across the ice near Blackfriars Bridge (according to one source I found), donkey rides, and the roasting of a whole sheep on the ice. People had to pay to see the sheep roasted and then pay for a portion of “Lapland Sheep.” Nine printing presses churned out souvenir items. This fair only lasted four days until a thaw set in.

The weather, of course, is always a safe conversation topic–particularly if the man of your dreams has appeared unexpectedly:

But it was then too late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and talked of the weather.

That’s Elinor, from Sense and Sensibility, whose keen sense of the appropriate phrase gives her a certain affinity with Jim’s aunt in A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas:


And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim’s Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, “Would you like anything to read?”

I have to mention a couple of fascinating sites I came across while trying to find a good Jane Austen quote about the weather (the one I was originally looking for, about a stupendously cold snap in London, is in Emma, I think). There is for your edification, a site with a search function for Sense and Sensibility, and other books too, Tilneys and Trap-doors, and that site also includes the Henry Tilney Fan Site–yes, the man who knows how to wash muslin. Who would’ve thought it.

Any polite comments on the weather, literary examples thereof, or really excellent time wasters online?