Someone decided it would be a good idea to re-release Mary Jo Putney’s debut novel, Dearly Beloved. They were wrong. It was not a good idea. This book should be put in the archives and only brought out as a bad example. I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This review is dark and full of spoilers.
Content warning – rape, sexual assault, internalized misogyny, verbal and emotional abuse
Here is the plot, with spoilers. Gervase Brandelin, Viscount St. Aubyn is at an inn in Scotland. He drinks too much. He thinks he is going to an assignation with a bar maid (who had invited him) but ends up in bed with a young woman named Mary. Mary’s father bursts in on them and forces them to get married. Gervase then rapes his new wife, who is terrified. He decides she is probably a simpleton rather than a whore, but abandons her anyway, leaving her with directions to apply to his banker for an annual income and a threat that if she ever comes to London or tries to contact him, he will rescind his financial support. He feels bad about the whole thing, so he runs away to India. Years later, the most beautiful, innocent looking woman in the whole of England, Diana Lindsey, is raising her son out in the country. She decided to go to London to be a courtesan, because she is bored and wants her son to be around more people. Her friend the retired courtesan introduces her to the courtesan scene. On Diana’s first night out, she meets Gervase and they are instantly attracted to one another despite the fact that his face is the one she sees in her nightmares, and he thinks she’s a whore. Diana is Mary, her father had drugged her and she had no idea what was happening that night at the inn. Diana enters into a sexual relationship with her husband/rapist/father of her child without telling him that he is any of those things. He is randomly sneering and suspicious of her because he thinks she is a whore and distrusts all women. When he finds out that she is his wife/victim/mother of his secret child, it confirms that she was the deceitful whore he had always suspected. They have more than one altercation in which no matter what Diana does or says, Gervase is angry and verbally abusive. Another man tries to rape and murder Diana and Gervase suddenly realizes he does trust and love her after all. Diana’s love was so pure it fixed everything.
Gervase Brandelin is emotionally and verbally abusive. The normalization of his behavior is awful. The message that the Diana’s love and gentleness could overcome Gervase’s scorn for women and turn him into a gentle and trusting partner is gross and dangerous. Gervase thinks of, or calls, Diana a whore a lot. I didn’t count, but it happened A LOT. He lashes out at Diana at the merest hint that she is untrustworthy. Why does he lash out? Because he is in pain – his mother sexually abused him, and he carries terrible burden of guilt he feels for raping his teenaged wife. Over and over again, his pain is used to excuse his behavior. When Diana gets angry at him, as any normal human would, not only does Gervase use her anger as a weapon against her, she views her anger as evidence that she herself is not perfect. Everything Gervase does should be considered a red flag and a deal breaker.
This is one of the books people who don’t read romance are talking about when they are surprised by consent in romance. Dearly Beloved was originally published in 1990. I read it sometime between 1990 – 1992, when I was in college. It was not my favorite book, and I wasn’t a fan of rape as a plot device, but I don’t think I recognized how deeply problematic it is. The idea that a woman would fall in love with and cure a man who was so deeply wounded that he lashed out in anger seemed normal to me. It seemed reasonable to believe that if you just loved them enough and never gave them reason to distrust you, it would fix their emotional hole and they would return your love and trust. A lot of women believe this. A lot of women find this story-line romantic. The book is full of so much angst and pain, but we also see how happy they can be together if Gervase would just accept that Diana truly is a paragon.
This book is founded on the idea that Gervase is a good person despite that little spot of rape and abandonment and all the emotional and verbal abuse. Diana (and the author) accept as true that Diana’s deception and the anger that she has held on to, are comparable to Gervase raping her, abandoning her, attempting to control her, and his constant jealousy and suspicion. The rotten cherry on top of this fetid sundae is the reason that Diana forgave Gervase – her pregnancy cured her anger.
I hated you until I began to feel my child move inside me. It was such a wondrous thing that there was no more room for hatred.”
She opened her eyes. “And to hold my son in my arms . . . it was a miracle. I decided then that any man who could father so sweet a baby couldn’t be all bad. Yes, you’d behaved wickedly, but that didn’t make you a wicked man.”
All kinds of women have found themselves pregnant after being raped, and I’m sure they have felt many different ways about the resulting pregnancy and child. But this, this is bad. So far this book has made the abusive hero a forgivable rapist, conflated protecting one’s boundaries with violently violating another person’s boundaries, conveyed the innocence of an infant to it’s father. None of these messages are ok. None of them.
Romance is a part of pop culture, and pop culture will always reflect who we are – good and bad. Dearly Beloved won a RITA for best debut novel, and it is on many people’s classics of the genre list. Even in 1990, this book should not have won an award, nor should it have been well regarded. It was and it will probably be loved and defended by people who read it now. I am grateful that I have evolved and no longer find misogyny romantic. The genre has evolved and I am so grateful that I have so many options when it comes to romance without rapist heroes or abusive heroes.