Picture me, on my tip toes, treading a very fine line.
Betty Keira and I were both quite young when we married (She was 21...I was a mere 20 years old), so we had very short stints as bacheolor girls...so this doesn't apply directly to either of us. We are more like the cheerful Cockney cleaning ladies with half a dozen kids running around making us grey before our time...she requests to be thought of as the one who has a beehive hairdo and "smokes like a chimney", I am the one who wears "horrible slippers" with nicks cut out for my corns. (Neither of which is true, but now that you have that image stuck in your mind you will think more kindly of us - as the two who come in to do the "rough").
According to an article on Wikipedia(that source of all that is true...ish):
The British Magazine "The Ladies Pocketbook" in 1836 said this abo
ut the Origins of Spinsters ... "Our industrious and frugal forefathers made it a maxim, that a young woman should never be married until she had spun herself a set of body, bed, and table linen. From this custom, all unmarried women were called spinsters, a term which they still retain in law."
In both The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare referred to a contemporary saying that it was the fate of women who died unmarried to lead apes into hell. By the time of the British Regency, "ape leader" had become a slang term for "old maid". It is often used in that context in Regency romances and other literature set in that period...In Australia, parties are held for young single people to meet and socialize (particularly in the rural areas). These events are known as Bachelor and Spinster Balls or colloquially 'B and S Balls.' Balls in which women ask men to attend are known as Sadie Hawkins dances in the United States...Unpopped popcorn kernels have been dubbed "old maids" in popular slang, since just as unmarried women, spinsters and old maids traditionally who do not have children, they do not "pop."
So, here's my can o' worms:
If you were/are a twenty-something year old (the age of a Neels heroine)- 
which would be more appealing to you?
a) marriage to a worthy, staid, and rather boring man (balding, with glasses).
b) a life of spinsterhood.
put another way -
a) Possible security.
b) Settling for nothing less than true love - and willing to go it alone if you don't find it..
B.
ReplyDeleteMarriage to a dull worthy man is a horrid fate. I highly recommend to you a Signet Regency by Joan Wolf: A Kind of Honor in which the heroine is married to someone who seemed superficially quite respectable but turns out to be . . . not so much. Then the hero shows up and she's stuck. Lots of references to Brighton, but very few actual postcards of Brighton, if you see what I mean. (The role of Brighton in that book was played by a small cottage in the village of Hampstead.)
I mention it because it's a strong argument for why you don't want to be married to the Wrong Man when the right one turns up. Of course, this would seem to be a problem for all of Betty Neels' marriages of convenience, but I content myself with the belief that all her heroes and heroines knew (subconsciously) that they had picked correctly even if they hadn't yet fallen madly in love & twigged to it.
(And then there's my life. True, I was not married until age 42, but when the almost-but-not-quite-perfect husband was supplanted by the absolutely-perfect-thank-you husband, I just kept Hub 1.0 as a great friend. Recycled, so to speak; very green.)
We wouldn't have a "romance" book, if the heroines always marry the dull but sensible man. Given. I do like how Neels heroines so seldom give in to that impulse. It doesn't matter how plain they are, in fact, the plainer they are, the less likely they are to have a "follower" until Hunky Dutch Doctor Jonkheer van der Hunkerjinck comes along. The statuesque Olivias occasionally fall prey to the idea of security over romance, going so far as to get engaged to a dull but "responsible" upcoming doctor...who has yet to "make his way"...but fortunately Dr. van der Hunkerjinck helps them to see the light.
ReplyDeleteI especially enjoy the stories where the doctor is set in his ways, and the plain, little Araminta shows him what he's missing (as in, one of my most favorite BN, "Caroline's Waterloo")
Girl Bachelorhood for me. With a properly managed IRA and a circle of interesting friends and relations, I would be set.
ReplyDeleteSince I did not marry until age 29 (already finished grad school and several years a professor), the decision not to marry (or even get very serious about) the nice but non-heart-thumping Chief Pharmacist (or, as we call them in my circle, The Farmers from Crosbyton) was one that I made consistently, when finally Professor van der Hertenzoon made his appearance.
ReplyDeleteNever ever regretted skipping the also-rans but have thrown things at the Professor's beastly Norwegian head at times--after all, as the title of the book by Florence Littauer states, After Every Wedding Comes a Marriage--ain't that the truth.
Betty Keira and I have it pretty good - if we chose the Bachelor Girl route we've got the best family to do it with...
ReplyDeleteI do think it would be a hard choice...sometimes the worthy, staid and seemingly boring man can turn out to have hidden depths, quiet but sly humor (the #1 element to a HEA, in my opinion) and more of a sense of adventure than is initially apparent. This is never true of the hero in Neels books(they are never described as boring. Placid, yes, boring, no), but we do catch glimpses of it in happily married doctors (friends of the hero) or the husbands of the hero's sister.
Oh, I think of Betty Neels' vision of the staid, worthy, boring fellow in your choice A as the stodgy Englishman she thinks she *ought* to marry but just can't bring herself to do it. So she's resigned to be a sp****er when who comes along but the HERO. [Cue the choir of angelic boy sopranos from Kings College...]
ReplyDeleteBasically, if you don't hear those piping voices singing Once in Royal David City when the stolid fellow looks at you, he doesn't have hidden depths, a sly sense of humor, or a gleam in his eye. But if you do hear them, then you're good to go: even though he may seem stolid, Betty Debbie is right: he's placid, not boring.
I'm trying to hark back to my own courting days...and find that, yes, Once in Royal David City was pealing all over the place.
ReplyDeleteWhew.
Also, I shall never hear that song again for the rest of my life without thinking of this moment.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started reading Betty I was about 12 or 13 years old and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what doing the rough was. I thought it might mean sanding the floors! But it still didn't make much sense, why did someone need to come in so often.....took me years to figure it out!
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of "doing the rough", until a few years ago when I started reading Neels. As a grown woman I had no problem imagining what the "rough" was, and was immediately envious of anyone who could afford to have someone do it for them. (Although, in fairness, Betty Marcy and I used to pool our nickles, dimes and quarters to pay our next younger brother and sister to do our share of "the rough" when we were kids)
ReplyDeleteBased on what I know of English life, I always assumed it meant the sort of vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, etc. that we'd think of as just "cleaning." That presumably left to Mr & Mrs. Jolly the jobs that weren't included in doing the rough, namely delicate dusting.
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me, in one of the early Neels books there's a lovely moment when the heroine and hero's mother share a realization that they dust the china figures that the hero has given them with their personal hankies -- just because they love him so much. Such a lovely sentimental moment.
I want someone to do the rough for me :-(
ReplyDeleteAnd I would most definitely stay a single girl (sadly, although I'm far older than a Neels heroine - I turned 40 this year! - I'm still single!!) Old maid indeed!
I spend inordinate amounts of time avoiding doing "the rough" at my house. Not that my house is that messy...but unless the floor is sticky, I'm not mopping...and now that my grandkids have moved 3,000 miles away (sob), my floor is seldom sticky.
ReplyDeleteAs one that married the right one at 34 I could easily live the single life - less laundry, less cooking, ... less love. Nevermind. It's the married life for me WITH the laundry, the cooking and sigh... the love.
ReplyDelete