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Originally Posted by issybird
Oh, I didn't really cringe, not even when Percy kissed the steps. Autres temps, autres mœurs. But it's fun to examine, especially since we're talking two realities; that of the book itself and also that of the time it was written, as is always the case with historical fiction. I said it before, but I'll repeat it; I think that's one thing Orczy got right, the sense of society a century before she was writing. She was much more on point than much of what passes as historical fiction today, which is all modern sensibilities dressed up in lace and brocade. That's what makes me cringe.
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Nah, kissing the steps isn't even other times. I can imagine some YA romance having that scene.
But some of the servant interactions in "The Fisherman's Rest" (eg: "pretty Sally") were enough to make me wince.
But how different was it really for the aristocracy, between the setting of
The Scarlet Pimpernel and when Orczy wrote it? You noted earlier that the world changed more slowly between TTM and the setting of this book, and I would include up to the period when this novel/play was written. I'm also inclined to think that the world changed most slowly for the aristocracy - even after the plebeians started cutting their heads off. As stuartjmz notes...
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Originally Posted by stuartjmz
[...] As for Orczy's avoiding this trend, I wonder if her very haute background helped. If her own family fled from a possible revolution less than 100 years after the one she wrote about, her aristocratic family may well have filled her childhood with stories that gave her the atmosphere of the times she later wrote about.
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