Friday 30 July 2010

A very late Character Connection (2)

Kitty Charing from the Regency Romance Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

To give you a bit of background information on Kitty's character, I will include a synopsis of the book:

Young Kitty Charing stands to inherit a vast fortune from her irascible great-uncle Matthew--provided she marries one of her cousins. Kitty is not wholly adverse to the plan, if the right nephew proposes. Unfortunately, Kitty has set her heart on Jack Westruther, a confirmed rake, who seems to have no inclination to marry her anytime soon. In an effort to make Jack jealous, and to see a little more of the world than her isolated life on her great-uncle's estate has afforded her, Kitty devises a plan. She convinces yet another of her cousins, the honourable Freddy Standen, to pretend to be engaged to her. Her plan would bring her to London on a visit to Freddy's family and (hopefully) render the elusive Mr Westruther madly jealous. Thus begins Cotillion, arguably the funniest, most charming of Georgette Heyer's many delightful Regency romances.


Young and pretty Kitty is a slightly selfish girl sometimes but this is made up for in her usual loveablely charming and generous nature. At first, Kitty is very unfashionable, living with her old Uncle who adopted her and tending to his needs but although she loves him, she wants to leave the house on a break for once in her life. Adding to this is his plan for his fortune to be Kitty’s dowry, which brings all her cousins visiting and proposing to Kitty. So, as she is very cunning and convinces her cousin Freddy to pretend they are engaged so that she can escape from her grumpy adoptive Uncle and visit London for the first time.This is  very different and somewhat difficult experience for Kitty, who has been raised in countryside seclusion with a dependance on literarure and she tries to learn to be independant and discover that her perfect love is very different from the stories she reads.

The conversations between her and Freddy (and their relationship) can be very funny, especially as Kitty is very new to London Society. Her kind nature leads her to helping people along the way such as her impoversished but beautiful friend and  her cousin who is fearful of his overbearing Mother and is afraid to tell her of his secret love.

I could not help liking Kitty and how she grew as a character in the book. If you would like a character that escapes Regency Romance novel heroine pre-conceptions then read Cotillion for a breath of fresh air.

2 comments:

  1. I read this Heyer quite a while ago, so I don't remember the plot so well but I did like how the relationship developed between Freddy and Kitty :) As I recall it was quite humorous!

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  2. @danya

    Yes, I loved the humour and light heartendness of it- it definitely says something when we remember the parts of a book that make us laugh!

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