Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2020-10-25 11:42 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2020-10-25 11:42 pm
I have read A Lady of Quality, so you don't have to
If you like morality tales about vexingly perfect people, this is absolutely the book for you. By the author of The Secret Garden, this book explores the life of one Clorinda Wildairs, an enfant terrible who unexpectedly grows into an extremely polished young lady, a positive goddess.
Given thatthe_comfortable_courtesan's name is also Clorinda, I thought I'd give it a read.
As a young woman, Clorinda is given to private displays of temper, but is somewhat softened by the good influence of her faithfully loving lesser sister, who worships her as everyone seems to. An annoyingly handsome young man pays desultory court; this goes nowhere-ish.
As soon as she says yes to an older man with a good fortune, she meets The Love Of Her Life, who is described in the same sort of glowing tones as Dagny Taggart regards John Galt, throughout the rest of the book. But since she is a Person Of Her Word, she molds herself into The Best Wife Ever for this aging gentleman, and when he dies a year later she casts herself into completely appropriate mourning. This is strict Compliance romance.
After a year and a half of mourning are up, she and the Duke are free to begin courtship. Am I smelling the illusory rose-leaf scent of a Liberation romance? No. No, I am not. It is merely the perfume of the Lesser Sister, waiting forever in the shadows and observing all. I would be less annoyed with this character if she weren't consistently described as being simple-minded and ugly, But That's Okay Because She's Faithful And Prays A Lot.
There is A Lot of Allegory with Clorinda breaking a horse suitably named Devil (it's not subtle) using a very heavy horse-beating implement (she's as strong as a man) and then this still annoyingly handsome but now showing signs of dissipation John fellow returns. He has a secret! It turns out to be a missing lock of hair, because in her wild youth she'd let him get close enough that he could cut it off (naughty Clorinda)! If he shows this to the Duke, all would be lost! Clorinda would no longer be the picture of perfection to match the Duke's Galtian bronze glory.
In an incredible taking over all this, Clorinda (still holding the horse-beating implement) flails around and whacks the villainous John a good one square on the temple. He falls down stone dead.
Clorinda burns the fatal lock of hair (drawing no notice from the servants, somehow, because burning hair stinks like the dickens) and figures out what she's going to do. Which, apparently, is to lie coolly, set up an alibi that John was anywhere but where he actually was (in rigor mortis, under the divan), and later carry him off to the empty wine cellars that were being conveniently bricked up so they wouldn't keep making the servants' quarters damp and drafty.
In any good Gothic novel, Clorinda would promptly go mad from guilt. Instead, she devotes herself to good works and uncovers a genuinely surprising number of women who were seduced and otherwise misled by John. She and the Duke are disgustingly happy with each other, and it's a Compliance romance after all. They have kids, and Clorinda's lesser sister gets to co-mother them.
Clorinda's extremely dissipated father dies, with a horrifying deathbed vision of the moldy dead John (who everyone has long since assumed has fled to France to avoid angry creditors). Clorinda's lesser sister dies, and on her deathbed confesses that she overheard the fatal argument, and has assumed all along that Clorinda murdered the bastard. She has been praying for Clorinda, and it was by the power of her prayers that Clorinda's diminishment into The Perfect Wife has come about (we are strongly encouraged to believe). It comes as a great relief to learn that no, it was an accident (despite the cold-blooded cover-up). Doves coo. Angels sing. The blue vastness of heaven opens up and the sister ascends, but not before counseling Clorinda to let God tell the Duke about this when the Duke dies, rather than confessing to it herself while they're both alive.
I prefer my Clorindas wicked and interesting, thanks...
Given that
the_comfortable_courtesan's name is also Clorinda, I thought I'd give it a read. As a young woman, Clorinda is given to private displays of temper, but is somewhat softened by the good influence of her faithfully loving lesser sister, who worships her as everyone seems to. An annoyingly handsome young man pays desultory court; this goes nowhere-ish.
As soon as she says yes to an older man with a good fortune, she meets The Love Of Her Life, who is described in the same sort of glowing tones as Dagny Taggart regards John Galt, throughout the rest of the book. But since she is a Person Of Her Word, she molds herself into The Best Wife Ever for this aging gentleman, and when he dies a year later she casts herself into completely appropriate mourning. This is strict Compliance romance.
After a year and a half of mourning are up, she and the Duke are free to begin courtship. Am I smelling the illusory rose-leaf scent of a Liberation romance? No. No, I am not. It is merely the perfume of the Lesser Sister, waiting forever in the shadows and observing all. I would be less annoyed with this character if she weren't consistently described as being simple-minded and ugly, But That's Okay Because She's Faithful And Prays A Lot.
There is A Lot of Allegory with Clorinda breaking a horse suitably named Devil (it's not subtle) using a very heavy horse-beating implement (she's as strong as a man) and then this still annoyingly handsome but now showing signs of dissipation John fellow returns. He has a secret! It turns out to be a missing lock of hair, because in her wild youth she'd let him get close enough that he could cut it off (naughty Clorinda)! If he shows this to the Duke, all would be lost! Clorinda would no longer be the picture of perfection to match the Duke's Galtian bronze glory.
In an incredible taking over all this, Clorinda (still holding the horse-beating implement) flails around and whacks the villainous John a good one square on the temple. He falls down stone dead.
Clorinda burns the fatal lock of hair (drawing no notice from the servants, somehow, because burning hair stinks like the dickens) and figures out what she's going to do. Which, apparently, is to lie coolly, set up an alibi that John was anywhere but where he actually was (in rigor mortis, under the divan), and later carry him off to the empty wine cellars that were being conveniently bricked up so they wouldn't keep making the servants' quarters damp and drafty.
In any good Gothic novel, Clorinda would promptly go mad from guilt. Instead, she devotes herself to good works and uncovers a genuinely surprising number of women who were seduced and otherwise misled by John. She and the Duke are disgustingly happy with each other, and it's a Compliance romance after all. They have kids, and Clorinda's lesser sister gets to co-mother them.
Clorinda's extremely dissipated father dies, with a horrifying deathbed vision of the moldy dead John (who everyone has long since assumed has fled to France to avoid angry creditors). Clorinda's lesser sister dies, and on her deathbed confesses that she overheard the fatal argument, and has assumed all along that Clorinda murdered the bastard. She has been praying for Clorinda, and it was by the power of her prayers that Clorinda's diminishment into The Perfect Wife has come about (we are strongly encouraged to believe). It comes as a great relief to learn that no, it was an accident (despite the cold-blooded cover-up). Doves coo. Angels sing. The blue vastness of heaven opens up and the sister ascends, but not before counseling Clorinda to let God tell the Duke about this when the Duke dies, rather than confessing to it herself while they're both alive.
I prefer my Clorindas wicked and interesting, thanks...
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I suspect if I'd gotten ahold of it when I was 10 or so, I'd have loved it.
And yeah, it makes sense that the vile John would have gotten extremely intimate, given that Clorinda had his miniature which she wore secretly.
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//cackles
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(I adore A Lady of Quality even though it is a treacly tale of a woman becoming Properly Feminine -- see also That Lass o' Lowrie's, which makes me wish for a time machine to grab Joan and put her through university in the 21st century so she can go kick ass in the world as the curmudgeonly delight she is -- but His Grace of Osmonde did nothing for me.)
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She showed such promise as a legitimate horse-tamer when she was a child, but her adult manner of doing it would not please Mr. Rogers.
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