Betty Neels: Metafiction and Repetition

Laura Vivanco

In their centenary year Mills & Boon brought out a collection of volumes of novels written by the 'Queens of Romance'. One of those queens was Betty Neels, whom they describe as

a very special, warm and charming writer and individual; after retiring from nursing, she became one of Mills & Boon's best-loved authors with a phenomenal publishing record. No collection of romances celebrating our centenary would be complete without Betty [...]. Over her thirty-year publishing career Betty wrote more than one hundred and thirty-four novels [...]. She continued to write into her ninetieth year, still pleasing her readers with her charming characters and heart-warming stories. (3)

Neels' 'first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969' (Harlequin) and as Keira at The Uncrushable Jersey Dress has observed,

once she hit her stride most are circumscribed little post cards filled with lame donkeys, Dutch doctors, hospital sluice rooms, English village life, splenectomies, lashings of whipped cream, nursing caps, dauntless heroines, Gucci scarves, and uncrushable jersey dresses.

Uncertain Summer was first published in 1972, relatively early in Neels' writing career, but it already contains a fair number of these ingredients. The reason I wanted to post about it, though, was because in this novel Neels includes a metafictional passage in which the heroine, Serena,

remembered reading once some novel or other in which the dim-witted heroine had declared on the last page that the hero was like a calm harbour after the stormy seas through which she had been struggling. Serena had thought at the time that the metaphor had been a singularly clumsy one - no man would care to be likened to a harbour; now she wasn't so sure, for she herself felt exactly as the tiresome girl in the novel had felt and Gijs, although not in the least like a harbour, had all its qualities. (150-151)

Serena has indeed been a rather tiresome heroine, having fallen in love with Gijs' very unsuitable but charming and handsome younger cousin and then, rather predictably, been jilted by him. Even though she has finally had to acknowledge Gijs' superiority, she agrees to enter into a marriage of convenience with him without realising that he loves her. In this she, too, seems rather 'dim-witted' for his actions make his love rather obvious to the reader. Serena, however, who began by being unsure 'if she liked him' (20), believes that he truly wishes their marriage to be 'a friendly and businesslike arrangement' (113).

I'd like to suggest that in the passage I quoted above, Neels seems to be trying to diffuse any reader dissatisfaction with her heroine by addressing the fact that the heroine is being 'tiresome'. The metafictional moment takes the reader out of the story, and by emphasising the reader's superior knowledge, it perhaps encourages identification with others who also have superior knowledge of the situation, namely Neels herself, and characters such as Serena's mother and Gijs' friend Sarah, all of whom are aware that Serena and Gijs love (or will love) each other. Instead of experiencing the heroine's confusion and distress with her, it seems that the reader is positioned alongside the benevolent matchmakers.

Having firmly placed her own hero and heroine in a particular romantic tradition (that in which a somewhat 'dim-witted' heroine finds happiness with a hero whose personality reminds one of a 'harbour'), Neels includes further evidence that the development of Serena and Gijs' love affair follows a pattern set down by others. Serena tells her mother that

'I didn't like him very much when we met.'
Her mother paused on her way to the door. 'My dear child, I loathed your father for quite some time before I fell in love with him.'
Serena contemplated her parent with open-mouthed astonishment. 'Mother, darling ...'
'Yes, and don't you tell your brothers and sisters. I'm only telling you so that you realize that yours is by no means an isolated case.' (143)

It certainly isn't 'an isolated case' in Neels' oevure.

Serena and Gijs are also shown to be following a pattern set down by an earlier Neels hero and heroine. Hugo and Sarah van Elven are the hero and heroine of the earlier Fate is Remarkable (which Magdalen has summarised and retold from Hugo's perspective). They reappear, very happily married, in Uncertain Summer and before Serena begins what she thinks will be a marriage of convenience, Sarah tells Serena that

'When I married Hugo I was in love with someone else, or at least, I thought I was.' She smiled. 'It didn't take me long to discover that it was Hugo all the time - so silly.' (135)

The use of the word 'silly' seems to suggest that Sarah was yet another 'dim-witted heroine' until she recognised the truth. Since then, she has made the transition to matchmaker status. Towards the end of the novel Serena, like Sarah before her, flees from her husband in the mistaken belief that he loves another. Sarah, knowing the script that Serena is working from, hastens the happy dénouement. As Gijs reveals to Serena:

'When Hugo and Sarah married, she didn't love him - she had been - er - jilted and he caught her on the rebound. She ran away too, it took Hugo more than a week to find her. She is far too fond of you - and me - to let history repeat itself. So she telephoned me.' (211)

By explicitly acknowledging the similarities between Serena and Gijs' story and those of others (particularly a previous Neels hero and heroine), Neels was perhaps preempting criticism of the repetitiveness of her oeuvre. Certainly it serves to normalise a certain courtship pattern within the romantic world she created.

I deliberately refer to it as a 'romantic world' because although Neels' novels were contemporaries, they seem to portray a very particular, and perhaps not very realistic, version of modern life. Magdalen, for example, has stated that

Frankly, even in 1969 when Neels published her first book, her heroines were anachronistic and unrealistic. During the 30 years during in which she wrote 134+ books, her heroines changed little while women everywhere else (fictional and real life) changed a lot.

Neels herself was well aware of this: ' "The stories I write are quite out of date as regards morals and sex but that is something readers find to their liking," Neels said' (McAleer 289). In Small Slice of Summer (1975) Letitia Marsden, the heroine, has been disappointed in love because she too is 'quite out of date as regards morals and sex':

the Medical Registrar [...] had taken her out for a month or two, talking vaguely about a future, which she, in her besotted state, had already imagined into a fact which wasn't a fact at all, only daydreams, and then, when she had refused to go away with him for the weekend, had turned the daydream into a nightmare with a jibing speech about old-fashioned girls who should move with the times [...] how did one begin to explain that being the middle girl in a family of five daughters, strictly but kindly brought up by a mother with decidedly old-fashioned ideas and a father who was rector of a small parish in the depths of rural Devon was hardly conducive to being the life and soul of the swinging set. (8-9)

In Small Slice of Summer Georgina, the heroine of Neels' earlier Damsel in Green, reappears as a happily married secondary character and the repetitiveness of certain elements in Neels' storytelling is normalised partly because the friendships between Georgina and Letitia's sister Margo, and between Georgina's husband and Jason Mourik van Nie, give an explanation for a social circle in which it is likely for an English nurse to come into contact with a Dutch doctor. In addition, Georgina actively seeks to promote the relationship between Letitia and Jason (and is thus another instance of the former-Neels-heroine-turned-matchmaker).

While I can only speculate about why Neels so often wrote romances about a large, inscrutable, rich Dutch doctor who stoically hides his love from the English nurse he adores, she herself was a nurse who married a Dutchman (albeit not a doctor). According to her biography at the Mills & Boon website,

She was always quite firm upon the point that the Dutch doctors who frequently appeared in her stories were not based upon her husband, but rather upon an amalgam of several of the doctors she met while nursing in Holland.

Nonetheless, her heroes do often seem to be of a very similar type, and the fortune-teller who predicts Letitia's future summarises the plot of many a Betty Neels romance: 'A tall, fair man, dearie [...] Trouble and strife, but the life of a princess is waiting for you, for I see wealth and jewels and great happiness' (136). The fortune-teller states that this is 'Just as it should be for a kind young lady' (136) and perhaps Neels herself could think of no better type of husband for a nice girl.

Neels' own preferences certainly did filter through into her fiction. Many of her heroes and heroines, including Serena and Letitia, come from large families. Gijs, in conversation with Serena, says

'[...] I'm sorry for only children, aren't you?
[...] 'Yes, I think I am.'
'Ah, at last I have found something about myself in which you can show some interest - I am an only child.'
She said woodenly, not caring in the least: 'I'm sorry. Did you find it very lonely?'
'When I was a little boy, yes. One learns as one gets older, however.' (92)

Initially Uncertain Summer was going to conclude with a passage in which Gijs would state his preference for 'a "large" family of at least four boys and four girls. The Mills & Boon editor altered the reference to four children to two' (McAleer 265). Neels resisted the change:

In her masterly reply, Neels [...] believed that, provided there was enough money to bring up and educate children, 'a large family is a marvellous thing (You've noted that my heroes are always well-heeled!).' Neels admitted she deplored birth control when used 'for purely selfish reasons ... I find it just as unforgivable for a couple to decide on a second car instead of a baby ... I also feel that if birth control is pushed too far, the coming generations are going to lose their sense of responsibility and family life, as such, will disappear.'
But the passage, as published, was none the less toned down by Neels. (266)

It reads as follows:

Laurens told me once that you were very good at letting girls cry on your shoulder.'
'Not girls, dearest - just you, and later on, our daughters.'
Serena said gently: 'No, little boys, all like you.'
'There is such a thing as compromise, my love,' said Gijs on a laugh. 'How about an equal number of each?' (215)

I'm really curious about the use of the phrase 'There is such a thing as compromise'. Was it there before Neels revised the passage? Or was it the result of Neels' own compromise on the issue of large families?

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• McAleer, Joseph, 1999. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• Neels, Betty, 2008. Uncertain Summer, in Summer Engagements (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).
• Neels, Betty, 2008. Small Slice of Summer, in Summer Engagements (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).
  

Betty Neels: "Discovering Daisy"

This is the first Betty Neels I’ve ever read, and I think I was fortunate to find this particular novel, since various reviews agree that it’s one of her best (see the review here by Mary Lynn and here (the 2003 review by ‘a reader')). It also seems to include some of Neels’ most common themes, which suggests that a fair amount of what I have to say here might also apply to other novels by Neels. According to the short biography available at the Harlequin site:

It is perhaps a reflection of her upbringing in an earlier time that the men and women who peopled her stories have a kindliness and good manners, coupled to honesty and integrity, that is not always present in our modern world.

The Wikipedia entry notes that in her stories ‘A character will often have an expertise in antiques’.

In Discovering Daisy the characters who appreciate antiques are also courteous and caring, which may reflect the author’s belief that such character traits were seen as old-fashioned, but, like the antiques, are nonetheless extremely valuable. The characters with little respect for antiques are also rude and prone to lying.

Daisy Gillard, the heroine, works in her father’s antique shop:

her nut-brown hair tumbled around her shoulders. She was an ordinary girl, of middle height, charmingly and unfashionably plump, her unassuming features redeemed from plainness by a pair of large hazel eyes, thickly fringed. (1999: 6)

Her clothes (I’ve mentioned the importance of clothing as an indicator of personality in a previous blog entry) are, when we first encounter her, ‘a quilted jacked and tweed skirt, very suitable for the time of year but lacking any pretentions to fashion’ (1999: 6) and she wears her hair tied back under a headscarf. Daisy is clearly a ‘sensible, matter-of fact girl’ (1999: 16) who adapts herself to her humble circumstances without drawing particular attention to herself or wishing to do so.

This alone is enough to give one a clue to the theme and imagery of the book, but I was far too caught up in the story to notice until the day after I’d put the book down and was wondering which books to write about for the blog. Daisy, of course, as the title of the novel makes clear, is going to be ‘discovered’, because she’s like one of the antiques that are sold in her father’s shop.

As the story begins Daisy is in love with Desmond, who has ‘superficial charm, bold good looks and flattering manners’ (1999: 8), but only temporarily, since not long into their relationship he accuses her of being ‘a spoilsport, prudish’ (1999: 7) when she refuses to go with him and his friends to a nightclub in Totnes. Totnes, it has to be said, is not a place I’d ever consider a hotbed of vice and depravity, so one has to assume that either Desmond’s friends are particularly offensive, or Daisy is very old-fashioned, or both. The final break with Desmond occurs after he proposes a trip to ‘a nightclub in Plymouth’ (1999: 14). Plymouth has a considerably more varied nightlife than Totness, as the local visitor information website reveals:

When the sun goes down, it's time for bright lights. International cuisine or traditional cooking, fine wine or real ale - it's up to you. Then, choose from a West End preview at the Theatre Royal, a concert or comedian at Plymouth Pavilions, or the latest blockbuster at one of our mulit-screened cinemas. Try your luck at the casinos, or simply enjoy the myriad of bars and clubs until the early hours.

It is not the sort of place to appeal to Daisy, and Desmond quickly replaces her with Tessa, ‘A pretty girl, slim and dressed in the height of fashion, teetering on four-inch heels, swinging a sequinned bag, tossing fashionably tousled hair’ (1999: 14). When Daisy first meets the hero, Jules der Huizma, he has a fiancée, Helene, and she too is thin and fashionable:

she was considered a handsome woman by her friends; very fair, with large blue eyes, regular features and a fashionably slender figure, kept so, as only her dearest friends knew, by constant visits to her gym instructor and the beauty parlor. She was always exquisitely dressed (1999: 52)

The contrast with the practical, old-fashioned clothing worn by the slightly plump Daisy could hardly be greater. For Neels and Jules the obvious prettyness of someone ‘in the height of fashion’ is no real match for the solid worth of a practical, old-fashioned girl. In fact, the slenderness and the fashionable clothes worn by Tessa and Helene are perhaps intended to be understood by the reader as an indication of their vanity.

Neels and Jules, then, are like the connoisseur of antiques, able to assess the value of the precious antique beneath its initially unprepossessing surface. Whereas the fashionable Desmond and his new girlfriend, ‘left [the antique shop] without buying anything’ (1999: 22), and the even more fashionable Helene says she dislikes all of Jules’ antique furniture (1999: 63), Jules is ‘interested in old silver’, like Daisy’s father (1999: 19) and purchases several items from the antiques shop. Daisy herself perhaps resembles a ‘Dutch painted and gilt leather screen, eighteenth-century and in an excellent condition – although the chinoiserie figures were almost obscured by years of ingrained dirt and dust’ (1999: 29). Daisy’s external appearance is not immediately attractive, but what lies beneath it is. The uncertainty facing the screen also reflects Daisy’s: ‘there was always the chance that it would stay in the shop, unsold and representing a loss to him. But on the other hand he might sell it advantageously’ (1999: 30). While Daisy’s father in no way wishes to sell her, her alternatives are to marry (and this is thought unlikely) or remain in the shop. The screen is purchased by two Dutchmen and taken to Amsterdam. Daisy too, once she marries Jules, will go to live in that city.

To return once more to clothing, the description of Desmond’s clothing seems intended to reinforce our impression of his lack of old-fashioned morals: ‘He dressed well, but his hair was too long’ (1999: 8) . Disapproval and suspicion of men with long hair unites indviduals from very different ends of the political and religious spectrum and presumably Neels is among their number. The conflict between Daisy and Desmond's value-systems reaches a head when Desmond obliges Daisy to change her image to suit his wishes. Instead of her sensible tweeds, he wants her to wear ‘a pretty dress – something striking so that people will turn round and look at us. Red – you can’t ignore red...’ (1999: 9). Indeed you can’t ignore red and, as Alison Lurie has observed:

bright scarlet and crimson garments have traditionally been associated both with aggression and with desire. The red coats of soldiers and fox-hunters, the red dresses worn by “scarlet women” in history and literature, are obvious examples. (1992: 195)

Daisy buys the dress, but when she takes it home and tries it on she ‘wished she hadn’t bought it; it was far too short, and hardly decent – not her kind of a dress at all’ (1999: 10). The moral implications of this item of clothing are stated quite explicitly here, and Daisy’s values must have been learned from her mother, who takes an identical view of the dress: ‘that lady thought the same. But Mrs Gillard loved her daughter [...]. She observed that the dress was just right for an evening out and prayed silently that Desmond, whom she didn’t like, would be sent by his firm [...] to the other end of the country’ (1999: 10, my emphasis). And whereas Desmond ‘made a great business of studying the dress. “Quite OK,” he told her’ (1999: 11) Jules, the hero, has a negative reaction to it which mirrors that of Daisy’s mother. He thinks that ‘that dress was all wrong’ (1999: 13) and his assessment of Daisy as ‘prim’ (1999: 13) makes her not an object of his scorn but of his consideration, and leads him to ask if she is similar to him: ‘ “Are you like me? a stranger here?”’ (1999: 13). Although Jules may mean this literally (he is a Dutchman in England), it is true that emotionally they are both strangers in the bustling ball-room. At one point Jules declares that ‘I am coming to the conclusion that I am not a socially minded man’ (1999: 51), in the sense that while he enjoys his work as a doctor, he prefers to spend his leisure time quietly rather than with large numbers of other people. Daisy and Jules’ courtship will take place in the open air and at quiet but picturesque locations of historic interest, far from the crowded places favoured by Desmond and by Helene.

Daisy shows love, respect and affection for her parents and other older people, including the hero’s mother and an elderly antique dealer in Amsterdam, and she is willing to learn from the older generation. Jules der Huizma similarly shows respect and care for his mother and Daisy’s parents. The Sister at the hospital at which Jules works thinks of him as ‘such a nice man, and always so courteous and thoughtful’ (1999: 49). In this Daisy and Jules are contrasted with Desmond, Tessa and Helene, who respect neither older people nor old-fashioned politeness. Instead they seek constant novelty, pleasure and excitement, Desmond with his friends in Totnes and Plymouth and Helene with her jet-setting friends and constant round of parties: ‘Helene is in no hurry to marry; she leads a busy social life – she will be going to Switzerland to ski, and then some friends of hers have invited her to go to California’ (1999: 75). Desmond is rude: on the evening of the dinner-dance he kept Daisy ‘waiting for ten minutes, for which he offered no apology’ and he criticises her hairstyle (1999: 11). Desmond’s fashionably-dressed friend new girlfriend Tessa is also rude, telling Daisy that she’s ‘too mousy to wear red’ (1999: 14). Helene too is lacking in courtesy: she ‘hadn’t wasted much charm on her future mother-in-law [...] and barely suppressed her boredom when she visited with Jules’ (1999: 92).

The fashionable, fast-living characters are also likely to lie. Unlike the truthful Daisy, ‘who if she made a promise kept it’ (1999: 10) and who only tells a small ‘fib’ (1999: 103) because she doesn’t want to outstay her welcome at Jules’ mother’s house, Desmond tells lies: ‘he had called her darling, and kissed her and told her that she was his dream girl, but he hadn’t meant a word of it’ (1999: 17). Helene also lies and is dishonest in other ways (but to go into that would be a huge spoiler, so I’ll not give any details).

Neels thus uses descriptions of clothing and attitudes towards antiques to indicate which characters have high moral standards and which do not. Those who value antiques, are the ones associated with old-fashioned virtues such as honesty and courtesy, whereas those who do not like antiques are portrayed as dishonest, rude and vain.

It is perhaps worth noting that although Neels’ ‘work is known for being particularly chaste’ (Wikipedia), there are some kisses and the way both hero and heroine approach food may be a subtle indication that they are not lacking in physical passion, much as Eric observed is the case in Mary Stewart’s Madam, Will You Talk?. When Daisy eats at the restaurant during her night out with Desmond she hardly pays any attention to her food, she ‘chose a morsel of whatever it was on her plate and popped it in her mouth’ (1999: 12). She also eats little in the house of two elderly Dutch gentlemen to whom she brings an antique and whose other furniture is ‘antique, but not of a period which Daisy cared for’ (1999: 35). Clearly they pose no threat to Daisy’s virtue: ‘the meal didn’t live up to its opulent surroundings’ (1999: 36) and a later, more substantial dinner, is ‘Good solid fare’ (1999: 37). Daisy’s enjoyment of another meal, in a hotel, indicates her friendliness and reflects how at ease she feels with the company:

She went downstairs presently, to the small dining room in the basement, and found a dozen other people there, all of them Dutch. They greeted her kindly and, being a friendly girl by nature, she enjoyed her meal. Soup, pork chops with ample potatoes and vegetables, and a custard for pudding. Simple, compared with the fare at Mijnheer van der Breek’s house, but much more sustaining... (1999: 38-39)

It is, of course, with Jules that she derives the most pleasure from food, and he masterfully chooses her meal for her:

He didn’t ask her what she would like to eat. ‘This is a typical Dutch meal,’ he told her. ‘I hope you’re hungry.’
She was, which was a good thing, for presently a waitress brought two large plates covered by vast pancakes dotted with tiny bits of crisp bacon. She also brought a big pot of dark syrup.
Mr der Huizma ladled the syrup onto the pancakes. [...]
Daisy ate all of it with an enjoyment which brought a gleam of pleasure into Mr der Huizma’s eyes. (1999: 99-100)

While not overtly sexual, the use of the words ‘enjoyment’ and ‘pleasure’, and the way in which the hero introduces the heroine to this Dutch speciality, and then takes delight in watching her response to it, is distinctly sensual.

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• Lurie, Alison, 1992. The Language of Clothes (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd.).
• Neels, Betty, 1999. Discovering Daisy (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon). This is a book published in the Enchanted line.