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.
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• 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).

Sin and Redemption

Yesterday Sarah commented that 'Persuasion is my favorite *Austen* [...] but I still think P+P makes a better ROMANCE'. Of course, I could just have asked her why she thought that, but I didn't. Instead I sat around pondering the comment, and as I was also reading Mary Jo Putney's Thunder and Roses, of which Putney has said ' I love all my stories, but must admit that for pure romance, it's hard to beat Thunder and Roses', some ideas began to appear.

As Eric noted not so long ago, there is a

deep, deep link between all the various genres of romance--the link that makes all romance "inspirational," I suppose, even if it isn't all exactly Christian. That's a topic I'll try to come back to as the year goes by.

I hope Eric does have time to come back to this. It was touched on briefly by Rev Melinda, a poster at the joint blog to which Putney contributes, who said that

romances in general often deal with issues that could be viewed as "spiritual" if not religious—love, death, meaning, trust, betrayal, redemption, self-sacrifice, reconciliation, cruelty, kindness, generosity of spirit—and did I mention LOVE [...]?

So as Putney added, there is therefore 'at least an implicit element of spirituality in most romances' and in some, as in Thunder and Roses, it's quite explicit: 'In my book, Clare’s spiritual dilemma is her secret belief that her faith is not what it should be'.

I'd also love to read Sarah's explanation of why she thinks Pride and Prejudice is a better romance than Persuasion but in the meantime, here are some of my thoughts on romance and religion.

It's impossible not to notice that a lot of romances have titles which refer to theological concepts and beings including: sin (An Invitation to Sin, One Little Sin, Lady of Sin, Lord Sin, etc) ; wickedness (When He Was Wicked, Your Wicked Ways, Wicked Widow, Ways to be Wicked, etc); temptation (Welcome to Temptation, Slightly Tempted, My Fair Temptress etc); devils (Devil's Cub, The Devil's Bargain, Devilish, etc); angels (Angel in a Red Dress, Angel in My Bed, Kiss an Angel, etc). Pride and Prejudice, of course, has one of the seven deadly sins in its title, and the hero of Thunder and Roses is known as 'Old Nick' and is part of a group known as the 'Fallen Angels'. In this context, Persuasion seems a very mild title, and while it does include a misunderstanding between the hero and heroine, a bit of caution and timidity on her side, and a bit of misunderstanding and pique on his, it can't compare with the very much stronger disagreement between Darcy and Elizabeth, and the sin of pride.

It would seem that as well as having at a hero who is strongly associated with sin/wickedness, it helps if a romance also has at least one evil villain or villainness. Pride and Prejudice has the wicked Wickham who lies, cheats and seduces; Persuasion has Mr Elliott, who admittedly has been instrumental in the downfall of Mr and Mrs Smith, and makes Captain Wentworth jealous, but he hardly reaches the level of depravity attained by the hero's first wife in Thunder and Roses.

The actions of villains often create the tormented/tortured hero so beloved of many romance readers. Robin Uncapher has observed that

If you read many historicals you will be hard pressed to find a hero without a terrible hurt in his past. They all seem to have at least one, but I don't think that they are all tortured. To this reader, "tortured" reflects the way the hero deals with the problem. A tortured hero tortures himself. He may be wracked with guilt. He may be bitter or angry. [...] A hero I see as not tortured, is one who is mentally healthy, often in spite of the awful things that have happened to him.

What they all have in common, according to Robin Uncapher, is 'a terrible hurt'. Darcy has Wickham's betrayal to deal with, Putney's 'Old Nick' has a past full of misery and betrayal, but Captain Wentworth's biggest emotional trauma is only a postponed engagement and, as he discovers, his (very minor) pride and misunderstanding are the causes of it:

a question has suggested itself, whether there may not have been one person more my enemy even than that lady [Lady Russell, who persuaded Anne not to marry Wentworth years before]? My own self. Tell me if, when I returned to England, in the year eight, with a few thousand pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? Would you, in short, have renewed the engagement then?"

"Would I?" was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.

"Good God!" he cried, "you would! It is not that I did not think of it, or desire it, as what could alone crown all my other success; but I was proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you. I shut my eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice. (Chapter 23)

and as a man who describes himself as having 'been used to the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards', he gives no indication of either great suffering or a tormented soul.

Another feature shared by both Pride and Prejudice and Thunder and Roses is that the hero is redeemed/'tamed' as a result of his association with the heroine and in many romances the importance of the heroine is saving the hero is demonstrated in a scene in which he has to 'grovel' or beg her forgiveness. Here is Darcy, for example:

I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing -- to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. (Chapter 58)

Anne Marble writes that 'many fans read romances with tortured (or even "alpha heel") heroes because they want to read the "grovel" -- the part where he apologizes to the heroine and redeems himself in her eyes' and she's written more about 'redemption romances' at All About Romance, where she quotes from one of the readers of the board who had defined the core of this sort of romance as being 'about someone who for whatever reason has behaved badly in systematic fashion - has been a bad person, and by the end of the book has been redeemed'. Marble notes that 'heroines don't get to be redeemed as often as heroes. In fact, heroines tended to be the saviors rather than the saved'.

The most famous humbling scene in the New Testament is probably St Paul's, which takes place on the road to Damascus, and the idea that it is precisely those who are the most sinful who should be the focus of attention and redemptive efforts is at the core of the New Testament's message:

[the] scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?
And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Luke 5: 30-32)

In Catholic theology, the Virgin Mary is sometimes described as a 'co-redemptrix'. The term is often misunderstood, and it does not imply that she took over Christ's work or was equal to him, but rather that 'she suffered WITH the Redeemer in his act of saving us' (Vidal, 2001). The romance heroine also often suffers greatly and she may bear some resemblance to the Victorian 'angel in the house'. For the Victorians 'the ideal of femininity was encapsulated in the idea of a "woman's mission", which was that of playing a model mother, wife and daughter. Women were also seen as moral and spiritual guardians' (Nead 2004). Perhaps these female role models contribute to the scarcity of romance heroines in need of redemption?

The hero's redemption is complete when he acknowledges his love for the heroine. As John states, 'love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God' (1 John 5: 7). Of course, John was probably not thinking of love as depicted in romance novels, but as Pope Benedict XVI recently wrote in his first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est,

eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized

With regard to the romance genre, some readers would appear to prefer stories in which the hero is sinful and inflicts suffering on the heroine because the greater his sin, the more powerful her redemptive work is shown to be. However, as the plentiful examples in this At the Back Fence column demonstrate, even among these readers there are limits on how much they will accept with regards to both the hero's behaviour (and, consequently, whether or not they believe he really has been redeemed) and the heroine's virtue (which, in extreme cases might be described as naivety) .

Not all romances are like this, but I wonder if this type is seen as a 'better ROMANCE' because it has come to be seen as the essence of what a romance story should be, both by romance readers and the general public. Is this the sort of storyline that those who mock the genre expect to find within the covers of a romance novel? And is their mockery due to a lack of belief in the hero's redemption? Or is it that these stories simply seem so extreme and incredible to them that they cannot believe in the heroine's exemplary virtue and love for the hero? I do have some sympathy for this point of view since, as noted above, many romance readers themselves would consider some heroes in this type of romance to be bullies, while their heroines may sometimes be designated TSTL (Too Stupid to Live).

But could it be that what really motivates some of these critics' scorn for the genre is their lack of belief in True Love? Scrooge declares that Christmas is 'Humbug' because 'What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough. [...] I live in such a world of fools [...]. What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money [...]?', and I think many people look at romance readers and think us fools for not paying enough attention to the divorce statistics.* Maybe, then, some of the criticism of romance is due to its 'inspirational' nature which irks these non-believers.

Literature often requires some suspension of disbelief, but is enjoyment of the romance genre dependant on a sort of faith?

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* Stephanie Coontz suggests, however, that 'Throughout Europe and North America, divorce rates rose hand in glove with sales of romance novels'. I'm not sure what evidence she has for this, but her argument is that divorce rates rose precisely because of an increase in the belief in love as the basis for marriage because 'once marriage was based on love, people began to wonder if it wasn't better to be single than to marry or stay with someone you didn't love'.

Hidden Treasure and Convenient Arrangements

Last night I read a couple of books and the contrast between them got me thinking about the relationship between the plot of a romance, and the type of love-story it is. In other words, it seems to me that often the plot becomes a metaphor for the protagonists' experience of love. For example, some romances are road-stories, with the two characters travelling somewhere. As they travel, they discover not only new places and new landscapes, but also new things about each other, and usually once they reach their destination (or soon after) they realise that they've reached a romantic destination too, and their love is mutual.

The first romance I read last night was June Drummond's The Meddlers, about a rake who's facing ruin, having been left with huge debts by his now-deceased father. It's proposed (by one of the meddlers of the title) that he marry his rich neighbour, Kate, a young woman whom he's known all his life, but he refuses since he doesn't want to be thought of as a fortune-hunter, and besides, he's known her since she was a little girl. She proposes instead that they should hunt for another fortune, an ancient treasure buried on his land, and she hopes that the reward the Crown will pay for its recovery will be sufficient to pay off the debt. As a result, there's a lot of travelling around, discovering historical clues, but what also becomes clear is that Dominic, the hero, has hidden layers just like the layers of Roman, Danish, medieval and subsequent history that lie beneath the fields of his estate. The treasure may be found by digging, but the depths of Dominic's character are only exposed by love:

Lady Letitia [Dominic's mother] gazed thoughtfully at his rigid back. Though he had always shown her love and tenderness, she was aware that he had the reputation of being cold-hearted and arrogant. The careless indifference he displayed to those outside his own intimate circle had caused her many a sleepless night.
Today she saw him in a different light, his hurt made plain, his self-blame and regret beyond doubt. She did not have to look far for the cause of this change. Her rakehellion son had a last fallen in love. (2004: 239)

Dominic himself comes to realise that the true treasure is Kate: 'I knew that you're more precious to me than any treasure' (2004: 294). He has to dig beneath the surface impression of Kate that his memories gave him, and look at her as she really is:

If he remembered Kate at all, it was as a thin little snip of a child with a tangle of beech-brown hair. [...] He imagined Miss Safford must have grown up meek-mannered, malleable, and dull.
Over the past few weeks [as they've been travelling together, trying to find clues to the location of the treasure] he had found this image to be very wide of the mark. Kate was possessed of a strong will, independent views, and a lively imagination. She was brave, honest, and loyal to her friends. [...] But that was not all. He was discovering in Kate a delightful companion, with a sense of humour that matched his own. (2004: 208: 209, my emphasis).

The plot, which involves the protagonists in detailed historical research, and travels to seek the advice of authorities in the field, is paralleled by their gradual 'research' into each other, with the developing relationship encouraged by the 'authorities' in this field, the 'meddlers', or adults who have known them all their lives and who think they are perfect for each other. This metaphor is of love as something which is gradually revealed, and which is based on evidence of compatibility and good character.

The second book I read had a very different plot. In Leigh Michaels' The Corporate Marriage Campaign, the hero, Trey, asks the heroine, Darcy, to pose as his fiancée as part of an advertising campaign for the department store he runs and part-owns. This reminded me of the many other 'fake fiancée' or 'fake wife' scenarios I've read, and also of many of the arranged marriage plots. What tends to happen is that, as here, the protagonists are wary of love. They maybe don't trust it because they've been hurt in the past, so they decide to have a business arrangement, but then, while they thought they were 'just playing the game. [...] Throwing yourself into the role, for the sake of the public image' (2005: 182), it becomes real. These plots, it seems to me, are acknowledging that many people are cynical about love. The characters are a bit like Scrooge, who doesn't believe in Christmas. The plot forces the characters to reverse their opinions so that they do believe in love. They have to have faith in something intangible, that other people are sure doesn't exist, rather like Scrooge, who comes to believe in the Christmas spirit(s), or the audience of a performance of Peter Pan, who have to shout out their belief in fairies when Tinkerbell is lying ill and dying:

she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.
Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees.
"Do you believe?" he cried.
Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to her fate.
She fancied she heard answers in the affirmative, and then again she wasn't sure.
"What do you think?" she asked Peter.
"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."
Many clapped. (Peter Pan)

It reminds me of something Crusie wrote, about why she writes romance:

even though I have seen the relationships of famous people crash and burn, even though I have seen the relationships of my friends crash and burn, even though I have seen my own relationships crash and burn (oh, Lord, let me count the ways), I truly do still believe in the existence of unconditional love, I still believe that it’s what holds humanity together, and I absolutely believe it’s the best of all possible things to write about. (1999: 226)

The story of a fake relationship which becomes real, against all the odds, is saying that, despite high divorce rates, despite all the cynicism, real love does still exist.

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Crusie, Jennifer, 1999. ‘Why I Occasionally Think About Not Writing Romance Any More/Why I Know I’ll Continue to Write Romance Until They Pry My Cold Dead Fingers from Around My Keyboard’ in North American Romance Writers, ed. Kay Mussell and Johanna Tuñón (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press), pp. 223-226.

Drummond, June, 2004. The Meddlers (Bath: Chivers/Thorndike).

Michaels, Leigh, 2005. The Corporate Marriage Campaign (Richmond, Surrey: Mills & Boon).