Monday, July 30, 2012

Immortal Flower: Carthage edition


The next book on my pile of romances is Elizabeth Hoy’s Immortal Flower.  It’s a Harlequin Romance first published in 1972.

Everyone look in a different direction

According to http://www.squidoo.com/Elizabeth_Hoy_vintage_Harlequins, Elizabeth Hoy wrote a few books that could be considered Sheik romances: including To Win a Paradise and Flowering Desert. I don't think I have any of her other books, but I could be wrong! She also wrote a number of books set in Italy and Ireland.

Immortal Flower is interesting because it’s in-between a sheik romance with a sheik as a hero and a desert romance where the desert is simply a romantic setting for a romance between two ‘westerners’. As you can see, there are two men on the cover – one Eastern, one Western.  Which one will the girl in green choose?!

It’s quite obvious from the set-up that she’ll choose the Western guy. On the front cover, he's the one looking at her. And on the back cover, he’s the one she finds the most annoying, so we definitely know that he’s the one she’ll end up with. But let’s go along with the ride for fun…

Our heroine Mandy works as a secretary for a professor who is doing research in Tunisia. The professor (Noel Croftwell, a very British Professor name) is a historian and archaeologist who is working on a book on Roman remains in Tunisia, specifically the ancient city of Carthage (of Dido and Aeneas fame). Mandy’s father, John Lavalle is an “authority on Oriental religions, author of the Islamic Encyclopaedia” (11).

Mandy and the Professor have been working in Tunisia for a few short weeks when his nephew Steven Heron arrives for a visit. Steven is a geologist surveying “somewhere in the Sahara” (9). When he arrives, exhausted from his trip, he’s very brusque and rude to Mandy, describing her to his uncle as a “red-headed dolly” (11).  Not a very good first impression.

The three main men in Mandy’s life, then, all study some aspect of ‘the East’ for a living: as a historian, religious scholar and geologist. Mandy, on the other hand, left University to take a secretarial course, as she felt her Arts degree was too un-directed. As she thinks of it, “if secretarial work hadn’t quite the same snob value as being able to call yourself a B.A. it at least promised movement and variety” (21). Mandy’s feelings about being an 'ordinary' woman surrounded by intellectuals are a recurring theme throughout the novel.

There is also a fourth man, Ramon al Hassan, who Mandy met at the beach and has been swimming with regularly, despite not knowing much about him. He is a “golden boy, with a body like a slim bronze god” (17). And very charming, unlike Steven.

Mandy, the Professor and Steven go out for dinner at the local fancy hotel and run into Renata Castella – our Other Woman. Hopefully she won’t turn out as terrible as the opera singer from Court of the Veils. Renata is a half-Italian, half-American “dilettante writer who lives in a magnificent old Moorish palace on the outskirts of the Tunis Media” (23). She’s a beautiful, exotically dressed widow; her husband was a race-car driver who died in a crash. And in her party is Mandy’s beach friend, Ramon, who Steven reveals is “the eldest son of an oil sheik who lives in a fabulous palace on the edge of the Sahara” (24).  Apparently, Ramon’s father is not the best of friends with Steven, as he suspects Steven of being a prospector or a spy for English oil interests. Not entirely unreasonably, I would think…

And thus we have our cast of characters all assembled. Mandy is already a little disillusioned with Ramon’s attitudes, for example, his fondness for veiling: “all this Oriental pomposity and male dominance…it struck her as prehistoric! And yet Ramon had been around, living in Cannes and in Paris.  But whether he realized it or not, his roots, it seemed, were in that sheikdom on the edge of the desert” (33).  On the other hand, she’s increasingly jealous of the attention that Steven is paying to the glamorous Renata and annoyed by Steven’s warnings against getting involved with Ramon. Steven too has some out-dated ideas: “the he-man type, like Steven went  about imagining girls were poor helpless creatures who couldn’t take care of themselves and had to be protected; a middle-aged viewpoint totally out of date” (44).

Renata, hearing of the Professor’s interests in Roman ruins, invites them all to come along with her to a party that Ramon’s father, Sheik al Hassan is throwing: “a period of festivity – a gathering of the clans, including Army manoeuvres, riding contest, and jousting, reminiscent of the old days of medieval English chivalry” (49). Another quote to add to Amy Burge's work on the use of 'medieval' in sheik romances. But a marabout “in floating white robes” with “strange depths in his dark eyes” warns Mandy that there is “a difficult and dangerous path ahead of [her]” and advises her to “walk warily” (53). So seldom do Christian mystics advise heroines to beware. It's always Gypsies and marabouts...

So I’m guessing there will be adventure at this party! I’m looking forward to it…

Friday, July 27, 2012

Court of the Veils: women are also jaguars…


As planned, Duane, Tristan, Isabela and Roslyn go on a trip into the city. On their way in they pass by some Oriental tropes: Isabela is as “proud and distant as Queen Nefertiti” (83) and the scene around a water-hole has a “Biblical quality, unchanged down the centuries” (84). 

Ivan Kalmar, a professor at the University of Toronto, has argued in fact that paintings of Biblical scenes were influenced by contemporary fashions in the ‘East’. So perhaps this ‘Biblical quality’ is more related to tropes of representing the Bible than the persistence of an unchanging style in 'the East'…

In more self-referentiality, Isabela remarks that “real Arabs were certainly not like the sheiks in novels and films” and Duane agrees: “I should hope not! […] those are real men and women, hewn out of the fire and ice of their land. In actual fact, a desert sheik is little more than a shepherd, a nomad wanderer who opens his eyes for the first time in a hair tent, who marries a girl of his own tribe and rarely takes a second wife, let alone a third or a fourth” (84).

The four enjoy the city, shopping in the souk, going out for dinner and dancing (Roslyn quite poorly). At night, Roslyn goes down to the lake by their hotel, to clear her mind and runs into Duane – and another romance plot-line.  They get caught in the rain and have to take shelter in a boatshed and ‘get out of those wet things’, if you know what I mean.

They have to stay in the shed overnight, because a landslide has blocked the path back up the hotel and it’s too dangerous to try to climb it at night. When Duane takes off his shirt (Just to go to sleep, I promise! We aren't in the 80s yet. While The Sheik may have had pre-marital sex, this book does not.), Roslyn sees the jagged scar on this shoulder, from his years in the jungle, she assumes: “a jaguar hiding in a tree, leaping down when his back was turned and rending his body…as that woman he had known had rended him on the inside” (128).

But in seriousness, they bond during the night, as Duane tells Roslyn about his father moving to England and his own choice to come to Dar Al Amra. Roslyn, of course, has no stories of her own to tell, as she still has no memories…

The next morning, they both sneak back into the hotel and, for some reason, don’t tell anyone  about it.  It’s really not clear why.  It would be too scandalous? They like having a secret little secret? Roslyn and Tristan go on horseback rides together, Roslyn hangs out with Nanette and when she goes into town with Tristan, learns about the improvements that Duane is planning with the locals.  He has started a Food Association Board and is friends with the man who will be the headman when the current headman dies, who wants modernization: education and new crop-growing schemes.

In another Biblical reference, Tristan suggests that whoever marries Duane “will have to fold her tent like Ruth and dwell with him in the desert” (154), like any daughter-in-law should (well, he doesn’t say that part, or the part where she later seduces some guy named Boaz).

Foreshadowing?

Finally, a crisis arrives. Nanette becomes ill. Duane calls in Dr. Suleiman, who represents the highly qualified modern Arab, trained in Algiers and in England, but come back to El Khadia to help the local people. And… you’ll never guess… his hands are “narrow and shapely as a woman’s” (160). So I guess this is a thing, at least in sheik romances!

Nanette apparently needs just a bit of bed-rest, so Roslyn takes over her nursing. Isabela is getting restless because she is not having enough attention paid to her. This bit then comes out of the blue: 

There is a sandstorm coming, but Isabela persuades Roslyn to come for a drive with her. She interrogates Roslyn about her and Duane’s relationship and then tricks Roslyn into getting out of the car and leaves her behind! In the desert! With a sandstorm coming! It’s very dramatic, and Isabela has been set up as selfish and temperamental, but it does seem like a bit much. 

Luckily Duane happens to be driving by and he rescues Roslyn.  He also reveals to her the secret of his cynicism around love. It was his mother! She was selfish like Isabela and after a series of affairs left his father, running away with a wealthy Brazilian only to be killed in an earthquake. After this revelation, the sandstorm hits and Roslyn hits her head on the front of the car. And…

Recovers her memory, of course! 

She is indeed Juliet Grey, just as Duane suspected. This prompts Duane to kiss her: “his mouth on hers was relentless, hurting her until she ceased to struggle…then, eyes closed, senses fully awake, she surrendered to the kiss that searched through all her being until it plundered the heart right out of her” (184). Duane reveals he loves her and she, of course, loves him. And then he gives her a ring.

I may have been a little snarky about this book's plot, but it is actually quite pleasant to read (despite the endless ruminations on the nature of love). The ‘local colour’ details are evocative. Morocco serves as a wonderful setting, and the novel is very revealing about the remainders of French colonialism (in a non-political way), but Moroccan people are only background actors in the story. I'm not sure any Moroccan women even have any lines...

Next up, Immortal Flower. This one has two potential heroes on the cover: a Tunisian man and a British man (I think).  Who will the heroine choose?

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

What does your signature reveal about you?

This week’s 1920s magazine post is from Movie Weekly, which is a bit more…sensationalist...than Photoplay (and Photoplay is not even that restrained, really).

Well, is it?
From Movie Weekly April 8, 1922. Click here to read the article.

Movie Weekly March 4, 1922 also has a pretty fabulous photo of Rudolph Valentino in his Sheik costume. Actors really stared in those old publicity photos. They’re looking at you, yes, you. Shhh…don’t speak, don’t speak.

And his hands do look large!
On page 6 and 7 of that issue is an article on what the movie stars' signatures reveal about them: 


“Success of Favorite Movie Stars Explained in Their Handwriting”
Click here to see the article more closely.

This is part two of a series! And apparently there will also be a ‘surprise handwriting’ article in an upcoming issue, if you happen to be a graphology enthusiast. The article begins with the classic space-filler found in many undergraduate essays – a definition:

“Fame has many faces. To be famous signifies the recognition of some sort of success achieved.”

Yes…go on…

“And no surer fashion of determining the essential elements which make for high popular acclaim can be found than that which an individual exhibits in handwriting. It is the intimate link between the nerve-action of the hand and the mind.”

I’m not convinced, but I’m willing to be entertained.

The signature of Constance Talmadge (star of films like Happiness a la Mode (1919) and Romance and Arabella (1919)) reveals that “her affections are potent, but her humorous eye would seize the amusing side of anyone who tried to be serious in a motor car.” 

So never drive anywhere with her, I guess.

Rudolph Valentino’s “even, well-poised fist moves ambitiously upwards, gesturing with his rather flamboyant capitals, exclamatory of his intense vitality and the conscious belief in himself.” Apparently, his “advance along the stellar way can be measured by the height of his signature. Very high.” 

This seems…a bit of a stretch?

The signature of Gloria Swanson (the woman standing in the riding pants) has a “virile swing” to match her “vigorous personality”.

Frankly, all of these descriptions sound the same to me! What do you all think? Are you convinced of graphology's vital utility?

Next up: the conclusion of Court of the Veils. For real this time!

Monday, July 23, 2012

Court of the Veils: And the Desert is like a Woman, of course!


Back to our heroine ‘Roslyn’ and her encounters with the Gerard family. There is one more character in this book who I failed to mention on Friday: The Other Woman.

Romances from this era often have an Other Woman character who serves as a foil to the heroine.  Where the heroine is innocent and unworldly, the Other Woman is glamorous and very, very worldly. Court of the Veils’ Other Woman is Isabela Fernao, a Portuguese opera singer who is working on an opera with Tristan. She is, of course, very beautiful, very seductive and very self-centred. Is Isabela interested in Tristan or in Duane or neither or both?

This novel has many, many philosophical discussions of love in it. Does love exist? What is it exactly? How should love be? It’s funny because even though it’s a constant topic of conversation, it doesn’t really seem to be a theme in terms of the plot (beyond, of course, the fact that this is a romance). We don’t have a couple of different couples engaged in different kinds of love. Or even one character who moves through different expectations of love, at least not from my reading. So why so much talk of it?

Anyway, the first of these discussions is between Tristan and his grandmother.  All this talk of love is very operatic, and this conversation starts with opera:

“‘To love is to be burned in the flames of passion and disillusion, grand’mere.’ He seated himself at the piano and shot her a smile.

‘Your cynicism almost matches Duane’s,’ Nanette said tartly. ‘Love can be a most enjoyable emotion, but you young people of today seem to regard it as a battle.  I suppose we can all expect the finale of your opera to be a tragic one, cheri, though in all likelihood Nakhla was merely fascinated by her soldier admirer, and in love with her master.  A woman cannot help loving her master.’

‘You are an incurable romantic, grand’mere,’ Tristan chuckled, and played a snatch from The Merry Widow.” (23)

No comment.

Court of the Veils has some quite enjoyable descriptions of the décor and setting, which double as ‘eastern’isms. Roslyn’s room has a ‘strange Eastern charm’: it’s “white-walled, and beamed with cedar.  The bed was low, with tall posts holding back yards of misty net as a safeguard against the intrusion of insects.  Squares of oriental carpet covered the floor, and the windows were narrow harem-lattices covered with mesharabeyeh [which are, according to Wikipedia, those lattice-y windows, so Winspear has basically repeated the terms here to offer both the explanation and the ‘authentic’ term]. There were deep window recesses beneath the lattices filled with cushions, a cupboard for her clothes, and a carved chest with mirror-stand upon it” (24).

I would like this room.  Of course, if I had it, it would also be covered in piles of paper and books. But still very picturesque, I’m sure!

In sheikh romances, though, pretty rooms are seldom just pretty rooms.  Often they’re reminders – of luxury, decadence or the Oriental past which is still present. Thus, Nanette tells Roslyn that her room was probably ‘long ago’ the room of ‘a favourite of the harem’: “in the days of female seclusion in the East, when the master of the house handed to his fancy of the moment a coloured veil to indicate that she was to be brought to him that night.” Roslyn replies, “what a catastrophe if the master wasn’t attractive,” but Nanette thinks otherwise: “The Aga was said to be a fiercely handsome man, so there is every likelihood that the inmates of his harem fought to win a veil from him.  These veils were added to their everyday wear.  A particular favourite would probably be clad in little else.” (25)

So many things to say about this – ‘the East’ exists here in a kind of limbo fairy-tale time of ‘long ago’ where there is a place called ‘the East’ where customs were all the same. Yet there’s a specific handsome Aga. And the veils! I do not know if this is actually a thing, but it really sounds like an Orientalist fantasy. Pics or it didn’t happen.

Well, Roslyn spends most of her time at Dar al Amra hanging out with Nanette and Tristan and occasionally crossing swords with Duane.  Duane ticks another of the boxes on my imaginary Bingo card by comparing the desert to both a woman and a horse:

“After four years I’m not certain whether I love its moods, or hate them. I sometimes think I like the desert best when it is wild, untamed, like a horse to be broken, or a woman.” (35)

Duane has some issues. He’s very cynical about love. He compares love to a peach – with a stone at its heart. Frankly I think he is missing the point of peaches, which are delicious! He is also suspicious of Roslyn. But he’s a very good plantation manager, apparently.

And he saves Roslyn from being attacked by a mountain cat while she’s wandering among the date palms. So there’s that.  He takes her to his house (he lives separately from Nanette) for a drink to recover her composure. And there he makes dragonflies – dragonflies! - sound wild and untamed (which I guess technically they are, but still?): “The male dragonfly is utterly ruthless towards its mate, you know” (55).

Violet Winspear cannot let an animal just be an animal (or insect, as the case may be). It must be a ruthless, stalking, masculine kind of animal, or an animal to be tamed.

On the other hand, Roslyn gets along with Tristan very well. In these types of novels, I’m never really sure why it is that the heroine doesn’t end up with the person she gets along with, who’s actually nice to her. I suppose it may be that that person also does have some flaws – often they’re too easy-going, or would like to live in a busy city, or are actually a bit of a playboy. I mean, sure, you love who you love, but if it’s as easy to love a rich man as a poor one, why shouldn’t it be as easy to love a hot guy who’s nice to you as a hot guy you argue with all the time? Maybe that’s more revealing of my own personal relationship interaction preferences than anything else, though...

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that Tristan and Roslyn kiss, after yet another philosophical discussion of love. They’re interrupted by Isabela, though, who is suitably tart about the whole thing. Roslyn still thinks she was engaged to Armand, so she’s feeling a little iffy about having kissed Tristan (his brother!). But we don’t mind, because we know she’s not really Roslyn…

Wow. I’m finding it really hard to do a whole novel in under three posts. I can’t believe I initially thought I would do one post per novel! I’m guessing I may get down to one or two posts per novel as I get through more of them, but for now, I’m afraid Court of the Veils is going to be going onto a third post…

Up next: All of the younger generation are about to take off for a weekend to the city of El Kadia… But before that – movie Wednesdays! I’ve been finding some more great stuff in the archives…