Marion Lennox - A Bride for Christmas

This is a novella, the third in the anthology Christmas Proposals. I've not been able to find a review of it anywhere, but the synopsis, from the back cover, is as follows: 'When wealthy Guy Carver arrives in Australia, to take over Jenny Westmere’s wedding salon, he finds he wants nothing more than to make Jenny and her little boy his family – by Christmas!' Before I go any further, I'd better issue my usual spoiler warning. This isn't a review, and because I want to look at some of the themes in the novella, I sometimes have to reveal spoilers.

This interview with Marion Lennox, from The Age gives a hint of what her books are like: they're romances which combine intense emotion and down-to-earth practicality. She's won the Rita twice - in 2004, for Her Royal Baby in the Best Traditional Romance category and again, in the same category, in 2006, for Princess of Convenience. As one might expect from her down-to-earth side, Lennox has a habit of giving the princess story a bit of a twist. Jenny, the heroine of this novella compares herself to Cinderella and the hero to Prince Charming and then observes:

'I have a feeling that marriage for Cinders had its downside.'
'I've never heard of any fairytale where they divorce,' he said, startled, but she refused to smile.
'No,' she said thoughtfully. 'But being all alone in his castle, with everyone knowing she'd come from rags to riches ... she'd have to be grateful for ever.' (2006: 346)

In her two Rita-winning romances featuring commoners who marry a prince the balance of power isn't always in the Prince's favour and the Princess-to-be is extremely talented and skilled at her job.

Marion Lennox's novels not infrequently feature widowed heroines, as does 'A Bride for Christmas', and characters who've suffered other bereavements (this is the case in Princess of Convenience, as discussed here), but as they're romances, there are happy endings. As touched on in 'A Bride for Christmas', though, Christmas can be a bitter-sweet (or even just a bitter) time for those whose bereavement is recent and even not so recent (Guy, for example, says that 'The first Christmas was the worst, but it's still bad' (2006: 293) after fifteen years), but in time the celebration can bring comfort to some:

The Christmas after Ben had been killed, when Henry's life had hung by a precarious thread, Lorna had decreed Christmas was off. 'It doesn't mean anything,' she'd declared. 'I'm tossing all my decorations.'
Twelve months later she'd rather shamefacedly hauled out her non-tossed decorations. Jack and Jenny had been desultorily watching television, with Henry on the sofa nearby. They'd been miserable, but they'd fallen on the decorations like long-lost friends. That night had been the first night when ghosts and fear and sadness hadn't hung over the house, and this year Henry had demanded his grandparents start sorting the decorations on the first day of November (2006: 277)

Both Guy and Henry (Jenny's six-year-old son) have been involved in car accidents which have left them emotionally and physically scarred: Guy 'worked hard. He kept to himself. He made money and he carefully didn't know people. His life decisions would never hurt anyone again' (2006: 259) and 'Normally when visitors came Henry was seen but not heard. Henry had been a happy, cheerful four-year-old [...] Now Henry's world was limited to hospital visits, physiotherapy clinics and his grandparents' farm' (2006: 279). Henry's physical scars are the more visible, and Guy comforts him by showing him his own, 'He'd learned not to hate his scars, but until now he'd never been grateful' (2006: 326), and telling Henry that

Most people start out as babies with no marks on them, but as interesting things happen they get marked. We all get marked from life. Somewhere I read that the native people in Australia deliberately make scars on their chests to show they're grown up. I think the more marks you have on you, the more interesting you become. ' He smiled at the little boy [...] 'So you and me, Henry ... we're really interesting [...]'. (2006: 327)

The theme of scars, life experience and how it making someone more interesting also turns up, though in a rather different way, in Jennifer Crusie's Christmas novella, 'Hot Toy', but I'll blog about that another day.

There's a second theme, also related to outward appearances, which is about style and different tastes in decoration, particularly kitsch (2006: 308). Kitsch is:

a German term that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior copy of an existing style. The term is also used more loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious or in bad taste [...] most closely associated with art that is sentimental; however, it can be used to refer to any type of art that is deficient for similar reasons—whether it tries to appear sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative, kitsch is said to be a gesture imitative of the superficial appearances of art. It is often said that kitsch relies on merely repeating convention and formula, lacking the sense of creativity and originality displayed in genuine art. (Wikipedia)

I may be wrong, but I see parallels here between different styles of wedding (the kitsch 'pink tulle' wedding versus the elegant, minimalist celebration) and different types of fiction (romance versus some types of modern literary fiction). Jenny's extremely pink wedding salon was founded by Lorna, who reads 'romance novels' (2006: 358). Romance, like Jenny's salon, is often described as 'fluff' and, like kitsch, is often described as formulaic and overly sentimental. As Guy observes, however, kitsch can be 'fun when you're not forced into it' (2006: 309). Of course, there are only a few romances which are kitsch, but even those can have a certain charm, even if some romance readers think of them as 'guilty pleasures'.

Guy's 'Carver Salons are sleek and minimalist' (2006: 254), whereas Jenny's shop is called 'Bridal Fluff', and it certainly doesn't fit in with the image of the other Carver bridal salons:

what he saw made him blanch. Bridal Fluff was indeed ... fluff. The shopfront was pastel pink. The curtains in the windows looked like billowing white clouds, held back with pink and silver tassels. A Christmas tree stood in the window, festooned with pink and silver baubles, and a white fluffy angel smiling seraphically down on passers-by. The name of the shop was picked out in deeper pink, gold and silver. (2006: 238-9)

Kylie, the first bride Guy meets, is having her fitting in the shop and is being dressed to meet her mother's idea of 'what a bride should look like - which was a vision in every decorative piece of lacework she could think of. The veil even had tiny cupid motifs hand-sewn onto the netting. Seeing the veil turned into a train, Jenny estimated Guy was looking at approximately eight hundred cupids' (2006: 247-8). The second bride-to-be is a celebrity, Anna Price, who 'had been pilloried in the press for her bad taste. Of course she'd want pink tulle' (2006: 264). I suspect that Anna's tastes in wedding dresses matches those of Jordan, with whom she shares a surname. Jordan/Katie Price was married in 2005 in a dress which 'was pink with a tightfitting bodice made out of Swarovski crystals and a large wide Cinderella style skirt, adorned in 1000's of crystals. She had a large tiara with rose and clear coloured crystals in the shape of interlocking hearts' (from this website, where pictures are available if you scroll down a little).*

In some ways, romance novels are like 'Bridal Fluff': they're stereotyped as being pink and fluffy, but they appeal to a range of customers and, in fact, not all are 'fluffy', just as not all the wedding's Jenny's run are 'fluffy' 'pink tulle' weddings: when Guy flicks through the catalogue of past weddings she's organised he sees 'Fluff, fluff ... But every now and then something different' (2006: 259). In fact the 'pink tulle' style is more to Lorna's taste. She was the one who founded Bridal Fluff, and her taste in Christmas decorations is equally over-the-top but 'there was a reason why the [Christmas] decorations were just ever so slightly over the top' (2006: 277) at Lorna, Jack, Jenny and Henry's home. For them the over the top decorations are a way of showing they're going to make the very most of life. Similarly, even the fluffiest, pinkest wedding has a special meaning for the bride who chooses it. Of course, it isn't a style that suits everyone, as Lennox acknowledges. Despite appearances to the contrary, Kylie longs to have a special day which reflects her own tastes, not her mother's:

'that dress ... Mum had you make it for me when I was sixteen. She chose it. Not me. Every week since then Mum gets it out and pats it. Do you know how much I hate it? [...] when Mum rang and said I could have a Carver Wedding I thought suddenly, A Carver Wedding! I could maybe have it like I want. Elegant. Sleek. Sophisticated. Something so when our kids grow up they'll look at our wedding photos and think, Wow, just for a bit our parents weren't assistants in a butcher's shop. If you knew how much I hate pink tulle...' (2006: 306)

Deep down, Guy isn't really a minimalist and he comes up with an inventive solution which gives every bride the wedding that suits her, whether that be pink tulle or something a little different. In this way Guy rediscovers what had first made him take up wedding planning. The first wedding he organised was run on a tiny budget, and 'The bride had been ecstatic' (2006: 256), but Guy faced a lot of prejudice, including from his now-deceased fiancée who had declared:

'If you loved me you'd keep doing law. Your father's expecting you to take over the family firm. Your mother's scared you're gay. Guy, you play with paints. Paints! And me ... How do you think I feel being engaged to a wedding planner?'
She'd said the words with such scorn. (2006: 258)

I may be wrong, but I wonder if there are parallels here with the way in which male romance novelists face even more prejudice than female ones. The big problem with Guy's retreat from emotional weddings is that some of his staff don't just scorn 'pink tulle' weddings, they also scorn women whom they assume would want that sort of wedding, perhaps in the same way that some people mistakenly assume that romance readers have lower educational levels than those who read other genres. When Jenny visited the Carver salon in Paris:

I could have been there to talk about my wedding. I could have been there to make enquiries about anything at all. But I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and carrying a small backpack Lorna had given me. [...] The backpack was pink. Anyway, they obviously sorted me as a type they didn't want. They asked me to leave, and suddenly there was a security guard propelling me onto the pavement (2006: 255)

Jane Austen's novels are romances which get past the literary security guards, but other romances, particularly those with pink, sparkles, clinches, or the Mills & Boon rose logo on the cover probably won't. At their core, romances, like Bridal Fluff's business model, are about emotion. Some romances may not be as stylish as others but deep down, there's a sincerity, joy and hopefulness in romance which is likely to be lacking in sleek, minimalist works.

• Lennox, Marion, 2006. 'A Bride for Christmas', in Christmas Proposals (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon), pp. 235-377.

* Incidentally, apparently Jordan's 'princess-style fantasy wedding has helped send sales of Barbie dolls soaring' (Louise Barnett, The Daily Record, 26 September 2005).

Coincidentally, the last book I analysed was by a 'Squawker' and included a pet chicken. Marion Lennox keeps chooks, and some appear in this novel. They're described as 'Feathery things that lay eggs' (2006: 294) and if you look at some of the photos of chooks on Ally Blake's blog (e.g. here and here), you'll see that that's really a very accurate description. Ally Blake, like Marion Lennox, is a romance writer who keeps chooks. Seems that where romance writers are concerned, feather boas are out, and feathered friends are in ;-)

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

This subject seemed appropriate given today’s date, and maybe it was inevitable that I’d eventually work my way round to a discussion of death, given my academic background, but I’d been reading romances and not thinking about it at all when suddenly I realised that I’d read quite a few romances recently where characters are recently bereaved and/or still dealing with the effects of bereavement, and where the consequences of bereavement are dealt with in much more depth than the ‘our heroine is an orphan because that narrows down the cast-list and makes her vulnerable’, the ‘our heroine is a virgin widow’ or the ‘our hero’s wife died but only after she’d made him cynical about all women’ plotlines. I’m not saying that these plots are bad, simply that they don’t dwell in any depth on what it’s like to deal with a bereavement. There are, however, plenty of romances in which the effect of the death of a loved one is dealt with in considerable detail.

When the deceased was the hero or heroine’s spouse, he or she sometimes appears as a ghost or vision, as in Linda Lael Miller’s Wild About Harry. Here the heroine’s dead husband suddenly makes his presence felt:

“If I’m not one can short of a six-pack, how come I’m seeing somebody who’s been dead for two years?”
Tyler winced. “Don’t use that word,” he said. “People don’t really die, they just change.” (2000: 12)

He urges her to remarry:

“Harry’s the man for you.”
“You were the man for me,” Amy argued, and this time a tear escaped and slipped down her cheek.
[...] “That was then, Spud,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion. “Harry’s now.” (2000: 13)

The approbation of the much-loved, but now deceased spouse doesn’t always occur in such a dramatic fashion. At the end of Karen Templeton’s Swept Away, just after Carly, the heroine has agreed to marry the widowed Sam, he winks at his daughter, Libby, and when Libby ‘looked over at her mother’s photo on her desk, she could have sworn she saw Mama wink, too.’ (2006: 249).

Not all romances dealing with this issue include a sign from beyond the grave which signifies the deceased’s approval for the match. In Elizabeth Bailey’s Seventh Heaven the heroine had an arranged first marriage, which though not unaffectionate, was never loving. There is, nonetheless, a short discussion of how the heroine’s first husband would have felt about her remarriage. She jokingly suggests that she must marry Septimus, the hero, because he, a poet, requires a patron:

“A poet needs a patron, does he not? And it is high time you ceased to waste your very considerable talent on – on gruesome tales or whatever it is.” [...]
“And do you suppose Mr Shittlehope [Louisa’s first husband] would have approved of your sponsoring the arts?”
“Well, he liked me to play the pianoforte,” Louisa offered.
“Then that is settled. You may marry me with a clear conscience!” (296-297).

Clearly this particular example of a discussion about the deceased and his/her wishes is lighthearted, but it nonetheless shows the characters’ need to consider the possible feelings of the deceased. Even in cases such as Louisa’s, the assumed approval of the deceased gives a certain extra legitimacy to the new relationship and demonstrates that the dead are not forgotten.

Given that romances not infrequently suggest that there is one Mr or Ms Right, with heroines often waiting, in a virginal state, for the one man who can ‘awaken’ them, the situation of a hero or heroine who has had one true love, and is now embarking on a second marriage, with a second true love, raises questions about fidelity. Perhaps some readers would feel that a remarriage is a form of disloyalty, infidelity, or an indication that the first marriage was not one of ‘true love’. The widowed father of the heroine in Templeton’s Swept Away says of bereavement after the death of a spouse that ‘I’ve never really bought into the idea that staying lonely somehow honored the person who’d gone on’ (2006: 113), but the idea itself is implied to be one which is prevalent in society and it’s one which seems to trouble a fair number of romance widows and widowers. The supernatural approbation of the deceased is, therefore, clear evidence of the rightness of the new marriage, removing all possibility of guilt or shame on the part of the new couple.

In Claire Thornton’s Raven’s Honour, the characters receive no supernatural sign, and for a time Major Cole Raven, the hero, is wracked by guilt because he’d loved Honor, the heroine, for years, despite the fact that she was married to one of the soldiers under his command. Although he never let her know his feelings, and despite the fact that he did all he could to keep Patrick O’Donnell alive, he nonetheless feels guilty about Patrick’s death. Honor, not knowing how Cole feels about her, mentions the story of Bathsheba and King David, and Cole's responds angrily:

‘You think I’m the kind of man who could order another man to his certain death – just so I could take his woman?’ Raven demanded, his voice low and throbbing with outrage. [...] The Old Testament story of the King’s sinful action had never been far from Cole’s mind over the past few weeks. So Honor’s accusation had cut like a whiplash across his already tormented conscience, laying bare his guilt. (2002: 63-65)

In this biblical story King David’s guilt derives from the fact that he was responsible for the death of Bathsheba’s husband, but guilt can also arise from the feeling that one is benefiting from another’s death, or from the bereaved spouse’s sense that they should remain faithful to the deceased’s memory. The presence in romances of the deceased, who appear as spiritual or supernatural presences, perhaps remind us of the words of Jesus when asked about the status in the afterlife of a woman who during her lifetime had had seven husbands:

Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.
Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. (Matthew 22: 28-30)

The dead cannot marry or be married, and therefore the living spouse is not committing adultery when he or she begins a new relationship. For those to whom no supernatural beings or signs appear, they must find other ways in which to come to terms with the past and assuage their guilt. In Raven’s Honour, for example, it becomes clear to Cole, and to the reader, that Patrick married Honor to protect her, and in his final words to Cole, ‘Take care of Honor, sir’ (2002: 34) he passed that responsibility on to Cole. In the novel it is demonstrated that Honor and Cole need feel no guilt, because neither betrayed Patrick. Rather, Cole is respecting Patrick’s final wishes by caring for Honor, and Honor, by returning home to ‘make peace with your mother’ (2002: 38), as Patrick had asked her to do, and laying out his corpse for burial does ‘ “Her last duty”, said Joe. [...] “No one could have asked more of her than that – not Patrick O’Donnell, at any rate”’ (2002: 40). Among Patrick’s final words to Honor were ‘You’re a good wife’ (2002: 38). By giving us these details about Patrick and Honor’s marriage, and showing Honor and Cole behaving honourably with regards to Patrick’s wishes, Thornton convinces the reader, and allows the hero and heroine to become convinced themselves, that they need not feel any guilt. It is also noticeable that Patrick continues to be mentioned throughout the book because he’s an integral part of Honor’s life, and Cole cannot understand Honor’s past without learning more about Patrick.

While the remembering of the dead is not emphasised in Raven’s Honour, it is an important theme in many of the books I’ve read recently. For example, in Karen Templeton’s Swept Away the hero, who’s been a widower for three years, explains his feelings about his dead wife:

“You still miss your wife too, don’t you?”
Sam took his time before answering. “One day, I realized I’d gotten through a whole hour without thinking about her. And at first I thought something was wrong with me, that somehow, it didn’t seem right not to hurt, not when you loved somebody as much as I’d loved her. Then, when the hour stretched to two, then sometimes even half a day, it finally began to sink in that missing somebody implies a vacuum of some kind, a hole in your life where this person used to be. And I thought, hell – after all those years we’d had together...’ He shook his head. “All these kids, each one of ‘em reminding me of her in some way. [....] It was Jeannie’s idea, painting the walls all those bright colors. The snowball bush out front, the lilac over there in front of the kitchen window, the row of cherry trees over there ... all her doing.”
With a gentle smile, he turned to Carly. “I suppose some people would find all those reminders painful. But I find ‘em a comfort. After all, it’s kinda hard to miss somebody who’s everywhere I look.” (2006: 69)

Unlike the dead characters in Sartre’s Huis Clos, condemned to Hell and to be forgotten by those who had once known and loved them, in romances the memories of the beloved dead are cherished and kept alive. In Miller’s Wild About Harry, Tyler’s mother says that ‘When you love someone, they leave a lasting imprint on your world’ (2000: 175). In Marion Lennox’s Princess of Convenience, the heroine’s son died of leukemia just three months before the beginning of the novel:

‘You don’t recuperate from a child’s death,’ she whispered, and she couldn’t stop the sudden flash of anger. ‘But that’s what they all said. You go overseas and forget, they told me. Start again. How can I start again? Why would I want to?
‘Like me,’ he said softly and her eyes flew to his. ‘Only harder.’
‘What ... what do you mean?
‘I believed them,’ he told her, his voice gentling. ‘Or maybe, like you, they just wore me down by repeating their mantra and I hoped like hell they were right.’ [...]
‘You’ve lost someone, too?’ she whispered, though she already knew the answer.
‘My twin. My sister. Lisle.’ (2005: 66)

In the course of the novel, however, they do both recuperate, and in part this is because they realise that recuperating does not have to involve either forgetting or starting again. In the final scene, the family gather together in the kitchen garden, while a priest says a blessing over the ashes of Dominic (the heroine’s son) and Lisle (the hero’s sister):

This kitchen garden was no formal garden. It was used every day, by everyone who lived in this castle. Edouard played here with his baby alpacas [....]. The servants gossiped here. Louise and Henri sat and held hands and watched Edouard play. Raoul and Jess sat here in the moonlight. And soon... In not so many months, maybe there’d be a crib out here, where a little one could have a daily dose of sun.
Home. Home is where the heart is, Jess thought dreamily. Home is here. [...]
They lifted their urns and they let the ash drift across the garden on the soft see breeze to land where it would.
The urns were empty. Jess turned and she held her husband tight, and once again she shed tears. But this time there was no desolation.
This was right.
Lisle and Dominic had come home.
With their families. (2005: 186-187)

Romance novels conclude with an ‘Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending’: often they demonstrate that love triumphs even over death. In the words of Cousin Geillis, a white witch, and relative of the heroine of Mary Stewart’s Thornyhold, writing in a message composed before her death, but delivered after it,‘‘Love is foreseen from the beginning, and outlasts the end’ (1989: 222), or, as Dylan Thomas said:

Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

----

• Bailey, Elizabeth, 2001. ‘Seventh Heaven’ in Elizabeth Bailey: Three Stories in One (Chatswood, New South Wales: Harlequin Mills & Boon), pp. 7-299.
• Lennox, Marion, 2005. Princess of Convenience (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon Ltd.).
• Miller, Linda Lael, 2000. Wild About Harry (Richmond, Surrey: MIRA Books).
• Stewart, Mary, 1989. Thornyhold (Sevenoaks, Kent: Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton).
• Templeton, Karen, 2006. Swept Away (Richmond, Surrey: Silhouette Books).
• Thornton, Claire, 2002. Raven’s Honour (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon Ltd.).