Anna Snyder has written a hilarious post over at The Toast, which I would have reblogged, but sadly The Toast doesn’t seem to allow that. The post finally answers the burning question on everyone’s lips:
Are you in a Regency Romance Novel?
by Anna Snyder
- You are either a virgin or a sad and lovely widow whose husband was lost at sea. You are spirited, but still passing ladylike.
- Your father is away in the colonies protecting his tobacco interests, or a bumbling idiot, or a gambler. His character flaws lead to you becoming betrothed to a man you’ve never met.
- Your dance card is filled up with the names of eligible gentlemen who are excessively unattractive.
- You have a maiden aunt who despairs of you. You have a gaggle of sisters of marriageable age and they are all silly.
- You are an incorrigible womanizer and you have lived in France. You are squandering your sizeable inheritance on loose women and card tables. You may very well be a pirate.
- Your best friend is a notorious flirt and not as pretty as you. She weds a buffoon for convenience and immediately regrets her decision. Her sole ambition in life is to orchestrate a marriage for you that’s ever so slightly beneath hers.
- A gentleman of your acquaintance once addressed you by your Christian name as he brushed his fingers against the lace filigree of your fichu. You still blush at the recollection.
- A notorious rake catches your eye at a fashionable social function. His brocaded—though not foppishly so—waistcoat betrays his unimaginable wealth. His eyes smolder like sapphires pulled from the inferno itself. He raises his glass to you with a ravenous smile.
- You are fluent in French, despite never having been abroad. Your profligate older brother once spent a season in Paris and came back with the clap.
- You have a secret, potentially scandalous alter-ego, such as authoress of smutty literature or highwayman. Your true identity is under heated debate by the Ton. In your spare time you give baskets of food to the poor and practice the pianoforte and/or mandolin.
- You are proposed marriage to by no less than three vicars every Tuesday. You refuse them with delicacy, then weep into the rosebushes on the east veranda. Your heart belongs to another.
- A wealthy and influential harridan disapproves of you and makes sure everyone within earshot knows it. You don’t give a fig what she thinks. You flutter your fan defiantly.
- You are dancing a quadrille with a gentleman you find despicable. He is taken aback by your wit and cheek. His devilish grin and tightly coiled arm muscles make you suddenly desirous of swooning. Your bosom heaves.
- A certain young lady with a comely face and dazzling eyes rejects you in no uncertain terms. She haunts your thoughts by day and your dreams by night, to the extent that you can no longer delight in any of life’s joys, not even whores.
- You are caught in a storm and contract a violent head-cold. Fearing for your life, a platonic friend of the family whisks you to his chamber and removes all your clothes with tantalizing earnestness. This is a very gentlemanly thing to do, and you shiver with longing.
- Everything between your legs is delicately referred to as your “sex.”
- Your nipples are like silken rose petals. The curve of your ear is like a trembling pink shell. An improbable plot device leads to you sharing a bed with a rogue whose Byronic masculinity awakens something excruciating in you.
- Despite having less sexual experience than a house fern, you fall into throes of ecstasy at your first encounter with your lover’s erect member/manhood/scepter. He deflowers you with the utmost tenderness and it’s the best sex anyone has ever had and you do it for hours and hours.
- Your orgasms are like an explosion of Roman candles, or an impossibly sweet bouquet of roses blossoming, or a sunburst that launches you to the heavens and carries you blissfully back down to earth on golden wings. This goes on for pages, at the end of which your lover strokes your hair and calls you “Sweeting.”
- Oh God, you are ruined, ruined! What man will ever marry you now that you’ve cast your virtue away on the transitory caresses of a rake? You’ll have no alternative but to come out on the town or, worse, become a governess. Your best friend will be delighted.
- After a period of uncertainty, it becomes evident that your paramour is a scoundrel no longer—his ardor for you is pure and undying, and he wants nothing more than to marry you immediately. He foreswears all his former debauchery and you congratulate yourself for changing him so thoroughly with your love. You may or may not be pregnant.
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Crying with laughter. Super find!
Still laughing!
Thanks! 😀
Truly hilarious Nicholas. I laughed out loud. 😀 It just got funnier and funnier.
Oh to be a rake in a romance novel. Looking for roman candles, lol
Your dance card is filled up with the names of eligible gentlemen who are excessively unattractive.
Yep, that is me!
LOL! That was hilarious and I also love the illustration! 🙂 This humorous list also explains why I cannot write Regency Romances… too many rules to remember. 😀
I know. What, with the pirates, and the Earls, and the Dukes… It would take forever to research! 😀
LOL Now I know why I never write or read Regency Romances! I prefer books about intelligent alien termites who are (mostly) sexless!
Lol – that does take care of the sex conundrum! 😀
I can’t stop giggling at this list and the descriptions. I especially love the accompanying artwork.
Now you see why I had to share! 😀
😀 😀 😀
Hilarious! Regency sticklers, however, would turn up their noses at the outrageous sex because it’s not true to the period, at least for ladies of a certain social class. Girls like Lizzie Bennet did not go to bed with Darcy until they were safely married. And there was a distinct shortage of dashing pirates about the vicarages of Hertfordshire.
The one thing missing from the list is a surfeit of highly eligible Dukes and Earls… or at the very least, haughty handsome fellows with twenty thousand a year 🙂
Twenty thousand a year what? Acres? Pounds? Slaves? Virgins? Ships? I have to know! 😀
Pounds. As I recall, that was considered an impressive income in 1810 🙂
No idea! You could probably buy a county for a shilling. Along with a few farmers. 😀
Ha, ha, I am a lot older than you thought, aren’t I 🙂
Erm, old enough to remember 1810?? Blimey!
My knowledge actually comes from a vast library of Regency romance books! But seriously, there was no sex in them until around 1990. I think that’s when Amanda Quick’s first book came out. Before that, it was against the conventions of the Regency genre. And I liked it that way. The sexuality was suggested rather than spelled out in detail. Like in old Hollywood movies 🙂
Ah, yes, that does make more sense. 🙂
I don’t mind sex in books, but like you prefer it implicit rather than explicit. Some things are best left to the imagination, don’t you think?
Well, yes and no. For me it is a matter of context. I enjoy a good sex scene in the right kind of story. But they are extremely difficult to write well. I know this from experience. A well-written sex scene can reveal a great deal about the characters, things you would not learn about them otherwise. It is not just there to be titillating (though it can be that, too). I feel that “literary” authors rarely tackle sex scenes because they are afraid of being ridiculed. John Updike is an exception (and he HAS been ridiculed for it). And with genre authors, it is all too often clichéd and cringe-inducing. Or the worst sin of all: boring. I saw a hilarious clip the other day of Charles Dance reading from “Fifty Shades.” I suppose my goal is to write something that he could read aloud, and it would be sexy rather than silly!
I have a confession – something I haven’t actually shared before: the first draft of Pearseus was rather more explicit. The sex scene between Parad and Gella alone took four pages. However, I ended up cutting it all out in the final edit, as I didn’t feel it added anything to the story or the characters.
Interesting! Well, I agree that if nothing is added, there is no reason to include it. But particularly in a story where the main focus is a romance, it can add important insights.
I just lost my composure when it got to the ‘sex’ stuff. The descriptions people use in erotica writing can be so ridiculous that I think they borderline on comedy books.
Lol – My scepter and I agree. :b
Scepter is a new one to me. Not sure if it beats out some of the ones that I don’t want to repeat.
Stop beating the scepter, Charles! 😀
Ha ha, not! Obviously the writer hasn’t written Elizabeth Hoyt or the really hot regency writers. Her latest hero was wrongfully charged with murder, ended in a loony bin, escaped and works as a gardener. In the previous book, the hero was a stuffy duke who literally moonlighted as the Ghost of St. Giles, a harlequin who hunts the murderers of his parents. The heroines range from innocent maids to seasoned actresses or widows who pair up with younger, innocent men. It doesn’t have to be stereotypical!
Hmm, now I’m thinking… Maybe I should write a post about little green men with huge phallic shaped guns that go fssst! and liquify the insides of startled humans. 🙂
Please, please do! I promise to post it!!! 😀
Yeah, right! I owe you another guest post that is still half done…
You make me want to go check out Elizabeth Hoyt!
I know, right?? 😀
I love the illustration:)
Gorgeous, isn’t it? 🙂