Like anyone raised on Georgette Heyer, I love the Regency. It's an interesting time tucked in between a more morally loose Georgian period, and the super strict Victorian. There's room for eccentrics and dissipated heroes and flirtatious chicks, but there are still rules which limit the characters and give authors a lot of material for conflict.
But there are some problems with this, the main one being: There can be no people of color in these stories. You can attempt homosexuality in this context, like Anna Cowan did; you can put in a Jewish person, like Trollope's The Way We Live Now (not Regency, but close); but there aren't many opportunities for a black hero, or an Indian one, etc. In modern London there are a lot of East Indians and Afro-Anglos, etc. But in the Regency, they're mostly absent.
Mary Kowal has recreated the Regency with magic, but I don't know if because of this she's managed to find a way to integrate diversity. Wrede and Stevermer didn't.
Well. I suspect ebook publishing is what's going to unleash some much needed diversity and fresh ideas and more radical ideas in Romance Land. Frankly the entire romance genre is incredibly white. Embarrassingly so.
2 comments:
I have noticed the general whiteness of romance genre.
There are some notable exceptions, though. Ranger, beloved of many, is black. Of course, she's currently ruined him for me but, oh well.
I haven't read that far in the series, but I did hear people were disappointed with that storyline or whatever.
Thanks for pointing out the exception. Although her books are really more mystery, aren't they? There isn't a different romance being resolved in each novel.
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