I don't know if it's any consolation, but Heyer herself was, as well as being upper middle-class at most, part of an out-group. Her father was a Russian emigre who wrote, and she herself had writing aspirations (and street cred; she did The Black Moth at 16, and though that shows in some respects, it's quite skilled), but attended a standard school for the ambitious. People who write/want to write are not-one-of-us. Can't have been too much fun.
She may have picked up her attitudes there, or may have been trying to fit into a social group higher than she was born/raised to. See biography stuff. Also, she was perennially short of money (including after she married), and that sometimes straitens the mind. So her prejudices may have been, in a weird way, part of a fantasy life.
And to be a bit fair to her, the Shylock trope is an old one, and a standard plot device; I do wonder if she'd ever met a Jew who was, as it were, "out". It's not as if she was alone in her prejudices (which I freely acknowledge; don't get me wrong); an appalling number of her contemporaries shared them.
Oh, yeah, she did hate readers; they tried to visit, and wrote her letters she didn't like. She just needed them.
LJ ate my ETA, so I'll just say, I loved your review, and laughed a lot.
As a teenager I only saw the danger as well as embarrassment Prudence was exposed to, while her brother, as Kate, risked much less; I thought he was a reckless lout for putting her in that position. It was clear he enjoyed the potential for danger; equally clear that Prudence didn't.
no subject
She may have picked up her attitudes there, or may have been trying to fit into a social group higher than she was born/raised to. See biography stuff. Also, she was perennially short of money (including after she married), and that sometimes straitens the mind. So her prejudices may have been, in a weird way, part of a fantasy life.
And to be a bit fair to her, the Shylock trope is an old one, and a standard plot device; I do wonder if she'd ever met a Jew who was, as it were, "out". It's not as if she was alone in her prejudices (which I freely acknowledge; don't get me wrong); an appalling number of her contemporaries shared them.
Oh, yeah, she did hate readers; they tried to visit, and wrote her letters she didn't like. She just needed them.
LJ ate my ETA, so I'll just say, I loved your review, and laughed a lot.
As a teenager I only saw the danger as well as embarrassment Prudence was exposed to, while her brother, as Kate, risked much less; I thought he was a reckless lout for putting her in that position. It was clear he enjoyed the potential for danger; equally clear that Prudence didn't.