Duh. I am deeply concerned you apparently never realized this before.
THERE IS MORE TO THAT SENTENCE, FOOL.
I think that this ties into the idea that we have discussed before, that wacky hijinks never seem as wacky when you're the one doing them. Because from your own point of view, they seem like the only sensible thing to do in the situation.
That's true, but I feel she has exploited the wide disparity between "what a character thinks is sensible" and "what is actually sensible" before to great effect. Like Richard and his cravat obsession in The Corinthian: just because he thinks it's terribly important to fix Pen's cravat before they RUN AWAY doesn't mean I'm not loling like mad. Whereas in this one, Kit WAS acting more or less sensibly, given the situation.
And simply because I was just thinking about PTerry, I think that the reason for this is that Heyer isn't detached enough from her characters in order to convey BOTH the idea that the POV character sees themself as acting sensibly AND that their behavior is actually hilarious. Her narrative voice tends to identify so closely with the POV character that we see the sensibleness rather than the ridiculousness of their actions because that's what they see; she doesn't have the ironic detachment of a PTerry or a Jane Austen that would allow us to see both.
I dunno, I think she usually does a decent job: there's the aforementioned cravat issue, or Sir Tristram hiding in the curtains in The Talisman Ring, or Gilly setting things on fire in The Foundling, all of which are totally hilarious but seemed like good ideas at the time.
I thought the part where Evelyn's mistress' mom came to demand satisfaction and then he had to be rescued by his "fiancee" was pretty damn hilarious myself :D
Heee, it totally was. However, that was funny mostly because it was dependent on his fiancee's awesome, not because of wacky impersonation hijinx.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-06-07 12:32 pm (UTC)THERE IS MORE TO THAT SENTENCE, FOOL.
I think that this ties into the idea that we have discussed before, that wacky hijinks never seem as wacky when you're the one doing them. Because from your own point of view, they seem like the only sensible thing to do in the situation.
That's true, but I feel she has exploited the wide disparity between "what a character thinks is sensible" and "what is actually sensible" before to great effect. Like Richard and his cravat obsession in The Corinthian: just because he thinks it's terribly important to fix Pen's cravat before they RUN AWAY doesn't mean I'm not loling like mad. Whereas in this one, Kit WAS acting more or less sensibly, given the situation.
And simply because I was just thinking about PTerry, I think that the reason for this is that Heyer isn't detached enough from her characters in order to convey BOTH the idea that the POV character sees themself as acting sensibly AND that their behavior is actually hilarious. Her narrative voice tends to identify so closely with the POV character that we see the sensibleness rather than the ridiculousness of their actions because that's what they see; she doesn't have the ironic detachment of a PTerry or a Jane Austen that would allow us to see both.
I dunno, I think she usually does a decent job: there's the aforementioned cravat issue, or Sir Tristram hiding in the curtains in The Talisman Ring, or Gilly setting things on fire in The Foundling, all of which are totally hilarious but seemed like good ideas at the time.
I thought the part where Evelyn's mistress' mom came to demand satisfaction and then he had to be rescued by his "fiancee" was pretty damn hilarious myself :D
Heee, it totally was. However, that was funny mostly because it was dependent on his fiancee's awesome, not because of wacky impersonation hijinx.