Murmur of Rain
Show Notes
Murmur of Rain is a Gothic-tinged historical romance set in France and Haiti in the 1890s by Patricia Vaughn. Lauren Dufort is the daughter of a descendent of enslaved people in French Guiana and a white Frenchman. Her parents were deeply in love, but their marriage estranged them from society, so when Lauren is orphaned as a teen, she is raised by her paternal aunt, Claude, who runs a gentleman’s club, knowing that her mixed-race identity may keep her from ever making a love match in 19th century France. But when handsome Haitian Roget de Martier arrives at Claude’s club, Lauren is immediately smitten and he seems to reciprocate interests. There are hints of secrets about his past and family in Haiti, but when the rich gentleman proposes marriage instead of a mistress arrangement, Lauren’s head and heart both feel like this is her best chance at happiness.
Books Mentioned
To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney
Shadows on the Bayou by Patricia Vaughn
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Mademoiselle Revolution by Zoe Sivak
Works Cited
Black Romance Podcast: Interview with Patricia Vaughn and Julie Moody-Freeman
The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
“A Parody of Love: the Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular Romance” by Angela R. Toscano
“Frederick Douglass and Haiti’s Mole St. Nicolas” by Myra Himelhoch (Some of the language is a bit outdated for example, she calls Haitians' interest in Mole Saint Nicolas as “mystical.”)
Transcript
Emma
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that will definitely tell you about any long-standing generational curses on its family before taking you across the ocean. I'm Emma, a law Librarian writing about justice and romance at the Substack Restorative Romance.
Beth
My name is Beth, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.
Emma
Murmer of Rain is a Gothic-tinged historical romance set in France and Haiti in the 1890s by Patricia Vaughn. Lauren Dufourt is the daughter of a descendant of an enslaved people in French Guiana and a white Frenchman. Her parents were deeply in love, but their marriage estranged them from society. So when Lauren is orphaned as a teen, she's raised by her paternal aunt, Claude, who runs a gentleman's club, knowing that her mixed-race identity may keep her from ever making a love match in 19th-century France. But when handsome Haitian Roget de Martier arrives at Claude's club, Lauren is immediately smitten, and he seems to reciprocate interest. There are hints of secrets about his past and family in Haiti, but when the rich gentleman propose his marriage instead of a mistress arrangement, Lauren's head and heart both feel like this is her best chance at happiness. After an idyllic honeymoon, Lauren is thrust into Haitian society with strict rules about gendered behavior, a surprise compared to cosmopolitan in Paris, and a rigid sense of place based on race and class. Roget comes from a wealthy Black plantation-owning family, and he was expected to marry his longtime fiancée, a very light-skinned woman who could claim aristocratic French ancestors.
Lorin must learn to parse these social codes, all while uncovering the things and people that seem to haunt the De Martier home. Vawn's book is imbibed with lots of Gothic mainstays. A housekeeper who seems to know everything but says nothing, a dead father who hurt his family in untold ways, black magic of an unknown culture to the heroine, and a house that holds many secrets. It also has a highly specific history to the time and place of setting. Vawn's Haiti is specific to the years 1890 and 1891, and shows a country that has been subjugated by colonial powers resisting further invasions. Vawn told the Black Romance podcast that she had originally written a straight Gothic romance, but then reworked these characters into a more historical setting after attending an RWA conference. Supported and encouraged by the likes of authors Bertrand Small and Sandra Kitt and editor Vivienne Stevens, Vawn wrote one of the first Black historical romances. Though published in the mid-1990s, Vawn's integration of historical set dressing, interest in how violence can manifest in romantic relationships, and Gothic tropes makes this book feel like a sweeping water streamer of the 1970s and 1970s in the best way.
Okay, so Beth reminded me as we were putting the notes together that I picked this book. I was like, Beth, why did you pick this book? And I picked this book, and I don't remember why I picked it. I mean, I remember... Beth told me why I picked it because I think I heard somewhere that it sounded like a Judith Ivory book, or I read the plot and thought it sounded like a Judith Ivory book, which makes sense because we love Judith Ivory. And I would agree. I think And then after I started reading it, I've been texted Beth and Chels and I was like, This reads like a Judith Ivory book.
Beth
Yeah, it was funny because originally in our script, you were like, Why did you pick this book? And I was like, You picked this book. But it was back in February. This has been on the docket for a while. Yes.
Emma
Yes, we've been meaning to read it.
Beth
Yeah, the only reason it's been moved is just it's like 460 pages.
Emma
It's a little long. Yeah. Yeah.
Beth
So you just want to make sure you have enough time to get it done. My favorite thing is when Chels will remind us to be reading the book. And I'm like, I got tons of time. And then always the night before, I'm like, Oh, I should have listened to Chels.
Emma
I should have started earlier. Chels will be like, This one's hard. It's hard to get through. It's really long. And we're like, We got this. And it's like, Oh, my God. No, we're listening to Chels. Chels knows. So, yeah, this one is... I mean, it doesn't feel super long.
In the prologue, we meet Ndate Yala, a formerly enslaved woman from French Guiana and Jean Dufort, a middle-class accountant for a sugar company. They have a secret love affair in Guiana and when Ndate becomes pregnant, Jean works to take her to France, where they can marry. They have a daughter, Lauren, but when Lauren is three, Ndate is killed in a carriage accident. We see Jean and Lauren struggle against the world that judges Lauren’s mixed-race identity, including a scene where Lauren gets in trouble at school for a white child’s misbehaving.
When Jean passes away, Lauren goes to her paternal aunt Claude's home and begins to help her in her business, which is a raucous gentleman's club on the Left Bank. Lauren's duties include playing the piano for the men at the bar, and she finds support and love amongst Claude and her unconventional household. Still, Claude is wary of Lauren's future, unsure of what life a mixed-race woman will find in even cosmopolitan France, something Claude admits she has no experience with. Lauren experiences sexual harassment by a man at the club, and it is clear that some men attribute sexual promiscuity with her racial identity.
She is saved by one of Claude's employees, but the experience is a harrowing one for her. One night at the club, she spots a handsome Haitian man, along with two French friends, and she's immediately enamored. When he returns, he invites her to dine with him and introduces himself as Roget de Martier. Claude is skeptical of his attention on Lauren, worried that he wants to have an affair. Their courtship runs hot and cold. Sometimes Roget sees distant and opaque, and sometimes he's overwhelmingly intimate. On an errand, Lauren sees Roget with another high class woman, and they appear intimate. Lauren becomes convinced he's engaged or married. She also learns from a club employee that Roget initially made a bet with his friends that he could bed her. When she sees him next, she confronts him and says she never wants to see him again, but this prompts him to propose. She thinks she's worried over nothing since he's clearly unattached and they marry. After a somewhat idyllic honeymoon, Lauren and Roget return to Haiti. On the boat, they meet some of Roget's acquaintances, and they make it clear that it is a surprise that he is, one, married not related at all, two, is married to a mixed-race woman of non-aristocratic birth.
Claude also sends along a small inheritance from Lauren's father in case she needs her own money. Lauren thinks Claude is being overly nervous but keeps the money where Roget won't know about it. When they arrive in Haiti, they meet Roget's family his mother, his older brother Gaston, his younger brother Antoine, and the housekeeper Filene. The mother is an alcoholic, and Roget repeatedly alludes to his father breaking her spirit. Gaston is a bully, and his antagonistic personality scares Lauren. His late wife is referenced, but when Lauren asks questions, she is shot down. Antoine is artistic and secretly gay. They have also arrived just as a political situation in Haiti is reaching a fever pitch. As Roget is a major landowner, he holds great political sway. The United States has been bringing naval ships into a Haitian Bay as an act of passive aggression to encourage the new Haitian President to lease a bay for US presence in the West Indies. Foreign leasing of a land is against the Haitian Constitution, written in response to the years of French colonial rule. Nearly all the Haitians agree that the US should not be given in the port, but the question of how to express that is unclear, showing force or aiming for diplomacy.
The Haitian President is assumed to be favorable to the US since that government helped him stall him, and Frederick Douglass is in Haiti acting as ambassador. Gaston assumes that Douglass only cares about the interests of his white bosses. In America, well, Roget feels that both the President and Douglass will prioritize the Black population in Haiti. Roget continues to run hot and cold with Lauren, sometimes showing her great affection and answering her questions about the plantation, and other times, shutting her completely out. She feels bored in her role as housewife and no household to run since Filene, the housekeeper, does everything. Roget tells her that high class Haitian women are different than Parisians, that they are expected to be traditional lives, but Lauren is industrious and seeks a greater purpose in Haiti. Lauren meets Georgette Defnd, wife of Paul, one of Roget's acquaintances. Their marriage was also not supposed to happen. She is from Martinique, and it was assumed that Paul would marry one of the high class, mixed-race women from Haiti, just like Roget. Georgette helps Lauren understand Haitian society's mistrust of her social position. Though Lauren has mixed-race heritage, her skin is darker than desired, and people struggled to understand why Roget would marry her when he's engaged to Lucien, a very aristocratic, light-skinned woman.
During one of Georgette and her outings, Lauren also hears a story about Gaston having a son who died, possibly killed by Filine, the housekeeper. Some people attribute the death to the curse on a house based on how Roget's father obtained the land. When Lauren asks Roget about the boy's death and Voudon practices, he shuts her down and falls asleep with his back towards her. The President of Haiti announced this formerly that there will not be any concessions to the United States, and the political drama seems to have passed. Roget and his family are invited to the ball, hosted by the Condes, his former fiancé's aunt and uncle. In Roget's POV, we learn that he planned to marry Lauren so that he wouldn't have to marry Lucien, not because he didn't want to, but because he believed that his family rot would destroy her, like he watched his mother and Gaston's wife be destroyed. He thought marrying a woman that he had some attraction to but did not love would keep Lucienne away, not really thinking about what would happen to Lauren. At the ball, Lauren finally sees Lucienne and is struck by her beauty. Roget is still hot and cold with her, and Lauren is confused by her behavior.
Roget is still hot and cold with her, and Lauren is confused by his behavior until she sees Roget and Lucienne in an embrace. She's unsure why her husband would have an affair with his former fiancé and not just marry Lucienne to begin with, but she's deeply hurt because she does love Roget. At the ball, Lauren also meets Frederick Douglass and is charmed by him. Lauren confronts Roget about Lucienne's presence at the ball, and he rebuffs her cruelly, not seeming to care that seeing his ex-fiancé might be a sore spot for her. She reveals that she saw them in Paris together and knows that it wasn't just an engagement, but a love affair. They fight and she asks, Roget, why did you marry me? And he responds, At this moment, I wonder myself, and turns his back to her. The next day, Gaston confronts Lauren with information about her past. Her parents weren't married when she was born, making her illegitimate. He threatened to tell Roget, which would be a reason for him to indulge the marriage and be able to marry Lucienne. Gaston also insinuates the only reason that Roget could possibly have wanted to marry Lauren was that she was good in bed.
At a card game, Lauren overhears to Roget's friends questioning him about why he didn't marry Lucienne, and he continues to evade. On the way home, Roget starts to think about how he might have miscalculated Lauren, originally thinking she would be fine with a marriage in the background, not asking questions about his reasoning. His thoughts linger in his confused attraction to her. Back at their house, Lauren tries to seduce Roget by wearing new lingerie that she's bought for a special occasion, but falls in her face when trying to walk seductively towards him. Roget falls into a fit of laughter, but as he's picking her up, he kisses her and they have sex for the first time in weeks. On a trip around the plantation, and Antoine, the younger brother, reveals to Lauren that he would like to go to Paris and discusses more directly the circumstances of Gaston's late wife's death. Roget found Reinette, the late wife, near a machineel tree that has toxic fruit. Reinette may have been thrown for a horse, but her body suggested that she may have been poisoned before she went out riding. Antoine also explains how the family came to all the land.
Soldiers in Haiti were paid with the land, and the brother's father made the farm prosper because he used modern equipment. That night, Roget does not come to their bedroom, and Lauren assumes that he's taken up with Lucienne again. Georgette has seen them together, confirming Lauren's suspicions. Lauren gets a letter from Claude stating that her parents were not married when she was born, but married five weeks later, confirming Gaston's blackmail information. Soon after, he rapes her, telling her if she alerts anyone to the incident, he will reveal her illegitimacy. Lauren and Roget continue to antagonize each other with her keeping information from him to avoid the truth about her birth and him keeping her in the dark about his relationship with Lucienne. She reads everything he does in bad faith, including him encouraging her to be more socially active with other Haitian women. One day, while practicing the piano, Lauren discovers a ouanga packet hidden in the instrument. She fears it means someone in the house is trying to kill her, but Roget dismisses her worries, telling her that her worry is what gives the packet power, though he kindly takes care of her as she panics.
Lauren and Georgette start volunteering at an orphanage and teaching children piano, starts to give Lauren more of a purpose in Haiti. She's surprised when she convinces Roget to buy a new piano for the children. At dinner one night, Gaston goads Lauren into riding a horse that Roget has forbidden her from riding since it was the one that Reinette was riding she died. She overrides his orders at the stable and takes out the difficult to control horse. She's thrown and it wakes up in a semi-consider state, wearing a nightgown and overhearing drums. She seems to be a victim of a magic ceremony with an altar and a goat sacrifice. She musters strength and runs out of the door, finds the horse and runs away, only to be thrown again and pass out. Roget finds her like he found Annette, and she tries to be exhaling to him that it wasn't an accident. She was poisoned and taken to the ceremony. Since she was in a nightgown that she recognizes, she thinks someone in the household must have been responsible. We jump to Lucien's mind for a scene and realize that she and Roget have not actually been conducting an affair, and Lucien is convinced they have not consummated their relationship because Roget has fallen in love with Lauren.
Roget's visiting friend from Paris also suggests directly to Roget that he loves his wife and not Lucien. Later, one night, Antoine has not returned home and the family worries about him. They get the news that he's been arrested. He was eliciting sex from a young man, a scammer who seduces rich men for blackmail. Roget has to pay a lot of money to cover it up, and Gaston demands that Antoine marry immediately. Antoine starts thinking about abandoning Haiti in running away to Paris. At a party where Roget flirts with a young woman, Lauren retaliates by flirting with a young woman's brother, annoying Roget. Roget begins to make love to her in a fit of jealousy, but Lauren won't tolerate the hot and cold behavior anymore and rebuffs him. Gaston continues to blackmail Lauren, even trying to rape her again, and she decides she will go to Paris with Antoine. At a bar one night, Gaston reveals to Roget that he slept with Lauren, and since she has rebuffed him repeatedly now, Roget is now convinced that his wife has been having an affair with his brother. He gets drunk, returns home, and rapes her. As weeks go by, Antoine and Lauren continue their plan for Paris.
The rape gives Lauren the feeling that she has nothing left to lose with her husband and is finally direct with him, asking him why he married her when he so clearly loves Lucienne. He explains that he was attracted to her, but he wanted to marry her to protect Lucienne from the trauma of being married into his family and having a fate like his mother or a Rignet. Lauren goes to the Emotions of Life, and Filene expresses worry about her missing meals and prepares a special conch soup. At some point, Lauren also realizes that she's pregnant with Roget's child. Lauren lies about eating and then learns that a young maid finished her meal and is now near death. She overhears Filene and Gaston discussing the incident. Filene poisons the stew because she can tell that Lauren is pregnant and she doesn't want there to be an illegitimate heiress of the household so that her son, by Gaston, can inherit the plantation. The Poison was supposed to be an award of fashion. Lauren also overhears Gaston admitting to having killed Reinette because she discovered that he was having an affair with Filne. Gaston hits and strangles Filene, but while this is happening, an earthquake starts and the house is shaking.
On another part of the island, Lucienne and Roget are together, and she confronts him with the fact that he's clearly in love with Lauren and not her since he's refused to have sex with her since he's returned from Paris. As he feels the Earth move, he races back to the house for Lauren's sake. Gaston fights Antoine and then runs away, and the other two brothers and Lauren try to evacuate everyone. But Madame de Martier, Roget's mother, has been in the head and can't get herself out. Eventually, they have to leave Madame de Martier, and Lauren must jump down to the brothers in the neck of time. When Lauren comes to, it's three days later. The house has been flattened and Roget's mother is dead. She's unsure if she She should tell him that she's pregnant, and she once again sees Lucienne and Roget together out of a window and assumes nothing had changed between them. But in that moment, Roget was completely breaking things off with Lucienne. Lucienne comes to see Lauren and tries to tell her that Roget would be happier with his wife than his mistress. Lauren takes it to mean that Lucienne is speaking down to her, and when Roget comes to see her, she reacts with vitriol, and he's unsure of how to explain.
Later, she finally tells him that she is pregnant and she did not have an affair with Gaston. It was rape and that she's illegitimate. Roget explains that Gaston was bluffing because her parents' eventual marriage legitimized her under French law. He asked her to stay, but she believes he is doing it because he wants his heir. One night, Roget finally comes to Lauren and explains that he never slept with Lucienne. He just didn't want to sleep in the same bed with Lauren out of fear of falling in love with his wife, but he was already in love with her and couldn't admit it to himself. Gaston is imprisoned for his murder of Filene, and Roget gifts Lauren her own land so that when their children inherit, she will not be a guest on the estate like his mother was. Happily ever after.
I would say the comp titles for this are definitely Judith Ivory's Bliss and Dance. I think that I maybe had those in mind, especially during the Paris scenes, just because of Paris.
Beth
I was going to say it's because of the Paris setting.
Emma
I think more books should be set in Paris. We get so many things set in London and England. Paris is fun. It's fun in Lord of Scoundrels. Caribbean Heiress in Paris. I think it is a great way to integrate Black culture into historical romance because of this long-standing relationship between France and It's Black population. This is one of the interesting things I knew, but as I was reading this book, I realized more and I read more history about that the Black population in France, particularly, is not homogenous at all in its origin. I think this is something that's hard for Americans to wrap their heads around, especially white Americans.
Beth
Because we had one defining event.
Emma
Most of the Black population in the United States comes from one event, slavery. Most of them are descendants of slaves. And then we have there are obviously immigrants from other cultures or other countries that were not ever descended from enslaved people. But the majority of Black people in the United States have this one defining experience as an African-American. Well, in France, the way they're colonialism worked differently, it extended longer. And there's more immigration from different cultures, so directly from Africa, from the West Indies. And also, France has learned that they don't keep statistics on race there. And so you don't know. There's It's hard to discover this since people have their individual experiences, and it's not necessarily homogenous. I think we see that a little bit in this book, where Lauren's experience is very different than Roget's in Paris, that she's in this parsing of identity where she identifies strongly being the descendant of enslaved people. And he's very... He identifies strongly as not doing that, except there's a hint that his ancestors were enslaved at some point, but his family has rejected that as part of their narrative history. And their relationships to Paris are often different.
Lauren considers herself Parisian because she grew up there, where Roget is very like, I'm not French, I'm not Parisian, because he's not. He's from... He's Haitian. And so they're not necessarily feeling communion with each other over their racial identity. It's more like these identities are totally separate. And so it works really well as a historical romance, because I feel like it's a very historical romance type of relationship, where someone has one identity, a class identity, or even someone who... Like an aristocrat and someone who's not an aristocrat, those divides where they have things in common, but there's also things that are different. Vaughn is able to do that because she sets it in Paris, or initially in Paris, and it goes to Haiti. They're these things. It's like both leads are what Americans would consider Black, but have very different class and racial identities.
Beth
Oh, yeah. There's like an ocean between them and identity. He's from the Haitian upper class gentry, I guess you could call him. And then she is the daughter of nobodies. In the Haitian society, they're like, Okay, you married some random from Paris. Who is she?
Emma
Yeah. And the implication is this Haitian society, once every step that all these characters want to take is a move towards high class whiteness. There's this idea that these people want proximity to whiteness. And so Lucienne, his original fiancé, is much, much lighter-skinned than Lauren. So even though Lauren and Lucienne are both mixed race, Lauren is darker skinned than Lucienne. And that is imbibed throughout the novel. Lauren learning... I think she grew up being the only Black woman surrounded. So she was like, Oh, people treat me this way because I'm mixed race. And that's how they treat people who are mixed race. And then she enters Haitian society, where there's all these different origins. It takes her a while to understand how to parse, looking at someone. How do you tell that they're descendant from aristocrats from France? She knows that Lucienne has something that she doesn't, but it's hard for her to understand. I think, again, because she's grown up surrounded entirely by white people and not had to parse that other than her own otherness in Paris. So yes, Judy, I do that. The other author, it reminded me of Sherry Thomas. I think that was the angst of it all.
It was very Sherry Thomas-like.
Beth
Yeah, our master of angst is Sherry Thomas. There's another title I liked a lot, but I think if people like this book, they would like it. It's called Mademoiselle Revolution by Zoe Sivak, S-I-V-A-K. It's historical fiction. It's not a romance, but it's right at the Haitian Revolution. And then she's also biracial heiress, and she escapes to Paris. So it's the same Haiti connection, but earlier in time. But I really like that book, if anyone is interested in it, or would be interested in it.
Emma
So yeah, I wanted to shout out the Black Romance podcast because I listened to their interview with Patricia Vaughn. So Julie E. Moody Freeman is the interviewer. And as far as this podcast goes, this is just an incredible interview resource because I feel like she's interviewed everybody who's anybody in Black Romance. That's where I learned a lot about Vaughn's writing and publishing process because she's only published two books and they were in the '90s.
Beth
Yeah, and there's nothing else on her. I was googling-
Emma
There's not a lot.
Beth
There's not a lot on Patricia Vaughn. So shout out to Julie E. Moody Freeman for doing this.
Emma
And that's one of the reasons I wanted to read this book, and I'm glad that we picked this book, even though I didn't remember that I picked it, is because it's very underread on Goodreads. It's out of print right now, but there are ways to get it. It's on Internet Archive, and you can buy a used copy for pretty expensive. So I would recommend looking at Internet Archive. But I just think this book is really underread, and I'm excited to talk about it. But in this interview with Freeman, Vaughn mentions how her first attempt was this more Gothic romance. And she says in the author's note that she's a fan of Gothic romances. So that's going to be a big theme of what we talk about, because I think Beth and I both noticed while reading this, that it reminded us more of early 19th century Gothic romances. It's not a Jane Austen descendent it at all.
Beth
No, yeah, it's not at all. Okay. Yeah. So also Patricia Vaughn is so charming on this podcast.
Emma
She's so cool and fun. Yeah.
Beth
I'm like, Can I just go to lunch with you and you just tell me about your life a little bit? So she talks about how she got into Gothics and romance because she was taking Spanish lessons. And it was a personal tutor, but this professor was like, Hey, you have a really elegant writing style. You should write a Gothic novel. And he has a friend who was an agent who was trying to get Gothic... Or that's what the agent's specialty I was like, I would think. And so in the interview, she's like, these were popular for the time. And I was like, the '90s? But no, this was late '70s. Like '78, '79, which is at the time of people are writing a lot of Gothics. So she started then. And then she said she wasn't even that big of a reader or she hadn't really written anything. So then she did read a bunch of Gothic novels. She started going to writing conferences is. So she said she spent nine years on writing this book, but it got published in '96. So I feel like she must have... It's like when she sold the book, there's...
But this really seems like a labor of love. She talked about she loved the characters.
Emma
She was earning her degree while she was writing. I think she just was like, this story. She had this idea and she really wanted to tell it, which is very cool. I love, I think hearing about not reading romance or not reading Gothics or before the spark with her. I like hearing that because I feel like most authors come up and they're like, I read Georgette Heyer.
Beth
I've been wanting to do this since I was a child. I love that she just as an adult, was like, Oh, I would like to try this, actually.
Emma
I have a story to tell, which I like. I think if you read this, it makes sense. If this is the story she wants to tell, she would not find a lot of satisfaction, maybe in a lot of the stuff that was published, especially pre-70s. I'm not surprised that she was starting to seek out Gothics.
Beth
Yeah. And I guess I bring up the timeline just so you can see the influences. It's get pulled into the '90s, but it's this long writing process.
Emma
Yeah, it feels like a Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Beth
In the best way. I'm like, this should have started a whole revolution.
Emma
Right.
Beth
And a new setting. Everyone's obsessed with London. I'm like, we could have all been our Haitian setting.
Emma
Right. I love the Gothics. She does such a good job of integrating the history. And so much of the history she picks feels so perfect for a romance novel. Yeah, I know. For somebody who's not a romance novel reader, she's picking stuff. I'm like, this is exactly the stuff that should be in there.
Beth
Yeah. And you already mentioned Bertrice Small. I'm like, shout out to all these people who are encouraging her along the way.
Emma
I'm currently reading Skye O'Malley, which is another doozy.
Beth
I thought of you.
It just makes me think better of her.
Emma
It was like, Bertrice Small, every quote from her in every interview ever is bonkers, and I love her. And so I'm glad to see that she's out here supporting a Black woman who had not written a book before. She's like, You got something to say. And I was like, Thank you, Bertrice Small. That makes me proud to be reading Skye O'Malley right now. So I wanted to talk about Gothic influences, because obviously we both noticed this and then she mentioned it. So that's particularly related to a book with Black characters, because I think our image of 20th century Gothic revival fiction, I think the main thing that we think of is a pale woman in a cloak running away from a big house. But I think you think of it as a very white genre in the 20th century, Daphne Du Marurier, and Victoria Holt. You get a thin white woman who's at a big house. But because these characters in the book are all Black, I was thinking a lot about the postcolonial and racial readings of 19th century Gothic romances that were a big part of the academic view of these books in the second half of the 20th century.
In conjunction with feminist readings, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Guber is the Mad Woman in the Attic. So if any people haven't heard of this book before, you've probably heard the phrase. So it takes its name from the descriptor of Bertha Mason, our sister's first wife, and Jane Eyre. So parts of Gilbert and Guber's argument is about how Brontë divides femininity into two stark categories. Angelic, domestic Jane, and insane, violent Bertha. But they're not just opposites, they're two sides of the same coin. It's not saying that Jane is good and Bertha is bad. It's more like these are two halves that have been split and forced by Victorian femininity. So Bertha is described by Bronte, and by extension, first-person narrator Jane, as a goblin, as a clothed hyena. So all these lots of dehumanized ways. So Jane and Bertha are opposites, but they also share traits and experiences. Bertha being locked up by her husband mirrors, and this experience exacerbates her violence, that it mirrors Jane being locked up by her aunt in the opening passages of the book, and that bringing out the fearful violence in the child. Jane also throughout the novel, express this feeling for Bertha that Mr. Rochester seems incapable of.
Bertha in the book, in Jane Eyre, the original book, is described, I think, as a white Creole. And so there's this racialized aspect of talking about her. It's like she's maybe a white woman or she passes as white. It's unclear how she's described. But another take on Jane Eyre from the second half of the 20th century is Wide Sargasso Sea, which is a retelling prequel by Jean Rhys from 1966. So this is also a feminist and postcolonial retelling of Jane Eyre, but it's from Bertha Mason's perspective. So in this book, her name is Antoinette Cosway, and Bertha Mason is a name that's coercively given to her by Rochester. I don't remember why he calls her Bertha, but Mason is the name of her stepfather. So it's not her name. It's one of the ways that he races her identity. Antoinette in this book is described as Creole, her father being white, and her mother being a mixed-race woman from Martinique. So again, it's more clear in Whites are Grass, I see that she's white passing. She's definitely mixed-race, and definitely not as white as Rochester. So her ancestry and Otherness is explicitly one of the reasons that her husband rejects her and has suspicion of her mental health, which is exacerbated by his rejection of her.
Plus, he seems to enjoy the control he specifically has over a mixed-race woman in his marriage, where he can flaunt affairs and manipulate her. He enjoys the power that he has as this White man coming in and saving her from the family that she's with that has all these mental health problems. Also in the book, it's clear that Antoinette's family was a planter family that owned slaves and then lost their money and status in the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. So in this book, she's also very much rejected by Black people she interacts with. They see her as the descendants of owners and plantation owners. She's really in between worlds. And the book just follows her. It is a prequel to Jane Eyre, and then the last third of the book is about birth experience in the locked room at Thornfield Hall. So while the 20th century Gothic revival might have focused on white protagonists, its sources in the 20th century consideration of them definitely consider race and violence as the consequences of slave trade as a part of this. The other big example is Wuthering Heights. So Wuthering Heights is set earlier than Jane Eyre, which is important because it's set when slavery is still a thing in England and the British Empire.
So Heathcliff is identified in the book as slurs that might suggest that he's Romani, typically. But the suggestion that he might be of African descent comes from where Mr. Earnshaw finds him. He finds him in Liverpool, which is the center for slave trade in England as a port city. Nellie Dean also says some things like she tells stories about Cathy and Heathcliff to them that key up their imaginations. But she says of him that she tells him that you were kidnapped by wicked sailors and brought to England. So this could either be Nelly being imaginative or like, Brontë telling us a clue about Heathcliff's origins. And I know you said that you thought a lot about Jane Eyre while reading this, and they're definitely plot similatries. We have the housekeeper, the house coming down at the end of the book, and the haunting of Reinette and Lucienne, both due of the relationship. So what were your other thoughts about Jane Eyre and classic Gothics when you were reading this?
Beth
Right. I guess I said that because I see that text as landmark to romance in a way that Lord of the Rings might have an outsized impact and shadow on fantasy. Even if you're not trying to do anything like Tolkien in some way, someone might still to compare your work to his. So yeah, if you're going to do a Gothic, then Jane Eyre and Rebecca are going to cast a shadow. I think Gubar and Gilbert in their essay, A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Playing Jane's Progress. In this ride tone, they say, We, like the Royal We, see Jane Eyre as a moral Gothic, Pamela's daughter and Rebecca's aunt, and Pamela by Samuel Richardson, which came out in the 1700s. So I guess I'm just taking your Gubar and Gilbert analysis a little further in our Jane Eyre comparison. So I definitely see this, not like... I say subversion, but that might be too strong, of the Jane Bertha relationship in Lauren and Lucienne, where maybe Lucien has some traits like Jane, but she's treated like the Bertha. Do you know what I mean? When you were talking, you mentioned that Jane and Bertha also have similar traits and experiences.
So it's not as need of a divide there either. So I think Vaughn keeps with this division of femininity that you're talking about. Roget's entire reason for marrying Lauren in the first place is to protect Lucien from his family. So when he's in France, before he marries Lauren, he says to his friends, when they ask, why won't he marry Lucienne? They've been intended for each other for forever. So he says, now more than ever, my family is no place for a woman, certainly not a woman like Lucien. They would destroy her. I I watch it happen to Reinette and to my mother. I will not watch it happen to her. So he has reason to believe that his older brother, Gaston, murdered Reinette, and he's afraid for Lucienne since they, like I mentioned, been intended for each other. Side note, are all Gaston's just bad?
Emma
I was like, Did she pick this name? Because I was like, Beauty and the Beast had come out. I was like, Did she pick this because he's evil? I don't know.
Beth
To be fair, she's been working on this book so long. Maybe Disney somehow two it in it from her. Right.
Emma
Like parallel thinking Gastons are just bad. Does it mean something in French? It's clearly like we're missing a pun?
Beth
I think it's the foreigner or the guest. Interesting. Anyway, that's what Google said. And speaking of names, Lucienne is beautiful and fairly white, with only a hint of African ancestry. And she comes from the Haitian upper class. So even her name means light. And also, Reinette, I think, is like, queen. Like these very royal and like... Anyway, so you mentioned the dehumanizing language used on Bertha. Throughout Murmur of Rain, Roget struggles with dehumanizing both women in different ways, according to their class. He doesn't see Lucien as, I say as human, but he doesn't see her as a person.
Emma
Person, yeah.
Beth
Rather as this untouchable woman who must not be harmed. Roget, I has never really considered if he would be attracted to such a woman, only that he ought to be. And he dehumanizes, and this is stronger language than I intend. I just was like, do I mean dehumanize or objectify? But He dehumanizes Lauren in a similar way, except it's the opposite side of the coin. Since Lauren's birth is common, it's okay to put her in danger. And obviously, there's a racial element there where it's like Lauren is darker skinned than Lucienne. Roget thinks of his life as a chess board, and at one point in the book, thinks about how Lauren is a pawn, but refusing to act like one. Roget comments on why won't Lauren simply act like a Haitian woman, implying compliant, and he is forced to see her, again, as a person like Lucienne. We have the Bertha Lucienne character as the other woman occupying different levels of being locked away. Rochester depicts Bertha as mad and locks her in an attic. And Roget depicts Lucienne with this level of purity and locks her out of his family. The angelic and domestic.
And then Lauren and Jane are our plain characters because of their backgrounds. Although Lauren is beautiful, she's just not white. Men are flirting with her all the time, although it's also this racial... There's a racial undercurrent, I think, there, where she's seen as more available because she has darker skin than Lucienne and all the white people she was around in France. So, yeah, I think it's... Yeah, I wouldn't draw a direct comparison to Jane Eyre. I don't know if I was talking to Vaughn and she would be like, I had never thought of it. But I feel like there's lots of books that you can pull comparisons to regardless.
Emma
Does that make sense? Whether she's looking at Jane Eyre directly or just looking at the 20th century Gothic revival, those that are definitely looking at Jane Eyre.
Beth
Also, Jane Eyre has influenced so many books. So even if you're not doing it, I guess this was my point. It's like, you're going to pull these comparisons.
Emma
Yeah. And I did think for most of the book, it took me a while. It takes a while to get any Roget POV chapters. I also thought it was maybe going to be a single POV, which would be very... Like Jane Eyre. Yeah, yeah. Like you're in.
Beth
But it was not first person, which I thought was interesting. It is like third person, mostly from Lauren's perspective. But we do get like...
Emma
Which I do wonder if that was one of the things that she switched when she moved towards the historical romance structure. This free indirect discourse that she does throughout the book. Because that's much more typical in historical romance than in Gothic. Because even 20th century Gothic revivals are often in first person, single perspective. I kept waiting for her to say, I am Madame de Martier now. It was right there. So yeah, Vaughn doesn't do that. She's avoid the hacky thing that I was like, Why not do the hacky thing? It would be fun. So yeah, definitely undercurrent of Gothic as a background. But I was also thinking beyond the gothic form, I think she doesn't just lay it on. She very much integrates it with explicit discussions of race and this time period of transition and uncertainty in Haitian history. It makes total sense to have a romance with Gothic elements happen here. So I think Gothic is like magic realism, where it only makes sense for these genres to happen in places of transition or trauma. You can't write magic realism. There's a reason it happens more in the south than it happens in New England.
Flannery O'Connor doesn't come out of New England writing magic realism stuff. And same thing with South America. These things coming out of diasporic trauma-ridden lands, I think Gothic is also like that. I think the Gothic, even you point to England, it comes out of this Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are coming out of this processing of the slave trade, even if that's not the main thing that they were dealing with. So we have these gothic elements. We have an outsider who has a mixed race identity who thinks that she understands what that means. Or she understands what the stakes are in Paris, which is a pretty close society. But then she enters the pretty closed society of Haiti and realizes that she doesn't understand the subtleties of it. Because now the issues are not just that she's mixed race. It's that her mother was descended from enslaved people, and people seem to be able to know this about Lauren immediately, and that her father was middle class. So she's French, which that Haitians ostensibly admire in some way. I thought this was interesting that Lauren... Lauren doesn't seem to get a lot of clout in the Haitian society.
They're all talking about how much they want be... They want to act like French people. And Roget points this out. He's like, We try to act French. But even though there are colonial oppressors, there's tension there. But she doesn't get a lot of clout for having lived in Paris, even though all these people around her are like, Whoa, I'd love to live in Paris.
Beth
Maybe it's that thing where it's like, I don't know, I noticed this. So my grandparents are from Germany and they immigrated to Canada in the '50s. But I feel like their Germany is frozen in time. Does that make sense? So maybe with these people in Haiti, it's like the French that... The France that they know is frozen in time from when their ancestors would have come over. Even if they go visit, I don't know. I wonder if that's an aspect of that. I'm sure it's lots of things.
Emma
Yeah. I kept expecting her people to be more impressed that she lived in Paris, but they didn't care. But I think also having lived in Paris, she's French, which in the 1890s, France is... We see this on their honeymoon. This is a very forward-thinking city. This is where impressionism is happening. They go to the Moulin Rouge. Or they don't go to the Moulin Rouge, they go to the Chat Noir. But it's Bohemian. She sees to lose the track from across the way. It's this cosmopolitan city. And then Lauren is really surprised to go somewhere else. Paris is on the forefront of progress moving forward in the late 19th century. She goes somewhere else and she's like, Oh, she's really surprised by the rigidity of Haitian gender roles. And also she sees... So as far as her race goes, after her mother and father die, she's raised by her aunt, who's a French-white woman, and she's surrounded by white people. And so she goes to Haiti, she's entering a society as a mixed-race woman. Without a background of knowing how race and class intersect to create stratifications. Because, again, she's only ever been the one mixed-race person that she's known.
And I thought Vaughn did a really good job of making sure these structures are clear to the reader. Because, again, I think probably most readers are not going to be familiar with the stratifications in 19th century Haiti. But there's not one character that sweeps in and explains to the Lord. It's multiple characters explain it multiple times in different ways, in ways that are appropriate to their character. No-wing comes in and says, The De Martiers are the rich Black landowners and men in that family value marrying mixed-race women with fair complexions and aristocratic backgrounds. Instead, we have Antoine say a piece of that, and Georgette say a piece of that, and reveal in layers to Lauren's perspective, how these structures work together. And then she also sees how people respond to her marriage to Roget, and that builds out the picture rather than having big exposition come in, which I think was easy to do, especially when you're setting something in a unique setting. I think a lot of historical authors feel this need to explain the setting. If it's not a setting that is common in historical romance, you feel like you need to have to explain everything.
But Vaughn doesn't really do that.
Beth
Yeah, I like what you said, that there isn't a scene where someone sits down and is like, Let me explain the Haitian class system to you. It's like a lot of balls and family interactions that shows Lauren, and by extension, the reader, how this society works. And there are definitely pointed comments that she gets, but they function more to remind Lauren how she should be acting, I think, than to be like, By the way, this is how society... Or let me teach you something about society real quick. She and Georgette become friends because they're both outsiders. I like that part of it, and I think it's true of life in general. It's easy to make friends when you're both outside the society that you're trying to get into or integrate into. And another thing I had to remind myself a few times is that Lauren is quite young in this book. I think she's 18 or something.
Emma
Yeah, I think close to that because I think the first chapter is in 1870. Well, yeah, maybe like 21? Because 1870 is when her mom dies and it's 20 years later.
Beth
Right. Yeah, she's She's young, so 18 or even 21, to me, still feels very young. So she meets and marries Roget. And so it's not just this massive cultural change she's experiencing going from France to Haiti, but she's literally so young. I think even if she had been 30, she still would have experienced a culture shock. I don't think you ever age out of that. So I don't want to make it all about her youth. But my main point is that she doesn't have this larger wealth of life experiences to draw on or help her navigate this new culture. So, yeah, it's just a lot going on. Yeah.
Emma
And I think she even thinks that at some point, like with Roget, she's like, I don't... I think she says something to him like, I don't know how things are done. I think this is something Roget has to learn about her. Roget, even though he's kinder about it, does also ascribe experience to her in a way that is racialized, when they have sex for the first time on their honeymoon.
Beth
Yeah, he's like, oh, this is your first time? He just assumes.
Emma
He just assumes, yeah. And he... When she's like, oh, I feel like a hussy when I have sex with you. He's like, Yeah, you are a hussy. He gets to learn that's like, Oh, don't speak to people that way. Or like, this is something that she's sensitive about because of sexual harassment that she's experienced at the club. But Yeah, she points out to him. She's like, I don't know how things are done. You're the first person I've ever kissed. You're the first husband I've ever had. This is the first time I've ever been in Haiti. She points that out to him repeatedly. And I think Roget, that's part of him realizing that she's a person and Like, he's not, she's not just a pawn. It's like, she needs things explained to her because she's never done them before.
Beth
Yeah. We don't really like Monarchs on this podcast, but I do remember Megan Markle at one point talking about how, you know that scene in Princess Diaries where she gets the princess lessons? She's like, no one does that. Like, you just... And I feel like similar things happen to her, where she just got thrown in and Harry was like, you don't know how to bow? Like So I think that's just a common thing because you don't think about being in your own culture or how you interact with everyone as being weird, or that is something that other people wouldn't intuitively pick up on. Right. I think even as a parent, sometimes I have to be like, oh, yeah, I need to explain what this means. My child has never encountered this before, so it's like you're their cultural ambassador in ways.
Emma
Yeah. I guess maybe unique in a romance novel that's addressing it. Because I think sometimes you see a lot of the outsiders go into the aristocracy, and I think that maybe it's a little bit easier. There's a codified way of the things that happen when someone's like, Oh, they don't know. When a heroine doesn't know to say your grace to a Duke or something. It's like, this is a little bit more extreme than that, where everyone around her is... Even people who she's identifying with, even like Georgette, who's her fish-out-of-water friend, she's still from Martinique, which is much closer to Haiti than Paris is.
Beth
Although I do love what Georgette is. She's like, when they first meet, she's like, well, I'm an outcast. And then Lauren's like, oh, you're not from here? She's like, and then Georgette's like, no, no Haitian woman would dress like how I'm dressing. So I do love she just is like, I'm keeping my identity. But she has a husband who's like...
Emma
Obsessed with her.
Beth
Yeah, he loves her. So he's like, yes, of course, my darling, wear whatever you want.
Emma
I love Georgette. I love every time that it's like, Georgette frequently is the person who tells Lauren about seeing Roget with Lucienne. And she's like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. It's like, Georgette cannot keep her mouth shut.
Beth
But honestly, I would prefer that friend. Do you know what I mean? So you're not blindsided when someone says something snied and is like, oh, where's your husband? You're like, You already know because your friend scoped out the situation for your friend. But you're right. It is much more like her not realizing.
Emma
She's like, Oh, wow, that meant something. She's so funny. I love her. Yeah. Okay. So another thing that we both loved about this book is... I said that we dance around and talk a lot about, but Beth has a different take on how we approach this.
Beth
I say we bust through the door like a Kool-Aid man, and we're like, Please tell your plot to a history. Have a reason for your setting. Yes.
Emma
So I think we just... I think there are sometimes... I go back and forth I'm like, Is there ever a reason to not have specific history in your historical romance? I think the more I read, the more I prefer it. So people are take it or leave it. But I think here it works really well because Vaughn connects how the love story is being told to the history. That's the thing. It's like, I don't want just Beau Brummel to walk into your salon and be like, I'm Beau Rommel. Or people don't even do Beau Brummel anymore. Everyone's doing Lord Byron now, I think, because people don't know who Beau Brummel is. But I think it has to... Something has to... There has to be a connection. This is the appeal of historical romance. And I always think this is why so many Waterloo books read social manners novels, because it's stark when that form is... That ease of form, like social manners of social graces in these salons and parlors. It is narratively interesting when that ease of life gets interrupted by this huge trauma. So Waterloo books take this specific form because the historical event lends itself to this type of narrative.
Beth
Well, it's a striking image, too, of that party that they have right before. And this war is literally bearing down on them. And they're like, Let's have a party. Oh, look, there's Nelson. Right.
Emma
So it makes sense that those Waterloo books take the same form over and over again. And then here, I think it makes sense. She's uniting Gothic form with a history that lends itself to the Gothic. And there's this union between the love story, the form of the novel, and then the history. And I don't think this has to happen in every book, because I do realize that this probably is a lot harder than just writing to people who exist in a historical setting and just fall in love, to not have it connected to a specific piece history. Honestly, this part reminds me a lot of like, Meredith Duran and how she integrates specific moments in history to what's happening and how the love story is being told. I think it's probably harder than writing a wallpaper romance, but I appreciate when people put the effort into it.
Beth
Yeah. You were talking a bit about the trauma, and I'm like, that's what the Gothic is for. It's like taking that trauma and turning it into story or reckoning with it in some way. And then I feel like every place has its own version of the Gothic, because the American Gothics can be different from English Gothic. Because we just have different traumas as societies.
Emma
So I do have some history, just to explain, because I don't really go over this in the plot summary as much, but I reference some of these things. And so the history of the background of Haiti at this time period, because, again, like Vaughn does so much research, and she has a work site at the end of her author's note. So we get quite a few historical figures in the book. There's the President, Florvil Hippolyte, who ushered in a period of relative stability when he became President in 1889, which is right before when the book starts. And then Frederick Douglass is also there, who served as an ambassador to Haiti for two years. So the main political event that the book centers on is the United States' attempts to secure a naval presence in Haiti at Mole St. Nicholas. I probably said or something in French. But they're trying to do this through intimidation by docking warships in the Bay. This was like a holdover. This was like a policy. I think Teddy Roosevelt, be silent and carry a big stick. This is before that, but it's like this is a main theme of US naval policy.
It's like, put your ships by people and know that we're big. So Hippolyte became President with the help of the backing of the US, and his hesitancy to rebuff the US is directly seen in this book, where he's not sure, and Roget references this, the US helped him become President. So Rear Admiral Bancroff Gherardi basically attempts to circumvent Frederick Douglass's relationship with Haiti by intimidating the local government with demands and naval presence. So he's sending messages directly to the Haitian government, which should be coming through the ambassador. So it's this white military man overriding Douglas's relationship with Haiti. When the Haitian government finally responded firmly after the US attempts at gunboat diplomacy, the US ended up blaming not on Gheradi's unsettled intimidation tactics, but on Frederick Douglass's diplomatic efforts. And then we see in the book, Douglas being recalled from Haiti by the US. So he loses his ambassadorship over this incident that basically was not his fault at all.
Beth
I'm glad you brought it up because I didn't look too much into the history, but the only thing I read was talking about Frederick Douglass and the author was like, This is largely seen as a stain on his career. Do you know what I mean? His public life. And I was like, okay, I guess.
Emma
Yeah, I think it's like this. Gherardi is just mailing letters to the Haitians, the Haitians and the Haitians eventually... So in the Haitian Constitution, it's against the law for... I don't know if this is still true. The Haitian Constitution in the 1890s that Hippolyte is the President under, it's against the law for any foreigner to own land on Haiti. And so that's the thing. They're like, this could be against our Constitution. We may not be able to form a government. Even if we wanted to give it to you, we couldn't because this is against our Constitution. And so that's the question in the book is, is Hippolyte going to kowtow the US government and override the demands, the wants of the Haitian people who have lived under this Constitution? So to connect to this is something people probably have heard about more. So eventually the US would establish a presence in the Caribbean in Guantameno Bay. That's the alternative site that they seek after Haiti doesn't work out, so in Cuba. And then also they occupy the Haiti for a period of 19 years between 1915 and 1934 under Marshall government. And they establish a corvée system of labor, which is de facto slavery for the purpose of public work.
So they're coming in, they're building all these things, but they're enslaving the population that's there to do them. And thousands of Haitians died during this occupation, either through political killings or deaths from forced labor. And this period basically is seen as the time period that allows for the populist dictators to come into power, so like Papa Doc and Baby Doc that are this, again, trauma on Haiti, that because they hate... The Haitians hate the United States so much, the dictators are able to come into power through this populism because they're characterizing themselves as anti the US. So it just... I mean, the history of Haiti is awful. The United States is a huge part of how awful it is because It's just been an island that has been... Or it's been a country on an island that has been taken advantage of by so many different places. And it's totally a racialized history, too. One of the reasons that people talk about... People point out that Haiti and the Dominican Republic have very different relationships with different countries because Haiti is a majority Black population, while Dominican Republic is often seen as more European because of the Spanish immigrants there.
And so it's seen as wider. And so sometimes the US is nicer to the Dominican Republic in its relations. Well, Haiti is seen as Black, and they do things like set up the corvée system of labor, which is awful.
Beth
A shout out to the US for being at the scene of the crime.
Emma
They leave Haiti for the day, and then they come back. And I mean, the reading of the corvée system is just... I knew vaguely about it, but it was very harrowing. And so I wish... This is something more Americans should know about because it was bad. So that's some history that was there. And Vaughn did a great job, I think, of integrating it. I As I was reading, I kept looking things up and being like, Oh, I want to read more about that. And then I would read more about it. And then the next page or something, Vaughn would have integrated stuff that I read. So it's like she just... She got... She nailed it. Okay, so the other big thing about this book, that I think Beth and I both were maybe surprised by because it happened so late, is this is absolutely a bodice ripper. So I think this is the bodice ripper I've read where the assault comes the latest in the book. I wasn't sure if maybe To Have and to Hold, it's similar, but to have it to hold, you know it's coming.
Beth
I think in the first third of To Have and to Hold. And this is in the last... It's right before the third act, I feel like. Yeah. So, yeah, this book is labeled as a bodice stripper. And I was like, did people mislabel that? Because you get so far into the book. You're like, I'm like, are people...
Emma
There are even all these things where Roget is like, I would never do that to a woman. So he characterized him as very anti that. And then he has this breaking point, and he ends up raping Lauren. So it is a bodice ripper, but it happens pretty late in the book. So that's also a warning to readers that it is a bodice stripper. It's not an opening scene bodice ripper, like The flame and The flower or something.
Beth
It's such an interesting way to approach it because I feel like you can play with the form of it. I don't want to downplay the rape itself, but much of the harm happens through this cyclical withholding, where Roget refuses to treat Lauren as his partner and his wife. So many scenes feel very similar in the sense that it's moving the plot forward, but Roget and Lauren keep running over the same ground in their relationship. And Vaughn offers that multiple reasons why Lauren should leave. She even has a nice man kiss her. I can't remember his name. He's Alexis.
Emma
Yeah, yeah. He's the rake-ish. I was like, If this was a modern novel, Alexis and Lucienne would run off together. Yeah, yeah. And we would get their sequel. Yeah.
Beth
He kisses her and he's like, I would happily take you as my wife. And she's I still love Roget. So I like that because I feel like Vaughn is offering up all these paths. And it just it leads to this, what is actually unforgivable for her, which is that Lauren discovers Roget married Lauren to protect Lucienne from his family. For her, that's like, I'm done. She forms that plan with Antoine to be like, Let's get out of here. Let's escape back to France. Even In this entire book, she assumes that Lucienne and Roget had been having an affair, which, but they never consummated it. I feel like Roget tries, which he only reveals to her at the end of the book.
Emma
He's like, Yeah. Also, he's like a surprise. He's like, Lucienne and I weren't even sleeping together. It's like, what did you do? What were you doing to make Lauren think that you were sleeping with another woman? It's like, You never came home to bed. He's like, How could you think this? And it's like...
Beth
And you would casually just be like, Well, I was out horseback riding with Luci4enne. And I'm like, Okay. But yeah, it was, I think, a really interesting way to approach it. What do you think? Yeah.
Emma
So I think with bodice rippers, a lot of times the mode is for the assault to happen, and then the book is the journey to correct that. Yes. But then I said Lauren forgives Roget pretty quickly. It was like, forgive is not exactly the right word. It's more like she moves on and she's like, I'm ready to talk about other things. I know that things are not going to be solved until we talk. The problem is that they haven't been talking, not that he raped her. She's like, This is part of the bigger issue. And so it's not that she forgives him so quickly. It's more like she's willing to talk to him. She even says, At this point, I can look at him and not scream, and I'm ready to talk to him. So the rape is not the origin of any of the problems, but one of the manifestations of it. So I went back to the Angela Toscano article that I love, A Parody of Love: The Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular Romance. I think we've shouted it out on this podcast before. And so I think this work is not unlike the rape in To Have and To Hold, the Patricia Gaffney book.
So Toscano calls the rape in that book a rape of coercion. She writes, The violation occurs not from ignorance of the other, a misconstruction of the other, but more distressingly from the hero's desire to know the heroine, ontologically as she's beyond her body, appearance, or social role. In this type of rape, the hero wants a reaction from the heroine, a response from her, not just physically, but verbally. The desire is encapsulated in the term forced seduction, which has been long used in genre parlance to eumphemistcally indicate any rape of the heroine by the hero. So how she describes this when she's talking about To Have and To Hold as distinct from rapes where a character has a... There's rape of mistaken identity, or what is the other one she calls it? I can't remember where the second one is. But it's this rape of finding out information, and it's almost like when the conversation isn't working, it's like the hero throws everything at the wall and it's like, I'm going to violate you physically because I can't violate your mind, which should sound familiar to have it to hold. This is what happens. Sebastian is inquisitorial rape.
He's asking her questions, and it's not working. So the violence is the natural conclusion, narratively, of Roget's resistance to speak to Lauren about anything that is going on. And then Lauren's own withholding of information about Gaston's rape of her because Roget rapes her as a response to Gaston revealing that he has slept with Lauren. So it's the manifestation of their lack of communication with each other. So then Roget breaks violently in trying to get a reaction Lauren in the face of the reveal that she and Gaston have slept together.
Beth
Yeah, that whole thing is interesting because while Antoine and Lauren are planning their escape, she tells him what happened, that Gaston has been... It is rape, too. I feel like that Gaston does to Lauren. It's just that he has blackmail on her. So she tells Antoine, and she's like, well, I could never say anything to Roget. And Antoine is like, well, I think you might be surprised by my brother. You should tell him. And she still refuses. So I feel like it's like a... Everything sets up to this moment of what you're talking about, a rape of Inquisition, or of knowing. Right.
Emma
And then the... So then I think you can see where the act works narratively, because I think this moment... Beth said that the breaking point is when she realizes that he married her to protect Lucienne, but she's only able to get to that point where she can ask that question directly, because she's now less afraid of losing Roget because she's like, he's not... She's like, she's like, has nothing left to lose. She's like, I'm just going to ask the question. Like, he's been dancing around it. Like, I've been trying to get hints or ask around it. She just asked Roget directly about asking him both about Reinette and the family, and then also about Lucienne. So she finally gets answers because she's like, I'm not... She takes him off the pedestal and she's like, I've lost him. And so I deserve answers. And that's the whole book. Up until this point, she thinks, I can't If I push him too hard, he will... I will lose him. And that's unfathomable to her. And so the violence actually gets them talking, which, again, is a part of this inquisitorial rape, narratively, as Toscano identifies.
Beth
Yeah. I'm glad you said that Lauren also has Roget on a pedestal. She wants this perfect romance, and she'll do anything to protect it, and doesn't know how to have real moments with Roget as well.
Emma
Yeah, and she thinks she's lost him to Lucienne, but readers know that he's not actually having an affair with Lucienne at this point. But it's more like she's lost him because she never had him, because he's not communicating with her.
Beth
Yeah, you want to throw him in the garbage multiple times throughout the book, which is the best, actually. When people say they want... When they're listing off all the problematic things, like a book, I'm like, But you should be mad. I should feel like I want to throw him in the garbage. That's the whole point. Yeah.
Emma
How many times is he... He's seduced by her or seduces her. And then she's like, Things are good now. And then she's like, But then he didn't come to bed the next night. You're like, roget!.
Beth
And that's so real, too. Imagine you feel like you finally got it together, like you settled the relationship in a way. And their physical relationship, at least in the first part of the book, is their main connection.
Emma
They can't stop having sex.
Beth
Yeah, they're both surprised by the passion they feel for each other. Lauren, I think, has some... I didn't know I could feel like this. Maybe some shame around that desire to have sex. Then Roget, I think, is surprised because he never really felt that for Lucienne. I think he thought it would be the same with Lauren, but he's like, No, I'm actually really attracted to this person. But I don't think he really figures it out until the end. Especially because he starts calling Lucienne his sister. Do you know what I mean? I think he finally gets the correct context for how he actually feels about this woman. We should talk about Lucienne a bit. Yes.
Emma
Okay. So Lucienne as the other woman. I loved her. I think if people hate other women plots, they should read this because Lucienne is awesome. Yeah. I was like, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop because I just thought in a typical Gothic, the other woman is going to be revealed to be ontologically evil in some way. She's holding something back or she's plotting the other woman's downfall. So there might be a reveal that she's sleeping with Gaston, or she's the one plotting against Lauren. But she just wanted to marry the guy that she thought she was going to marry. And I think that's a very normal reaction. They were engaged, and then she comes home, and he's married to another woman. These are normal feelings that she's had. So I like to have Vaughn never had Lauren's thoughts devolve into like, Lucienne's a slut for sleeping with my husband. Lauren mostly thinks about Lucien in terms of her own perceived inadequacy. She's like, I'll never be Lucienne. It's not that Lucienne is evil for stealing my husband. She doesn't even seem to hate Lucienne until the end when Lucien comes and talks to She's like, Don't come talk to me.
Because she thinks she and her husband are still sleeping together.
Beth
Yes.
Emma
Yeah. The cruelty is limited to Roget's inadequate communication with Lauren and then his initial betrayal of marrying Lauren to protect Lucienne. So I think this reminds me of how Sherry Thomas would write Another Woman. So I thought she was great and I wanted to hang out with her.
Beth
Yeah, she is great. I already started to talk about this. I love how Vaughn... I think in another book, Lucienne would get a terrible ending and Roget would be like, oh, I realized I never loved her at all. And this is my true and purest love for this person. But no, like, Vaughn allows him to recontextualize his feelings. And Lucienne is still an important person in his life. So I think in another novel, that maybe wouldn't have been handled as well. But I think Vaughn does it pretty naturally. And it makes a lot of sense for Roget's character. So you alluded to the scene. I like that Lucian tries to reconcile with Lauren near the end. Lucienne is always held up as the pinnacle of manners and the Haitian woman and the upper class society. But she steps in it near the end, where she's trying to offer this olive branch to Lauren, but it doesn't go well. So this is from the book, and this is Lucienne speaking. Lauren, he needs you now more than you know. All my life, I've lived in extreme luxury. I've been spoiled. I realized that, but I doubt that I could exist without it.
I I'm used to grand home and many servants. Her voice faltered and caught in her throat. He needs a wife who can work beside him and help him rebuild his family's plantation. Not on one who would be put on a pedestal. And so Lauren is fuming at this because it's a nice thing to say. It's like, I am a lady, and he needs someone who's not a lady. Like Rosie. Yeah, exactly what she said. Are you attempting to tell me that you are a lady and I am not? And what Roget needs at this moment is a wife who is not so much a lady. So it's just, it's perfect. And I feel so much for both of them. I love when... This is maybe bad. When someone wrongs you and you just feel so justified in your anger. It's the best feeling in the moment. I feel like I always regret it later when I'm like, I shouldn't have come back so strong. But I don't know. I went like an epilog of 10 years in the future and both these women can just be friends.
Emma
Yeah. I think they would definitely like Lauren to get along. And it's just like Lauren... Also, Lauren, again, she's just been in an earthquake. The house has fallen down around her. She's up in bed. She thinks her husband is still having an affair. There, even though they were just in an earthquake together. And she's like, Fuck you, lady. I don't have the time for this. She's like, This is bullshit. Please leave me alone. And it's like Lauren, finally... Because she's been polite to Lucienne up until this point. And she's like... Because they meet in public and they have to have all this... They have to be decorous. And finally, Lauren's like, No, I'm not doing this anymore. And then Roget, I think when he hears reports, Lauren tells him what she said to Lucienne, and he's like, Oh, my wife is a force to be reckoned with. And I need to apologize in a way that is real, and I need to think about this before I do it, before she's not just going to let me waltz back into her life.
Beth
But it's also Roget stepping in it. I feel like he and Lucienne come up with like, Yeah, Lucienne, you should go talk to her.
Emma
Go talk to her. She'll love that.
Beth
Yeah. I'm like, Man, you are just miss after miss with the one.
Emma
Where she's like, Yeah, why wouldn't you want to talk to Lucienne? She's great. Lauren's like, I hate her. Stop it.
Beth
Yeah.
Emma
So we can... I mean, we talked a little bit about Georgette already I think other side characters. Georgette is so fun. She is. I'm trying to think of other side... I mean, the brothers, the brothers are great. The brothers, all the servants are very well-developed. I think a side character is where Vaughn shines. I know her other book is set in New Orleans, Shadow of Bayou. So I'm definitely going to seek that one out because these are the two historicals that she's written. And I just think this was great. And I think Reformed Rakes listeners would really like it if you like her taste.
Beth
Yeah, this is like perfect reformed rakes book. I feel a way about Patricia Vaughn, the way I feel about Cecilia Grant, where I'm like, if you wrote another book, I would roll out the red carpet for you.
Emma
Yeah. I'm so on board with her. And I think it has definitely under 30 reviews on Goodreads. And I think I can understand why it hasn't been reprinted, because I imagine that publishers are hesitant to reprint a bodice ripper. But the Flame and the Flower is still in print. You can get an e-book of The Flame and the Flower.
Beth
Oh, I see that regularly when I go to a second-hand store.
Emma
So I would love for this to get a reprint, because I think people would really love it. It's definitely not the first Black historical, but it's very, very early in the timeline of Black romances. I imagine it's one of the earliest. It's got this sweeping epic thing in the '70s and '80s that is not happening Black characters until the '90s. It just is phenomenal. And so I wish more... I hope more people read it. And I'm hoping for a reprint. I don't know. Everyone should... Or even just like...
Beth
When you say reprint, also just being like digital because it was just... Also, hopefully, that would bring down the price of the book.
Emma
Right. The actual physical book. Yeah. I think it should be like an e-book or even reprint another edition of the physical book because it just deserves to be read. And it's just so up our alley. So hopefully our our listeners will seek it out and just love it as much as we did.
Beth
Yes. Let's get some reviews up. Don't rate and review us. Go rate and review.
Emma
Right. Go read the book and then go leave a goodreads or storygraph wherever you post your reviews. Yes.
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