A Series of Links

Sarah's post about romances in series is up at Romancing the Blog:

To me, “series” romance means “category” romance (Harlequin, Mills & Boon, Loveswept, Silhouette, etc.). There are other series, of course, because the term is very loose, and this “looseness” is precisely what I’m interested in. Because “series” can also mean mainstream novels that are connected in some way. [...]

Then, uniquely, perhaps, there’s J.D. Robb’s Eve and Roarke series, where the narrative focus of the book is the mystery, but the heart of the series is the continuing relationship between the two main characters.

And it is this last one that I’m seeing more of, specifically in gay male romance, but with a twist. While we follow the characters in these stories from their Happy For Now in their first story, through relationship maturation in further stories, both the narrative and emotional focus of the books is the relationship. Unlike mystery series, which we follow for both the continuation of the relationship AND the new mystery in every book, these series focus just on the same relationship, book after book. [...] And does anyone else reading these series find the HFNs slightly unsatisfying and find the trend that a book labeled a romance might not have a strong HEA rather troubling?

Yesterday at Dear Author Jessica took a look at the progression of relationships and how that relates to selfhood:

In some ways, every single romance is about selfhood, since the romantic ideal says that until we meet our counterpart, we cannot truly be our best selves, our complete selves. What’s unique about this, is that the self is defined as fundamentally relational: people are not silos, who choose to enter relationships as they might choose to engage, or not, in hobbies, but rather, people can only be who they are with relations of the right sort with other people. I personally believe that the valorization of this relational way of viewing the self is a key source of the feminist potential of romance, but I also think it gives romance, as a genre, some unique and important things to say about questions of selfhood and personal identity per se. I have been amazed at the number of romances I have read, across all the subgenres, that deal centrally and directly with the metaphysical question of what is self and what is nonself.

What would it take for you to become another, different person? First, consider loss: is there one essential thing, say, your memories, or your physical body, or your career, that defines you? What could you lose and still be you?

That's more than enough to ponder, I think, as 2008 draws to a close, so I'll make this a very short set of links.

The photo is from Wikimedia Commons.

Assorted Links

Laura Vivanco

Since the start of the holiday season we've written a lot of to-do lists at my house so I thought it would be appropriate to write another list, this time for the blog. It's a list of links to thought-provoking, controversial, or perhaps simply irritating, items:

• In the Women's Studies Encyclopedia, in the entry on "Supermarket Romances," written by Karen S. Mitchell, Mitchell states that "The juxtaposition of a multidimensional heroine with a somewhat one-dimensional hero is a characteristic of the romantic historical novels written today." She also writes that,

  While the heroines of historical novels have become increasingly competent in their domains, they are limited by the social constructs of the historical time. In this way they are forced to be subservient and are often subjected to rape, dominance, and violent abuse. Helen Hazen argues that romances include rape fantasies because "rape fantasy is quite healthy" (17).

  It's probably worth noting that Hazen's book was published in 1983. Although Mitchell is clearly aware that the genre has changed since then, her description of historical romances doesn't match the contents of the historical romances I've been reading recently. Does it describe recent historical romances you've read?

• The next item on my list has been discussed in some detail by Jessica. It's Critelli, Joseph W. and Jenny M. Bivona. "Women's erotic rape fantasies: an evaluation of theory and research." Journal of Sex Research (2008). Hazen is again used as an important source:

  One review of historical romance novels found that 54% included the rape of the lead female character (Thurston, 1987). In particular, Hazen's (1983) analysis of rape in romance novels also functions as a theory of women's erotic rape fantasies.
  
  In essence, both romance novels and rape fantasies are created works of fiction. Sexual fantasies are self-generated erotic stories often intentionally initiated to provide enjoyment and sexual arousal. Romance novels are structured erotic fantasies that individuals intentionally expose themselves to, typically for emotional satisfaction and sexual arousal. In a rape fantasy women create an imaginary scenario and they participate in the fantasy through the rape experience of their self character. In a romance novel that includes rape, women identify with the lead female character and vicariously experience her rape.
  
  Hazen (1983) notes that, although the hero in romance novels must be handsome, he may also be cruel. Gorry (1999), in a content analysis of male romance heroes, found that these men are strong, masculine, muscular, sexually bold, and dangerous.¹ According to Salmon and Symons (2003), romance heroes are not gentle and sensitive; they are men with the physical and temperamental qualities of warriors.²

  And

  Hazen argues that the romance novel presents the heroine with an exciting challenge. [...] In romance novels, there is often a violent confrontation with a dominant, sexually aggressive adversary who appears to be evil. The challenge for the heroine is to conquer his heart, seduce him into falling in love with her, have him voluntarily make a lifetime commitment to her, and transform his apparent evil and cruelty into something more socially acceptable without diminishing his masculinity. In romance novels, rape is used as an effective means of creating excitement and dramatic tension. Hazen argues that, in the female imagination, shattered purity through violent sex is a primordial danger whose tension creates a powerful story.
  
  In romance novels the narrative structure allows the fantasy to continue to completion in marriage.

• Salmon, Catherine and Don Symons, "Slash fiction and human mating psychology," was published in the Journal of Sex Research in 2004 and can be found online:

  Before discussing slash and its fans, however, we first consider the general question of why human beings enjoy fiction at all. Our discussion is animated by the premises that mental phenomena, such as enjoyment, are the products of brain states and that the human brain, like every organ in every species, is the product of evolution by natural selection.

  and

  Written fiction probably contains elements of both engagement of organizing adaptations and of pleasure circuit lock-picking, and different kinds of fiction may contain different proportions. Perhaps "great" works of fiction are those that most fully engage organizing adaptations, which is why they have survived the tests of time and translation, while "lesser" fiction, including genre romance novels, may primarily pick the locks of the brain's pleasure circuits.
  
  THE NATURE OF THE GENRE ROMANCE NOVEL
  
  Romance novels have been called, with some justification, "women's pornography." [...] If we can persuade the reader that porn consists almost entirely of lock-picking rather than engagement of organizing adaptations, our subsequent argument that the same is true of genre romances may be more persuasive.

  While I cannot comment on the evolutionary biology underpinning these statements, I would like to challenge the classification of romance as a "lesser" form of fiction. It would appear to be based on an assumption that romance is read solely, or primarily, for different pleasures than those derived from more intellectual fiction. As I hope we've demonstrated on this blog, some (though certainly not all) romances can be extremely intellectually rewarding to a reader who approaches them with a mind which is respectfully open about their literary and intellectual merits. Salmon and Symons might also benefit from a little more thinking about how much intellectual activity can be involved in the writing and reading of porn. Pam Rosenthal, for example, has said that she

  come[s] out of that highfalutin French intellectual porn tradition. Story of O was absolutely formative for me in the 1960s, and so was Sontag's essay The Pornographic Imagination. I read a lot of the Marquis de Sade in my teens, too.
  
  And I've gotten a fair amount of mail from highly intellected porn readers as well

  In fact, Salmon and Symons would appear not to be aware of erotica and porn written by women, because on their list of "erotic genres [which] could exist, but to our knowledge, none of them does" they include

  Narratives with little development of character, plot, or setting in which heroines have brief, impersonal sexual encounters with attractive male strangers, with no obstacles, no falling in love, no strings attached, and no happily-ever-after endings (i.e., narratives that directly mimic male-oriented porn).

  Salmon and Symons seem aware only of women authors of romance novels: "What, then, actually does characterize women's erotic fiction? The genre romance novel has the following features. The goal of the heroine is never sex for its own sake, much less sex with strangers."

• A more recent, item which has already deeply irritated many romance readers is a study which, as reported by the BBC, found that "Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life." The study's already been discussed at AAR and at the Smart Bitches'. It's probably worth acknowledging that research can sometimes be reported in the press in ways which lack the nuances present in the original. I'm not sure exactly which study is being referred to, but there are a variety of papers and other items on this and related issues which have been produced by members of Heriot-Watt's Family and Personal Relationship Laboratory. They are:
  
  • Holmes, B.M., & Johnson, K.R. (In Press). Adult attachment and romantic partner preference: A review. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
  • Johnson, K.R., & Holmes, B.M. (In Press). Contradictory messages: A content analysis of Hollywood-produced romantic comedy feature films. Communication Quarterly.
  • Holmes, B.M. (2007).In search of my "one and only": Romance-oriented media and beliefs in romantic relationships destiny. Electronic Journal of Communication, 17 (3).
  • Holmes, B.M. (2004). Romantic partner ideals and dysfunctional relationship beliefs cultivated through popular media messages: Implications for relationships satisfaction. Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest Information and Learning.
  
  I haven't had time to read these over (due to a need to get on with some of the items on my other lists). Does anyone else feel like taking on the task over the holidays?

• And finally some good news, via AAR's new blog,. The original source of the news has subsequently been deleted because, as Paula Guran explains,

  the numbers I was mentioning yesterday were compiled from the only the lists of the top fifty bestselling books for the week (in whatever the category and whatever week) on Bookscan — not ALL the books sold. Evidently, that was not clear — especially when taken out of context elsewhere.
  
  Second, I evidently was not supposed to put those figures “out into the media” at all. I didn’t put them “out into the media”. The media picked up a public posting. To me, there’s a difference, but evidently there is none to Bookscan and I see their point.

  However, they're still available at Galleycat: "compared to the first 49 weeks of 2007 [...] mass market paperback sales are up 14 percent—and overall romance sales are up 83 percent, with mass market paperbacks alone experiencing a 50 percent boost." I suspect those might be US figures, but romance seems to be doing well in the UK too: "The real winner in our economic meltdown, you see, is the book publisher Mills & Boon" (Black).

And that's the end of my list, and probably my last blog post of 2008. Happy Holidays!

1 April Gorry's Ph.D. thesis, "Leaving Home for Romance: Tourist Women's Adventures Abroad" (from the University of California Santa Barbara), is unpublished and therefore not readily available, but descriptions of her analysis of the heroes of romance novels can be found here and here. It should be noted that the thesis is not primarily about romance novels. The abstract of a conference paper presented by Gorry in 1995 gives an indication of the focus of her research:

the mating behavior of Caucasian tourist women vacationing in tropical locations such as the Caribbean, East Africa, Indonesia and Greece. The widespread occurrence of a phenomenon that cannot easily be explained by evolutionary theory makes female romance tourism worthy of ethnographic attention. An initial three month period of field research conducted in the Caribbean has revealed the following behavioral anomalies: tourist women tend to engage in more promiscuous behavior than they would at home, taking one or more different lovers in the span of a few days, choosing men of lower status than themselves, providing payment for "romantic services," and prioritizing male appearance and reputed love making ability over other mate selection criteria.

2 Salmon and Symons's book, Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality, while it includes statements about romance novels, seems to be only partially about them. The description of the book is as follows:

The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. [...] The authors focus particular attention on slash fiction, an erotic subgenre written by and for women and found on-line and in fan magazines. Slash—so-called for the punctuation mark indicating a romantic pair—depicts sexual relationships between heterosexual male television and film characters such as Starsky and Hutch (S/H) and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (K/S). Salmon and Symons argue that—despite some differences—slash fiction has much in common with romance novels. The authors examine the essential ingredients of female sexual fantasy and how slash fiction provides them.

The photo of the list is from Wikimedia Commons.

Sarah on Reviews, Analysis, and Ethics

Reprising the questions of (a) the difference between writing reviews and literary criticism and (b) categorising books as either "good" or "bad," Sarah explains at Dear Author why she's begun to write reviews at that website and how she now has "a number of moral dilemmas that I’m sure all baby reviewers go through as they learn (hopefully) how to be good and ethical reviewers."

A list of all Sarah's posts at Dear Author can be found here.


The photo was taken by Michal Maňas and is of

Lady Justice - allegory of Justice - statue at court building in [...] Svobody Street, Olomouc (Czech Republic). [...T]he statue was made by sculptor J. L. Urban. This image of Lady Justice lacks the typical blindfold and scales, replacing the latter with a book. (Wikipedia)

Come Now and Look at Me

Laura Vivanco

Not so long ago Jessica wrote a post titled "“Come for me, baby”: orgasm on command" in which she asked

Why is this phrase (and its variations) so ubiquitous in romance? You don’t believe me? Well, here’s a list complied ONLY from my bookshelf of maybe 30 titles. I bet you can think of many more.

Of course there's an element of dominance/control involved, and as Jessica asks, "was it the Office of Alpha Hero Protection that issued the dictum (heh) that in order to enhance Alphaness, heroes must control even this aspect of lovemaking?" But I suspect there might also be an element of bonding involved, of becoming, in the words of Matthew 19, and repeated in the marriage ceremony "one flesh."

Jessica's post reminded me of another frequent command issued by heroes, namely that the heroine look at him as she has her orgasm:

The blood was pounding in his head, roaring in his ears, yet his body continued to move slowly with hers. Balanced on the edge, David said her name a last time.
"Aurora, look at me." When her eyes opened, they were dark and aware. "I want to see where I take you." (Roberts 591)

And here's a similar example:

Byron realized suddenly that it was not enough for there to be pleasure given and taken. He wanted Victoria to be aware of him, as aware of him as a man as he was of her as a woman. She was beautiful like that [...] beautiful with her tightness clasping him intimately, as if she would turn them both into one marvelous animal. But he did not want her to plunge into ecstasy alone. He wanted her with him as she went over the edge - he wanted to be a part of that beauty at its climax. [...] "I'm here," he whispered. "Look at me. Remember - I am with you."
She opened her eyes and met his gaze. "For now," she agreed. (Joyce 67)

Again, I think the command is part of an attempt to bond the two more closely. I wonder if there's any lingering literary and emotional significance derived from much earlier medical/scientific ideas about the power of the eyes. In the Renaissance it was thought that eyes could potentially have a powerful effect:

"Love's arrows," held in high esteem by the French poets of the Pleiade, were not, for Ficino, a mere metaphor. They were equipped with invisible pneumatic tips able to inflict severe damage on the person shot. Had not Plato already said that love was a kind of ocular sickness (ophthalmia: Phaedo, 255c-d)? And did not Plutarch ascribe to sight a "miraculous force"?
Regarding the "evil eye," fascination or jettatura, its etiology is the same:

Fascination is a force which, emanating from the spirit of the fascinator, enters the eyes of the fascinated person and penetrates his heart. Spirit is therefore the instrument of fascination. It emits from the eyes rays resembling itself, bearing with them spiritual quality. [...]

So speaks Agrippa of Nettesheim, after Ficino. (Culianu 30)

As mentioned above, this scientific explanation of the function of the gaze influenced literature:

In late medieval literature [...] the arrow does not always proceed directly to the heart, but strikes the lover first in the eyes. This bizarre trajectory becomes more comprehensible when we realize that the poets have associated the arrow of Love with either the glance or the image of the beloved, which enters through the lover's eyes but pierces deep within. (Stewart 13)

Donaldson-Evans clarifies that this imagery has a very long literary history:

when love is born not simply as a result of seeing the Beloved but by the active participation of the Beloved's glance, then we are dealing with a specific tradition which can be traced back to early Greek classical literature. It is, in fact, a topos which, since it has gone unnamed until now, we propose to call the Aggressive Eye Topos. (202)

Its scientific basis, according to Donaldson-Evans, contributed to its longevity:

such imagery is rooted in a theory of vision which extended from classical antiquity up to the seventeenth century. This scientific authority (it is only for us that it is pseudo-scientific) undoubtedly accounts for the popularity and extraordinary longevity of this particular literary tradition. (203)

I'd like to suggest that, even if we would now consider the scientific authority underpinning the Aggressive Eye topos to be merely archaic pseudo-science, the tradition perhaps lives on in literary form in the romance genre. Heroes who ask or command heroines to look deep into their eyes seem to be trying to create an emotional connection (they may not at this point think of it as love) between them. When the hero ensures that they orgasm together while looking into each others eyes, he is perhaps trying to join them both physically and optically (body and soul), and in coming together in this way they are perhaps almost literally made, at least for a short space of time, into "one flesh."

• Culianu, Ioan P. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. Trans. Margaret Cook. U of Chicago P: 1987.
• Donaldson-Evans, Lance K. "Love's Fatal Glance: Eye Imagery and Maurice Scève's Délie." Neophilologus 62:2 (1978): 202-211.
• Joyce, Lydia. The Veil of Night. New York: Signet, 2005.
• Roberts, Nora. Mind over Matter. 1987. Going Home. Richmond, Surrey: Silhouette, 2004. 401-649.
• Stewart, Dana E. The Arrow of Love: Optics, Gender, and Subjectivity in Medieval Love Poetry. Bucknell UP: 2003.

The image of the eye is from Wikimedia Commons.

Romance Revised in Teaching American Literature

Laura Vivanco

Since I first posted about the essays on romance authors which had been published in the journal Teaching American Literature there have been some changes made. Most of the essays have been renamed and restored to their original (in some cases significantly longer) lengths:

• Gillian Mason's "Rosemary Rogers: The Positive Power of Romance and Sexual Fantasy" is now "Rosemary Rogers."
  
• Suzanne Milton's "Danielle Steel: Bringing Family Issues to Light" is now "Danielle (Fernande) Steel."
  
• Sarah S. G. Frantz's "Suzanne Brockmann: The Military and the Romance" is now "Suzanne Brockmann."
  
• Wendy Wagner's "Jennifer Crusie: Romance as Academic Question" is now "Jennifer Crusie."
  
• Fahamisha Patricia Brown's "Beverly Jenkins: African American History and the Romance Novel" is now "Beverly Jenkins."
  
• Patricia Kennedy Bostian's "Amanda Scott: Bringing History to Life" keeps the same title and url.
  
• Leslie Haynesworth's "Janet Evanovich: Comedy and Romance" is now "Janet Evanovich."
  

These essays have also been joined by:

• Fahamisha Patricia Brown's "Anita Richmond Bunkley." Brown notes that

  Anita Richmond Bunkley identifies herself as the author of nine book-length novels, two romances, three novellas, and one work of non-fiction. While it is difficult to say which two titles she would characterize as romances, what is certain is that all of her novels contain an element of romance. (1)

  Given that one of her novels, Suite Embrace, (published in 2008) "is a Kimani romance novel (Harlequin’s African American series)," that's possibly one of the two that Bunkley would classify as romances.


• Lee Anna Maynard's "LaVyrle Spencer." I was particularly interested in Maynard's description of
  

  themes and motifs in The Fulfillment, most notably in the characters’ connections with the seasonal cycles on the farm. Life on a farm is dictated by the seasons, with they and not the farmer controlling the timeline of planting, cultivating, and harvesting, but Spencer forges a much deeper symbolic connection in her novel. (2)

  and her observation that, in Forsaking All Others,

  With sly self-referentiality, Spencer opens her novel with a breakthrough assignment for Allison – shooting a lusty cover for a romance novel Allison finds herself absorbed in reading, although she bristles at the tidy, happily-ever-after ending and what she imagines will be its surefire appeal to women readers. (4)

  Maynard also discusses the symbolism of "the rejuvenation of a house" in two of Spencer's novels.
  
  
• Diana Stout's "Karen Robards." In the very first paragraph, Stout informs the reader that "Robards claims that she doesn’t write under any formula, and has never sold any of the cookie-cutter romances produced by such publishers as Harlequin and Silhouette" (1). I wonder if this is Stout's paraphrasing of the following exchange between Robards and an interviewer:

  Did you ever write for the big formula-type romance publishers?
  
  No. I never did.¹

  Even if the description of Harlequin/Silhouette romances as "cookie-cutter" is the result of Stout's paraphrasing of Robards's response to the interviewer I'm still rather taken aback by it because it seems extremely dismissive of a great many romance novels and authors, including Nora Roberts (discussed below), who began by writing category romances. It has always seemed very ironic to me that, in a genre whose readers often complain that their novels are unfairly dismissed as "trash" or "fluff," some readers of single title romances often seem to be equally willing to take a negative, broad-brush attitude towards category romances.
  
  
• Wylene Rholetter's "Nora Roberts." One of the many interesting details about Roberts's career which are included in this extremely comprehensive essay is that "Roberts's name has come to be associated with connected stories during her more than twenty-year career, but, according to Isabel Swift, Vice President, Editorial, Silhouette, the concept was new in category fiction when Reflections and Dance of Dreams appeared in 1983" (2).
  
  Another unusual aspect of Roberts's career is that The Last Honest Woman "was Roberts's fiftieth title for Silhouette, and Roberts herself served as the cover model for Abigail O'Hurley Rockwell, the novel's heroine" (6). I've included a photo of the cover in question, as well as a near-contemporary photo of Roberts, for comparative purposes.²
  
  For all Roberts's success, the following claim seems overstated: "When Roberts entered the field in 1981, category romance was successful as a genre, but individual works within the category format had a shelf life of about thirty days. Nora Roberts challenged that limitation. She has proved that twenty-year-old category fiction still sells" (26). While it is certainly true that Roberts's novels for Harlequin have been repeatedly republished with impressive frequency and in impressive numbers, the Harlequin Classic Library had already reissued category romances which twenty or more years old. Juliet Shore's Doctor Memsahib, for example, is #4 in the Harlequin Classic Library. The publication details reveal that the novel was first published as a Mills & Boon hardcover edition in 1958, the first Harlequin edition was published in 1960, the "Golden Harlequin Library" edition was published in 1972 and the Harlequin Classic Library edition was published in March 1980. Lucy Agnes Hancock's Community Nurse was first published in hardback in 1944. The first Harlequin edition, in paperback, dates from 1953, and it seems to have been reprinted a couple of times between then and 1982, when it was added to the Harlequin Classic Library.
  
  As Rholetter notes, people often describe "Roberts as a 'publishing phenomenon'" (22) but the statement that "The MacKades with their expletive-rich language, quick tempers, tender hearts, and steady love for family suggest that in the creation of male characters, as in other areas, Roberts has moved far beyond the limits of formulaic romance" (12, emphasis added) seems to me to do more than simply praise Roberts's skill at characterisation. It raises questions about what constitutes "formulaic romance," and how many other authors in the genre have "moved far beyond" its limits. Rholetter's clearly not alone in elevating Roberts by comparing her and her novels to an anonymous mass of other romance writers and their books: "According to Thomas Kellner of Forbes, Putnam's Phyllis Grann believed Roberts's books were 'much more complex and textured' than typical romance fare" (9). This got me thinking about how scholars who appreciate the genre can write about its outstanding proponents without wording that appreciation in ways which might be interpreted by others (particularly those who do not know and love the genre as we do) as a dismissal of much of the genre. I think Rholetter gets the balance right here: "Margo [...] is a familiar type to romance readers, the beautiful woman fully aware of her sexual power and accustomed to using it. What sets Roberts apart from lesser talents is the skill with which she uses the type yet creates a distinctly individual character" (13). Here Rholetter carefully distinguishes between the use of traditional plot types (which are neither denigrated nor praised, but simply mentioned as an integral part of the genre) and the skill of a particular author in bringing something new to their use.

1 Stout included the interview “Karen Robards: The Romance Writer & Her Crystal Ball” in her list of sources. The web address Stout gave no longer seems to be working, so it's possible the version I found may be different.

2 The photo of Nora Roberts came from Claire E. White's 1998 "A Conversation With Nora Roberts" at Writers Write. The image of the cover of The Last Honest Woman is a customer image provided on Amazon.com. This is the cover of the "September 1990 reprint of "The Last Honest Woman" by Nora Roberts, Silhouette Special Edition No. 451, April 1988." The original cover features the same picture, but without the inset portrait of the heroine/Roberts.

Marketing

Sarah S. G. Frantz

I've been thinking about marketing romances recently and how various authors go about doing it. Nora Roberts is still actively marketing her novels herself, especially her series books. Suzanne Brockmann does elaborate reader weekends. Most authors do book tours.

How do e-book authors market themselves when they don't have books to sign and sell to their readers if they show up at a bookstore? Here's one way: Angela James' 12 days of Holiday Hell. Should be an interesting twelve days.

And yes, I'm doing this because I want a Kindle and book gift certificates (a very few of the prizes)! Excuse me, I'm off to hunt through 17 author websites, heaven help me. I've got 12 days to do it, right? :) Join me and have some fun, discover new e-book authors, and many win some stuff!

What the Dickens! Lorraine Heath's In Bed with the Devil

Laura Vivanco

What if

• Oliver Twist's parents had been legally married and then, when Oliver was still a child, had been murdered in front of his very eyes
• Oliver had joined Fagin's gang immediately afterwards
• Mr Brownlow had, instead of being an old friend of Oliver's father, been an earl and Oliver's grandfather
• the evil Monks had been an uncle rather than a half-brother and had been murdered by the child Oliver
• Oliver had grown up, was now Lucian Langdon, Earl of Claybourne, but wasn't convinced he was truly the old man's grandson because he can't remember his supposed parents?

That's the premise of Lorraine Heath's In Bed with the Devil. It can be read for free online until 23 December 2008 as part of Avon's Love Gives Back promotion. As usual I'm not writing a review (although you can find reviews here, here, here, here, and here), but I've tried to avoid giving spoilers about aspects of the plot which don't relate to Dickens's novel. Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist is also available as a free online read. You can find a synopsis of its plot here, here and here.

I tend to find intertextuality of this sort amusing and interesting because it challenges the reader to find the similarities as well as the differences between the two texts and to identify the references to the original which appear in the newer novel. The fact that Heath is drawing on Oliver Twist wasn't immediately apparent, but it gradually became more so, until eventually inescapable proof of the connection was provided by the novel the heroine (Lady Catherine Mabry) has chosen to read to her dying father: "With a sigh, she sat back and lifted a book from the bedside table. 'Let's see what sort of trouble Oliver and the Artful Dodger are going to get into today, shall we?' " (47). The novel is mentioned again at various points in the novel, including when Catherine also "told her father the tale of the Earl of Claybourne. He'd seemed as entertained by the story as he was by Oliver Twist" (339). Finally, on her wedding day, Catherine learns that Lucian's full name is Lucian Oliver Langdon:

Oliver.
Holding his gaze as he gave her his vows, she wondered how much of his youth was contained in the words of the story that she'd recently read to her father. It seemed improbable, but not impossible. But it was a puzzle for another day. (365-66)

Within her novel Heath thus toys with the concept of reversing the direction of the source of inspiration. She proposes that the story of her own fictional character (based on Dickens's Oliver) may have been the inspiration for Oliver Twist. In fact, it is thought that Dickens may have based his Oliver on the real-life Robert Blincoe.

In addition to borrowing from Dickens to create her hero's backstory, Heath also pays homage to Dickens's work in the choice of names she gives her characters. Fagin is transformed into "Feagan, the kidsman who managed our rather notorious den of child thieves" (2) and Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, becomes Jack Dodger:

"Dodger." In their youth, he'd been Dodger more often than Jack. He'd been skilled at dodging the hands that wanted to grab him when the target realized his pockets were being picked. (91)

As mentioned at Wikipedia,

In the tradition of Restoration Comedy and Henry Fielding, Dickens fits his characters with appropriate names. Oliver himself, although "badged and ticketed" as a lowly orphan and named according to an alphabetical system is, in fact, "all of a twist."[...] Toby Crackit’s is a reference to his chosen profession–housebreaking.

Other children in the gang Lucian belonged to derived their names from their professions: Dr William Graves spent his "youth as a grave robber" (207), Inspector James Swindler is so-called because "When I was young and in search of a name, it seemed appropriate" (182) and Lucian himself was known as "Luke Locke. I was very skilled at picking locks. Most of us were orphans, didn't know our real names anyway. But even for those who did, Feagan always insisted on changing their names. When they came to him, they started life anew" (262). For her part Frannie is "Frannie Darling because that's how Feagan referred to me. 'Frannie, darling, rub my feet.' 'Frannie, darling, fetch me a cuppa gin.' And so when your grandfather asked me my name, I said Frannie Darling" (52-53).

Lucian, unlike Oliver, never spends any time in the workhouse but Heath does include a reworked version of the famous scene in which Oliver asks for more food. Here it's Lucian, Earl of Claybourne, who's offering food while another little boy asks for more:

"Did you know they have lemonade, pastries, and lollipops over there? Would you like to buy some for you and your mum?" Claybourne asked.
Whit nodded enthusiastically, his weariness suddenly cured.
"Hold out your hand," Claybourne ordered.
Whit did.
"Fold it up." Claybourne demonstrated, closing his hand into a fist. Then he snapped his fingers. "Open your hand."
The boy did, his eyes growing wide at the ha'penny resting on his palm. [...]
He turned back to Whit. "Close your hand around the coin and say 'Please, sir, may I have more?'"
Whit closed his hand around the coin. "Please, sir, may I have more?"
Claybourne snapped his fingers. Whit opened his hand, his eyes wider than before. The ha'penny was gone. A sixpence rested on his palm. (219-220)¹

Dodger's life-story is also altered. Catherine says of Dickens's Dodger that: "My heart did go out to the Artful Dodger, though. I was sorry he was transported. I hear it's a very harsh life, although I suspect there are those who deserve it" (340). Heath's heart seems to have gone out to the Artful Dodger too, and so instead of having him transported, she allows him to become a successful businessman who is the hero of Between the Devil and Desire, which is the sequel to In Bed with the Devil.

Some of the social themes of Dickens's work also reappear, in a somewhat modified form, in Heath's. Here are Catherine and Lucian discussing Dickens's work:

"I've been reading Oliver Twist to my father. It's the story -"
"I've read it."
"Did Dickens have the right of it?"
"He painted a very accurate portrait of life in the rookeries, yes." (162)

Heath continues the social critique present in Dickens's novel by having Lucian demonstrate concern about the treatment of young criminals. He's written to The Times: "what I argued in my letter was that children, even if over the age of seven, should not be held accountable for understanding the law and, therefore, shouldn't be punished as though they had the reasoning power of an adult" (163).

Lucian also explains that these children have not been "taught what is right and what is wrong" (163). He then admits that "I knew better. I don't know how I knew, but I did" (164). This is, of course, explicable if he really is the Earl of Claybourne and had been taught right from wrong by his parents before their deaths. Dickens's Oliver also has different moral values from his companions, but the reader was perhaps supposed to ascribe this to some innate genetic qualities:

Oliver [...], who has an air of refinement remarkable for a workhouse boy, proves to be of gentle birth. Although he has been abused and neglected all his life, he recoils, aghast, at the idea of victimizing anyone else.This apparently hereditary gentlemanliness makes Oliver Twist something of a changeling tale, not just an indictment of social injustice. (Wikipedia)

Another issue which is touched on in Dickens's novel is domestic violence. Sikes murders his girlfriend, Nancy. It is this issue rather than that of social justice which provides the driving force of Heath's novel. Interestingly,

The marks of domestic violence were not invisible in one crucial sphere of mid-nineteenth-century discourse. Stories, novels, and essays proliferate that relate incidents of violence against working-class women, prostitutes, and "fallen women," whether publicly in the streets, or domestically in their squalid homes [...]. Locating violence against women in the poor and working classes seems to have been an attempt by bourgeois society to quarantine the pestilence of violence to the "lower orders." (Lawson and Shakinovsky 8)

and

Descriptions such as "helpless women," and "woefully unwomanly, slatternly, coarse," indicate that the writers expect their bourgeois readers to recognize the victim "type" but not themselves to identify with her misfortune.
This discourse is quite naturally carried over to fictional representations of poor and working-class women's bodies [...]. For instance, Sikes's murder of Nancy in Dickens's Oliver Twist, grotesque and horrific as it is, is true to the "type" bourgeois readers are to expect from such degraded characters. (Lawson and Shakinovsky 9)

Heath, by contrast, locates domestic violence at the heart of a relationship between two people at the very top of the social hierarchy. The Duke of Avendale beats Winnie, his wife and Catherine's friend:

Tears rolled from Winnie's eyes. "Oh, Catherine, sometimes he terrifies me so. They say his first wife was clumsy and fell down the stairs. And his second slipped in the bedchamber and banged her head so hard on the floor that it killed her. I knew these tales, but I didn't doubt the veracity of them, not until after I was wed. He is so charming when he is not angry. Oh, but when he is displeased, he is most frightening." (42-43)

This suggests, correctly, that domestic violence is not solely an issue for the poor and the working classes, but is also one which can affect families from all parts of society. It also ensures that, although London has changed very considerably since Dickens's day, Heath's novel, though set in the same period, highlights an issue which is of relevance today.
--------

• Heath, Lorraine. In Bed with the Devil. New York: Avon, 2008.
• Lawson, Kate and Lynn Shakinovsky. The Marked Body: Domestic Violence in Mid-nineteenth-century Literature. SUNY Press, 2002. (Via Google Book Search)

1 The original scene is in Chapter 2 of Oliver Twist:

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

"Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The photo of the cover of Oliver Twist is from Wikimedia Commons. The word "dickens", which I capitalised in my title so that it also referred to the author, is "used to express annoyance or surprise when asking questions: what the dickens is going on?" and was originally "a euphemism for 'devil'" (Compact Oxford English Dictionary).