{"id":59,"date":"2017-04-10T20:29:48","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T20:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evependle.com\/?p=59"},"modified":"2017-04-10T20:39:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T20:39:57","slug":"really-old-romance-aurora-floyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/10\/really-old-romance-aurora-floyd\/","title":{"rendered":"Really Old Romance: Aurora Floyd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1181403934l\/1147799.jpg?resize=311%2C475&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"311\" height=\"475\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Aurora Floyd was written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in 1863. The story is basically a romance-cross-mystery, with a hint of social commentary. Aurora has stunning black eyes and a dark secret. Two men (more actually, but only two that count), fall in love with her.<\/p>\n<p>Talbot Bulstrode is stuck in the mud aristocrat who wants to be loved. John Hellish is a straightforward well-loved Yorkshire man. Aurora&#8217;s plain blonde cousin Lucy is in love with Talbot. Talbot wants Lucy to love him, but because he doesn&#8217;t realise she does, he falls in love with Aurora. Yep, really.<\/p>\n<p>Spoilers &#8211; all the plot spoilers.<br \/>\nBut really, be honest with yourself. It&#8217;s so long and meandering, you&#8217;re not going to read it. (If you really do want to, I recommend listening to it on Librivox.)<\/p>\n<p>Aurora is already\u00a0married. But really, this is just an excuse for Aurora to have sex. When she reads of her husband&#8217;s death, Aurora accepts the proposal of marriage by Talbot.\u00a0Bigamy is less objectionable to Victorian sensibilities than fornication.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously Lucy takes this with ladylike dignity. Aurora refuses to tell Talbot about her secret and they break up. Aurora marries John.<\/p>\n<p>But when it turns out Aurora&#8217;s husband is still alive, yet again Aurora is blackmailed. (She gets blackmailed a lot.) The husband is murdered, and there&#8217;s a bit of a mystery at the end. Aurora lives HEA with John. Talbot and Lucy also live HEA.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting book from lots of perspectives. In particular, it&#8217;s amazing that the heroine has sexy-times and isn&#8217;t actually completely condemned for it. This hardly ever happens in modern or modern historical romances. Braddon is an intrusive omnipresent narrator, but doesn&#8217;t actually completely condemn Aurora&#8217;s behaviour. And there&#8217;s a hint of scathing about the way Braddon talks about Lucy that&#8217;s quite satisfying.<\/p>\n<p>Trope and Inspiration take-homes for romance authors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pre-marital\/pre-hero sex. There really ought to be more of these stories. \u00a0A lot more. It&#8217;s historically accurate and a genuine conflict for the heroine.<\/li>\n<li>Blackmail. Because really, why not?<\/li>\n<li>Black eyed heroines who are the daughters of a banker and an actress.<\/li>\n<li>Sly references to Dickens characters. Love this.<\/li>\n<li>Accidentally bigamy by the heroine? Is this a step too far?<\/li>\n<li>Suspicion of murder by the heroine. In fact, murder by a heroine? Why not.<\/li>\n<li>Riding and racehorses! Yes!<\/li>\n<li>A second choice romance&#8230; Could this work?<\/li>\n<li>Moral ambiguity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Stuff to avoid:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pitting a blond woman against a brunette woman. Ack.<\/li>\n<li>God-like narrator. Nope.<\/li>\n<li>Bigamy. Probably ought to go in this section.<\/li>\n<li>Random dumps of landscape description.<\/li>\n<li>The main character keeping a secret from the reader. So annoying!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aurora Floyd was written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in 1863. The story is basically a romance-cross-mystery, with a hint of social commentary. Aurora has stunning black eyes and a dark secret. Two men (more actually, but only two that count), fall in love with her. Talbot Bulstrode is stuck in the mud aristocrat who wants &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/10\/really-old-romance-aurora-floyd\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Really Old Romance: Aurora Floyd&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9a9I8-X","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evependle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}