Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer is a name I've been familiar with for years because for some reason a lot of science fiction fans like her novels. I seem to recall that the late rich brown was a fan of hers, as is Jo Walton, and now I discover via Hazel Ashworth that D West recommended her novels to Hazel years ago and that Friday's Child was a particular favorite of theirs. Since I've been focused on women writers lately, this appeared to be an ideal time to finally explore Heyer's work, so I picked this one up at Powell's City of Books while I was in Portland for Christmas.

The novel starts out with a bit of a head fake that initially threw me off. Viscount Sheringham proposes marriage to the Incomparable Isabella Milborne, widely believed to the most beautiful woman available -- and as a side benefit she's quite wealthy too. Isabella rejects the proposal, because she considers Sherry an irresponsible gambler and libertine. Sherry, who won't inherit his fortune unless he marries before he turns 25, flies into a rage and vows to marry the first woman he sees. This turns out to be Hero Wantage (what a name!), who is a childhood friend of his and Isabella's who was raised by a cousin when she was orphaned at an early age. Sherry always treated Hero as a bratty kid sister, but when he learns that her mean-spirited cousin is trying to force her to become a governess in Bath, he takes pity on her and proposes marriage. She accepts.

From this set up, I confess I thought the novel would be about how Sherry would reform his rakish ways and win the Incomparable over in the end. However, I was quite wrong about that. The title is from an old nursery rhyme about the character traits of people according to what day they were born on:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath day
Is fair and wise and good in every way.

Wikipedia says there's an alternative version which has it, "Friday's child works hard for a living/Saturday's child is loving and giving," but Heyer pretty clearly had the former version in mind. Hero is an unbelievably sweet and giving person, and the novel is a kind of satire contrasting her essential goodness and empathy with the selfishness and corruption of the aristocratic crowd that Sherry runs with. Far from being about Sherry's reformation in pursuit of Isabella, the novel is about his reformation in pursuit of Hero.

I loved pretty much everything about this book. I loved Heyer's assured, precise, nuanced prose style, her vivid characterization, complex plotting, sly wit, and also her rowdy humor. There's a scene involving a duel between Sherry and one of his upper crust friends whom he sees kissing Hero that is particularly hilarious and had me laughing out loud in delight. Early on I thought I might find the unquestioned life of ease and plenty of these aristocratic characters tiresome after a while, but the slight air of satire kept it fresh, and to be honest it works as a kind of fantasy world as well, where you can have the vicarious pleasure of never having to worry about money or work or really anything other than, well, pleasure. Heyer is aware that her characters are less than admirable, but she generously forgives them for it, whether they deserve the generosity or not. Yet she keenly observes their absurd vanity, selfishness, and meanness, all the while contrasting it with Hero's loving and giving self-sacrifice, which puts them all to shame. It's wish-fulfillment, but it's very funny, sweet, and moving as a form of escape from harsher realities, and that was something I really valued at this particular juncture in my life. It definitely convinced me to read more Heyer, and maybe to get back to Jane Austen, to whom Heyer is often compared, because Heyer wrote a lot of romances set in the Regency era. Hazel Ashworth says D. liked to say that Heyer was like Austen on speed. Sounds about right to me. It was also funny to discover how much of D's humor I could see in Heyer. It didn't surprise me to learn that he loved Hunter S. Thompson, but I surely had no ideas whatsoever that he loved Georgette Heyer too. It's enlarging to be surprised like that, I must say. Many thanks to Hazel for recommending the book, which she says has helped her through many a hard time too.