To Have & to Hold
Show Notes
This is our second episode in our trilogy on Patricia Gaffney’s Wyckerley series. Published in September 1995, To Have & to Hold is the story of Sebastian Verlaine, the new Viscount D’Aubrey and Rachel Wade, an outsider to Wyckerley. Rachel, until very recently, had been incarcerated for ten years for killing her abusive husband. Sebastian and Rachel meet in strange circumstances for a romance novel: she is being arraigned for vagrancy, having no place to live after her release from prison, and Sebastian, in his new role as viscount is one of the magistrates overlooking this procedure. Sebastian is immediately struck by Rachel’s story and appearance and rather than have her sent back to prison, he offers to employ her as his housekeeper. But do not mistake this act as one of beneficence—he makes it clear that he has less honorable intentions toward Rachel. Join us on a fraught journey as we discuss prison, justice, and redemption.
Books Referenced
To Love & To Cherish by Patricia Gaffney
Forever & Ever by Patricia Gaffney
Cold Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas
Stormfire by Christine Monson
The Governess Game by Tessa Dare
An Offer From a Gentleman by Julia Quinn
Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas
Night in Eden by Candice Proctor
Works Cited:
A Parody of Love: the Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular Romance
Transcript
Emma
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that would stand up for you as a character witness in a court of law. I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance, the substack Restorative Romance.
Beth
I'm Beth, and I'm on booktok under the name bethhaymondreads.
Chels
My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance Substack, the Loose Cravat, a romance book collector and booktoker under the username chels_ebooks.
Emma
This is our second episode in our trilogy on Patricia Gaffney's Wyckerly series, focusing on the second book To Have and To Hold. Chels said in our last episode that we see each of these books dealing with one structural force of provincial life. The first book deals with God. The third book deals with labor. This one is about prison, literal and metaphorical. Published in September 1995, To Have and To Hold is the story of Sebastian Verlaine, the new Vicount D'Aubrey following the death of Geoffrey, into To love and To Cherish, and Rachel Wade, an outsider to Wyckerly. Rachel, until very recently, had been incarcerated for ten years for killing her abusive husband. Sebastian and Rachel meet in strange circumstances for a romance novel. She is being arraigned for vagrancy, having no place to live after her release from prison, and Sebastian, in his new role as Viscount, is one of the magistrates overlooking this procedure. Sebastian is immediately struck by Rachel's story and appearance, and rather than have her sent back to prison, he offers to employ her as his housekeeper. But do not mistake this act as one of beneficence. From the beginning of Sebastian's internal monologe, he makes it clear that he has less honorable intentions towards Rachel.
Emma
He is fascinated by the effects of prison on her personality, and he wants to know all the sordid details of both her abuse by her husband and the husband's murder. Rachel similarly understands the conditions that employment by Sebastian require, but is so fearful of prison that she prefers the coerced relationship with her employer to the idea of returning to a cell. What follows is one of the most compassionate romance novels I've ever read, about harming and being harmed, and what is required to develop past that. This was the first bodice Ripper I'd ever read, and reading it radically shifted what I thought what I wanted from romance novels. This book does depict sexual violence, and it is between the male love interest and the female love interest. I will qualify that compared to the other bodice ripper we have read for the podcast Stormfire, the sexual violence and physical violence in this book is significantly less extreme, and I personally found the discussion between Sebastian and Rachel about the violence enacted really empowering and restorative. But if you need to skip this episode and catch us next time, we understand. So before we get into the plot summary, I wanted to talk about our personal relationship to bodice rippers.
Emma
This is the second bodice ripper that we've done on the show. This is the first bodice ripper that I ever read. I read it, I think, in November of 2022, and I had been really trepidatious to read the genre. Even though I take a lot of my recommendations from Chels, and Chels reads quite a few bodice rippers, I was sort of scared of reading them. So I thought we could talk about sort of our relationship to this sort of subgenre in historical romance.
Beth
I read it in April of this year, and it was funny because we were talking before we started recording about how you kind of catch the bug of bodice rippers. Because I look on my goodreads and we were recording for Stormfire, and I must have just been like, I want another book like this, and picked up To Have and To Hold, but finished it a little bit before Stormfire. Yeah, kind of like Emma said, this kind of changed my brain chemistry a little bit. I don't know. It's like, oh, romance books can be like this. I don't just, they're fascinating to me.
Chels
I've, I guess I've kind of have a little bit of a reputation on TikTok for being like the bodice ripper dude because I read a lot of them and they really interest me. Something that I think is really interesting is the first time I read To Have and To Hold. I wrote my Goodreads review of it, and I've since returned to it many, many times. But looking at that, the first time, I was kind of struck by how almost apologetic I was about liking it. I feel like I was a very different person at that time. I had all of these caveats about like, oh, if you don't like this, if you're not comfortable with this. And I've kind of stopped speaking that way because as adults, you know what you're comfortable with, you know what you can handle. I don't think this is an immoral book. I'm far from it. Actually, quite the opposite. I think we might talk about this later, but I think this book is extremely feminist. I think those caveats kind of do a disservice kind of like, prepare people to look at it in an uncharitable light. And I want to trust people the way that I would want people to trust me to get it and not worry so much about people that don't get it.
Chels
So it was kind of fascinating to see how in the past few years I've completely changed because I would never do that anymore. I'm the least apologetic about it. So that's quite funny.
Emma
Yeah. I think those caveats are what scared me of bodice rippers for so long. Even though I don't find myself particularly sensitive to media. I watch scary movies, I watch violent movies. But something about bodice rippers seem like people are so tender about how they talk about them. And I think you can be tender with yourself, but I think sometimes it's kind of like a horror film trailer. The trailer is always scarier than the movie. But I was expecting, when I read this book, I was expecting to be upset by eroticized rape. That's sort of what I was expecting in bodice rippers, like if sex scenes in romance novels are erotic. And that's what I've gotten from the, I guess like 100 romance novels I had read at the point when I read this book, but that's not what I found in this book. I think other bodice rippers have different relationships with how they write sex scenes, but this book in particular, it's very clear about what's happening. Like when something is a rape, it's called a rape. And I found that sort of novel, and we'll talk about that sort of the labeling of things and why that's different in this book compared to some other books that have similar setups.
Emma
So as always, we're going to do plot summary and get into sort of so everyone's on the same page of what happens with what's going on in the book. Sebastian Verlaine is on his way to fulfill his duties as the new Viscount D'Aubrey. We see what his priorities are quickly on his way to one of those duties. Presiding over magsiterial criminal proceedings. He's also breaking things off with his French mistress in a carriage, pretty callously towards her feelings. He's not particularly motivated to take the role of viscount seriously and arrives at town hall late during the first of these proceedings. Sebastian defers to the other magistrates when it comes to punishment, even though he thinks they're being a mite too harsh. But then a woman appears before the panel. Rachel Wade has been charged with indigence, the condition of not having a fixed address. She has been unable to find employment after being released from Dartmoor convict prison. She had served a ten year sentence for murdering her husband. The magistrates are prepared to treat Rachel routinely, namely jailing her until the next assizes where her residency would be determined and she could be moved to a poor house in a parish that is responsible for her.
Emma
She was born in Dorset but married in Devon, where Wyckerly is. So there is a question as to which community has a duty to her. But Sebastian begins to ask questions of the proceeding, including questioning the utility of jailing someone who has already served a sentence for their initial crime. Sebastian's inner thoughts make it clear, though his intentions are not pure. He is fascinated by Rachel's steeliness and the accusation that she killed her husband, but he is also attracted to her subjugation and helplessness. The viscount suggests an alternative. Rachel's new crime is that she has no job and nowhere to live, so he will provide both of those things and employ her as his housekeeper. Rachel is clearly educated and a lady, so she has qualifications except for her conviction record. He puts the choice to her and she accepts rather than return to jail, which the prospect of clearly terrifies her, Sebastian introduces Rachel to her duties, but she approaches everything in the house with trepidation. Prison has had a profound impact on the way she interacts with the world. She's suspicious of comforts as illusions. She doesn't look people in the eye because she'd been trained not to by her guards.
Emma
He asks her what it was like in prison and she ignores him. And Sebastian quickly realizes that his plan to get under her skin as a form of coercive, and satisfying to him, seduction, will be harder than he realized. She just doesn't care enough to be bothered by his prodding. In Rachel's first POV section, she says deciding things was going to be a problem and we see what actually is her great anxiety about taking the role of Sebastian's housekeeper. She suspects or knows his untoward attention, though she doesn't understand it. But what she really fears is the act of making decisions. In prison all of her decisions were made for her and she describes decision paralysis. When she's presented with the simplest of choices, Rachel meets the household staff and they respond to her with various levels of trepidation and unkindness. The cruelest being Violet, a maid in her 20s, who makes it clear she does not feel compelled to follow the directives of the former convict. She does find some nervous allies in maid Susan and the agent of the estate, William Holyoke. Holyoke is a local man, so Sebastian is able to question him about Rachel's history, at least the parts that are public knowledge.
Emma
That her husband lived in a big house between Wyckerly and a nearby town. He had mining interests. He was much older than Rachel when they married, and he was bludgeoned to death. Rachel never confessed to the murder. Holyoke also reveals to Sebastian what kept Rachel from being sentenced to death. During the trial, it was revealed that Mr. Wade had sexual partialities that made the jury more sympathetic to 18 year old Rachel, who had only been married to him for a week. Sebastian finds himself motivated to stay in Wyckerly and away from the London season, both for reasons for estate management and because of Rachel. The revelations about her husband's abuse only increase his interest in unlocking her mind, though his thoughts about his way of going about this remain distinctly sinister. When Rachel's late to a meeting, he goes to her housekeeper's room and thinks through the process of a step that he believes to be inevitable. Their first kiss. He is moved by her vulnerability and image as a martyr. He will have flashes of something earnest, but is always immediately followed by thoughts of possession and control. He kisses her, she lets him, though she cries, and then he invites her to dine with him.
Emma
When Rachel can't accompany Sebastian to see a new foal because she has an appointment in town, she explains the conditions of her ticket for leave, which works similarly to parole. She must have regular meetings with administrators and continually pay a little of a fine to the crown. In town, Rachel meets Reverend Christy Morell for the first time. Christy then visits to meet with Sebastian, since Christy has just returned from his honeymoon. Christy reveals to Sebastian that Miss Lydia Wade, Rachel's schoolfriend, who is the daughter of Rachel's husband, lives in town and is very upset by Sebastian's appointment of Rachel. In one of his episodes of controlling behavior, Sebastian takes Rachel to town to purchase her clothes, leading to interactions with the townspeople that primarily embarrasses Rachel. During this trip, she goes to see her husband's grave. This seems to provide some closure to Rachel, and while graveside she meets Anne Morell. Anne is friendly to Rachel, and this enlivens Rachel more than anything else in the narrative so far, but she's deflated when she returns to Linton hall because Miss Lydia Wade is there to see her. Lydia is immediately cruel to Rachel, telling her the joy she got from picturing Rachel alone in prison, insisting Rachel did commit the murder.
Emma
Lydia lunges at Rachel, but Sebastian stops her. Lydia's aunt, who's also visiting, attempts to explain that Lydia has not been well and escorts her niece away. Rachel continues to be distressed and struggles to sleep that night, experiencing fretful dreams of her husband. This is the state that Sebastian finds her in in the sitting room. After initially comforting her, Sebastian makes it clear he's going to have sex with her, and Rachel responds, I hope I'm able to bear it. Sebastian realizes she means not only the sex they're about to have, but her entire life. She makes it clear to him that it is a rape, saying, I don't want this and asking if this is a condition of her employment. While he's undressing her, Sebastian asks, what did he do to you? Referencing Rachel's husband, but this is where he meets the great resistance, not in the sex act. She refuses to say anything in response, even as he continues to ask the question. After the rape, in Rachel's mind, we learn that she's experiencing some relief, the dread of weeks finding a release. Her only regret centers on thinking that sleeping with Sebastian precludes her friendship with Anne Morell.
Emma
Sebastian asks if he hurt her and clarifies "your body." Rachel responds, "my body survived, my lord, and seems to be functioning normally." Sebastian asks Rachel to strip and join him in bed and realizes, based on her responses, that this is something that her husband asked her to do in that moment as well. When Sebastian is chagrined, Rachel sees something underneath his callous shell. When he undresses her, he sees her scars from her husband's abuse, which were used as the mitigating circumstances in her trial. They have sex again in Sebastian's bed, but this time he focuses more on extracting pleasure from Rachel, focusing on her body, and this leads to more violent resistance in her mind, she is terrified at the prospect of enjoying any aspect of sex, and this is what takes up her thoughts as she thinks of her resistance. Sebastian then becomes petulant and fussy towards Rachel and finally does something he's been threatening. He throws a house party. The guests include Claude Sully, his sometimes friend and heir of Rachel's husband. When Rachel attends to the party, Sully uncoolly points out that she murdered his uncle. He toasts to her his uncle's murder enriched him, greatly embarrassing Rachel.
Emma
Sebastian insists they all dine together. While together, the friends and Sully push Rachel to discuss her prison term. She does matter of factly, and this falls short of meeting their craving for salacious details. Finally, they play a card game: truth that demands people share things about themselves and the questions again primarily turn to Rachel. Sebastian is surprised that she continues to reveal things about herself, wondering what her limit could possibly be to the indignity. The answer is when Sully asks her about evidence given at the trial, about Mr. Wade tying her to a chair and using a riding crop on her. This causes Rachel to bolt away. Sully asks Sebastian where Rachel's room is and if Rachel is his, implying exclusivity. Sebastian responds to the negative and Sully goes after Rachel, but Sebastian is quick to follow and he rescues her from Sully's assault. Sully is able to stab Sebastian, though Sebastian gets the better of him in the fight and kicks all the guests out of the house while bleeding profusely. Sully swears revenge. In her duties as housekeeper. Rachel expects to have to take care of the invalid Sebastian, but he now refuses her help at all.
Emma
He drinks and plays piano and doesn't take care of his wound. After five days of pickling, he finally lets Rachel tend to his wound and is clear that he's deeply ashamed of letting his friends goad her the way he did and the pleasure he took from watching her squirm, as well as parallels between their behavior and his own. He tells Rachel he was able to stop the evening and stop Sully because he knew the hatred he felt towards his friends was also a hatred towards his own actions. Sebastian questions Rachel's ability to move through the world without anger towards her circumstances or towards him. And she opens up about the conditions of prison that led to her lack of caring that precludes anger as an emotional state. They both sense a shift in Sebastian's interest in Rachel and her past that goes beyond prurience. So she tells them about the last ten years of her life while laying down next to him. At the end of her recital, Sebastian asks, who do you think killed Wade? And this breaks Rachel. Sebastian believes her innocence without a doubt, something even her family did not do. They fall asleep in bed together.
Emma
Sebastian and Rachel fall into a sort of domesticity. He gives her a puppy namedDandelion and talks to her about his estate. The relationship has shifted. Sebastian becomes interested in reviving Rachel, bringing her back to the living. And Rachel's non consent has also shifted. They both know she still has resistance, but it is stemming in part from the place of trauma from her first marriage. Sebastian is interested in seducing her, still with his aim of his own pleasure, but through supporting her pleasure on unraveling the secrets of her mind. This includes how she came to marry her husband. Rachel knew Lydia Wade school. Rachel had been sent there so she could move in the right circles to snag a husband, though she had more scholarly aspirations. Rachel met Lydia after finding the girl self harming. They became close friends, and Rachel was invited to the Wade house. Lydia had sung the praises of her father, but Rachel initially did not like him. He unsettled her by his interest in her, but then charmed and flattered her to the point that she had forgotten her initial reticence. He courted her and then proposed, and she was encouraged to accept by her parents because of Wade's wealth.
Emma
She was 18 and he was 38. Rachel blames herself for accepting the proposal, though Sebastian has a more generous read on the situation. She then skips the history of the weeklong marriage and explains how Wade was murdered and how no one else was in the home except for servants before their honeymoon privacy. Rachel also reveals that she did attempt to tell her mother about the abuse, but she couched the letter in such delicate terms that her mother believed Rachel was just explaining fear of normal marital relations. Sebastian then realizes that though at once he really wanted to know this, he now has no desire to know the details of Rachel's abuse. But he also knows that anything Rachel chooses to disclose to him, he would listen to. He offers to listen to her about the marriage as an act of atonement for his sins against her, but Rachel refuses in the moment and makes a reference to Sebastian doing acts similar to that of her husband. He is offended and attempts to explain that consent can be part of acts that look like violence in the bedroom, but she balks at this idea. On the trip to the post office in town, Rachel receives a package.
Emma
She opens it. There's a sigil representing the prison she was in. She becomes distressed, and Anne Morell finds her and invites her to tea. Anne makes it clear to Rachel that they are friends and that Rachel may use Anne's name to gain respectability in Wyckerley. Rachel tells Sebastian about the threatening package, and he believes that Sully is responsible for it, though Rachel believes that it is Lydia. Sebastian promises to speak to Lydia's aunt on her behalf and invites Rachel to his rooms that night, at precise time for another gift. When she arrives, he takes her to the bath and gifts her a hot bath. In his rooms, she relaxes, and he keeps himself from touching her, remarking that he ought to be given a medal for resisting temptation. She quips the order of the bath, and he's taken aback by her ability to make a joke. He thinks one half of his goal was to make her laugh, but it had never occurred to him that her making him laugh might be just as good. Rachel attempts to thank him for the gifts, but Sebastian tries to explain that thanks are unnecessary because what he's trying to do is make her happy at Linton hall, he begins to seduce her again, expressly seeking her pleasure.
Emma
For a time, Rachel seems to be fully consenting to the interaction, but suddenly declares, stop. It is clear this time the resistance is because she's afraid of her own pleasure rather than of him. She asks him to cease seeking her pleasure and instead take his own. After they have sex again, he tells her that he's falling in love with her, and she says nothing in response. In the next few weeks, Sebastian continues his care for Rachel, though he does not repeat his declaration. Rachel is confronted with a big decision as housekeeper when a new maid, Sydney Timms, who was taken in after her father was arrested for physically assaulting her, is underperforming on the job. After talking to the girl, Rachel realizes that the small rooms of the kitchen trigger Sydney because of the nature of her father's abuse, Rachel and William Holyoke conspire to have Sydney reassigned to dairy made duties harder work, but it's less time spent indoors. Rachel sees Sebastian talking to Sophie Dean, a woman from the village in his study, and is struck by jealousy of the young and attractive woman.
Emma
She worries about her dependency on Sebastian's affection, which still seems mercurial. The moment Sophie leaves, Sebastian kisses Rachel, then asks Rachel of her opinion of Sophie since he has decided to invest in her copper mine. Sebastian then takes Rachel for one more gift, boxes and boxes of newly published books, but in the same moment, he tells Rachel he's been called away because his father is dying and he must leave Rachel for a few days. While he is gone, she receives a letter that informs her that her ticket of leave has been remitted, setting aside her parole conditions, meaning she's free from all administrative punishment. While out and about enjoying her freedom, Rachel is told by Anne Morrell that Claude Sully is back in town. Back at Linton Hall, Rachel is sorting through the books and Violet, the surliest maid, arrives to work late and refuses a directive from Rachel to aid the task at hand. Violet's insolence reaches a breaking point and Rachel dismisses her. Rachel initially feels triumphant in her power, but Violet swears that Rachel will be sorry. When Sebastian returns, Rachel tells him about her ticket of leave and sacking of Violet.
Emma
He's earnestly proud of her, and while they're sitting outside, he suggests they have sex in the open air. Though nervous because of the openness, this is the most enthusiastic Rachel has been towards the prospect. She still shirks away from his attempts to give her pleasure until he binds her wrist with easily breakable lily stalks. Though she's not literally bound, the symbol of giving up her power opens her up. Additionally, Sebastian begins to make Rachel ask for specific acts rather than just taking the initiative himself. She's able to orgasm for the first time with him, but Sebastian sees a sadness after that he can identify, but Rachel cannot articulate. He thinks of asking her to tell him that she loves him, but he balks the potential hollowness of the request. They take a short trip to the seaside town of Plymouth, an almost false honeymoon under assumed names. Sebastian tells Rachel that the day before was his birthday, and she decides to buy him a present, a libretto of La traviata, one of his favorite operas. Their mutual affection and trust is established. So that night Rachel decides to tell Sebastian about her husband's abuse. The details are not related directly to the reader, but afterward Rachel thinks the worst has happened she's opened herself up completely, and Sebastian was going to hurt her.
Emma
Back in Wyckerly, when Rachel returns home after attending her duties, she sees Sebastian arguing with Louse, one of the administrators of her parole. Sebastian is insisting that there was some sort of mistake. Louse informs Rachel he has a warrant for her arrest because she violated the conditions of parole. None of the administrators received similar letters as Rachel. She attempts to show the letter of leave to Louse, but is missing from her room. Sebastian staves off immediate arrest and has a plan to figure out what is going on. But his father has died, so he must also go to his family's seat. As Sebastian is preparing to leave, Christy Morell arrives. He has another suggestion to save Rachel from returning to prison, Sebastian could marry Rachel. Sebastian laughs and Rachel blushes. Christy apologizes for suggesting it, but also tells Sebastian that Lydia Wade's aunt has died. When he returns to the house, Sebastian has to look for Rachel. She is furious with him for laughing at the suggestions that they married. He apologizes, but she insists that this is his true self. She knows that marriage between them is impossible, but she remembers him telling her that he was falling in love with her, and now he has made her feel cheap.
Emma
Sebastian realizes that all his encouraging of her to be independent has now made her independent of him. Sebastian has to leave to go to his father's funeral. During that trip to see his family, Sebastian spends most of the time thinking about Rachel and then decides he will make his home in Linton rather than the more austere seat of his family. When he returns, prepared to declare his love for Rachel and understanding that his saving of Rachel was a self interested act, he finds a note stating that she has left. But Sebastian also receives the news that Rachel has been captured during her escape attempt through Plymouth and now has been arrested. He is worried that she will attempt suicide rather than return to prison. Rachel is brought before the magistrates again. Only Sebastian is missing this time. During the proceeding, William Holyoke attempts to be a character witness, but his honesty about conversations with Rachel makes it clear that she was trying to escape punishment. Anne Morrell also advocates for Rachel's character, but to no avail. The magistrates seem prepared to send Rachel back to prison for two years. Then Sebastian arrives. She is furious to see Rachel in chains and Sully and Violet in the proceedings audience.
Emma
Sebastian seems to know that Sully and Violet are responsible for the false letter to Rachel, but Sully declares he has no proof. Sebastian then changes tactics and berates the magistrates for giving Rachel no chance of notice for her missing meetings or paying of her fine. Rachel owes a grand total of two pounds on her fine, and Sebastian immediately pays it. The magistrates are satisfied with the administrative demands of Rachel's parole, but still take issue with her attempt at fleeing. Sebastian's explanation for this is that she was there on his instructant to buy her wedding trousseau. Rachel won't let this lie stand, and Sebastian is at a loss of how to help her any further. Then Christie arrives with evidence related to Rachel's original case. It seems as though they're going to accuse Sully of the murder, but then Lydia Wade attacks Rachel with a pair of scissors. Sebastian gets to her and asks, why the hell won't you marry me? The next chapter opens with a letter from Lydia's aunt to Christy, revealing that Mr. Wade was sexually abusive of Lydia, causing her instability and extreme jealousy of Rachel. When she married Lydia's father, Lydia killed Mr. Wade.
Emma
As Rachel is recuperating from the attack, Sebastian tries to wear her down to accept his proposal, but Rachel worries he's doing it out of a misplaced nobility or duty. She knows he did not love her when he invited her to be his housekeeper. He admits that that was driven by his desire to sleep with her, so he tells her when he did first fall in love with her, a meeting concerning household duties. When one of the maids and Rachel shared courteous smiles, something she had not yet shared with Sebastian, which made him act out trying to display cruelty so he reports to her that he fired a stable boy, though Sebastian actually had a good reason for it, that the boy hit horses. But in the moment, in the meeting, Rachel responds by attempting to understand Sebastian despite no evidence for his good reason or that he would have potentially had a good reason. Rachel's last resistance to the proposal is that she's a fallen woman because of her status as a convict. But Sebastian assures her that the title of countess will wash away any past that she's anxious about. She agrees to marry him.
Emma
Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about is the courtroom scene. There's a speech. I keep calling it a speech because it feels like a speech, but it's actually an internal monolouge that I think is the moment that I sort of fell in love with the book. And it's also, I know it's one of Chels's favorite moments. So we're going to start with the inner monologue from Sebastian, then also talk about some of the things that he articulates out loud. So I'm going to have Chels read Sebastian's little inner monologue
Chels
He felt pity for her and curiosity and an undeniably lurid sense of anticipation. Against all reason, she interested him sexually. What was it about? A woman, a certain kind of woman, standing at the mercy of men. Righteous, civic minded men with the moral force of public outrage on their side that could sometimes be so secretly shame facedly titillating, he thought of the hypocritical justices of England's less than glorious past. Men who had taken a lewd pleasure in sending women to the stake for witchcraft. Watching the pale, silent, motionless figure behind the bar, Sebastian had to admit a reluctant but definite kinship, not with their sentencing practices, but with their prurient fervor.
Emma
Chels, why do you love this paragraph so much? I think this is even the part. This is how you sold me on this book, was this paragraph.
Chels
It's so honest. I think this is kind of the thing that we keep coming back to, and we'll kind of keep coming back to this when we're comparing it to other books. But the fact that Sebastian is so aware of where his interest in Rachel is coming from and is so honest with the reader where it's coming from to begin with. So it's not just like an abstract cruelty. It's a recognized titillation. It's like a watching a train wreck kind of thing. The excitement that he's getting from it. It just feels like you're listening to someone admit something that people don't admit. And it just felt so novel. I don't think I've ever read a romance novel that did that. And I've read ones that are very violent. But this one, just like the way that we get into Sebastian's mind, the way that he is so explicit with how he sees Rachel, what his interest in Rachel is, and he just wants to toy with her.
Beth
It's crazy, his self awareness. But the lack of self reflection is just like, such a crazy dynamic to have in a character.
Emma
Yeah, I love this paragraph. So one of my party tricks is that I can always tell when an author has a legal background. Patricia Gaffney, I don't think she has a JD, but she did work as a freelance court reporter, which I think is a very interesting career to be able to write these court scenes and obviously has some interest in the legal field. I don't know her legal history, or she did study literature, and so I'm sure she has a ability to do scholarship. But I do think this connection is so interesting. So many of the people who wrote British common law, especially about rape and violence against women, were also the ones who were writing the common law that allowed witchcraft to be prosecuted. Most famously, Sir Matthew Hale. I wrote about this in my newsletter, but he's the one who created the marital rape exemption in common law. He's also notorious for sending people to the stake for witchcraft. He has all of these legal theories, but what proves witchcraft? He argues that because we have laws against witchcraft, that's proof that witchcraft exists. It's like very circular logic. I don't know if Gaffney has Matthew Hale in mind, but there are very specific people who, obviously, Matthew Hale, who has all this common law jurisprudence about prurient, sort of controlling women through sex acts in this connection to witchcraft.
Emma
This connection is very historical. And, like, when I read this paragraph, it just was like, oh, wow. That plays out in history, that these things connect. The other thing I connect it to is the interest in true crime. I think sometimes we talk about true crime now as this new phenomenon, but I don't think watching a woman's body be violated or in pain or subject to systematic violence is a new thing. And I love that Sebastian's indictment is really biting, but no one escapes it. So not him, but also not the reader who may be reading the scene and wondering, what did this woman like? What did her husband do to her? And so I love throughout the book, there are these moments where if you spend too much time wondering the details of Rachel's abuse, you kind of get wrapped up. It aligns you with Sebastian over Rachel because you're watching her not reveal all this to you. And so that interest is both something that you sympathize with. You're like, oh, I kind of have that. Like, you want to know what's going on with Rachel, but you're not totally innocent from that sort of prurient interest in following her for this tintillating reason.
Chels
Doesn't he compare her to Hester Prynn, too?
Emma
Yes. I think in the paragraph right before this, when it comes that it's like that this is, like, tale as old as time for him, that there are women who are also. Because the other thing is that in the courtroom, she's the one who's being accused of being violent, but everyone knows that she's the victim of violence. And so there's that tension between she's getting the consequences of criminal consequences, but everyone's interested in her because she was the victim of violence.
Beth
I think this is, like, your connection to true crime, I think is an interesting way for Gaffney to have the reader connect with Sebastian in a way, because he's definitely not a sympathetic or empathetic character in the beginning, so you have to build up that connection in some. It's. I like what you said about the true crime. I think that's how the reader connects.
Emma
To, like, even if we're not doing bad, are we're interested in bad things being done to someone, to just knowing the information is still kind of on the sliding scale of bad acts. Yeah.
Beth
And I think how we get that information changes with, like, as his relationship changes to her and the framing of when he's actually interested in Rachel as a person, sees her as a person, wants to support her. I think our relationship kind of changes there, too.
Chels
And I think that's why Gaffney starts with Sebastian's point of view and keeps it going for so long, because we are kind of, like, voyeurs of what's happening to Rachel for the longest time, and then we finally get her point of view, and it's definitely kind of, like a little bit of a shift there. But I think there's an interview, too, where she said that she had to start with Sebastian because she had to put the reader aligned with Sebastian. There was no other way that you could do it. Like, if you were going to start with Rachel's point of view, it just wouldn't work.
Emma
who is this guy I hate him?
Beth
Oh, I think that's so smart. You think of all the shows like, say, breaking bad, you're like rooting for straight up villain. But it's from his point of view. So you're just. He just had cancer and then things went awry.
Emma
And I love Sebastian. It's like, he will not let. Every time he's about, he's doing something nice. They're like, oh, this is his moment of redemption. He's like, I'm not doing this for good reasons. He knows that he can sell this to the magistrates because it's like, oh, he's doing this act of largesse. But also I think everyone in the room knows too, because it seems like everyone in Wyckerly knows they're sleeping together. Pretty quickly like it's this unspoken thing where it's like he gets to act as this patron of the lower classes. It's like this open secret. Like nobody is ever surprised that Rachel and Sebastian are sleeping together. It's just like, can we talk about it or should we not talk about it?
Beth
I think it's kind of a spoiler for the next book. But when she sees Sebastian and Rachel together, Sophie kind of relates their backstory of just like, yeah, they were definitely together even though she was, you know the housekeeper. But yeah, being an aristocrat wipes away a lot of sins and that's why they can be together. He's like an earl too. I know he has like the viscountcy, but he's also even higher than that. He's an earl.
Emma
Yeah. When his dad dies, he becomes earl of a different area, which is confusing because sometimes viscounts are like the sons of earls, but he's a viscount and an earl for two different reasons. The aristocracy is a mess. So there's one other part in the courtroom scene I wanted to talk about because I think it shapes the whole book. So I wrote about this a lot in my newsletter that I wrote about this book because Sebastian brings up theories of punishment. He questions whether the mode of punishment for Wyckerly should be rehabilitative or retributive. He asks this of another magistrate, and the magistrate says something like a little of both. And Sebastian then walks through theories of punishment and how they apply to Rachel. She's done a sentence for ten years as adjudicated earlier, so retribution has been met. She's finished her sentence as judged by her original court. And then her follow up crime that has led to this new proceeding is not really a crime, but a condition, as Sebastian phrases it, her lack of permanent address. So what are we really aiming to rehabilitate her from putting her back in prison, just continues to have her not have a job or a permanent address.
Emma
The solution would be to give her a home. And so that's how Sebastian argues his scheme to the other magistrates. But this is one of the first books that I've ever read. I think one other book that I've read does this, that sort of pulls out these theories of punishment in such explicit forms. And this is a lot of what I write about is which theories of punishment are being played out in romance novels. That's why the romance novel, the newsletter, is called restorative romance after restorative justice. But Sebastian is using the words rehabilitative justice and retributive justice. But I think the arc of Sebastian with Rachel is much closer to restoration, where he has to figure out how to fix things for her. And also with Rachel, the question is, because she didn't actually kill her husband, what are we rehabilitating her from? What's the retribution for? But I think just calling these words out seems to be a big arc of the book that Sebastian is aware that there has to be justification for actions, especially when it's from a system.
Chels
That's why I feel like this book is so much more interesting, because you have a lot of historical romances where someone is accused of a crime that they didn't commit, so they're actually innocent, and then so you're kind of on their side the whole time, because, you know, they're actually innocent. And I think to have him to hold makes the case that it really doesn't. Like it matters in some way, I suppose. But I think, honestly, reading this whole book, I think if Rachel had killed her husband, I think most readers would be like, enough.
Beth
Okay.
Chels
Yeah. And so that's, I think one of the things that makes this book really special, particularly like displaying the ticket of leave, which I guess, seems very similar to how the parole system works here.
Emma
Yeah, parole comes from the penal colonies, so that's why they don't call it parole yet. And so the ticket of leave, but it's similar to parole in the function or administrative checking in afterwards. But the word parole exists in the penal colony, so that's the distinction. But they functionally work the same.
Chels
And then there's so many things that happen to Rachel that are just kind of seem to prime her to put her back in the position where she starts. So she doesn't have a place to live. Therefore you go back to prison. It's kind of like the same things that we see, today, we're like, oh, you have to say that you were in prison, so therefore, it's harder for you to find a job in certain states. All these sort of things that you can kind of tie back to present day American judicial punishment.
Emma
Yeah.
Beth
I'm like, how little has changed actually
Chels
Just.
Beth
I like what you said, though, that it doesn't almost matter if Rachel did kill her husband or not, because I think Gaffney drives this home even further. When we find out that it's Lydia, and Lydia's also a victim, it's not like this satisfactory moment. Like the way. And you're reading a mystery and you finally find out who the murderer is. It's not like that feeling in a mystery book. It's just like, oh, another victim.
Chels
Yeah. Would enacting any sort of suffering on Lydia, how would that make anyone better? How would that make just. It's just very clever, very empathetic way to portray all of these and Lydia. Like, when we see Lydia throughout the book, even though we're giving these. I almost said clues. They're not clues. Like, people are straight up being like, Lydia's not. Okay, but her cruelties, her single minded obsession with Rachel for, like, making Rachel suffer after everything that Rachel has further suffered. Like, we're not really primed to be on Lydia's side, but a victim is a victim. She doesn't have to be sympathetic. What a situation. What a life.
Emma
Okay, so now I want to move to of. Because it does take us a while to get to Rachel's POV. We are with Sebastian for a long time, and sort of the first thing that Rachel tells the reader about herself is that she cannot make decisions anymore, even simple ones with no real consequences. I didn't realize this until reading it this time, which is, I think, my third time reading it, that actually the first thing we see Rachel do is exactly that. She makes the decision presented to her by Sebastian to be her housekeeper. So there's a discussion to be had about whether that's actually a decision. But even for Rachel, I think being able to say out loud, like, I will go with you, feels like a big leap. Even if it's a coercive decision, obviously, she does not want to go back to jail, and that idea is so awful that this makes the choice more straightforward. But I think something else is going on. For Gaffney to have these be really the first two pieces of information that we have about Rachel's state of mind and her actions, like, the level of distress that decisions cause for her and the level of distress that prison causes for her, that would make this decision to go with Sebastian so much easier.
Chels
Yeah. I think when I was first describing this book, I called this a choice that is no choice at all. So that's kind of how I reconcile the two. So it's either prison, which Rachel is desperately afraid of and has decided she would rather die than return to, or allow Sebastian to violate her in an unspecified, though you can kind of tell way. So in the early days when she's at Linton, Rachel is often thinking, like, what will he do to me? And then, while it's a source of distress, she also thinks that she thought she was impervious to everything. Now, short of locking her up in the cell again, what could anyone do to hurt her in any deep or lasting way? Nothing. And yet she feared Sebastian Verlaine. So she has this sort of disassociation from her body, like the idea that there's nothing Sebastian could put her through that would hurt her, is the starting point of the book, long journey, where Rachel indulges in more tactile pleasures, like physical touch, the sun on her face, petting a dog. Rachel's initial difficulty in making choices kind of stem from her traumatic experiences, where they were stripped from her.
Chels
But the early choice to go with Sebastian is because she kind of believes herself to be invulnerable and that pleasure and pain are experiences that she's immune from and that she is kind of like a husk of a person.
Emma
Yeah, I think the watching Rachel make choices, I think that's something that Sebastian also has to figure out, because, again, he's thinking, I'm going to be the worst thing for her. And it's kind of like, Sebastian, you're not that important to Rachel at this point. He's so convinced that he's going to be the thing that she's worried about. And it's much more like, what's she going to do with the curtains? How is she going to give people directions? These are the things that cause her paralyzing fear. So whatever Sebastian does is not going to be as bad as what her husband did. And even if he did what her husband did, she's not going back to prison. That's the goal. She will accept anything to avoid going back to prison. And Sebastian watching Rachel learn to make decisions. And also his goal is for her to be independent. He wants to teach her to be a person again. He sort of takes on this weird goal, which he's doing for his own sexual pleasure, but also, it becomes, like, this very sweet arc where he's trying to teach her how to make decisions. Of course, what ends up happening is that she ends up making the decision to try and leave him.
Emma
That's the part that's like, I guess I have the most sympathy for Sebastian in that moment where someone else has a worldview that just is so different than yours and you cannot factor yourself into them. And Sebastian keeps trying to. He keeps trying to figure out what is he doing to Rachel? What is Rachel responding to him. And it's like he's just kind of a non factor for her until he starts being kinder to her or incredibly, incredibly cruel to the point where he becomes disgusted with, like, it has to be so extreme that Sebastian, he sort of gets untethered.
Beth
He eventually makes that discovery that kindness is what really gets to her. And before there's this part in the book where Rachel's, like, relaying a time in prison where she went to the infirmary because she had some sort of sickness and the nurse just rubbed her back or something and she sobbed. So, yeah, that's just Gaffney casually breaking me reading this book.
Chels
Yeah. When they first meet and they first have that relationship, he's just like another in the long line of men that have abused. Think that I have that quote. I think from the moment that you were mentioning Beth. It's, like, on the bottom here. Yeah.
Beth
I took a picture of it on my phone because I have, like, the physical copy of the book. It's so cute. Sorry. Keep going.
Chels
It had taken him an unconscionably long time to figure out it was gentleness that devastated Rachel, not ruthlessness. Now he wondered if there was an ancillary lesson to be learned as well. That gentleness could disarm the seducer as well as the seduced gut punch me.
Emma
It's so hard. Gaffney is so smart at that where it's like you're watching Sebastian be kind. But it's also he's being kind to control her. And it's like, as the reader, you're reading it, you're like, oh, you're waiting for the moment where you can start rooting for Sebastian. And it's like he does not want to give it to you. He will keep reminding you. It's like he is doing this for prurient reasons. He's doing this because he wants to control her. He wants to hurt her. He's not even sure at certain points what his goals are. And he's, like, losing his mind a little bit. Of, he's like, I'm supposed to be this way, but I'm actually feeling this way. But it works so well because I think it's a very back and forth that it feels like real life in a way where you're like, the arc is so natural in the back and forth. It doesn't feel like there are beats to expect.
Chels
Yeah, it seems like he just wants a reaction from her no matter what. It's something that he has to work for even in the beginning days where he's being so cruel to her in a lot of ways. And it's not until that turning point, which we'll talk about this later, but the turning point of the game night where he realizes that, oh, I don't actually just want a reaction from Rachel. This sucked. I did not want this.
Emma
I made a huge mistake.
Chels
Yeah, that's, I think, kind of like the come to Jesus moment from him where he's like, oh, I care deeply about, like, what have done. Like, who am I? It's so wild.
Emma
Okay, so now we're going to talk about the rape scene, and I'm going to call this the sexual rape scene, which seems like an overkill of a phrase, but I think you'll see in a minute why I'm calling the sexual rape scene something different than sort of the structural rape scene, which is the game night we referred to. So Sebastian's assault of Rachel is not a one off, but the sexual rape scene comes first. So this is my first bodice ripper. I was really worried that I'd be reading the eroticized rape like I referenced earlier, but the gap in my expectations and the reality reminded me of two Alfred Hitchcock films. So the most famous sexualized violence in his filmography, and maybe in film history, is Marion Crane's murder in Psycho from 1960. It's a 45 second scene that is famously complicated to shoot. It took dozens of camera setups to film and includes 52 edits. The formal result is really frenetic and violent, not even considering the violence that's actually being depicted. But Sebastian's first rape of Rachel is much closer to the experience of watching the more polarizing Hitchcock film Marnie from 1964.
Emma
Tippi Hedren plays Marnie, a thief who has been employed by Mark Rutland, played by Sean Connery. Rutland blackmails Marnie into marriage and on their honeymoon she repeatedly denies his attempts at physical intimacy until he eventually rapes her. The actual rape is filmed the opposite of Psycho. It is so subdued that I have read the rape referenced as happening off screen, though I disagree. The camera focuses on Hedren's face and zooms in. She has a blank, thousand yard stare, and Connery's body is laying on top of her. Rutland just wants to know what drives Marnie to steal, and he spends the rest of the film doing a pseudo Freudian interrogation of her. The experience of reading Sebastian's first sexual rape of Rachel, to me is much closer to the experience of watching Marnie than Psycho. And I think this gets to the theory that academic Angela Toscano writes about in A parody of Love: the Narrative uses of Rape in Popular Romance. She classes Sebastian's rape of Rachel as a rape of coercion, as opposed to a rape of mistaken identity or a rape of possession, and argues that the rape of coercion has an element of inquisition, where narratively the hero probes the heroine's identity because she's a mystery to him, attempting to get a reaction out of her.
Emma
Like Marnie, Rachel's reaction to the sexual rape is underwhelming to her assaulter. She comes across as cold and unbothered. I want to talk about our reaction to the scene for Rachel and what it means for Sebastian, and then we'll also talk about the more quote unquote successful act of violence against Rachel, which is closer to an actual inquisition.
Chels
Yeah, I love classifying this as a rape of coercion because that's absolutely how I see it, too, because Sebastian's early interest in Rachel, where he identifies with the prurient fervor of religious elites, is kind of a titillation from her distress and her memories. And it's also like this morbid curiosity that dehumanizes her. So even when he's engaging in some semblance of seduction, his interest is not fully with Rachel, but with Rachel's experiences with her abusive husband. So during the scene, he's, like, continually asking her, what did he do to you? And did he hurt you? Always, was there never any pleasure for you? So he's not really in that moment. Like, he's kind of like trying to figure her out and for his own salacious reasons.
Beth
Right. Kind of like Emma said. And as Toscano mentions, the actual rape is this cool, controlled act. And the brutality comes from Sebastian's questions. Like Chels said, tescano says the rape is inquisitional. In the latter narrative, Rachel does not respond either physically or verbally, leading Sebastian to realize that she will never answer him. It is the initial failure to garner a response from her through physical rape that leads to a verbal rape. So this is kind of what we've been hinting at. Sebastian wants to know Rachel's identity, and because he knows he won't get answers from her, he recognizes that his terrible friends will. So there are three friends, and Sully is the worst one when they question Rachel. So there's, like, this scene where he invites his friends over. We talked about in the plot summary. All four of them are there, and the whole point is to just. Well, I have a quote that I'll reference. So they question Rachel about punishment in prison. She excuses herself and says she'll come back. But she didn't come back. He had to send for her. After they'd assembled in the drying room, he didn't wait for Sully or one of the others to ask him to do it.
Beth
He did it on his own, deliberately, cold bloodedly. Because baiting Rachel was to be the evening's entertainment. Everyone knew it. The fact he'd lost his stomach for it himself didn't signify. On the contrary, it pointed to a new and dangerous weakness in himself he didn't like and was determined to snuff out sully, and the rest would be his proxies. While he regrouped, reminded himself of who he was and of what his purpose in life had always been. The pursuit of selfish pleasure. So this, like we mentioned, is a pivotal moment in the book where Rachel finally talks about what happened and is, like, this verbal assault, essentially. And Sebastian gets a mirror up to himself is the best way to describe it.
Emma
Yeah. And I think Chels has a quote about sort of what Sebastian's preamble to Rachel is for the game night. And I think this also makes it clear why the game night is more structurally a rape, even though he's not literally assaulting her.
Chels
Yeah, I just think about this quote all the time, because it's just. Not only it makes it clear, kind of like, that intentionality, but also just like, I think, kind of like, talking about Rachel's locked mind. Well, there's so much about her that Sebastian knows, but I'll just read it, and then I guess we can talk about it after. So this is before the game night. He had initially approached Rachel to have a gathering for the people at Wyckerly before he comes up with the much more cruel scenario of the game night, where he invites his London friends. So he ends up inviting an even more hostile audience than he was initially intending. But when he asks her to hostess for this gathering of people at Wyckerly, he notices that she's reticent. And then he says, you spent the last ten years in a small room by yourself. You've lost the ability to converse easily with others, and you're still nearly incapable of making choices, even simple ones. The good people of Wyckerly believe you're a murderous and you not unnaturally find dealing with them a trial and an embarrassment. You want to keep to yourself and attract the least amount of attention while you try to rebuild some semblance of a life.
Chels
If it were up to you, you would rather not organize and play hostess at a party for a lot of hostile strangers. And so, just when Rachel is starting to get relieved, he understands her. He understands where she's coming from and why she doesn't want to do this, where she thinks he's going to give her that relief. He then comes back and says, but of course it's not up to you, is it? It's up to me. So that's what makes the whole scene and the game night so much more chilling. The fact that he's entirely aware of every single source of her discomfort. He's so in tune with her and how she interacts with the world at this point, her unique challenges, and he decides to put her through this extreme trial anyway.
Emma
Yeah, this is sort of why it functions more like a rape, because I think also the condition of her employment. She understands she's going to have to sleep with him. And so even when she makes the lack of consent choice at the court, she's like, okay, I'm predicting I'm going to have to sleep with this guy. She's not predicting she's going to have to host a party for him, which is so much worse in her mind. And this is the scene that, when I read it, now that I've read other bodice rippers, this is the scene when I'm rereading the book, I'm like, this is the part that makes me feel like I'm reading a rape scene compared to when I'm reading Stormfire and I'm reading the really violent stuff. This is the one that feels like the closest to an unforgivable act on Sebastian's part, it's when I'm the maddest at him. It's when it's like he's the cruelest to Rachel because he knows exactly how bad it is for her and there's no really excuse for it.
Chels
Yeah. And just to give some context, like, if you haven't read the scene, if you haven't read the book, Sebastian has been spending the entire time trying to get answers from Rachel and not really been able to, or at least not been willing to kind of go to the lengths that they end up going to at this party. So the game night, they have this game called truth, where once you draw, somebody else will ask you a question. You have to tell the truth. And they game it to where Rachel has to answer way more questions than everybody else at the party. And they ask her more and more salacious details, like, what did you do in prison? How were you punished? What was that like? What did your husband do? Like, all of these things that are just, like, huge cuts to her, like, things that she hasn't really been able to speak about, that she now has to as part of her employment, due to these people who are way more malevolent than Sebastian. Like, his friends are so much worse than her. They have no concept of a future with Rachel, so it doesn't matter to them at all what happens to her that night.
Chels
Whereas Sebastian, while he likes to think of himself as someone who has no conscience, he envisions something with Rachel. He does see her as a person by this point, whether he has fully realized it or not.
Beth
Yeah, I think that's what is so hard to read about this scene, where it's like he could have just been detached and unfeeling the whole time, but it is because he's starting to feel. And he's starting to feel guilty and be like, oh, wait, this isn't actually how I wanted this to go. Or now that I'm seeing it, it's actually terrible. This is terrible.
Emma
And notably, the question that Rachel won't answer is what her husband did to her. She's talking about prison in much more detail than she was talking to Sebastian about it initially. It's like sort of her life before entering the house. She will talk about the indignities of that, and Sebastian's sort of surprised at the level of detail she's sharing. But the question that makes her run out of the room is the one about the week of her marriage, about a very specific act that was sort of reported that Sully brings up. And so it's like, this is the last frontier for information about Rachel, and this is her line that she will not share with just anyone, even if she's just trying to go through the motions of getting through the party. So before we move on to the parts where Sebastian is trying to fix things for his initial bad behavior, I do think we should talk about the dynamic that Sebastian and Rachel have that's certainly not unique to this book, but so often goes unquestioned. The romantic relationship between a titled man and a woman in his employ, or really any woman living in his house at his behest.
Emma
I've compared this book at length to Cold Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas because I feel like the sex scenes are structured very similarly, but that book is not remotely characterized like a bodice ripper. But I was wondering if either of you had examples from your reading of this dynamic, particularly of books that skirt the categorization of bodice ripper, despite this particular element of coercion with sleeping with someone who's dependent on you for their livelihood.
Beth
Yeah. In our group chat, I was like, I want more aristocratic characters like Sebastian because they would be more like him. I feel like so often authors are having these characters be, like, the exception, like, they're the exceptionally nice, rich, aristocratic guy, which I feel like it just would not be the case. I want authors to explore the ramifications of having someone in power. I think this is the trouble with romance sometimes, where you have your tropes and building blocks an author uses to build their book and then market it. Then when they write the book, they don't interrogate certain situations they set up beyond what the tropes are supposed to tell us about that situation. So I'm going to pick on The Governess Game by Tessa Dare to kind of illustrate this point. So, in the book, Alex is the governess to Chase's two wards. He's a duke, right? Like, he inherits the wards with the Duke. He's some level of aristocrat.
Emma
He's a duke, but also like, a crime fighter, right?
Chels
Right. Those are real.
Beth
Yeah, of course. So Alex is approaching, like, spinsterhood. So she initiates a relationship with Chase because she kind of wants to see what sex is all about. So later on in the book, there's the scene where they're at like a ball, I think. And Alex recognizes her former employer, like a former employer, Sir Winston, who had tried to take, quote, liberties with her in the past. She tells Chase Winston won't recognize her. And when he talks to him, Winston asks who she is, and she replies, I'm just a governess. And then Chase then replies, you're not just a governess. You're not just anything. Then Winston, understandably, is like, well, of course she's not just the governess. They never are, are they? Then Chase punches him, making it into a spectacle, which Alex tells him that's what he did. And he makes Sir Winston apologize to Alex. So after this, there's this conversation where Alex rightly berates him and is like, everyone's going to know that I'm your mistress. Like, that's what I am. And Chase counters, she's not his mistress. And it's a point of the book where the relationship is tipping into is this something more?
Beth
We can't share our feelings yet because feelings are scary. So Alex does this little speech to him, which when I compare it to, like a Gaffney speech, feels like a little underwhelming. So she says to him, Chase, you are a wealthy, well-placed man, the heir to a Duke. Society will forgive you anything. Women in my position are not so fortunate. We work for our living at the pleasure of the upper classes. The tiniest hint of scandal and we are ruined. Unemployable forever. That's the way English society works. Guess what Chase says to this? He says, then English society needs to do better. I'm not sure how to feel. Like, on one hand, I understand that Dare is leaning into a modern situation transplanted to the past and she's using it to further the emotional relationship between Alex and Chase to show readers how much Chase cares. But after this exchange, they have sex. And that's kind of like. Like this doesn't actually ruin her to my recollection, I don't think she gets ruined. The rest of the page count kind of think goes more to the relationship and then they have to save the wards who've run away.
Beth
So it's like this very surface level examination of a power dynamic that could have been like the whole book. This could have been like a whole book. And Dare just kind of throws it in there for one scene where I'm like, you could have just pulled this scene out, actually. So you didn't skirt close to addressing the power dynamic and just kept your book more at surface. I don't want to say it's like a surface level, but I guess that's what I'm saying.
Emma
Yeah, because it's like this is the scenario. Because I feel like this duke or titled Man/woman in his employee relationship, there has to be some reckoning with it. And the reckoning could be that Alex wants to have sex. That's a good enough reason to explain away the power dynamic. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it goes away. It's just that a. There's a reason to overcome it that makes it consensual or makes it. But if it doesn't get discussed, it's sort of just like laying there and then there are other books where it's like the power dynamic. The only thing that we know that explains away the power dynamic is that when we're in the POV shots of the heroine, it's like, oh, she's enthusiastic. It's like, oh, we don't have to worry about the hero taking advantage of her position because she's enthusiastically having sex with him. Every time that we have a sex scene and we're like, great, cool. Don't have to worry about it. But that doesn't mean that if she says no that he won't kick her out of the house.
Beth
Yeah, that's never talked about. Or even if we stick back with The Governess Game. You're in such a weird position as a governess. You're not a servant, but you're not in the house. You're in this weird halfway place. And I think that's like a really interesting thing to explore in a book. But very often it just is not even touched on
Emma
unemployable, that implies that Alex is thinking about her next. Like, presumably when Chase kicks her out of the house. she's thinking about it, but then it never goes.
Chels
Just the fact that the heir to a duke would need someone to explain class to him is very funny to.
Beth
I'm like, this is like, for the benefit of the reader and also for her to have the strong moment. Like, you don't understand where we're coming from. And I'm like, but he probably does.
Emma
He does and doesn't care.
Chels
He understands very well, but it just doesn't really affect him. He doesn't have to think about it. I guess, first before I move on to one that I compare more to having to read. We've all read offer from a gentleman. Right.
Beth
The Julia Quinn. Quinn.
Chels
Benedict's book.
Beth
Benedict's book, yeah.
Chels
So it's kind of like you wouldn't think of. I kind of feel like Benedict's book is a. Like, it's not explicitly a bodice ripper, but that's something that I kind of had talked about on TikTok before. Particularly when they were positioning Benedict to potentially be queer. Like, kind of like the complications and how you would really need to think about how you write Benedict if you were actually going to actually write the storyline that they do give him no idea what they're going to do with that. I feel like they might just throw it out the window entirely, which is totally cool with me. And I feel like would be fine with a lot of people because it's a weird one. So an offer from a gentleman is a Cinderella. Retelling Sophie is an illegitimate daughter. Something. Something. They meet up. Like, Benedict's chip on his shoulder is absolutely second son syndrome. He acts like he's extremely oppressed because people know that he's a Bridgerton, but they don't know which Bridgerton,
Beth
which fair, there's eight of them!
Chels
They're just like, oh, it's one of them.
Emma
You can always develop a personality. That's always an option.
Chels
Yeah. Right. And they show. They make him an artist, but in the book, he's an artist, but it's in scare quotes. It's not like a thing that he's working towards.
Emma
It's just like there's a profession.
Chels
Yeah, it's just like, at one point, Sophie sees the sketches, and he's, ah, sometimes. But the thing that makes it a bodice ripper is that when he gets this sexual interest in Sophie, he puts her in this position where she had done something, where he says, okay, well, you're going to either be my mistress, go work for my mom, or I'm going to get you in prison. And so it's just like, Sophie's like, what kind of choices are these? And it's kind of similar to. A little bit similar to how Sebastian deals with, like, he's just like, look, you don't really have a choice. There is no choice here. Your life could be over as you know it, or you could do this thing. Know is marginally better. Hopefully, you don't know. But because it's the Bridgertons and because there's kind of, like, this glamor around the. Like, they're kind of presented as being a very moral and very wholesome family that Quinn doesn't really treat Benedict as being villainous in that way. So that's something that I kind of think about a lot when I'm thinking about how people are so intense about bodice rippers, and I'm like, y'all read bodice rippers all the time.
Chels
You just don't read ones that make it explicit. What's happening?
Emma
Yeah.
Beth
I feel like the pushback only comes when the author explicitly frames, like, hey, here's some harm. So we actually have to work through the harm.
Chels
Right.
Beth
It's like, if it's not brought to the surface, everyone's like, what are you talking about?
Emma
That's how I feel about Cold Hearted rake, where it's like, there were times when Devin and Kathleen hook up. I don't know if they have sex early.
Beth
She's not that housekeeper.
Emma
What is, is she's the widow of the old earl.
Beth
Oh, she lives in the dower house.
Emma
Yeah. Or she's going to. She's in the house. She's, like, raising the sisters. And it's like, so her issue, she has, like, three reasons that she could be kicked out, because she did not consummate her marriage to the first earl. So she's really afraid of being kicked out for fraud. She's like, I wouldn't get a dowry or I wouldn't get a dower portion if they realized that my marriage wasn't consummated. So she's afraid of telling him about that. She's afraid of him in general. He's a rake. And she's afraid because she argued with the earl before he went horseback riding when he was drunk and dies. So she's also worried he's going to be. Yeah, don't go horseback riding if you're a bad person. So she's worried she's going to be blamed for the death of the first earl, and she would be sent back to Ireland, where that's, like, her next closest relations. And she hasn't been in Ireland for years, so she really has nowhere to go if she can't stay at the house. So she's really interested in staying at the house, and he's really interested in getting rid of the house.
Emma
That's his whole plot is like, I want to sell this house. The estate has too much debt, and so he's seducing her while he's planning on selling her home and sending her back to Ireland. So it's very much like, where she's living is very dependent on him, and it's never addressed as part of a coercion or a power thing between them. He looms over her in a very masculine way, but it's like any sort of power dynamic is masculine and feminine, not owner of house and guest in house. So, yeah, she's not a servant, but she is financially.
Beth
She's, like, dependent on him.
Emma
Very dependent on him.
Beth
Why am I not surprised? Kleypas frames it as, like, a masculine feminine.
Emma
If you read older Kleypas, it's like that are much closer. Even her books that aren't quite bodice rippers, this one feels like a throwback in a lot of ways, and I think it makes it more interesting. I like this book, and I think once I started thinking about it in terms of a bodice ripper, I actually liked it more because the couple is incredibly boring without that element. Honestly, the book is kind of boring, but I like it as this connection to Lisa Kleypas bodice ripper early days, but it's never announced. And that's the difference between this and To Have and To Hold have it to hold, where it's like, things are called what they are and To Have and To Hold . So that's my Kleypas take for the episode.
Beth
Let's do night in Eden, which is, like, much closer To Have and To Hold .
Chels
Yeah.
Beth
In scenario.
Chels
Yeah. So there's this other book, Night in Eden, by Candice Proctor. It's not as good as tab and to hold, and I think I actually have real caveats for this one, but it's really interesting to think of them kind of, like, in comparison to each other because they're quite similar in a lot of ways. So in Night in Eden, Bryony is transported to a penal colony in New South Wales for murdering her husband. So at the time she's transported, she's pregnant, but she loses her baby shortly after she arrives. So Hayden St. James, who's the hero of the like, recently lost his wife, and he essentially purchases Bryony from the penal colony to serve as a wet nurse for his son. Apparently, this was a thing that was very, very common for women prisoners. So Bryony's position is, of course, very precarious. She's much less than a servant in the scenario. She doesn't have the option to leave or to say no to St. James. So he initially distrusts and dislikes her. Also, he's worried that she will harm his baby, but he's also attracted to her at the same time. So there's actually that real intense bodice hostility to this, even though I think you couldn't really call it one.
Chels
So this is a source of heightened tension in the book as they're in this really, really remote location with mostly each other for company. While Bryany can say no in this book and she does, she also can't really say no. It would be an untenable situation if it was sustained for, like, years and years to be indentured to someone who repeatedly remarks on their physical attraction to you and who tries to accost you. So because we get Briony's point of view, we see that she's also attracted to St. James. She sees that she's also loving her life, she loves the baby. She's, like, coming into her own. It kind of stops it from being like this bodice ripper. But, like, Bryany's situation and Rachel's situation are not that different. They are both kind of like, stripped of everything. They're stripped of their choices. They're stripped of their dignity. As women who have been arrested for the crime of murdering their husband, they are kind of suspect, treated with hostility and prairie and interest. So there is kind of like a lot that are so similar in here, but it is handled very differently because Briony in book eventually consents.
Chels
But it's also kind of like, if you looking how forceful St. James was and trying to get to that place, like how she's in this isolated, remote location. If she wasn't interested, what would have, like, all of those thoughts kind of come to me when I'm reading that.
Emma
So I guess ending with talking about giving consent. Eventually I think we could talk about what Sebastian does sort of earn Rachel's consent. And I think something that's interesting in this book is that the consent is not given in one go. She sort of starts feeling more warmly towards Sebastian. But even she thinks, as he's sort of trying to attempt seduction through kindness or warmness, she's like, well, I haven't really given my consent to this either, but this is different. And if I have to make the choice between violence and this, I'd prefer this. There's a stage of that before she sort of enthusiastically consents. And so I guess the arc of Sebastian earning Rachel's consent and sort of the actions that he takes and whether it's successful. Because I feel very warmly towards Sebastian by the end of the book. But then every time I start the book over, I hate him again. And so I wonder if I have been duped or tricked by Sebastian, because I guess this is the only bodice ripper that I've read that I like. The hero by the end of the book, which is a unique experience where it's like, I don't.
Emma
In Stormfire, I don't like anyone by the end of the book. And in the Woodiwiss books, I like. Again, I sort of don't like anyone. I'm just exhausted and drained by them. This book feels, like, triumphant at the end. And I'm wondering. I'm trying to parse out, I guess, for myself what makes that happen. And I think it must be something Sebastian does, because my feelings about him change the most.
Chels
Yeah. Something that I think about a lot. Because a lot of reader reactions to this book are this book is untenable because Sebastian is unforgivable. Like, what he does is you can't redeem him. And something that I kind of started to think about with this book is it's not just looking at Rachel as someone who's been harmed by a carceral system, like, someone who society is talking about rehabilitating or whatnot, but how you look at Sebastian, like, does Sebastian deserve love? Does Sebastian deserve happiness? Does he deserve this happily ever after? Does he deserve to have Rachel feel about him this type of way? And I think if we're going to look at Rachel with these eyes of, like, if you killed your husband, it's okay. I don't see why we can't similarly kind of come to that conclusion for Sebastian, that people aren't inherently awful. You can get to a different place. You can kind of have these complicated feelings about people. People can do extremely bad things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're worthless or that they don't deserve to change in your eyes, that something that you do is going to haunt you for the rest of your life, and that nobody should ever forget it.
Chels
Like, and that's kind of the more uncomfortable thing to acknowledge. You know, even if Rachel did kill her husband, I think a lot of people would be like, well, he deserved it. Rachel absolutely did not deserve anything that Sebastian did to Rachel. But if we're kind of, like, getting into this space of just, like, rehabilitation, it's not just the rehabilitation of Rachel. It's the rehabilitation of Sebastian as well.
Beth
I think one of the turning points for me as the reader when I'm about Sebastian, how I feel about Sebastian is so after he's been stabbed and he's having not just recovering, but a long night of the soul for several days, he's just like, what have I done? And there's this moment when he's talking to Rachel, and I think he's kind of explaining why he's changed emotionally when he's talking about that night and what happened. And there's a point where he's like, you know what? I wasn't even going to verbally apologize. I was just kind of going to allude to it. But actually, no, I apologize. I'm sorry that this happened to you. And I was like, honestly, that's, like, the very first baby step, and I'm there for it. And I think that's right at the moment where it changes, at least for me, where I was like, yes, okay, Sebastian, you got this. Baby steps.
Emma
I think something Chels said, I think, made me also think about. It's like, Sebastian doesn't need to be forgiven by everyone for everything. He needs to be forgiven by Rachel for things he's done to Rachel. I think Rachel's life up until this point, it makes sense that she would only trust someone with this information about her who is capable of great harm. She doesn't tell Anne. She doesn't tell Christy. She doesn't tell these two people in her life that are incredibly good to her about the abuses of her husband. She tells someone who's going to feel bad about it. Sebastian feels bad as someone who has done bad things, and that seems important to Rachel, and it also seems important to Sebastian that he not protect himself from hearing that information, whereas, like, Anne and Christy, as friends to Rachel, would not have to have. I don't think it would be hard for them as empathetic people to hear from Rachel, but it would not be hard for them to hear because of things they've done. And I think that gives Rachel some control in their relationship that she wouldn't have in other relationships because you have such feelings for Anne.
Emma
And we talked in the last episode about how Christy Morell is, like, the greatest romance hero. Like, the greatest in a way that's, like, boring, right? He's, like the perfect man in some ways. I want Rachel to be with that kind of guy, where it's, like, someone who would never do anything to hurt her. And we just know that from the jump, I could set her up with that kind of guy. But Rachel seems to want someone who would never hurt her because he's capable of hurting her and chooses not to, and that seems important for that. She trusts that more than someone who just would never hurt anyone.
Chels
I love that
Emma
it's kind of on Rachel to decide, I don't have to forgive Sebastian. She gets to
Chels
Rachel.
Emma
I do love her. We call this a feminist romance novel. I think Rachel's steeliness and the way that she talks about prison and moving just how scared she is of that system, I think confronting that system and her power in that is what makes this feminist.
Chels
And then, too, we haven't explicitly talked about kind of after. Sebastian kind of sees himself for who he is, kind of part of his about face, which is also kind of, like, part of why, as a reader, it's a little bit easier to be like, they make sense together, is kind of like he refocuses that energy into, like, he says he has two goals. He wants to make her smile, and he wants to make her come. Oh, wait. He says he's.
Beth
No, that's right.
Chels
He wants to make her laugh.
Beth
Makes her laugh,
Chels
And he wants to make her come, putting all of that energy that he had before into making her uncomfortable to peeling her back like an onion. He puts into doing that, and it is just gesture after gesture after gesture after gesture. He's, like, buying her clothes. He's building her an orangery. He's getting her a dog because it was, like, one of the small comforts that she had had in prison is she once saw a dog briefly. So he gets her a dog, but then after getting her a dog, he takes it to the next level. He logistically plans for the dog because he knows that would be something would be very hard for her if he just got her a dog and was like, here's a dog. She's like, I don't know what to do with the dog. It's just like all of these things added up together, just kind of make it. And then also how he's not infallible after that. He's gotten to this point where he's thinking of her and he's doing all of these things, but he still makes that big, huge third act mistake where he laughs when Christie suggests that he marry Rachel.
Chels
And it's not so much like Rachel. Like she says she's not, oh, I know you can't marry. Like, that's not why I'm upset. But you embarrassed. Like, you made me uncomfortable. You made me feel lesser than. And we're at this point now. Everything that you have done, everything that you've showed me, is where I don't need that. That's not something that I need to deal with.
Emma
In my plot summary, I noticed when I was writing it how often I say, and then Rachel is embarrassed, and then Rachel is embarrassed, and then Sebastian embarrasses Rachel, and then the last time he embarrasses her, she's like, I don't have to do this anymore. This is unacceptable. And now if you're going to have a relationship with me, you can't do this. And he has to move past that. I also like the part you brought up about him devoting himself to her pleasure, because I think that's maybe another part where I sort of turn onto his side, because it's like her consent is still not totally formed there, but it's because she's so terrified of having an intimate relationship. Her non consent transforms from being afraid of violence in a relationship to being afraid of the intimacy. And so they both sort of want to move past her non consent. It's like she wants to be able to have a relationship with him, but she's still saying, stop. No. And he's like, okay, we'll try something else or I won't seek your pleasure. I'll just take mine so we can still be intimate and move past this.
Beth
Like, I get it, Rachel. It's like the harder you will fall, the farther up this kindness ladder you go. I can't. I think that's why that final embarrassment is what does her in. It's like, because all that has happened, and now you embarrass me, like, no, thank you.
Emma
Go be an Earl.
Beth
You go be an earl. I'm leaving.
Emma
One last thing I want to talk about before we move on to looking forward is how much I love the scene that Gaffney writes where Rachel finally tells Sebastian about the abuse. Because the whole book, we've been wondering what the details of this are, and it's sort of like one final blow to the reader for wanting that information. I love that the reader never gets to know the details. It's an intimacy between Rachel and Sebastian. It sort of, like, codifies them together as a couple. I don't know if anything else to say about this, but Gafty does all these fun structural things like the letters or the diary in the first book. This feels like that sort of very thoughtful structure of information where it would be so easy for Gaffney to have paragraphs of details about Rachel's abuse from her husband, but she tells Sebastian it, but the reader never gets to know. I just love that.
Beth
Yeah, I love that. Sebastian at that point, he's like, he wanted to know about the abuse so much, but then he gets to a point where he doesn't want to know anything about it because it would just be too painful to hear. But obviously he hears it because it's like a big jump in their relationship.
Emma
I think he uses the word atonement, too. He's like, part of my atonement is listening to, like, give this litany of abuse.
Chels
Yeah, I love that, too. I love that. That was kind of like, you got what you wanted, right? And Gaffney's choice not to tell us what happened to Rachel, I think, kind of works in multiple ways. First of all, what we're imagining is awful.
Beth
It's so awful, and it's hinted at. It's not like we are completely in the dark.
Chels
Yeah, we have an idea of what happened, but we're just not getting the details, which I don't think we should be privy to. But if you are wanting to be privy to that, if you are just like, wait, what? What happened? What happened? What happened? That's kind of like putting you into the prurient interest like, that same camp. We are also the magistrates. We are also the people who are kind of, like, looking down on Rachel and judgment, like, wanting to hear her explain herself. If you did a crime, if you did something, explain exactly in grotesque detail why it was worth, like, all of these little cuts to the soul. So we're kind of looking for that from her, too. And. Yeah, no, I just thought it was very clever. And, yeah, I was like, Sebastian, I don't want to hear at that point. I think even after just, like, a single point of view chapter from Rachel, I was just like, I cannot. Every revelation, I'm not even sure if the revelation of what happened to her husband would have been more painful than the things that she divulges. That happened in, like, I think that kind of devastated me in a lot of ways.
Chels
Just like, the casual cruelty that everybody kind of is just like, oh, yeah, that's just what you deserve.
Beth
It was hard to listen to, I think. One thing that I think Jordan Peele said this about the ending of Get Out, where he had a different ending. Spoilers for Get Out, I guess, where Chris, the main character, I think he's just killed Rose and there's, like, flashing lights and you think it's a cop car because they're both like, she's dead on the road, or, no, she's not. She's dying. And I think she calls out to them what she thinks is the cops. Yeah, yes. And as the watcher, you're just like, what? But then it turns out that it's his friend from the TSA agency and he escapes. He lives another day. And Jordan Peele says the reason why he did that is because we do all the work of what's going to happen in our imaginations, so he could give a happy ending to his character. But also, we went through that horrible scenario just in our imagination. So I kind of feel like that's a little bit applicable to what Gaffney is doing. We don't have to hear what's happening, but I think we can imagine some pretty terrible scenarios.
Chels
We're horrified nonetheless.
Beth
Yeah, we're pretty horrified.
Emma
So we love Rachel, but this is the book that is in the middle of the trilogy. And so I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about sort of how this fits into Wyckerly at large and then sort of and preview what book is coming, because unlike the last recording, we've now all read the third book. So we're ready to talk about what the hints to Forever and Ever are. So Anne and Christie play a big role in Rachel's life, and Sophie Dean appears. So how do you see this sort of fitting into the trilogy? Did. How did you feel about Anne and Christie coming back? I always appreciate seeing Anne and Christie because they're cute together.
Beth
I feel like it makes sense for his role as the. Like, he is going to be supportive to people like parishioners, especially ones that are ostracized. Like Rachel. Sophie appears, I think, just as, like, a little preview for next book, but it still makes sense. And it does, like, narrative utility where she's jealous. I think jealousy can clarify your own feelings to yourself. But it turns out that she just has this mind. He wants to invest.
Chels
Yeah. So I guess first talking about Anne and Christy. So something that we talked about a lot in the last episode is kind of like how Anne sees herself. And so it was so interesting to see Anne through eyes, like, because not that much time had passed. It's not like they've just come back from their.
Emma
Yeah, like, they're on their honeymoon at the end of this book, or the end of the first book, we see them on their honeymoon and they return from Italy in this book. So it really is like a week.
Chels
And that kind of oddness that Anne had been talking about with herself, like, how she didn't quite fit in. She was a little bit weird. She knew that that is something that Rachel also is kind of like, oh, she's wearing this dress, but she looks pretty and cool and very. It's just, like, the most pleasant version of. And, like, Rachel is a very kind person. But I think that her judgments aren't false. They're not like her just being like, oh, yeah, that was a cute. I think she would probably remark on that if it wasn't right. So I thought that was very interesting. And then Anne reaching out to be friends to Rachel is huge for this book because it can't just be. You have no buy in of Rachel's happiness if it's just with Sebastian. It's like her getting a community, something that had been completely denied to her for her entire. So Anne, like, sticking her neck out for Rachel and Christy also, who encouraged the connection, who was like, I think you would really like Anne. And Rachel's like, sure. Like, she's not going to want anything to do with me. But, no, of course, they're very, extremely nice people.
Chels
So I think that is a huge part in Rachel's recovery, is that she can become a part of this community because she has that initial connection with Anne. She finally has a friend. I think someone might have mentioned this earlier, is that when she finally becomes Sebastian's mistress, she's like, the biggest thing that bothers me is that now I can't be friends with Anne because Anne won't want to be friends, which would.
Emma
Also make me sad. I want to be friends with Anne. If I met her, I'd be like, man, that sucks that I can't be friends with her. It also works out perfectly that Anne is the vicar's wife because that's the one position that can be friends with both a housekeeper and countess. Like, it makes perfect sense that Anne is going to be, like, the bridge for Rachel to sort of go between these class differences.
Chels
Yeah.
Beth
And it would be devastating for Rachel to lose. And that part when Anne's, like, you can call me by my first name, and Rachel's, like, riding that high of the next level in their friendship. And I was like, I just want a book of them being best friends together,
Emma
and Anne's standing up for her and the judges are like this means nothing to us, but you can talk if you want, Anne's like I will talk! I'll say how great Rachel is!
Chels
And then I just wanted to say one thing about Sophie. So you'll probably notice some similarities between how Sophie appears. So Sophie's a heroine in the third book that we'll talk about next time. So in the first book, Sophie's appearance is she's kind of on the fringes. There's this one point where Anne sees her, and Anne is, I think, 24 at that time, and Sophie's, like, 20, and Anne is, like, married to Geoffrey. Anne has suffered greatly. And so even though Anne maybe in some ways has lived in some ways, you could perceive it as being, like, a charmed. Like, she's just deeply depressed. She looks at Sophie, and she's like, this is what I want to get back to. This is what I wish that I could be right now. I want to turn back time. I want to be happy, beautiful, carefree. So she has this kind of, like, envy for Sophie, and that's something that Rachel kind of has, too. But although I guess you would call it more jealousy for Rachel where she sees Sebastian talking to Sophie and she's kind of, like, confused. She's like, what is this feeling do?
Chels
I'm feeling, like, what is this in my chest? Which is, like, a huge. It's good that she's feeling this. She has this proprietary emotion for Sebastian. She likes him. She's jealous of Sophie because Sophie is pretty and is there, and it's not necessarily anything to do with what's happening, like what her relationship with Sebastian is. It's just like purely business, purely brief. But it's mostly so Rachel can kind of remark upon the change in her mind, just being like, oh, wow, that was weird. I felt jealous. That's weird. I've never felt jealous like that over a relationship because she didn't want anything to do with Sebastian for the longest. So that's kind of what gets us into the third book. So now, the two times we've seen Sophie, she's kind of been this. She's been adulated, she's adored, she's beautiful, she's on this pedestal. And so something that Gaffney has said is that she's like, oh, I want to pull her down. So I put you in the right mindset for book three. Sophie's going to have a really hard time.
Emma
I love To love and To cherish. I love To Have and To Hold. I also love Forever and Ever. It's a three for three series for me. So I'm very excited to talk about Forever and Ever and also to read it again. Also, I saw this in the end of my To Have and To Hold, Forever and Ever initially had a different title. Did I was surprised they advertise it. Yeah. And I was like, this blows my mind. Forever and ever is such a good title.
Chels
Till death to us part.
Beth
From this day forward.
Emma
Yeah.
Beth
So it's like To Love and To Cherish, To Have and To Hold, From this day forward. And I was like, why didn't they keep that?
Chels
I think it's the symbol of the order. The and symbol because they all have the ampersand. So I think that might be it. It's something that we talked about or not talked. We didn't really talk about it in the episode, but we were kind of like, why is the first book to love and to cherish? Because in the vow to love and to cherish after, To Have and To Hold, it's To Have and To Hold, to love and to cherish. And the vow that they quote in the books forever and ever doesn't appear. I guess that's kind of like an optional. It doesn't have to be. So that's something that I noticed when I was reading it. I'm like, wait, that's weird that it's like, this order is weird. And then also forever and ever isn't there. But I guess we've solved one mystery, is that it was initially going to be from this day forward, but you'll still never know why the first one is to live and to cherish.
Emma
I do think the titles match up with the characters, even if order should be in a different order, where it's like, I do think those are the right verbs for the right couples for the first two.
Chels
I was trying to do that. I was trying to be like, okay, do these match these character? And I think I was just kind of being like To Have and To Hold and to love and to cherish felt very similar to me. So I'm glad that that makes sense, though, because maybe I'm just not.
Emma
I just think the theme of possession in this book, possession, a lot of my favorite romance novels talk about possessing again, I'll talk about Kleypas one more time. That's like one of my favorite things in Married by Morning, when Leo says, so, Leo the hero, very similar dynamic of employee, like titled man, employee woman, he says, you don't have to be mine, let me be yours. And that's sort of like the way that they problematize the power dynamic is like, he's not going to possess her, she's going to possess him. And so I think those verbs, I think, make sense for this sort of dynamic. And I just think a lot about how do we frame possession in a relationship and consent. And then I think love and cherish are so like lovey dovey. And I can associate those with Christie being sweetie pie.
Beth
Well, also, I feel like Geoffrey did love Anne in his own way, but like Christie cherished her and loved her and wrote terrible poetry for her.
Chels
I don't give anything to se, like all of his poetry.
Emma
I can imagine, Anne explaining it away to people in the village. Like, Christy is performing something and she's like, yeah, he does this. We love him.
Beth
Yes.
Emma
So thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you enjoy the podcast, you can find our bonus content on our Patreon at reformedrakes. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is at reformedrakes. Please rate and review. It helps a lot. Thank you again and we'll see you next time.
