Customer Reviews

A Civil Contract

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Jo Beverly gives one of the best introductions I've ever read, and she's right -- you either love "A Civil Contract" or else you don't. I belong to the former camp because I not love this novel, I also think that it is probably the best Regency-era romance novel that Ms Heyer ever wrote. To begin with, "A Civil Contract" isn't what you'd usually expect from a Regency-era romance novel: the hero, Adam Deveril, has returned from the Napoleonic wars only to be greeted by the news that he has inherited a badly in-debt estate with his father's sudden death at the hunting field. A deeply honourable man with principles, Adam is willing to sell the estates and give up on his dream of marrying the love of his life, the beautiful and much pampered Julia Oversley. Fate steps in the shape a rich merchant, Jonathan Chawleigh. Mr. Chawleigh offers to help Adam settle his father's debts, save the estates and see that the rest of the Deverils are settled comfortably, if Adam will marry Mr. Chawleigh's plain and practical daughter, Jenny. And even though every feeling revolts at such a scheme, Adam finally agrees to the scheme so that his mother and sisters will be comfortable, and so that he can save his ancestral home. But will Adam be able to put aside his feelings for Julia and allow himself to feel some affection for practical Jenny? Or will he spend the rest of his life bitterly regretting that he had to give Julia up?

The novel centers on the first year of Adam's marriage to Jenny -- how the couple learn to live with each other, to understand each other and to cope with their families (in this case Adam's melancholy and slightly melodramatic mother, and Jenny's brash and over bearing father). Is their marriage a success? Does Adam come to love and value Jenny? I've always liked to think so. But not many readers have agreed; many believe that while Adam comes to value Jenny, all he feels for her is affection and gratitude. Whatever conclusion you come to however, it is undeniable that "A Civil Contract" is one the best, almost realistic look at an arranged marriage that has been recently written. Once again Ms Heyer makes us care for the principal characters involved and to hope that Adam really has come to passionately care for Jenny (as she so devoutly hopes that he one day will). "A Civil Contract" is a superbly written book, and is one that really should not be missed.

Georgette Heyer's talent for drawing true to life characters is no more clearly revealed in this bittersweet view of an arranged marriage, between a commoner and a land-poor Viscount. Julia and Adam are very much in love, Adam perhaps more particularly than Julia, but the exigencies of financial ruin obligate both to chose alternative paths, that is marriage to wealthy mates, to happiness.
Likeable Julia will always find happiness, as she is a loving and much beloved beauty, who if selfishly self involved, at least is kind to those about her. Adam is a somewhat different case, you may alternately like to bop him along side the head, er, pardon me, I mean box his ears, at his failure to realize the jewel he has acquired in his plain little heiress.
The real heroine of this novel, to our contemporary minds, must be the plump Jenny Chawleigh, and if a more lower class name you can find... Not only does she defy the Regency novelist demand that she be protrayed as a crass, mushroom, insensitive to others and living on her expectations of her fat coarse but beloved fathers largesse, she is lacking in all those qualities you usually associate with Regency heroines. New clothes do not suddenly turn the duckling into a swan, she remains as she appears at the beginning. She loves her husband and is bright, talented in her housekeeping and an honest keeping little thing. As they were to say in the parleance of the times.
Your heart aches with Jenny's as she intercepts the looks of the heartsworn lovers, she having just delivered the much hoped for heir, and know that Adam may be dutifully faithful to her, but his heart may always be elsewhere. But we live Hopefully everafter.
Adam, by the end of the novel, you have hopes may come to realize his dream of a life long love in his dowdy plump little merchant heiress bride, but it will never be the glowing heart rending first love of his youth. You will find yourself associating with that plump little practical wife of his, dutifully and desparately in love with her husband, and rooting that her hopes will eventually be realized. I think I am most reminded of the poignancy of Koen's book, "Through a Glass Darkly", a paean to unrequited love, albeit it in an earlier era of British History.
If you love the lighthearted Heyer romps full of detail on cockfighting breeds, horse numbers at the inns, and the alls well that ends well of so many of hers and others regency novels. This one is a shocker. It is a mature work, but a mature author, and in my humble opinion, the very best book ever written by Heyer. I couch this by saying I have no particular love of mysteries, so though I understand that many regard her mysteries as the best of her writing, and are the most valuable book seller wise, I absolutely live for a well written regency. And this is a regency through and through. Not a mystery in sight in this particular book, written to portray that interlude between the imprisonment of Napolean and his subsequent defeat the following year at Waterloo. As a result, this book would be a good one to be followed with a rather boring account, more of a historical narrative on Waterloo, called "An Infamous Army." which being one of my least favorite Heyer books. But that is another review.

I've been a Heyer fan for ages, and thought it was time to write some reviews, so I'm starting with one of my favourites.

A Civil Contract is a sad story, to a large degree. It encompasses one disappointment after another until well into the story, when small victories start to crop up, and you feel the inklings of a rosier future. Every tiny positive tinges the tale with a cumulative warmth that makes the final chapter wonderfully satisfying, and I never put this book back on my shelf without feeling there's something to be said for the gradual development of a profounder, more gentle love, over that impetuous passion found in the typical romance novel.

The characterisations are robust, and I particularly like the tension added by the little problems the principal characters deal with, and their resolutions. There's something very natural and organic about the hero and heroine of this book, and I can't help but revisit them at regular intervals.

Heyer's a master of historical fact, but is also able to maintain an idealistic view of the Regency period. Then again, this story is far from the usual formula of beautiful people finding beautiful love, and beating big, bad, ugly situations to make a beautiful future together that it's easier even than usual to forgive Heyer her rose-tinted view of a period filled with ugliness. This is the story of a mismatch that works, and it's a good one, at that. Read it, and if you like it buy it, because you'll want to read it again at some point.

This is my favorite of all the Georgette Heyer novels because, unlike most romance novels, it tells you what happens after the wedding, with all the trials and tribulations of a couple trying to build a life together. Like all of the heroes in Georgette Heyer books, Adam Deveril is a truly good guy who always does the right thing no matter how difficult. While Jenny might not inspire him with romantic passion the way Julia Oversley does, you never doubt that Jenny is the better wife for him. She truly has his best interests at heart and shares in his aspirations for rebuilding Fontley in a way that Julia never could. By the end of the book Adam comes to realize that you and you imagine they'll have many contented years togther. It's nice to see the shy, plain girl who's also smart and good-hearted win in the end.

I also really enjoy all of the supporting characters: Adam's lively sister Lydia, the sardonic Lord Brough, the hypochondriac Lady Lynton, and the debonair Lord Rockhill. Best of all, there's the generous, kindly, plebeian Mr. Chawleigh, Jenny's doting papa, who characterizes the newly forming merchant class that will slowly but surely be accepted into the ton.

This is a great book for those who want to know just how "happily ever after" comes about.

I absolutely adore Georgette Heyer's works and was looking forward to A Civil Contract. Having just finished it, I still cannot say whether I liked it or not. I was drawn deeply into the lives of the main characters, as I always am with Heyer, and her writing here was particularly moving and poignant. Jenny is truly admirable, as is Adam, in his way, but I grew increasingly impatient with his inability to see Julia for the spoiled, shallow, vacuous (and ultimately predatory) beauty she obviously was. A man of his substance should not have been so carried away by romantic fantasies -- and yet, aren't we all, sometimes? And although I often wanted to shake Adam or slap his face, how can one blame a man for simply NOT falling in love with "the better woman"? Of course, I applaud Heyer for revealing Julia's character to be as flawed as we knew it to be -- I constantly wanted to throttle her!--, and for revealing Jenny to be a true heroine worthy of the love and value Adam eventually offers her. All in all, a mature, realistic, and extremely well-written book, truly moving and bittersweet, and one I will remember for a long time -- but it did not give me that warm romantic easy feeling that I have come to look for from Heyer's works.