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Birmingham #1
The Flame and the Flower
New York Times bestselling author Kathleen E. Woodiwiss debut romance…The FlowerDoomed to a life of unending toil, Heather Simmons fears for her innocence—until a shocking, desperate act forces her to flee. . . and to seek refuge in the arms of a virile and dangerous stranger.The FlameA lusty adventurer married to the sea, Captain Brandon Birmingham courts scorn and peril when he abducts the beautiful fugitive from the tumultuous London dockside. But no power on Earth can compel him to relinquish his exquisite prize. For he is determined to make the sapphire-eyed lovely his woman. . .and to carry her off to far, uncharted realms of sensuous, passionate love.
512 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1972
1699 people are currently reading
8908 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
52 books1,924 followersKathleen Erin Hogg was born on June 3, 1939, in Alexandria, Louisiana, she was the youngest of eight siblings by Gladys (Coker) and Charles Wingrove Hogg, a disabled World War I veteran. She long relished creating original narratives, and by age 6 was telling herself stories at night to help herself fall asleep. At age 16, she met U.S. Air Force Second Lieutenant Ross Eugene Woodiwiss at a dance, and they married the following year. She wrote her first book in longhand while living at a military outpost in Japan.
She is credited with the invention of the modern historical romance novel: In 1972 she released The Flame and the Flower, an instant New York Times bestseller that created a literary precedent. The novel revolutionized mainstream publishing, featuring an epic historical romance with a strong heroine and impassioned sex scenes. The Flame and the Flower was rejected by agents and hardcover publishers, who deemed it as "too long" at 600 pages. Rather than follow the advice of the rejection letters and rewrite the novel, she instead submitted it to paperback publishers. The first publisher on her list, Avon, quickly purchased the novel and arranged an initial 500,000 print run. The novel sold over 2.3 million copies in its first four years of publication.
The success of The Flame and the Flower prompted a new style of writing romance, concentrating primarily on historical fiction tracking the monogamous relationship between a helpless heroines and the hero who rescued her, even if he had been the one to place her in danger. The romance novels which followed in her example featured longer plots, more controversial situations and characters, and more intimate and steamy sex scenes.
She was an avid horse rider who at one time lived in a large home on 55 acres (220,000 m2) in Minnesota. After her husband's death in 1996, she moved back to Louisiana. She died in a hospital on July 6, 2007 in Princeton, Minnesota, aged 68, from cancer. She was survived by two sons, Sean and Heath, their wives, and numerous grandchildren. Her third son, Dorren, predeceased her.
She is credited with the invention of the modern historical romance novel: In 1972 she released The Flame and the Flower, an instant New York Times bestseller that created a literary precedent. The novel revolutionized mainstream publishing, featuring an epic historical romance with a strong heroine and impassioned sex scenes. The Flame and the Flower was rejected by agents and hardcover publishers, who deemed it as "too long" at 600 pages. Rather than follow the advice of the rejection letters and rewrite the novel, she instead submitted it to paperback publishers. The first publisher on her list, Avon, quickly purchased the novel and arranged an initial 500,000 print run. The novel sold over 2.3 million copies in its first four years of publication.
The success of The Flame and the Flower prompted a new style of writing romance, concentrating primarily on historical fiction tracking the monogamous relationship between a helpless heroines and the hero who rescued her, even if he had been the one to place her in danger. The romance novels which followed in her example featured longer plots, more controversial situations and characters, and more intimate and steamy sex scenes.
She was an avid horse rider who at one time lived in a large home on 55 acres (220,000 m2) in Minnesota. After her husband's death in 1996, she moved back to Louisiana. She died in a hospital on July 6, 2007 in Princeton, Minnesota, aged 68, from cancer. She was survived by two sons, Sean and Heath, their wives, and numerous grandchildren. Her third son, Dorren, predeceased her.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,282 reviews
July 20, 2011
In 1972, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss did what every writer dreams of doing—she wrote a classic novel with her very first book. The Flame and the Flower had it all—passion, conflict, adventure, drama, a setting that sweeps us from Georgian England to a plantation in the Carolinas, and unforgettable characters. She broke all the conventional rules of historical fiction by making the sexual relationship between her hero and heroine a vital component of their emotional relationship and in doing so, gave birth to the modern genre of the historical romance.
I was ten years old when The Flame and the Flower was first published, fifteen the first time I read it. Although I read it numerous times after that, I hadn't picked it up in years. So when I started re-reading the book to research this article, I told myself I'd treat it like an assignment and just read for an hour at a time. The prose was denser and much more detailed than what we've become accustomed to in recent years, but after only a few pages, I found myself thoroughly captivated. Before I knew it, three hours had passed and I still couldn't bear to put the book down. Thirty years after it's publication, The Flame and the Flower is still a deliciously readable novel, a quality it shares with another timeless classic, Gone with the Wind.
I was also struck all over again by what a fine writer Kathleen E. Woodiwiss is. To enter her world is to enter a time machine that transports you back to 1799, where Heather Simmons, our Georgian Cinderella, is being held captive by her aunt's cruelty until sea captain Brandon Birmingham comes storming into her life to sweep her away. Although Woodiwiss's descriptions are lush and detailed, her prose is never purple. You can almost hear the ring of poetry in her description of Heather's uncle: His hands were gnarled and twisted with the years of backbreaking labor eking a shallow subsistence from the marshy land, and the weather-thickened skin held the pain of the passing seasons etched in deep lines that furrowed his face. And the clean, evocative beauty of this sentence, which describes Brandon's ship as it makes its way to the Americas, is enough to make any writer in any genre weep with envy: Now the rigging sang in the wind and the ship strained as it chopped its way through frothy white caps. By setting her own standards so high, Woodiwiss challenged every romance writer who came after her to strive for excellence in their craft.
One of the criteria of an enduring classic is that it should be the first to do something, and in The Flame and the Flower, Woodiwiss succeeds on every count. So many of her innovations would go on to become the bedrock conventions upon which the historical romance genre would be grounded. Although her settings and secondary characters are vividly drawn, the relationship between Heather and Brandon always remains at the core of the plot. By trapping them together on an arduous sea voyage for much of the book, Woodiwiss succeeds in creating the perfect romantic microcosm. Many scenes that might seem clichéd now were sparkling and new thirty years ago: the heroine assisting the hero with his bath; the hero walking in on the heroine as she bathes; the hero nursing the heroine through a near fatal illness caused by his own insensitivity. Woodiwiss gives the hero a loveable wise-quipping brother, a loyal manservant, and a witchy ex-fiancée. Every man who meets Heather falls a little bit in love with her and in an eerily prescient twist, there's even a suspense sub-plot involving a brutal killer that drives the book to a heart-jolting climax.
Although less politically correct then some would prefer, the book is probably more historically accurate than many of the romances written today where all the young misses are feisty and all the gents are enlightened as to the rights of women. Yes, seventeen-year-old Heather is essentially a passive victim in the beginning and thirty-five-year-old Brandon is perfectly capable of being an arrogant jerk, but they both fulfill that essential criteria of good fiction—they experience personal growth and transformation during the course of the story. Heather finds her spirit while Brandon loses his heart.
Whether it be on Amazon.com or on a panel with other romance writers, you can't discuss this book or Heather and Brandon's first sexual encounter without waging the same debate that's been raging ever since Rhett carried a resisting Scarlet up those long, winding stairs in Gone with the Wind. I learned that firsthand in Harpers Ferry in April of 2002 when I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion comparing The Flame and the Flower to a "modern" romance. Some participants found the book enthralling while others found it appalling, but no matter what their opinion, it still evoked emotions every bit as strong as the passion Heather and Brandon share.
The controversy arises when, during their first meeting, a drunken Brandon mistakes Heather for a wharf prostitute. Both her explanations and her struggles are so weak and ineffectual that one can almost forgive him the mistake. He's quite remorseful when he realizes he's deflowered an innocent, but that doesn't stop him from taking her once more before she makes her escape. Is this shocking and wicked? Oh yes! But still stirring in this era where our deepest and most primal sexual fantasies have been sanitized and the definition of "feminism" seems to be have been extended to the area of censoring other women's fantasies. When Brandon tells Heather, "I've found with you, sweet, that when I want you badly enough I can overlook being a gentleman," my heart beats a little faster as I imagine him with the devilish glint of a marauding Errol Flynn or Clark Gable in his eye.
As Patricia Reynolds Smith, the academic who edited Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women with Jayne Ann Krentz, pointed out during our panel discussion, this is no forced seduction where Heather is made to experience pleasure against her will. Woodiwiss never once glamorizes rape. Heather despises it the two times Brandon has his way with her when she is resistive. It's not until he learns to show her tenderness and consideration after a long period of enforced abstinence that she comes to enjoy their lovemaking.
The one scene that fueled my own adolescent fantasies and has lingered in my imagination for over twenty-four years is the scene where Brandon first learns that Heather is carrying his child. After her vicious aunt slaps her and rips her ragged dress from her body, revealing her pregnant nakedness to everyone in the room, Brandon comes storming out of the shadows and sweeps his cloak around her. In that one thrilling and protective gesture, we see a shadow of the hero he will become.
Although Brandon can be a bit of a bully when crossed, from the very beginning of the novel he demonstrates a capacity for humor and irresistible kindness. He resents being forced into marriage, yet he buys Heather beautiful clothes, covers her when she is cold, has a tub brought on board his ship because he knows she cherishes her baths, and orders a special pair of long johns made to help her endure the bitter winter weather at sea. He also fulfills another crucial female fantasy that would go on to become a staple of our genre—once he lays eyes on Heather, he never wants or touches another woman.
Since The Flame and the Flower gave women their first chance to read about sex outside of the context of male pornography, I was amazed to realize how few sex scenes there actually are in the book. After Heather and Brandon's initial encounter, they don't make love again until near the very end of the novel. During the long sea voyage, we watch them slowly becoming husband and wife—denying each other sexual comforts, yet strengthening their emotional bond. We enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching them fall in love, not just in lust.
The sensual tension escalates through a series of tender moments such as the one where they exchange Christmas gifts back at Brandon's Carolina plantation, the scene where Heather is sewing baby clothes while Brandon reads aloud to her from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the funny and touching scene where their child is finally born. By the end of the book, you actually believe that these two could build a happy life together—built not only on physical attraction, but on mutual respect and love.
While Brandon is becoming a hero worth having, Heather completes her own satisfying personal journey. Her fiery confrontations with her husband don't defeat her, but strengthen her. No longer a passive victim, late in the book she even vanquishes the lecherous Mr. Bartlett, who manhandles her when he mistakes her for a bondwoman. While devoted slave Hatti hits the villain in the face with a mop, Heather stomps on his instep, then hurls a chunk of soap at his head, causing him to somersault off the porch. A fuming Brandon arrives, but Heather no longer needs him to rescue her. She has completed her journey from girl to woman and is now fully his equal and his match.
Both the power and pleasure of The Flame and the Flower are rooted in its retelling of the primal myths that reside in our collective unconsciousness. In the snippet of poetry that prefaces the book, it is not the flame that consumes the flower, but the flower that triumphs by re-emerging after being scorched by the flame. Kathleen E. Woodiwiss didn't just understand the "Beauty and the Beast" mythology on an intellectual level. She internalized it to such a degree that it infuses every word of both this story and her follow-up classic, The Wolf and the Dove.
And in Brandon Birmingham, Woodiwiss delivers a beast worthy of the taming. As Patricia Reynolds Smith pointed out during our panel discussion, in recent years there has been a tendency for romance writers to "defang" their beasts much too early in our stories. We're so determined to make our protagonists "heroic" from the very first page (possibly to stave off internet criticism of the ultra-Alpha male?) that there's very little room left for the personal growth that makes this book so satisfying and enduring.
And it is enduring. 183 reader reviews on Amazon.com prove that. As I scrolled through them, I was amazed by how many of them were written by girls who were around the same age I was when I first discovered the book. It seemed these young women could relate to both Heather's age and her coming-of-age journey during the story. This made me wonder if romance writers aren't missing some vital component of "growing the market" in our efforts to be more politically correct by prematurely aging the heroines in our historical romances. Perhaps the best way to win a reader's heart for life is to win it while it's still young and tender.
Whether you love The Flame and the Flower or hate it, we're still talking about it almost 40 years later. How many other romances will be able to make that claim? As I turned the last page of the book with a wistful sigh, I was humbled all over again by what a tremendous debt of gratitude we all owe Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Brandon Birmingham and Heather Simmons are truly the grandparents of all the historical heroes and heroines who came after them. At the end of the book, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss shouldn't have written The End, but The Beginning.
I was ten years old when The Flame and the Flower was first published, fifteen the first time I read it. Although I read it numerous times after that, I hadn't picked it up in years. So when I started re-reading the book to research this article, I told myself I'd treat it like an assignment and just read for an hour at a time. The prose was denser and much more detailed than what we've become accustomed to in recent years, but after only a few pages, I found myself thoroughly captivated. Before I knew it, three hours had passed and I still couldn't bear to put the book down. Thirty years after it's publication, The Flame and the Flower is still a deliciously readable novel, a quality it shares with another timeless classic, Gone with the Wind.
I was also struck all over again by what a fine writer Kathleen E. Woodiwiss is. To enter her world is to enter a time machine that transports you back to 1799, where Heather Simmons, our Georgian Cinderella, is being held captive by her aunt's cruelty until sea captain Brandon Birmingham comes storming into her life to sweep her away. Although Woodiwiss's descriptions are lush and detailed, her prose is never purple. You can almost hear the ring of poetry in her description of Heather's uncle: His hands were gnarled and twisted with the years of backbreaking labor eking a shallow subsistence from the marshy land, and the weather-thickened skin held the pain of the passing seasons etched in deep lines that furrowed his face. And the clean, evocative beauty of this sentence, which describes Brandon's ship as it makes its way to the Americas, is enough to make any writer in any genre weep with envy: Now the rigging sang in the wind and the ship strained as it chopped its way through frothy white caps. By setting her own standards so high, Woodiwiss challenged every romance writer who came after her to strive for excellence in their craft.
One of the criteria of an enduring classic is that it should be the first to do something, and in The Flame and the Flower, Woodiwiss succeeds on every count. So many of her innovations would go on to become the bedrock conventions upon which the historical romance genre would be grounded. Although her settings and secondary characters are vividly drawn, the relationship between Heather and Brandon always remains at the core of the plot. By trapping them together on an arduous sea voyage for much of the book, Woodiwiss succeeds in creating the perfect romantic microcosm. Many scenes that might seem clichéd now were sparkling and new thirty years ago: the heroine assisting the hero with his bath; the hero walking in on the heroine as she bathes; the hero nursing the heroine through a near fatal illness caused by his own insensitivity. Woodiwiss gives the hero a loveable wise-quipping brother, a loyal manservant, and a witchy ex-fiancée. Every man who meets Heather falls a little bit in love with her and in an eerily prescient twist, there's even a suspense sub-plot involving a brutal killer that drives the book to a heart-jolting climax.
Although less politically correct then some would prefer, the book is probably more historically accurate than many of the romances written today where all the young misses are feisty and all the gents are enlightened as to the rights of women. Yes, seventeen-year-old Heather is essentially a passive victim in the beginning and thirty-five-year-old Brandon is perfectly capable of being an arrogant jerk, but they both fulfill that essential criteria of good fiction—they experience personal growth and transformation during the course of the story. Heather finds her spirit while Brandon loses his heart.
Whether it be on Amazon.com or on a panel with other romance writers, you can't discuss this book or Heather and Brandon's first sexual encounter without waging the same debate that's been raging ever since Rhett carried a resisting Scarlet up those long, winding stairs in Gone with the Wind. I learned that firsthand in Harpers Ferry in April of 2002 when I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion comparing The Flame and the Flower to a "modern" romance. Some participants found the book enthralling while others found it appalling, but no matter what their opinion, it still evoked emotions every bit as strong as the passion Heather and Brandon share.
The controversy arises when, during their first meeting, a drunken Brandon mistakes Heather for a wharf prostitute. Both her explanations and her struggles are so weak and ineffectual that one can almost forgive him the mistake. He's quite remorseful when he realizes he's deflowered an innocent, but that doesn't stop him from taking her once more before she makes her escape. Is this shocking and wicked? Oh yes! But still stirring in this era where our deepest and most primal sexual fantasies have been sanitized and the definition of "feminism" seems to be have been extended to the area of censoring other women's fantasies. When Brandon tells Heather, "I've found with you, sweet, that when I want you badly enough I can overlook being a gentleman," my heart beats a little faster as I imagine him with the devilish glint of a marauding Errol Flynn or Clark Gable in his eye.
As Patricia Reynolds Smith, the academic who edited Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women with Jayne Ann Krentz, pointed out during our panel discussion, this is no forced seduction where Heather is made to experience pleasure against her will. Woodiwiss never once glamorizes rape. Heather despises it the two times Brandon has his way with her when she is resistive. It's not until he learns to show her tenderness and consideration after a long period of enforced abstinence that she comes to enjoy their lovemaking.
The one scene that fueled my own adolescent fantasies and has lingered in my imagination for over twenty-four years is the scene where Brandon first learns that Heather is carrying his child. After her vicious aunt slaps her and rips her ragged dress from her body, revealing her pregnant nakedness to everyone in the room, Brandon comes storming out of the shadows and sweeps his cloak around her. In that one thrilling and protective gesture, we see a shadow of the hero he will become.
Although Brandon can be a bit of a bully when crossed, from the very beginning of the novel he demonstrates a capacity for humor and irresistible kindness. He resents being forced into marriage, yet he buys Heather beautiful clothes, covers her when she is cold, has a tub brought on board his ship because he knows she cherishes her baths, and orders a special pair of long johns made to help her endure the bitter winter weather at sea. He also fulfills another crucial female fantasy that would go on to become a staple of our genre—once he lays eyes on Heather, he never wants or touches another woman.
Since The Flame and the Flower gave women their first chance to read about sex outside of the context of male pornography, I was amazed to realize how few sex scenes there actually are in the book. After Heather and Brandon's initial encounter, they don't make love again until near the very end of the novel. During the long sea voyage, we watch them slowly becoming husband and wife—denying each other sexual comforts, yet strengthening their emotional bond. We enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching them fall in love, not just in lust.
The sensual tension escalates through a series of tender moments such as the one where they exchange Christmas gifts back at Brandon's Carolina plantation, the scene where Heather is sewing baby clothes while Brandon reads aloud to her from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the funny and touching scene where their child is finally born. By the end of the book, you actually believe that these two could build a happy life together—built not only on physical attraction, but on mutual respect and love.
While Brandon is becoming a hero worth having, Heather completes her own satisfying personal journey. Her fiery confrontations with her husband don't defeat her, but strengthen her. No longer a passive victim, late in the book she even vanquishes the lecherous Mr. Bartlett, who manhandles her when he mistakes her for a bondwoman. While devoted slave Hatti hits the villain in the face with a mop, Heather stomps on his instep, then hurls a chunk of soap at his head, causing him to somersault off the porch. A fuming Brandon arrives, but Heather no longer needs him to rescue her. She has completed her journey from girl to woman and is now fully his equal and his match.
Both the power and pleasure of The Flame and the Flower are rooted in its retelling of the primal myths that reside in our collective unconsciousness. In the snippet of poetry that prefaces the book, it is not the flame that consumes the flower, but the flower that triumphs by re-emerging after being scorched by the flame. Kathleen E. Woodiwiss didn't just understand the "Beauty and the Beast" mythology on an intellectual level. She internalized it to such a degree that it infuses every word of both this story and her follow-up classic, The Wolf and the Dove.
And in Brandon Birmingham, Woodiwiss delivers a beast worthy of the taming. As Patricia Reynolds Smith pointed out during our panel discussion, in recent years there has been a tendency for romance writers to "defang" their beasts much too early in our stories. We're so determined to make our protagonists "heroic" from the very first page (possibly to stave off internet criticism of the ultra-Alpha male?) that there's very little room left for the personal growth that makes this book so satisfying and enduring.
And it is enduring. 183 reader reviews on Amazon.com prove that. As I scrolled through them, I was amazed by how many of them were written by girls who were around the same age I was when I first discovered the book. It seemed these young women could relate to both Heather's age and her coming-of-age journey during the story. This made me wonder if romance writers aren't missing some vital component of "growing the market" in our efforts to be more politically correct by prematurely aging the heroines in our historical romances. Perhaps the best way to win a reader's heart for life is to win it while it's still young and tender.
Whether you love The Flame and the Flower or hate it, we're still talking about it almost 40 years later. How many other romances will be able to make that claim? As I turned the last page of the book with a wistful sigh, I was humbled all over again by what a tremendous debt of gratitude we all owe Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Brandon Birmingham and Heather Simmons are truly the grandparents of all the historical heroes and heroines who came after them. At the end of the book, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss shouldn't have written The End, but The Beginning.
June 2, 2010
I read this book years ago when I was a teenager. I had borrowed all the Kathleen E. Woodiwiss novels from my mother's shelf and she had stolen them from her mother. Kind of creepy, yes, but I read my grandmother's literary porn.
As a teenager I may have actually given this book three stars. I actually enjoyed reading Brandon's dominating ways and Heather's bodice-ripping adventures. Though, despite my youngish years, I still found their first encounter "disturbing" and Brandon's subsequent treatment of Heather over the first year of their marriage as disgraceful.
I haven't read this book in a few years but I find myself continually puzzled. Granted it was the first of its kind and it spawned a new genre, but I kind of wish it hadn't.
These "alpha male" romantic heroes really get on my nerve. When dissected, they're often nothing but spoiled, selfish little bullies. The illusion that their poor behavior is because of raging lust and that once their issues with the heroine is resolved they turn into sweet puppies is actually misleading and sick.
No. Spoiled self brats continue to be spoiled selfish brats. Men who require the whole world, and their women included, to bow to their whims and serve their needs should not be romantic heroes. Men like this in real life are abusive, controlling assholes!
Maybe it's because I'm not a big fan of the Romance genre. Sure, I love romantic books - I really enjoy reading them, but I have read a select few and to me they have often seemed more like a How To Guide: How To Have Your Very Own Abusive Relationship.
And people wonder why women end up in abusive relationships when they're told that the very controlling behaviors exhibited by men in these novels are sweet and caring gestures. No. They're controlling and manipulative.
It's not just the Romance Genre though that is guilty of this. It's a sickness that has pervade other types of fiction *Glares at the Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Genre*
I would much like to read a novel where the male character is a responsible adult capable of monitoring his temper on occasion and not throwing a temper tantrum every time he doesn't get his way. I would like to read novels where the heroine isn't a victim of every situation - she's someone that takes charge of her life and sticks up for herself.
In my mind, Brandon Birmingham needs to go sit in the corner and think about what he's done.
Kathleen E. Woodiwiss can join him too.
As a teenager I may have actually given this book three stars. I actually enjoyed reading Brandon's dominating ways and Heather's bodice-ripping adventures. Though, despite my youngish years, I still found their first encounter "disturbing" and Brandon's subsequent treatment of Heather over the first year of their marriage as disgraceful.
I haven't read this book in a few years but I find myself continually puzzled. Granted it was the first of its kind and it spawned a new genre, but I kind of wish it hadn't.
These "alpha male" romantic heroes really get on my nerve. When dissected, they're often nothing but spoiled, selfish little bullies. The illusion that their poor behavior is because of raging lust and that once their issues with the heroine is resolved they turn into sweet puppies is actually misleading and sick.
No. Spoiled self brats continue to be spoiled selfish brats. Men who require the whole world, and their women included, to bow to their whims and serve their needs should not be romantic heroes. Men like this in real life are abusive, controlling assholes!
Maybe it's because I'm not a big fan of the Romance genre. Sure, I love romantic books - I really enjoy reading them, but I have read a select few and to me they have often seemed more like a How To Guide: How To Have Your Very Own Abusive Relationship.
And people wonder why women end up in abusive relationships when they're told that the very controlling behaviors exhibited by men in these novels are sweet and caring gestures. No. They're controlling and manipulative.
It's not just the Romance Genre though that is guilty of this. It's a sickness that has pervade other types of fiction *Glares at the Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Genre*
I would much like to read a novel where the male character is a responsible adult capable of monitoring his temper on occasion and not throwing a temper tantrum every time he doesn't get his way. I would like to read novels where the heroine isn't a victim of every situation - she's someone that takes charge of her life and sticks up for herself.
In my mind, Brandon Birmingham needs to go sit in the corner and think about what he's done.
Kathleen E. Woodiwiss can join him too.
Read
January 11, 2025This is the first review/rambling I ever wrote on a romance novel. It was also one of the first genre romances I'd read while also being aware of and interested in romance as a genre. Buckle up children. Trigger warnings for SA out the wazoo.
I thought I knew where I was with F&F from the final sentence of the very first paragraph:
Omg, I thought to myself, this is such a hardcore bodice ripper, even the buildings have their virtue threatened. But, truthfully, dear reader, I was not prepared.
You probably all know, inside out and back to front, the basic plot of this book but here goes nothing: Heather is a beautiful and virtuous maiden who lives with her Evil Aunt and Hopeless Uncle. Evil Aunt arbitrarily decides to sell her into prostitution. Heather flees the first of many would-be rapists, only to be mistaken for prostitute anyway by two dudes who have been dispatched by the hero, Captain Brandon Birmingham, who is looking to acquire a ho into whom he can place his penis. As it does not seem to cross Heather’s mind at any point to say “um, I’m not a prostitute”, Brandon deflowers her and subsequently decides she is such a good penis repository that he will keep her. Heather runs back to her Evil Aunt, who mistreats her for a while until it becomes apparent Heather is with child. Captain Brandon is pressured into marrying her, which makes him throw – what we manly men call – a total strop. The newly married couple go shopping and have a lot of baths, and a lot of arguments, and eventually set sail for America. In America, there is an Evil Ex and an Evil Cripple, and they fall in love. I mean, Heather and Brandon fall in love. Not the Evil Ex and the Evil Cripple, though they would probably get on well together. There are also some murders, but not of anybody we cared about. The end.
I will not lie: I spent a lot of this book confused and slightly worried, which had less to do with the plot (implausibility does not trouble me – I like books about dragons, remember) than the behaviour of all the people in it. Even the apparently nice ones. Especially the apparently nice ones. Thankfully, I was able to navigate who were supposed to be the good guys because morality in F&F seems largely determined by body shape.
Our heroine, Heather, is thin and righteous and, we soon discover, possesses a couple of super-powers: the first of which is the ability to make all men instantly want to rape her and the second is the ability to make all women instantly hate her. I feel these were an unfortunate choice and she should have held out for super-speed or invisibility. I found it rather difficult to get a handle on her, not because she’s devoid of character, but because she goes through such a lot over the course of the book (this poor woman is semi-violated more than most people sneeze) that she’s constantly in flux. ‘Terrified of being raped’ and ‘escaping from a rapist’ are not exactly what you’d call a personality. I could be reading it wrong, but I think the ‘true’ Heather is supposed to emerge in the second half of the book when she finally has a home and some security. She becomes very wifely, at this stage, in what I personally found a discomfortingly Stepford way but I think there’s enough textual evidence in there to suggest that this always what she wanted, and who she was, and she hasn’t just been brainwashed by Brandon’s, err, mighty wang.
Unfortunately, this was also the point at which I completely lost touch with Heather. In a weird way it reminded me a lot of Richardson’s Pamela. Despite the fact Mr B is always spying on her bosom, Pamela is kind of cool in the first half of the book (spirited, resourceful under siege, protective of her bosom) but, once she’s tamed Mr B into marriage, she becomes this picture-perfect pattern of virtue and is, therefore, a bit of a bore. Heather is nearly always a picture-perfect pattern of virtue but, before she gets shipped off to America with Brandon, she’s quite sympathetic. She’s not exactly over-endowed in the brain department but I thought her fears and anxieties were depicted plausibly, and – without going crazy-spunky about it – she does display some degree of resourcefulness in escaping from Brandon. And, now I think about it, she takes out Rapist #1 armed only with a small knife for peeling fruit. Which is totally Brian Blessed awesome. Respect, Heather, respect. Whereas in America she sits around sewing and being pregnant.
The other thing I found a bit hard to navigate was the fact Heather seems to go actively dangerously nuts in Brandon’s presence. Maybe I’m just an incurable romantic but I was under the impression that a lover should, y’know, bring out the best in you. There were several occasions when her behaviour genuinely made ‘do not date, do not date’ sirens start howling in my head.
The first warning sign occurs when Heather and Brandon are sleeping in a tavern, not long after their … what’s the Regency equivalent of a shotgun wedding? Flintlock wedding. Some men break into the room with the aim of kidnapping Heather. Brandon is so very very manly that he confronts the interlopers stark bollock naked and forces them to jump out of a second storey window, from whence sounds of their breaking limbs and obvious pain drift up from the street. Now, I agree that these are not good men but they are clearly poor and uneducated (you can tell because they have common people accents and I think one of them might be fat) and probably have only limited ways to make a living. And, presumably, even fewer now they can’t walk. I’m not condoning kidnapping as a trade for the lower classes but I do feel making random members of the public, no matter how morally dubious, auto-defenestrate at whim crosses the line from self-protection to sadism. Not our Heather though. She greets Brandon’s display of rampant psychosis with “a soft ripple of musical laughter”.
Then there’s the occasion when they’re on a ship halfway between England and America and Heather casually asks if she can have cream in her coffee. Brandon, I think entirely fairly, derides her for this hilarious and blatant display of utter stupid, by asking “Do you think we’ll find a herd of cows in the middle of the North Atlantic?” Whereupon Heather immediately bursts into tears and runs from the room. I felt, at that moment, I was sharing a Dude Look with Brandon. I mean, seriously, Heather, get a grip. This man was raping you a few chapters back, and now you’re crying because he was slightly verbally mean? What’s going on?
However, for me, the final nail in the coffin of my sympathy for Heather came in America, where she enacts one of the most masterfully passive aggressive manoeuvres I’ve ever witnessed, in life or fiction. She is like the Napoleon of manipulation. I didn’t know whether to applaud her or run away screaming, or applaud while running away screaming. Basically, she decides she going to make Brandon a Christmas present but, instead of using the abundant amount of money he owns and everybody keeps telling her she has the right to use, she sells some old dresses and uses the proceeds to knit him a cock sock (or some other hand-made garment, I forget the details). He is, of course, delighted with the gift when she presents it to him at Christmas, mistaking it for a gesture of genuine affection rather than the trap it blatantly is. The truth soon comes out and there is A Scene. I can’t tell whether this is genuinely meant to demonstrate Heather’s honesty and integrity in not wanting to take Brandon’s wealth for granted or if we are meant to think he brought it on himself for being a git to her earlier. To be fair, if I was married to Brandon at this point, I would have no faith in his human decency either but there’s just something so subtle and sinister about the Gift Trick that it scared the living hell out of me. And there’s no doubt that Heather knows exactly what she’s doing
Ye gods. Get out Brandon, get out now.
Speaking of Brandon, I found him as difficult as Heather, if not more so. I have just enough basic understanding of the genre to be able to recognise him as your Greater Spotted Alpha. Uber-virile, super-manly, overbearing, possessive, obsessive and protective. But he’s also kind of a wankbucket and I don’t know to what extent that’s a side-effect of Alphadom or if it’s just him. Personally, I think can tell a lot about a person if their first act is to rape someone and that’s not the least sympathetic thing they do. To be honest, it’s probably a lot more understandable than some of his later actions, because it’s just about attributable to an error of judgement, and Brandon is clearly a bear of very little brain.
What really threw me, however, was his behaviour afterwards. Once he’s comprehensively established that Heather was a virgin, she’s not a prostitute and she’s definitely not willing, he enthusiastically goes onto to rape her two more times. Seriously, dude. What gives? If I squint at it funny I can just about get my head round the first time. I mean, yes, I like to think most of us would take “no, no, please stop” as, y’know, indication that stopping would be a good idea right now but Brandon comes from the Mr Collins school of emotional intelligence and his blood seems to flow in one direction only. But why on earth does he keep on raping? (aaaand that sounds like a breakaway pop hit waiting to happen). And how are we meant to feel about it? To commit rape once may be considered unfortunate, twice looks like carelessness.
To be fair (I can’t believe I’m writing that sentence in this context), once they’re married, Brandon stops sleeping non-consensually with his wife. But I found his sexual behaviour reprehensible throughout: his justification for his two additional rapes is that Heather is so hot she deserves it (she was wearing a see-through gown as well, which I assume is the 1800s equivalent of a short skirt) and he basically stops raping her because he’s annoyed he’s been forced into marrying her and wants to punish her. Which just goes to show how messed up this man is. Yet, despite having instigated the whole no-more-raping rule, he whinges constantly throughout the first year of marriage that it’s her fault that he’s got nowhere to put his wang. Take some responsibility for your own penis, man!
I was genuinely having problems interpreting Brandon as any sort of fantasy figure until I realised how much time he spends taking Heather shopping and then it all clicked into place. For a fellow who impregnates women by looking at them and pushes bad guys out of windows, he’s remarkably – hilariously – metrosexual. When these two aren’t bathing or fighting, they’re out buying dresses. It’s like the Pretty Woman Rodeo Drive scene but, err, longer and duller. Well, duller for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like frocks but as an end product not as a process. You would probably have to be Julia Roberts to get me to voluntarily go clothes shopping with you but Brandon is totally into it.
Dear me. He rapes virgins, defenestrates villains and can match a gown to a woman’s eyes at forty paces. What a guy.
Although Brandon and I did not get on (and since I wouldn’t go shopping with him we probably wouldn’t be a good match anyway), he does possess one trait that I found borderline endearing. Yes, that’s one, count ‘em, one. Whenever he’s having an internal monologue moment, he has an utterly bizarre habit of slipping into some kind of cod-Shakespearean dialect:
Now, I’m not very good at articulating my feelings either, so I sympathise but … whut? A small purple flower is eating your heart? And Heather has taken all the hearts? And there are doors in the hearts that are being slammed? Now, Brandon, sweetie, I may be going out on a limb here but … you’re unhappy about something aren’t you?
Oh bless him.
So, where does this leave us? Well. I had fun reading it, I damn with faint praise but – however important it may be in the development of the genre, or however much secret affection it may garner in the small, carnivorous purple flowers of readers’ hearts – I can’t say it did much for me. It’s exuberant, I’ll give it that. I was genuinely pretty shocked when I looked up from my Kindle, having followed Heather from an aghast country shack, through about six attempted rapes, via kidnapping, pregnancy and marriage, to discover I was barely 15% of the way through the book. I mean, 150 pages of a fantasy novel and you’re probably still in the prologue. So stuff really does happen in this thing. Stuff by the bucket load. So much stuff, I was pretty exhausted by the sheer stuff of the stuff. But I think the main problem, for me, was that I found Heather and Brandon both incomprehensible and largely unlikeable. It was borderline impossible to invest in the actual romance bit of the book, when the nicest thing I could think to say about them was: well, they probably deserve each other. Often followed by: God, I’m glad I’m not dating either of them.
I was somewhat discomforted by both the actual rape and the prevalence of rape, but that’s a personal rather than a universal judgement. I’m just squeamish and hand-wringy, ignore me. And, for a book written for an assumed audience of women (right?), I found Heather’s second super-power a bit disconcerting. Nearly every other female character she meets is actively vile to her, for no apparent reason, but I suppose it keeps the focus on Brandon as a source of physical and emotional support. Also, I was quite disappointed to learn the term bodice ripper is a misnomer. Not a single bodice is ripped over the course of this novel. Not one. Just the occasional lightly torn chemise. But I guess chemise-wrecker doesn’t sound as cool.
On the other hand, personal reactions and confusions aside, I can sort of see what F&F was doing, or trying to do, and why it’s important. I guess there’s an extent to which we can see Heather and Brandon’s sexual relationship as … well … what’s the opposite of a metaphor? A literalisation of gendered power dynamics. Brandon can initially take what he wants, with no consequences, but eventually Heather is able to channel his desire down more socially and personally acceptable channels within the context of marriage. You could even go so far as to argue that Heather and Brandon reciprocally violate each other. Brandon, of course, literally, but then Heather (albeit inadvertently) blackmails him into marrying her, thus emasculating him and denying him the power of choice, just as he did when he raped her. Of course, this all takes as read a view of relationships in which women want marriage and security and men want sex and, err, sex, and the two must be traded from across the gender battlefield. But, Heather ultimately gets to have sexy fun times too, and on her own terms. Equally, it’s very clear that she wants the life she eventually fashions with Brandon. And, I think, perhaps that’s the important thing. Heather goes from having no choices, to being in a position to have everything she wants. And I guess that’s a decent fantasy for anybody, in the 1970s or not.
Everything I learned about life and love from reading The Flame & The Flower: to truly win a woman’s heart, throw some dudes out of a window, if you inadvertently have non-consensual sex with someone you might as well get a few more rapes in since the damage is done, fat people are evil, hair is remarkably emotionally expressive, boobs want to be free and should not be oppressed by clothing, nobody wore any underwear in the 1800s.
I thought I knew where I was with F&F from the final sentence of the very first paragraph:
The thatched cottage stood between spindly yews and, with shutters open and door ajar, it seemed to stare as if aghast at some off-color jest.
Omg, I thought to myself, this is such a hardcore bodice ripper, even the buildings have their virtue threatened. But, truthfully, dear reader, I was not prepared.
You probably all know, inside out and back to front, the basic plot of this book but here goes nothing: Heather is a beautiful and virtuous maiden who lives with her Evil Aunt and Hopeless Uncle. Evil Aunt arbitrarily decides to sell her into prostitution. Heather flees the first of many would-be rapists, only to be mistaken for prostitute anyway by two dudes who have been dispatched by the hero, Captain Brandon Birmingham, who is looking to acquire a ho into whom he can place his penis. As it does not seem to cross Heather’s mind at any point to say “um, I’m not a prostitute”, Brandon deflowers her and subsequently decides she is such a good penis repository that he will keep her. Heather runs back to her Evil Aunt, who mistreats her for a while until it becomes apparent Heather is with child. Captain Brandon is pressured into marrying her, which makes him throw – what we manly men call – a total strop. The newly married couple go shopping and have a lot of baths, and a lot of arguments, and eventually set sail for America. In America, there is an Evil Ex and an Evil Cripple, and they fall in love. I mean, Heather and Brandon fall in love. Not the Evil Ex and the Evil Cripple, though they would probably get on well together. There are also some murders, but not of anybody we cared about. The end.
I will not lie: I spent a lot of this book confused and slightly worried, which had less to do with the plot (implausibility does not trouble me – I like books about dragons, remember) than the behaviour of all the people in it. Even the apparently nice ones. Especially the apparently nice ones. Thankfully, I was able to navigate who were supposed to be the good guys because morality in F&F seems largely determined by body shape.
Our heroine, Heather, is thin and righteous and, we soon discover, possesses a couple of super-powers: the first of which is the ability to make all men instantly want to rape her and the second is the ability to make all women instantly hate her. I feel these were an unfortunate choice and she should have held out for super-speed or invisibility. I found it rather difficult to get a handle on her, not because she’s devoid of character, but because she goes through such a lot over the course of the book (this poor woman is semi-violated more than most people sneeze) that she’s constantly in flux. ‘Terrified of being raped’ and ‘escaping from a rapist’ are not exactly what you’d call a personality. I could be reading it wrong, but I think the ‘true’ Heather is supposed to emerge in the second half of the book when she finally has a home and some security. She becomes very wifely, at this stage, in what I personally found a discomfortingly Stepford way but I think there’s enough textual evidence in there to suggest that this always what she wanted, and who she was, and she hasn’t just been brainwashed by Brandon’s, err, mighty wang.
Unfortunately, this was also the point at which I completely lost touch with Heather. In a weird way it reminded me a lot of Richardson’s Pamela. Despite the fact Mr B is always spying on her bosom, Pamela is kind of cool in the first half of the book (spirited, resourceful under siege, protective of her bosom) but, once she’s tamed Mr B into marriage, she becomes this picture-perfect pattern of virtue and is, therefore, a bit of a bore. Heather is nearly always a picture-perfect pattern of virtue but, before she gets shipped off to America with Brandon, she’s quite sympathetic. She’s not exactly over-endowed in the brain department but I thought her fears and anxieties were depicted plausibly, and – without going crazy-spunky about it – she does display some degree of resourcefulness in escaping from Brandon. And, now I think about it, she takes out Rapist #1 armed only with a small knife for peeling fruit. Which is totally Brian Blessed awesome. Respect, Heather, respect. Whereas in America she sits around sewing and being pregnant.
The other thing I found a bit hard to navigate was the fact Heather seems to go actively dangerously nuts in Brandon’s presence. Maybe I’m just an incurable romantic but I was under the impression that a lover should, y’know, bring out the best in you. There were several occasions when her behaviour genuinely made ‘do not date, do not date’ sirens start howling in my head.
The first warning sign occurs when Heather and Brandon are sleeping in a tavern, not long after their … what’s the Regency equivalent of a shotgun wedding? Flintlock wedding. Some men break into the room with the aim of kidnapping Heather. Brandon is so very very manly that he confronts the interlopers stark bollock naked and forces them to jump out of a second storey window, from whence sounds of their breaking limbs and obvious pain drift up from the street. Now, I agree that these are not good men but they are clearly poor and uneducated (you can tell because they have common people accents and I think one of them might be fat) and probably have only limited ways to make a living. And, presumably, even fewer now they can’t walk. I’m not condoning kidnapping as a trade for the lower classes but I do feel making random members of the public, no matter how morally dubious, auto-defenestrate at whim crosses the line from self-protection to sadism. Not our Heather though. She greets Brandon’s display of rampant psychosis with “a soft ripple of musical laughter”.
Then there’s the occasion when they’re on a ship halfway between England and America and Heather casually asks if she can have cream in her coffee. Brandon, I think entirely fairly, derides her for this hilarious and blatant display of utter stupid, by asking “Do you think we’ll find a herd of cows in the middle of the North Atlantic?” Whereupon Heather immediately bursts into tears and runs from the room. I felt, at that moment, I was sharing a Dude Look with Brandon. I mean, seriously, Heather, get a grip. This man was raping you a few chapters back, and now you’re crying because he was slightly verbally mean? What’s going on?
However, for me, the final nail in the coffin of my sympathy for Heather came in America, where she enacts one of the most masterfully passive aggressive manoeuvres I’ve ever witnessed, in life or fiction. She is like the Napoleon of manipulation. I didn’t know whether to applaud her or run away screaming, or applaud while running away screaming. Basically, she decides she going to make Brandon a Christmas present but, instead of using the abundant amount of money he owns and everybody keeps telling her she has the right to use, she sells some old dresses and uses the proceeds to knit him a cock sock (or some other hand-made garment, I forget the details). He is, of course, delighted with the gift when she presents it to him at Christmas, mistaking it for a gesture of genuine affection rather than the trap it blatantly is. The truth soon comes out and there is A Scene. I can’t tell whether this is genuinely meant to demonstrate Heather’s honesty and integrity in not wanting to take Brandon’s wealth for granted or if we are meant to think he brought it on himself for being a git to her earlier. To be fair, if I was married to Brandon at this point, I would have no faith in his human decency either but there’s just something so subtle and sinister about the Gift Trick that it scared the living hell out of me. And there’s no doubt that Heather knows exactly what she’s doing
She sipped her tea daintily and lifted her nose with a slightly injured air. ‘Sir, I understood quite well,’ she needled, “that your money was not mine to spend.”
Ye gods. Get out Brandon, get out now.
Speaking of Brandon, I found him as difficult as Heather, if not more so. I have just enough basic understanding of the genre to be able to recognise him as your Greater Spotted Alpha. Uber-virile, super-manly, overbearing, possessive, obsessive and protective. But he’s also kind of a wankbucket and I don’t know to what extent that’s a side-effect of Alphadom or if it’s just him. Personally, I think can tell a lot about a person if their first act is to rape someone and that’s not the least sympathetic thing they do. To be honest, it’s probably a lot more understandable than some of his later actions, because it’s just about attributable to an error of judgement, and Brandon is clearly a bear of very little brain.
What really threw me, however, was his behaviour afterwards. Once he’s comprehensively established that Heather was a virgin, she’s not a prostitute and she’s definitely not willing, he enthusiastically goes onto to rape her two more times. Seriously, dude. What gives? If I squint at it funny I can just about get my head round the first time. I mean, yes, I like to think most of us would take “no, no, please stop” as, y’know, indication that stopping would be a good idea right now but Brandon comes from the Mr Collins school of emotional intelligence and his blood seems to flow in one direction only. But why on earth does he keep on raping? (aaaand that sounds like a breakaway pop hit waiting to happen). And how are we meant to feel about it? To commit rape once may be considered unfortunate, twice looks like carelessness.
To be fair (I can’t believe I’m writing that sentence in this context), once they’re married, Brandon stops sleeping non-consensually with his wife. But I found his sexual behaviour reprehensible throughout: his justification for his two additional rapes is that Heather is so hot she deserves it (she was wearing a see-through gown as well, which I assume is the 1800s equivalent of a short skirt) and he basically stops raping her because he’s annoyed he’s been forced into marrying her and wants to punish her. Which just goes to show how messed up this man is. Yet, despite having instigated the whole no-more-raping rule, he whinges constantly throughout the first year of marriage that it’s her fault that he’s got nowhere to put his wang. Take some responsibility for your own penis, man!
I was genuinely having problems interpreting Brandon as any sort of fantasy figure until I realised how much time he spends taking Heather shopping and then it all clicked into place. For a fellow who impregnates women by looking at them and pushes bad guys out of windows, he’s remarkably – hilariously – metrosexual. When these two aren’t bathing or fighting, they’re out buying dresses. It’s like the Pretty Woman Rodeo Drive scene but, err, longer and duller. Well, duller for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like frocks but as an end product not as a process. You would probably have to be Julia Roberts to get me to voluntarily go clothes shopping with you but Brandon is totally into it.
Everything he selected she more than agreed with, and those discarded she had prayed would be. His sense of color astounded her. The man was gifted. She had to admit he chose better than she.
Dear me. He rapes virgins, defenestrates villains and can match a gown to a woman’s eyes at forty paces. What a guy.
Although Brandon and I did not get on (and since I wouldn’t go shopping with him we probably wouldn’t be a good match anyway), he does possess one trait that I found borderline endearing. Yes, that’s one, count ‘em, one. Whenever he’s having an internal monologue moment, he has an utterly bizarre habit of slipping into some kind of cod-Shakespearean dialect:
Heather, this tiny purple flower from the moors, has dined upon my heart and now it grows within her and I have no more a heart to share. But my heart, thou hast betrayed me deep. You have closed all doors but one and that I slammed in anger.
Now, I’m not very good at articulating my feelings either, so I sympathise but … whut? A small purple flower is eating your heart? And Heather has taken all the hearts? And there are doors in the hearts that are being slammed? Now, Brandon, sweetie, I may be going out on a limb here but … you’re unhappy about something aren’t you?
Oh bless him.
So, where does this leave us? Well. I had fun reading it, I damn with faint praise but – however important it may be in the development of the genre, or however much secret affection it may garner in the small, carnivorous purple flowers of readers’ hearts – I can’t say it did much for me. It’s exuberant, I’ll give it that. I was genuinely pretty shocked when I looked up from my Kindle, having followed Heather from an aghast country shack, through about six attempted rapes, via kidnapping, pregnancy and marriage, to discover I was barely 15% of the way through the book. I mean, 150 pages of a fantasy novel and you’re probably still in the prologue. So stuff really does happen in this thing. Stuff by the bucket load. So much stuff, I was pretty exhausted by the sheer stuff of the stuff. But I think the main problem, for me, was that I found Heather and Brandon both incomprehensible and largely unlikeable. It was borderline impossible to invest in the actual romance bit of the book, when the nicest thing I could think to say about them was: well, they probably deserve each other. Often followed by: God, I’m glad I’m not dating either of them.
I was somewhat discomforted by both the actual rape and the prevalence of rape, but that’s a personal rather than a universal judgement. I’m just squeamish and hand-wringy, ignore me. And, for a book written for an assumed audience of women (right?), I found Heather’s second super-power a bit disconcerting. Nearly every other female character she meets is actively vile to her, for no apparent reason, but I suppose it keeps the focus on Brandon as a source of physical and emotional support. Also, I was quite disappointed to learn the term bodice ripper is a misnomer. Not a single bodice is ripped over the course of this novel. Not one. Just the occasional lightly torn chemise. But I guess chemise-wrecker doesn’t sound as cool.
On the other hand, personal reactions and confusions aside, I can sort of see what F&F was doing, or trying to do, and why it’s important. I guess there’s an extent to which we can see Heather and Brandon’s sexual relationship as … well … what’s the opposite of a metaphor? A literalisation of gendered power dynamics. Brandon can initially take what he wants, with no consequences, but eventually Heather is able to channel his desire down more socially and personally acceptable channels within the context of marriage. You could even go so far as to argue that Heather and Brandon reciprocally violate each other. Brandon, of course, literally, but then Heather (albeit inadvertently) blackmails him into marrying her, thus emasculating him and denying him the power of choice, just as he did when he raped her. Of course, this all takes as read a view of relationships in which women want marriage and security and men want sex and, err, sex, and the two must be traded from across the gender battlefield. But, Heather ultimately gets to have sexy fun times too, and on her own terms. Equally, it’s very clear that she wants the life she eventually fashions with Brandon. And, I think, perhaps that’s the important thing. Heather goes from having no choices, to being in a position to have everything she wants. And I guess that’s a decent fantasy for anybody, in the 1970s or not.
Everything I learned about life and love from reading The Flame & The Flower: to truly win a woman’s heart, throw some dudes out of a window, if you inadvertently have non-consensual sex with someone you might as well get a few more rapes in since the damage is done, fat people are evil, hair is remarkably emotionally expressive, boobs want to be free and should not be oppressed by clothing, nobody wore any underwear in the 1800s.
May 15, 2010
It was nice to finally read this signature romance by a historical romance great. I quite enjoyed it. Initially, I was a bit worried, because Brandon came off as an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk. However, he really redeemed himself, showing a profound selflessness and dedication for his young wife. Yes, he did rape her. If you don't like rape in a romance, then you won't like this book, and I would not judge you. We all have our personal tastes and comfort zones. Rape is a plot device I can tolerate, depending on the execution. My issues with Brandon were due to his blase' reaction to raping a young woman. He was willing to gloss over his action, and to keep her as his mistress since the stallion had already gotten into the barn, so to speak. He didn't apologize to her. But, we come to see that over the course of this story, Brandon does acknowledge his wrongdoing to Heather, and takes measures to do better by her in the future. He's not perfect, but he was a good man and he really did show his love for Heather as this story progressed. In fact, some of his gentleness towards Heather reminded me of a Julie Garwood hero, particularly in the scene when Heather's water has broken and he's trying to get her changed. He was exasperated with her reasoning about him turning his back while she changed, and cleaning up the water from the floor, but he remained gentle and kind with her. So, yes he did redeem himself. He showed her a lot of patience and understanding about the 'big secret' she was hiding.
Brandon is in some ways a stalkerific hero. He's very possessive, obsessed with, and jealous about Heather. He doesn't want any man near her, and was about to go crazy when the men were fawning over her at the ball they held. I found it interesting that he didn't really get too angry at his brother Jeff, even though Jeff was flirting really heavily with Heather. But, I think his love for his brother made it clear to him that this was no real threat.
The things I loved about this story:
*The love bond that grows between Heather and Brandon becomes very profound and beautiful. They showed their love physically in many scenes, and most of them are non-sexual. With gentle touches and caresses, and how thoughtful they were to each other's wellbeing and needs. I loved that most of this book doesn't involve love scenes, because we get to see the relationship between Heather and Brandon develop in a good way, and to reset the tone of their first meeting in this story. I would recommend this book to a reader who wants a good romance book showing a couple who is married. When the love scenes occur later on in the book, they are the more vague, pretty language type, if that's not your thing.
*The beautifully descriptive and atmospheric writing. Ms. Woodiwiss was a very talented writer. Her writing is gorgeous and elegant. It invokes a period feel that I really immersed myself in. I felt like I was there during many of the scenes due to her vivid writing.
*The familial and friendly interactions between the characters. Jeff is quite the character. He is funny and insightful. I liked the humor in this story.
*Very good adventure moments and a decent mystery. The murders that occur in this book were surprisingly dark, although they all occur off-screen.
*Heather is a great character. She was such a sweet, kind, gentle, innocent heroine. But she isn't one of those heroines who made my eyes roll or got on my nerves. She is timid, but strong in some ways. Nowadays, it seems as though romance fans have made authors afraid to write heroines like her. But I quite enjoyed her. She reminds me of some of Julie Garwood's loveable heroines, although she doesn't show the sustained bizarre logic that they show ( which cracks me up). This girl was a real sweetie for me.
Things I wasn't Crazy About:
*Slavery is a huge issue for this reader. I respect that some readers aren't particularly bothered by romance novels set in slavery times, but I don't care for them. I hate the idea of slavery, even if it is true that some slave-owners were kind to, and often thought of their slaves as family-members. I think Ms. Woodiwiss wanted to have a story set in the American South, but wasn't too comfortable with the connotations of slavery. She seemed to shy away from showing the ugly aspects of slavery in the interactions of Brandon with his slaves. She never even called them slaves, referring to them as servants. I won't presume to tell an author how to write, but I didn't really care for the soft-shoeing here. I'd rather she called a spade a spade, and showed Brandon as a more kindly slaveowner. That would have been more realistic for me. The Disneyland depiction of the slave plantation is a bit insulting for me as a reader. As I said, this is my personal issue. I don't judge other readers who have no quarrel with it. Having said that, this was a book set in the slavery times that didn't bother me as much as some did (soft-shoeing may have served a role in this).
*I wasn't sure if I liked the almost caricature-like depiction of some of the Black characters. I almost felt as though Ms. Woodiwiss watched Gone With the Wind, and wrote Hatti based on Mammy from Gone With the Wind. The other Black characters had almost no personality. They were shadow-figures who fetched, cleaned, and carried. It made me wince, more than a few times.
*Physical beauty=good, External ugliness=bad. I didn't really like that underlying theme here. The villain was a very ugly man, and his heart was ugly. He could have easily been really gorgeous and evil. Louisa, Brandon's scheming ex-fiance was showed as a lacking contrast to Heather, not just in poor character, but because she was large-framed, and in her thirties, and not sexually innocent like Heather. Young and firm-fleshed isn't necessarily always better than mature and buxom. A woman's value isn't necessarily in her virginity or lack of sexual experience. Louisa was very promiscuous, and she wasn't a nice person, and I didn't like her, but I don't think she should have been rejected based on her getting older. Not that Woodiwiss was saying this, but there were contrasts drawn between the two that relied heavily on physical appearance. It made me uncomfortable.
I can honestly say that I really liked this story. It took forever to read (small print, and length), but it was very readable. I loved Brandon and Heather as a couple, despite their inauspicious start. If you would like to read classic, well-done, old-School romance, this is a good place to start. Recommended if you don't mind slavery in your romances.
Brandon is in some ways a stalkerific hero. He's very possessive, obsessed with, and jealous about Heather. He doesn't want any man near her, and was about to go crazy when the men were fawning over her at the ball they held. I found it interesting that he didn't really get too angry at his brother Jeff, even though Jeff was flirting really heavily with Heather. But, I think his love for his brother made it clear to him that this was no real threat.
The things I loved about this story:
*The love bond that grows between Heather and Brandon becomes very profound and beautiful. They showed their love physically in many scenes, and most of them are non-sexual. With gentle touches and caresses, and how thoughtful they were to each other's wellbeing and needs. I loved that most of this book doesn't involve love scenes, because we get to see the relationship between Heather and Brandon develop in a good way, and to reset the tone of their first meeting in this story. I would recommend this book to a reader who wants a good romance book showing a couple who is married. When the love scenes occur later on in the book, they are the more vague, pretty language type, if that's not your thing.
*The beautifully descriptive and atmospheric writing. Ms. Woodiwiss was a very talented writer. Her writing is gorgeous and elegant. It invokes a period feel that I really immersed myself in. I felt like I was there during many of the scenes due to her vivid writing.
*The familial and friendly interactions between the characters. Jeff is quite the character. He is funny and insightful. I liked the humor in this story.
*Very good adventure moments and a decent mystery. The murders that occur in this book were surprisingly dark, although they all occur off-screen.
*Heather is a great character. She was such a sweet, kind, gentle, innocent heroine. But she isn't one of those heroines who made my eyes roll or got on my nerves. She is timid, but strong in some ways. Nowadays, it seems as though romance fans have made authors afraid to write heroines like her. But I quite enjoyed her. She reminds me of some of Julie Garwood's loveable heroines, although she doesn't show the sustained bizarre logic that they show ( which cracks me up). This girl was a real sweetie for me.
Things I wasn't Crazy About:
*Slavery is a huge issue for this reader. I respect that some readers aren't particularly bothered by romance novels set in slavery times, but I don't care for them. I hate the idea of slavery, even if it is true that some slave-owners were kind to, and often thought of their slaves as family-members. I think Ms. Woodiwiss wanted to have a story set in the American South, but wasn't too comfortable with the connotations of slavery. She seemed to shy away from showing the ugly aspects of slavery in the interactions of Brandon with his slaves. She never even called them slaves, referring to them as servants. I won't presume to tell an author how to write, but I didn't really care for the soft-shoeing here. I'd rather she called a spade a spade, and showed Brandon as a more kindly slaveowner. That would have been more realistic for me. The Disneyland depiction of the slave plantation is a bit insulting for me as a reader. As I said, this is my personal issue. I don't judge other readers who have no quarrel with it. Having said that, this was a book set in the slavery times that didn't bother me as much as some did (soft-shoeing may have served a role in this).
*I wasn't sure if I liked the almost caricature-like depiction of some of the Black characters. I almost felt as though Ms. Woodiwiss watched Gone With the Wind, and wrote Hatti based on Mammy from Gone With the Wind. The other Black characters had almost no personality. They were shadow-figures who fetched, cleaned, and carried. It made me wince, more than a few times.
*Physical beauty=good, External ugliness=bad. I didn't really like that underlying theme here. The villain was a very ugly man, and his heart was ugly. He could have easily been really gorgeous and evil. Louisa, Brandon's scheming ex-fiance was showed as a lacking contrast to Heather, not just in poor character, but because she was large-framed, and in her thirties, and not sexually innocent like Heather. Young and firm-fleshed isn't necessarily always better than mature and buxom. A woman's value isn't necessarily in her virginity or lack of sexual experience. Louisa was very promiscuous, and she wasn't a nice person, and I didn't like her, but I don't think she should have been rejected based on her getting older. Not that Woodiwiss was saying this, but there were contrasts drawn between the two that relied heavily on physical appearance. It made me uncomfortable.
I can honestly say that I really liked this story. It took forever to read (small print, and length), but it was very readable. I loved Brandon and Heather as a couple, despite their inauspicious start. If you would like to read classic, well-done, old-School romance, this is a good place to start. Recommended if you don't mind slavery in your romances.
May 25, 2015
4.5 stars.
"Kathleen Woodiwiss is credited with the invention of the modern historical romance novel: In 1972 she released The Flame and the Flower, an instant New York Times bestseller that created a literary precedent."
Well done to her for "creating" this genre .... many have learned from her, I'm sure.
I can see how some might have issues with what happened in the beginning of the book ... it's fiction ... it is what used to be termed "a bodice ripper" ... it happened.
Her struggle pulled his shirt loose and then his furred chest lay bare against her with only the thin film of the chemise between them ...
It was a sweeping tale that took us from the streets of London across the ocean to the New World.
Under the full moon the great live oaks with their hanging moss seemed to stand like gray sentinels.
The Hero was an ass. I loved how strong Heather was. Loved his brother... wonder does he get his own story.
"With all the lovely young ladies here he had to go to England and bring back a Tory as a wife."
LOL, don't know what was worse, the fact that she was a Tory or half-Irish!
I will definitely check out more books by this author. They may be a bit old and dated but I still love this genre.
June 30, 2010
What I learned from this book: 1. rape is ok if you're a hot, sensuous man. 2. beauty= good, ugly= bad
I am reading my way through Romance Readers Top 100 and I finished Shanna first and then The Flame and the Flower. I really enjoyed Shanna's story, protagonists and flowery language. I read The Flame and the Flower next and am frankly mystified as to why it holds such a special place in so many readers hearts. Is is because it was one of the first romance novels you read?
My principal misgiving about the book will be pretty obvious: The hero's repeated rape of the heroine in the beginning of the book. Not just the rape, but his cavalier attitude about it. Literally *laughing* in her face after learning about the terrible mistake that brought her to him and telling her to face the reality, the harms been done, now she'll have to be his mistress, time for some more rape, but don't worry baby you'll get used to it, btw don't attempt to leave because now you're my prisoner. Then when he gets called out on his actions and has to marry her he verbally abuses her and rails, "i have a fiance! what am i supposed to tell her?!" Seriously?
Not once throughout the book does he evince any sort of remorse for his heinous treatment of her in the beginning. Yeah, sure, they fall in love and his promises that she would eventually beg for it from him come true, and he lavishes affection on her, great. Besides realizing that he could, gulp, love a 'slip of a girl' his character doesn't really grow in my opinion. He spends the first half of the book being such a jerk that I hoped she would run off with the brother. Finally, hero and heroine start having sex and everything is great between them. I've actually been sucked in at this point and am manipulated into being happy for them. But wait--- now there's a crazy rapist/ murderer on the loose. Unlike our hero he's evil because he's disgustingly ugly (also he kills people). Evil guy tries to rape/kill our heroine and the hero saves her.
HEA ruined by this interchange 3 pages from the end: "If you had killed Mr. Court, do you think I would have blamed you? My Lord, the man deserved it!" (interesting... so HE deserves to die for wanting to rape her, but it's ok for the hero to rape her) After this follows a revelation about "Lady Cabot's" and some chuckles about what it would have been like had she worked at the brothel. Still the worst is yet to come---
"I'm glad that bastard who thought of putting you there met his end. Otherwise I might be tempted to go back and wring his blasted neck. He got what he deserved for trying to rape you."
She looked at him slyly. "You were the one who raped me. What were your just desserts?"
He grinned leisurely. "I received my just rewards when I had to marry a cocky wench like you."
Nice. Not only does he never feel any remorse, or apologize, but the whole thing is a joke by the end?!
On a side note I also find it really obnoxious how Louisa is compared to Heather and found lacking, not so much in character, but in physical beauty which REFLECTS that lack of character. There are countless examples in the book, the most annoying of which I found to be when Louisa barges in on the happy couple while Heather's top is undone because she was just breast-feeding her son. Brandon's reaction to this is to remember how Louisa's boobs are getting saggy cuz she's so old and how she's nowhere near as hot as Heather so where does she get off with that attitude? Good thing you're into raping nubile teenagers Brandon, or else you might be shackled into marriage with someone only 3 years younger than you!
I'm not trying to attack some people's favorite author, but I sincerely want to know *why* this book is so beloved.
I am reading my way through Romance Readers Top 100 and I finished Shanna first and then The Flame and the Flower. I really enjoyed Shanna's story, protagonists and flowery language. I read The Flame and the Flower next and am frankly mystified as to why it holds such a special place in so many readers hearts. Is is because it was one of the first romance novels you read?
My principal misgiving about the book will be pretty obvious: The hero's repeated rape of the heroine in the beginning of the book. Not just the rape, but his cavalier attitude about it. Literally *laughing* in her face after learning about the terrible mistake that brought her to him and telling her to face the reality, the harms been done, now she'll have to be his mistress, time for some more rape, but don't worry baby you'll get used to it, btw don't attempt to leave because now you're my prisoner. Then when he gets called out on his actions and has to marry her he verbally abuses her and rails, "i have a fiance! what am i supposed to tell her?!" Seriously?
Not once throughout the book does he evince any sort of remorse for his heinous treatment of her in the beginning. Yeah, sure, they fall in love and his promises that she would eventually beg for it from him come true, and he lavishes affection on her, great. Besides realizing that he could, gulp, love a 'slip of a girl' his character doesn't really grow in my opinion. He spends the first half of the book being such a jerk that I hoped she would run off with the brother. Finally, hero and heroine start having sex and everything is great between them. I've actually been sucked in at this point and am manipulated into being happy for them. But wait--- now there's a crazy rapist/ murderer on the loose. Unlike our hero he's evil because he's disgustingly ugly (also he kills people). Evil guy tries to rape/kill our heroine and the hero saves her.
HEA ruined by this interchange 3 pages from the end: "If you had killed Mr. Court, do you think I would have blamed you? My Lord, the man deserved it!" (interesting... so HE deserves to die for wanting to rape her, but it's ok for the hero to rape her) After this follows a revelation about "Lady Cabot's" and some chuckles about what it would have been like had she worked at the brothel. Still the worst is yet to come---
"I'm glad that bastard who thought of putting you there met his end. Otherwise I might be tempted to go back and wring his blasted neck. He got what he deserved for trying to rape you."
She looked at him slyly. "You were the one who raped me. What were your just desserts?"
He grinned leisurely. "I received my just rewards when I had to marry a cocky wench like you."
Nice. Not only does he never feel any remorse, or apologize, but the whole thing is a joke by the end?!
On a side note I also find it really obnoxious how Louisa is compared to Heather and found lacking, not so much in character, but in physical beauty which REFLECTS that lack of character. There are countless examples in the book, the most annoying of which I found to be when Louisa barges in on the happy couple while Heather's top is undone because she was just breast-feeding her son. Brandon's reaction to this is to remember how Louisa's boobs are getting saggy cuz she's so old and how she's nowhere near as hot as Heather so where does she get off with that attitude? Good thing you're into raping nubile teenagers Brandon, or else you might be shackled into marriage with someone only 3 years younger than you!
I'm not trying to attack some people's favorite author, but I sincerely want to know *why* this book is so beloved.
Read
January 12, 2024Reread: DNF 30%
I can’t do it. This is so terrible. The prose is long-winded and overly descriptive, the hero is an idiotic asshole, the heroine is a stupid moron who’s entire personality is being beautiful and trembling with fear, the clichés are abundant and it completely lacks any depth whatsoever.
And note on the noncon: I get these old skool bodice rippers are rapey, but this one was so blatant it was uncomfortable. She calls him a rapist in her head over and over and if even she does -dingbat that she is- then it’s not even skirting the line.
This is supposed to be a quintessential book in the canon of romance and all I can say is thank fuck they aren’t written like this anymore. It was so boring and stupid I could not continue.
Kudos to my fifteen year old self who hid a tattered copy of this under her bed, we know better now little Kristina *pats head*.
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I read this in high school and remember it was really rapey and the hero was a grouchy asshole. No rating due to not trusting my standards at 15 years old.
I can’t do it. This is so terrible. The prose is long-winded and overly descriptive, the hero is an idiotic asshole, the heroine is a stupid moron who’s entire personality is being beautiful and trembling with fear, the clichés are abundant and it completely lacks any depth whatsoever.
And note on the noncon: I get these old skool bodice rippers are rapey, but this one was so blatant it was uncomfortable. She calls him a rapist in her head over and over and if even she does -dingbat that she is- then it’s not even skirting the line.
This is supposed to be a quintessential book in the canon of romance and all I can say is thank fuck they aren’t written like this anymore. It was so boring and stupid I could not continue.
Kudos to my fifteen year old self who hid a tattered copy of this under her bed, we know better now little Kristina *pats head*.
********************************************
I read this in high school and remember it was really rapey and the hero was a grouchy asshole. No rating due to not trusting my standards at 15 years old.
August 8, 2023
Ngl this had me wishing the British won the revolutionary war
September 14, 2016
Wtf!!! So if I guy thought you were hot and wanted you he could just rape you and you had to marry your rapist!!!!
Holy bat shit!
That is nuts!
Also what the hell kind of polite society is it that lets a young girl suffer thought all that and then he has the nerve to joke about it!!!!
I can't believe this.
I understand things were different but good god man that is crazy!
Poor baby to have to live with that and the poor girl married to her rapist has to find a way to make peace and continue to forge a relationship based on rape!
Disgusting.
Also, he said he would have found her anyways because she would have worked in a whore house that he goes to. What kind of a nut job is that?
The only thing that redeemed this book for me somewhat was that he did not sleep with her until it felt right and he did not force her after their wedding. He was really punishing himself here.
She on the other hand, having no idea that sex was for pleasure, was good without the sex and she felt none of his frustration.
Hey dude, That's what happens when you only rape a girl, she is not going to know that orgasms are mutual as you have never given her any!!!
So while he was torturing himself she felt nothing. Poetic justice here!
Holy bat shit!
That is nuts!
Also what the hell kind of polite society is it that lets a young girl suffer thought all that and then he has the nerve to joke about it!!!!
I can't believe this.
I understand things were different but good god man that is crazy!
Poor baby to have to live with that and the poor girl married to her rapist has to find a way to make peace and continue to forge a relationship based on rape!
Disgusting.
Also, he said he would have found her anyways because she would have worked in a whore house that he goes to. What kind of a nut job is that?
The only thing that redeemed this book for me somewhat was that he did not sleep with her until it felt right and he did not force her after their wedding. He was really punishing himself here.
She on the other hand, having no idea that sex was for pleasure, was good without the sex and she felt none of his frustration.
Hey dude, That's what happens when you only rape a girl, she is not going to know that orgasms are mutual as you have never given her any!!!
So while he was torturing himself she felt nothing. Poetic justice here!
June 4, 2023
CW: rape
Of all the books in our Romance History Project, I probably dreaded this one the most. All I knew was that the MMC rapes the FMC. That turned out to be only the start of how much sexual assault Heather would face. While I never would have read this if not for the project, it did give me insights into romance, much as it pains me to say.
Woodiwiss was inspired to write after a friend gave her Valley of the Dolls. She liked the sex scenes but otherwise found it depressing. She couldn’t find the love stories with a happy ending that she was looking for, so she decided to write her own (source). She had difficulty finding a publisher for The Flame and the Flower. It was rejected by every hardcover book publisher for being too long. (They were right.) Instead of revising, she pivoted to paperback publishers and Nancy Coffey, the senior editor at Avon, acquired it. Published in 1972, it sold over 2 million copies the first four years of publication. Clearly an audience was there.
It’s credited for a few things in romance history: being the first romance to be published in paperback, the first historical romance, and the first sexually explicit romance. The credit for the latter two items is dubious. If anything, I’d say this historical romance is the most recognizable in terms of today’s historical romances but it’s not really the first. Nor is it the first sexually explicit romance; The Lord Won’t Mind was published two years prior. It’s possible even earlier sexually explicit romances exist. The Lord Won’t Mind not being credited for this smacks of homophobia. It erases authors like Gordon Merritt and the many queer men who found solace and recognition in The Lord Won’t Mind. (This is not an endorsement of that romance, however. It’s extremely problematic in its own right.) The reviews and critiques at that time falsely emphasized “romance is by women and for women” even though The Lord Won’t Mind was a bestseller in its own right and had two sequels. We have yet to escape that harmful phrase.
It’s fairer to say it was the first sexually explicit MF romance. Sex scenes were fade to black or nonexistent before this. While it’s credited for taking women’s sexuality seriously, that’s a stretch. (More below.) The Flame and the Flower and the historical romances that came after became known as “bodice rippers”, though no bodices were ripped in TFaTF. When I got back into reading romance several years ago and heard this term, I assumed it meant the bodice was ripped off in passion but unfortunately, it’s more likely that it refers to rapist MMCs ripping it off in order to harm the FMC. Such is this book’s complicated legacy.
It failed on three levels for me.
1. The rape and abuse
Oof. Where to even begin? Not only is Heather raped by Brandon, almost every white man either wants to assault her or attempts to do so. The degree of sexual assault was hard to take. She is in peril of one kind or another the entire book, starting with her aunt/guardian’s brother who takes Heather to London on the pretense of getting her a good position but actually intends to put her to use in his brothel and attempts to rape her first. She manages to escape him by accidentally killing him. And when she wanders the docks in a see-through dress afterward, Brandon’s men assume she’s a sex worker and bring her to him. And she goes along because…she thinks they somehow know she killed someone? Oh, Heather. In any case, Brandon proceeds to rape her despite Heather’s protests and when she finally gets him to understand she’s a virgin and not a sex worker, he shrugs and proceeds to rape her again and then decides he’s going to keep her captive.
This guy.
This becomes the template for the book. Brandon does whatever he wants. Heather sometimes protests (and names this as rape to his face!), more often goes along with whatever is happening, and has brief moments of spunk, like when she actually escapes Brandon’s ship. Unfortunately, Heather gets pregnant and is forced to marry her rapist. Brandon decides to punish her for entrapping him by not having sex with her. This lasts for about a year when he decides he’s had enough of celibacy and tells her he’s going to rape her or she can go along with it. She is his property and he'll treat her however he wants, emotional abuse included.
TFaTF is extremely supportive of purity culture. It’s not just painting a picture of Heather’s purity and goodness. Her virtue is imperiled by the way every man tries to get a piece of her but only Brandon is successful, which paints a target on her back from all the unwed women who want him. Every other white female character is portrayed as catty and vindictive. The sexually experienced women are murdered and raped a la “they had it coming”. Brandon’s ex Louisa in particular makes single women look bad. If she had directed her ire at Brandon instead of Heather, I would have cheered her on.
While rape appeared in literature well before this book, it’s unclear why Woodiwiss chose to include this much rape. After all, she wanted to write a love story with sex. Why did that equate with rape in her mind? Had she read and romanticized The Sheik? I read a lot of articles and papers to try to get at what was in the social conscious at the time that she could have been perhaps responding to. I’m still left with so many questions.
People say TFaTF was a fantasy and that female readers didn’t take it seriously or aspire to have this kind of love story in real life. The 1970s gave rise to Gothic novels featuring helpless FMCs and dangerous MMCs. Women did have cause to fear men given the patriarchal culture and rampant misogyny. (Not that that’s not still an issue but women have way more rights now.) Was the fantasy that a woman’s love could transform an abusive man? Was that the prevailing concern in the 1970s or does it perhaps speak to Woodiwiss’s own marriage? Others say rape was the vehicle by which “good girls” could have premarital sex. How does this square with the 1960s revolution? And why go the route of rape instead of letting the “good girl” have a marriage of convenience? It strikes me now that perhaps the rise of MoC as a trope was to subvert the rapist MMC trope.
While reading, the comparisons to dark romance wouldn’t leave me. Rape and dubcon is not uncommon in dark romance. I prefer MMCs that aren’t rapey regardless of subgenre but I can allow more leeway there. More work goes into redeeming the villains, even if it’s only in the eyes of their love interest, at least in the dark romances that get it right. They’re honest that the morally gray MCs aren’t someone to aspire to and that they’re not necessarily portraying a healthy relationship. Woodiwiss doesn’t offer that same honesty here. Even at the end, Brandon can’t see or admit that he’s no different from any of the men who tried to hurt Heather.
Presented without irony from Brandon:
2. The enslavement
While I knew Brandon was a rapist, I did not know (or at least didn’t remember hearing) he’s also an enslaver. What a prize. There’s no getting past how extremely racist and problematic this plot choice is. It’s not unsurprising when you consider the author’s background. Woodiwiss was born in 1939 in Louisiana. She would have grown up during a time when there was a concerted effort to reframe the Civil War as being about state’s rights instead of slavery. Gone With the Wind was one of her favorite novels. But that in no way excuses her decision to make her hero an enslaver.
Woodiwiss included the Mammy trope and the Happy Negro trope. Brandon calls his slaves “servants” and even refers to one as his friend. Talk about revisionist history! The white characters are all overtly racist. And if that’s not enough, there is a great deal of emphasis on Heather’s white skin.
There’s a pretty clear gap between reviews and critiques that did or did not mention Brandon being an enslaver or that this is set on a plantation. It is more frequently mentioned in more recent reviews but it was missing in reviews from even 10 years ago from people who I would have guessed would mention it. The glowing reviews are overwhelmingly from white readers. This is why “Read a Romance, Fight Patriarchy” has never been more than pure wishful thinking. Not all romances are created equally. This particular romance is in bed with the patriarchy, supports white supremacy, and is proud of it.
3. The romance
Let’s say hypothetically I could look beyond those first two elements. How does the romance hold up? Not great. In addition to raping Heather, Brandon is emotionally abusive throughout. He never learns or grows from his mistakes. He doesn’t ever realize he’s done anything wrong to Heather or anyone else around him. He’s the epitome of an entitled white man. He can do what he want without ever dealing with the consequences.
How then am I to believe Heather has fallen for him? What does he have going for him besides being wealthy and purportedly handsome? It’s more realistic to say she accepted her fate and resigned herself to never escaping marriage to her rapist. She has rationalized their “love story” and convinced herself to make the best of a bad deal. Given the limited options for women back then, the fact that she’s in a new country, and how every man she meets wants to rape her, she would have had a hard go of things if she had tried to escape with her son. I can understand why Brandon would feel like the best choice compared to the rest. But I never bought their love story.
Nor am I sure what Brandon saw in Heather, beyond a pretty face. She’s a trophy wife, the woman every man wants and every woman hates. Woodiwiss is lauded for writing strong heroines but that is not evident in Heather. At all. Unless by strength she meant “accepted her lot in the domicile and decided to be a good wife.” Heather is more of a Mary Sue or TSTL. I give her points for naming what Brandon did to her as rape but otherwise, she cowers and her naivety defies belief. Her only arc is in accepting her forced marriage as real. Winning Brandon’s heart is the pinnacle of her achievement and keeping the house running while he runs the plantation is her reward.
Closing thoughts:
Romance is an iterative genre. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m grateful for all the authors who give us Only One Bed and delightful niche tropes like bedside vigils and Normal Friend Stuff, for instance. But it can lead to the repetition of harmful tropes and offensive material. When one author includes a character ripping a condom packet open with their teeth, everyone thinks it’s fine to include that in their book. (It’s not sexy! It’s bad for the condom and your teeth!) When one author decides to write a rapist MMC, plenty of others follow suit and that is indeed what happened with this book. Woodiwiss was far from the first author to include a rapist MMC but as an early romance author, her choices made a clear imprint on the genre that followed. It’s there with the toxic masculinity of alpha heroes (a misunderstanding of what it means to be alpha) and on the pages of dark romances and mafia romances. It’s there in the redeeming of rakes and villains who have done nothing to atone for their misdeeds toward their love interest.
And look, I’m not immune to those things. I may draw the line at raping MMCs but I am always down for seeing monsters and villains brought to their knees by love. I’ve hand-waved away problematic things in romances I otherwise loved. We can contain multitudes. Trying to draw a line for an entire genre is murky. But then I see there are still people reading The Flame and the Flower for the first time and giving it 5 stars and wonder how and why. I do think we can and must advocate for doing away with bigotry in all its forms and any revisionist history, which knocks this book out of contention.
I did not like reading this but it helped me understand why certain problematic things continue to iterate, thanks to authors, editors, publishers, and readers alike. I only wish Avon would include a critical introduction that would provide necessary context if they’re going to keep putting this book out in circulation.
Further reading:
New York Magazine: The Tempestuous, Tumultuous, Turbulent, Torrid, and Terribly Profitable World of Paperback Passion
by Alice K. Turner (February 13, 1978)
Michigan Sociological Review: The Portrayal of Women in Romance Novels by Helen Leedy (Fall 1985) [very much a time capsule]
Marvels & Tales: Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels as Reworked Fairy Tales by Linda J. Lee (2008), page 55
Dear Author: Sexual Force and Reader Consent in Romance by Janet
A Parody of Love: the Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular Romance by Angela R. Toscano (hard disagree with this take but it is helpful context)
Characters: Heather is a 17 year old white British girl. Brandon is a 35 year old white American ship captain and enslaver. This is set in 1799 England and Charleston, SC.
Content notes: MMC rapes underage FMC multiple times (first time he thought she was a sex worker, which does not excuse anything), intent of marital rape, forced marriage to rapist, pregnancy as a result of rape, multiple rape attempts by secondary characters, multiple instances of sexual assault , sexual harassment, intimate partner violence (emotional abuse by MMC; secondary character ), victim-blaming, FMC briefly threatens suicide over ever becoming MMC’s mistress, MMC threatens to kill ex-fiancée, physical abuse by FMC’s aunt, secondary characters found raped and murdered, serial killer, attempted murder, murder, thwarted trafficking attempt, abduction, physical assault, gunshot wound, MMC is an enslaver, racism, Mammy trope, Happy Negro trope, ableism, Disabled Villain trope (claw-like hands, disfigured face), misogyny, Evil Ex trope, animal abuse, colonialism, nightmare, infidelity (MMC is engaged when he meets FMC), anti-fat bias (not countered), fat-shaming, slut-shaming, sex worker stigma, purity culture, anti-Irish bigotry, alcoholic uncle, past death of parents (FMC’s mother died in childbirth, MMC’s mother died of swamp fever and his father from a riding accident), FMC’s father had a gambling addiction, hallucinations/fever, vomit (seasick), childbirth, on page sex, alcohol, inebriation, cigar, tobacco, “manhood” and “womanhood” as euphemisms, gendered pejoratives, gender essentialism, ableist language, mention of past physical abuse by villain’s father, reference to man who raped enslaved women
*Buddy read with Charlotte, Hannah, and Vicky.
RHP ranking, so far:
Maurice (4 stars)
Loyal in All (3.5 stars)
The Moon-Spinners (3 stars)
Regency Buck (1 star)
The Sheik (1 star)
The Flame and the Flower (1 star)
The Lord Won’t Mind (1 star)
Of all the books in our Romance History Project, I probably dreaded this one the most. All I knew was that the MMC rapes the FMC. That turned out to be only the start of how much sexual assault Heather would face. While I never would have read this if not for the project, it did give me insights into romance, much as it pains me to say.
Woodiwiss was inspired to write after a friend gave her Valley of the Dolls. She liked the sex scenes but otherwise found it depressing. She couldn’t find the love stories with a happy ending that she was looking for, so she decided to write her own (source). She had difficulty finding a publisher for The Flame and the Flower. It was rejected by every hardcover book publisher for being too long. (They were right.) Instead of revising, she pivoted to paperback publishers and Nancy Coffey, the senior editor at Avon, acquired it. Published in 1972, it sold over 2 million copies the first four years of publication. Clearly an audience was there.
It’s credited for a few things in romance history: being the first romance to be published in paperback, the first historical romance, and the first sexually explicit romance. The credit for the latter two items is dubious. If anything, I’d say this historical romance is the most recognizable in terms of today’s historical romances but it’s not really the first. Nor is it the first sexually explicit romance; The Lord Won’t Mind was published two years prior. It’s possible even earlier sexually explicit romances exist. The Lord Won’t Mind not being credited for this smacks of homophobia. It erases authors like Gordon Merritt and the many queer men who found solace and recognition in The Lord Won’t Mind. (This is not an endorsement of that romance, however. It’s extremely problematic in its own right.) The reviews and critiques at that time falsely emphasized “romance is by women and for women” even though The Lord Won’t Mind was a bestseller in its own right and had two sequels. We have yet to escape that harmful phrase.
It’s fairer to say it was the first sexually explicit MF romance. Sex scenes were fade to black or nonexistent before this. While it’s credited for taking women’s sexuality seriously, that’s a stretch. (More below.) The Flame and the Flower and the historical romances that came after became known as “bodice rippers”, though no bodices were ripped in TFaTF. When I got back into reading romance several years ago and heard this term, I assumed it meant the bodice was ripped off in passion but unfortunately, it’s more likely that it refers to rapist MMCs ripping it off in order to harm the FMC. Such is this book’s complicated legacy.
It failed on three levels for me.
1. The rape and abuse
Oof. Where to even begin? Not only is Heather raped by Brandon, almost every white man either wants to assault her or attempts to do so. The degree of sexual assault was hard to take. She is in peril of one kind or another the entire book, starting with her aunt/guardian’s brother who takes Heather to London on the pretense of getting her a good position but actually intends to put her to use in his brothel and attempts to rape her first. She manages to escape him by accidentally killing him. And when she wanders the docks in a see-through dress afterward, Brandon’s men assume she’s a sex worker and bring her to him. And she goes along because…she thinks they somehow know she killed someone? Oh, Heather. In any case, Brandon proceeds to rape her despite Heather’s protests and when she finally gets him to understand she’s a virgin and not a sex worker, he shrugs and proceeds to rape her again and then decides he’s going to keep her captive.
This guy.
This becomes the template for the book. Brandon does whatever he wants. Heather sometimes protests (and names this as rape to his face!), more often goes along with whatever is happening, and has brief moments of spunk, like when she actually escapes Brandon’s ship. Unfortunately, Heather gets pregnant and is forced to marry her rapist. Brandon decides to punish her for entrapping him by not having sex with her. This lasts for about a year when he decides he’s had enough of celibacy and tells her he’s going to rape her or she can go along with it. She is his property and he'll treat her however he wants, emotional abuse included.
TFaTF is extremely supportive of purity culture. It’s not just painting a picture of Heather’s purity and goodness. Her virtue is imperiled by the way every man tries to get a piece of her but only Brandon is successful, which paints a target on her back from all the unwed women who want him. Every other white female character is portrayed as catty and vindictive. The sexually experienced women are murdered and raped a la “they had it coming”. Brandon’s ex Louisa in particular makes single women look bad. If she had directed her ire at Brandon instead of Heather, I would have cheered her on.
While rape appeared in literature well before this book, it’s unclear why Woodiwiss chose to include this much rape. After all, she wanted to write a love story with sex. Why did that equate with rape in her mind? Had she read and romanticized The Sheik? I read a lot of articles and papers to try to get at what was in the social conscious at the time that she could have been perhaps responding to. I’m still left with so many questions.
People say TFaTF was a fantasy and that female readers didn’t take it seriously or aspire to have this kind of love story in real life. The 1970s gave rise to Gothic novels featuring helpless FMCs and dangerous MMCs. Women did have cause to fear men given the patriarchal culture and rampant misogyny. (Not that that’s not still an issue but women have way more rights now.) Was the fantasy that a woman’s love could transform an abusive man? Was that the prevailing concern in the 1970s or does it perhaps speak to Woodiwiss’s own marriage? Others say rape was the vehicle by which “good girls” could have premarital sex. How does this square with the 1960s revolution? And why go the route of rape instead of letting the “good girl” have a marriage of convenience? It strikes me now that perhaps the rise of MoC as a trope was to subvert the rapist MMC trope.
While reading, the comparisons to dark romance wouldn’t leave me. Rape and dubcon is not uncommon in dark romance. I prefer MMCs that aren’t rapey regardless of subgenre but I can allow more leeway there. More work goes into redeeming the villains, even if it’s only in the eyes of their love interest, at least in the dark romances that get it right. They’re honest that the morally gray MCs aren’t someone to aspire to and that they’re not necessarily portraying a healthy relationship. Woodiwiss doesn’t offer that same honesty here. Even at the end, Brandon can’t see or admit that he’s no different from any of the men who tried to hurt Heather.
Presented without irony from Brandon:
“I’m glad that bastard who thought of putting you there met his end. Otherwise I might be tempted to go back and wring his blasted neck. He got what he deserved for trying to rape you.”
She looked at him slyly. “You were the one who raped me. What were your just desserts?”
He grinned leisurely. “I received my just rewards when I had to marry a cocky wench like you.”
2. The enslavement
While I knew Brandon was a rapist, I did not know (or at least didn’t remember hearing) he’s also an enslaver. What a prize. There’s no getting past how extremely racist and problematic this plot choice is. It’s not unsurprising when you consider the author’s background. Woodiwiss was born in 1939 in Louisiana. She would have grown up during a time when there was a concerted effort to reframe the Civil War as being about state’s rights instead of slavery. Gone With the Wind was one of her favorite novels. But that in no way excuses her decision to make her hero an enslaver.
Woodiwiss included the Mammy trope and the Happy Negro trope. Brandon calls his slaves “servants” and even refers to one as his friend. Talk about revisionist history! The white characters are all overtly racist. And if that’s not enough, there is a great deal of emphasis on Heather’s white skin.
There’s a pretty clear gap between reviews and critiques that did or did not mention Brandon being an enslaver or that this is set on a plantation. It is more frequently mentioned in more recent reviews but it was missing in reviews from even 10 years ago from people who I would have guessed would mention it. The glowing reviews are overwhelmingly from white readers. This is why “Read a Romance, Fight Patriarchy” has never been more than pure wishful thinking. Not all romances are created equally. This particular romance is in bed with the patriarchy, supports white supremacy, and is proud of it.
3. The romance
Let’s say hypothetically I could look beyond those first two elements. How does the romance hold up? Not great. In addition to raping Heather, Brandon is emotionally abusive throughout. He never learns or grows from his mistakes. He doesn’t ever realize he’s done anything wrong to Heather or anyone else around him. He’s the epitome of an entitled white man. He can do what he want without ever dealing with the consequences.
How then am I to believe Heather has fallen for him? What does he have going for him besides being wealthy and purportedly handsome? It’s more realistic to say she accepted her fate and resigned herself to never escaping marriage to her rapist. She has rationalized their “love story” and convinced herself to make the best of a bad deal. Given the limited options for women back then, the fact that she’s in a new country, and how every man she meets wants to rape her, she would have had a hard go of things if she had tried to escape with her son. I can understand why Brandon would feel like the best choice compared to the rest. But I never bought their love story.
Nor am I sure what Brandon saw in Heather, beyond a pretty face. She’s a trophy wife, the woman every man wants and every woman hates. Woodiwiss is lauded for writing strong heroines but that is not evident in Heather. At all. Unless by strength she meant “accepted her lot in the domicile and decided to be a good wife.” Heather is more of a Mary Sue or TSTL. I give her points for naming what Brandon did to her as rape but otherwise, she cowers and her naivety defies belief. Her only arc is in accepting her forced marriage as real. Winning Brandon’s heart is the pinnacle of her achievement and keeping the house running while he runs the plantation is her reward.
Closing thoughts:
Romance is an iterative genre. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m grateful for all the authors who give us Only One Bed and delightful niche tropes like bedside vigils and Normal Friend Stuff, for instance. But it can lead to the repetition of harmful tropes and offensive material. When one author includes a character ripping a condom packet open with their teeth, everyone thinks it’s fine to include that in their book. (It’s not sexy! It’s bad for the condom and your teeth!) When one author decides to write a rapist MMC, plenty of others follow suit and that is indeed what happened with this book. Woodiwiss was far from the first author to include a rapist MMC but as an early romance author, her choices made a clear imprint on the genre that followed. It’s there with the toxic masculinity of alpha heroes (a misunderstanding of what it means to be alpha) and on the pages of dark romances and mafia romances. It’s there in the redeeming of rakes and villains who have done nothing to atone for their misdeeds toward their love interest.
And look, I’m not immune to those things. I may draw the line at raping MMCs but I am always down for seeing monsters and villains brought to their knees by love. I’ve hand-waved away problematic things in romances I otherwise loved. We can contain multitudes. Trying to draw a line for an entire genre is murky. But then I see there are still people reading The Flame and the Flower for the first time and giving it 5 stars and wonder how and why. I do think we can and must advocate for doing away with bigotry in all its forms and any revisionist history, which knocks this book out of contention.
I did not like reading this but it helped me understand why certain problematic things continue to iterate, thanks to authors, editors, publishers, and readers alike. I only wish Avon would include a critical introduction that would provide necessary context if they’re going to keep putting this book out in circulation.
Further reading:
New York Magazine: The Tempestuous, Tumultuous, Turbulent, Torrid, and Terribly Profitable World of Paperback Passion
by Alice K. Turner (February 13, 1978)
Michigan Sociological Review: The Portrayal of Women in Romance Novels by Helen Leedy (Fall 1985) [very much a time capsule]
Marvels & Tales: Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels as Reworked Fairy Tales by Linda J. Lee (2008), page 55
Dear Author: Sexual Force and Reader Consent in Romance by Janet
A Parody of Love: the Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular Romance by Angela R. Toscano (hard disagree with this take but it is helpful context)
Characters: Heather is a 17 year old white British girl. Brandon is a 35 year old white American ship captain and enslaver. This is set in 1799 England and Charleston, SC.
Content notes: MMC rapes underage FMC multiple times (first time he thought she was a sex worker, which does not excuse anything), intent of marital rape, forced marriage to rapist, pregnancy as a result of rape, multiple rape attempts by secondary characters, multiple instances of sexual assault , sexual harassment, intimate partner violence (emotional abuse by MMC; secondary character ), victim-blaming, FMC briefly threatens suicide over ever becoming MMC’s mistress, MMC threatens to kill ex-fiancée, physical abuse by FMC’s aunt, secondary characters found raped and murdered, serial killer, attempted murder, murder, thwarted trafficking attempt, abduction, physical assault, gunshot wound, MMC is an enslaver, racism, Mammy trope, Happy Negro trope, ableism, Disabled Villain trope (claw-like hands, disfigured face), misogyny, Evil Ex trope, animal abuse, colonialism, nightmare, infidelity (MMC is engaged when he meets FMC), anti-fat bias (not countered), fat-shaming, slut-shaming, sex worker stigma, purity culture, anti-Irish bigotry, alcoholic uncle, past death of parents (FMC’s mother died in childbirth, MMC’s mother died of swamp fever and his father from a riding accident), FMC’s father had a gambling addiction, hallucinations/fever, vomit (seasick), childbirth, on page sex, alcohol, inebriation, cigar, tobacco, “manhood” and “womanhood” as euphemisms, gendered pejoratives, gender essentialism, ableist language, mention of past physical abuse by villain’s father, reference to man who raped enslaved women
*Buddy read with Charlotte, Hannah, and Vicky.
RHP ranking, so far:
Maurice (4 stars)
Loyal in All (3.5 stars)
The Moon-Spinners (3 stars)
Regency Buck (1 star)
The Sheik (1 star)
The Flame and the Flower (1 star)
The Lord Won’t Mind (1 star)
July 31, 2025
I really don't get why people consider Kathleen E Woodiwiss to be the queen of historical romance? I mean I have only read two of her books and I can honestly say that she was nowhere near as good as other talented authors such as Judith Mcnaught and Laurie Mcbain. This book for instance is utter shite, full of stupid one dimensional characters with a pointless storyline that just drags on and on.
Don't waste your precious time reading this crap, you will only be sorry!
Don't waste your precious time reading this crap, you will only be sorry!
February 7, 2018
No sé por dónde empezar a hacer la reseña. Tengo tantas cosas que decir que no soy capaz de ordenarlo todo.
Primero os contaré de qué va esto:
Tenemos a Heather, una chica que un día fue una dama inglesa, pero su padre, una vez murió su madre, se dedicó a gastarse todo en el juego. Lo vendió todo, así que cuando murió dejó a Heather sola, y sin dote para casarse. Es entonces cuando aparecen unos tíos que deciden llevársela con ella. Las penurias de Heather solo acababan de empezar con su Tía Fanny.
Por otro lado tenemos a Brandon, capitán de un barco que acaba de llegar a puerto y que tiene... ganas de marcha, para intentar ser un poco finos. Confundiendo a Heather con lo que no es, obviamente, se la llevan al barco a ver al capitán. Y ya os digo que desde aquí va todo de mal en peor.
Ahora va mi opinión. Quiero decir que antes de leer el libro, leí varias reseñas de otras personas (me gusta hacer eso, ver qué opinan los demás aunque yo luego me lo leo igual para crearme mi propia opinión) y eso de que Brandon es un cabronazo al principio pero luego mejora...
¡ES MENTIRA COCHINA!
Este estupido hijo de su madre... si lo pillo delante lo mato a palos. Os voy a decir que este gilipollas no mejora en ningún sentido hasta el último 20% del libro. Así que podréis ver que lo odio hasta lo más profundo de mi alma. Ya como empieza el libro, a mí no me jodas, pero si ya te das cuenta de que no es lo que piensas, en vez de ser un caballero ¿vas y repites? ¡Arrrrrgggggg! Lo mato 😡😡😡😡😡 no pude dejar de odiarlo todo el maldito libro. Siempre con palabras cortantes, con desprecios e insultos hacia Heather. Una llega a un punto que también se cansa de aguantar a este piltrafa.
En cuanto a Heather, aunque suelo odiar a las protagonistas sin carácter, a ella no pude odiarla. Si que me dio mucha rabia que no sacase valor a veces para aguantar su postura cuando replicaba a Brandon, pero es verdad que era imposible mantenerse firme con un cabron aterrador como él.
Que si, que al final cuando por fin hablan y se salen de malentendidos y todo el rollo, son ambos cuquisimos y blablabla. Solo que yo, con lo rencorosa que soy, ni olvido ni perdono porque no soy dios ni tengo Alzheimer.
No puedo con el protagonista de este libro. Va más allá de mi. Me gustan gruñones pero lo de este tío no es eso, es que es un hijo puta con todas las letras. Va a la lista de los más odiados. De verdad.
Le doy esta puntuación al libro, a pesar de todo, porque te mantienes totalmente en vilo, enganchada y con la inútil esperanza de que algún día el carácter del imbecil de Brandon mejore. Pero ya os lo digo yo, no esperéis por ello.
Primero os contaré de qué va esto:
Tenemos a Heather, una chica que un día fue una dama inglesa, pero su padre, una vez murió su madre, se dedicó a gastarse todo en el juego. Lo vendió todo, así que cuando murió dejó a Heather sola, y sin dote para casarse. Es entonces cuando aparecen unos tíos que deciden llevársela con ella. Las penurias de Heather solo acababan de empezar con su Tía Fanny.
Por otro lado tenemos a Brandon, capitán de un barco que acaba de llegar a puerto y que tiene... ganas de marcha, para intentar ser un poco finos. Confundiendo a Heather con lo que no es, obviamente, se la llevan al barco a ver al capitán. Y ya os digo que desde aquí va todo de mal en peor.
Ahora va mi opinión. Quiero decir que antes de leer el libro, leí varias reseñas de otras personas (me gusta hacer eso, ver qué opinan los demás aunque yo luego me lo leo igual para crearme mi propia opinión) y eso de que Brandon es un cabronazo al principio pero luego mejora...
¡ES MENTIRA COCHINA!
Este estupido hijo de su madre... si lo pillo delante lo mato a palos. Os voy a decir que este gilipollas no mejora en ningún sentido hasta el último 20% del libro. Así que podréis ver que lo odio hasta lo más profundo de mi alma. Ya como empieza el libro, a mí no me jodas, pero si ya te das cuenta de que no es lo que piensas, en vez de ser un caballero ¿vas y repites? ¡Arrrrrgggggg! Lo mato 😡😡😡😡😡 no pude dejar de odiarlo todo el maldito libro. Siempre con palabras cortantes, con desprecios e insultos hacia Heather. Una llega a un punto que también se cansa de aguantar a este piltrafa.
En cuanto a Heather, aunque suelo odiar a las protagonistas sin carácter, a ella no pude odiarla. Si que me dio mucha rabia que no sacase valor a veces para aguantar su postura cuando replicaba a Brandon, pero es verdad que era imposible mantenerse firme con un cabron aterrador como él.
Que si, que al final cuando por fin hablan y se salen de malentendidos y todo el rollo, son ambos cuquisimos y blablabla. Solo que yo, con lo rencorosa que soy, ni olvido ni perdono porque no soy dios ni tengo Alzheimer.
No puedo con el protagonista de este libro. Va más allá de mi. Me gustan gruñones pero lo de este tío no es eso, es que es un hijo puta con todas las letras. Va a la lista de los más odiados. De verdad.
Le doy esta puntuación al libro, a pesar de todo, porque te mantienes totalmente en vilo, enganchada y con la inútil esperanza de que algún día el carácter del imbecil de Brandon mejore. Pero ya os lo digo yo, no esperéis por ello.
July 30, 2020
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 3.5 stars
This is a true bodice ripper, but slightly more tasteful than most of the others I’ve read. My main issues were the dismissal of rape at the end and the racial stereotypes. This book was written in the early seventies, but as I was never alive at that time, I didn’t realize how terribly ignorant people were (or just this author).
Heather (18) was a half-Irish, half-English orphan who is worked to death by her guardians, her aunt and uncle. She is beautiful and gets the opportunity to go to London where she “meets” the Yankee captain, Brandon Birmingham.
Brandon (35) is on his last voyage and he ends of returning to the Carolinas with some extra cargo, a wife. He is pretty terrible in the beginning, but gets better throughout the book. He is an orphan and the eldest of two sons. He owns a plantation in Charleston and is extremely wealthy.
Overall, if you are triggered by some of the thinking of the 1970s and 1790s this may not be the book for you, but if you can look over that, you may like it!
This is a true bodice ripper, but slightly more tasteful than most of the others I’ve read. My main issues were the dismissal of rape at the end and the racial stereotypes. This book was written in the early seventies, but as I was never alive at that time, I didn’t realize how terribly ignorant people were (or just this author).
Heather (18) was a half-Irish, half-English orphan who is worked to death by her guardians, her aunt and uncle. She is beautiful and gets the opportunity to go to London where she “meets” the Yankee captain, Brandon Birmingham.
Brandon (35) is on his last voyage and he ends of returning to the Carolinas with some extra cargo, a wife. He is pretty terrible in the beginning, but gets better throughout the book. He is an orphan and the eldest of two sons. He owns a plantation in Charleston and is extremely wealthy.
Overall, if you are triggered by some of the thinking of the 1970s and 1790s this may not be the book for you, but if you can look over that, you may like it!
March 18, 2011
My modern sensibilities were deeply offended by this classic 1970’s romance. It is reading books like this when I regret my quirk of always needing to finish books, even when I don’t like them. At the beginning of the story, the 18-year-old heroine is living with her verbally abusive aunt and hen-pecked uncle. They decide to foist her off on an extended member of the family who claims he can have her admitted to a prestigious finishing school for young ladies. But as soon as she’s left for London with him he indicates his true plan is to sell her to a high-class brothel after he’s grown tired of his own use of her body.
He unsuccessfully attempts to rape her and after she escapes from his home she is captured by two Yankee seamen who mistake her for a streetwalker. They take her aboard their ship where she is raped repeatedly by the 35-year-old captain and illustrious hero of the story.
Here’s a taste of rape, 1972-style:
“Relax…Just lie still and don’t fight me. Later you can learn what pleases a man, but for now just lie still…”
“You don’t appear to be a cold wench, ma petite…only for the moment a reluctant one. Soon you’ll learn to enjoy it. For now just learn to accept it.”
And when she sobbingly tells him she hates him, loathes him, despises him, he actually laughs and says, “You’ll change your mind…Someday you’ll be begging for it…Just wait, Heather, and we’ll see which one of us is right.”
Following the rape, he tells her he intends to install her in a private household as his London mistress. She doesn’t find this proposition acceptable so she escapes from the ship and returns to her aunt and uncle’s cottage, where she is grudgingly taken back in. Life reverts back to the way it had been except that Heather is now suffering the symptoms of early pregnancy, although she doesn’t realize the truth of it herself. It isn’t until her aunt catches a glimpse of her in the bath when the reality of her circumstances are finally acknowledged; Heather has been impregnated by her rapist. So of course the logical next step in this type of scenario is a forced marriage.
Heather, being a victim of the era, is spineless, subservient and too stupid to live so she meekly goes along with the plan. She rides to London with her aunt and uncle and through the connections of a powerful family friend, the rapist, Captain Brandon Birmingham, is forced to man up and unwillingly dragged to the altar with Heather Simmons, the ever-deferential.
He is angry at being trapped into marriage and believes Heather played a role in orchestrating their forced nuptials. So in order to punish her for having wronged him, he tells her he will never sleep with her. When he initially informs her of his intent to withhold the hot sexxin’, he actually seems to believe he is denying her something she would have wanted. So when she is relieved that she won’t be required to perform her wifely duties, he is actually surprised. I wanted to throttle him! Come on, you arrogant asshole, she was a fucking virgin. You raped her. Thanks to you, her only experience with sex has been a physical and emotional violation of the worst sort. Why is it so shocking that she wouldn’t want you?
Then, for the next couple hundred pages following the wedding, Brandon takes his liberties in taunting her, mocking her and being cruel. And even on the occasions when he acted kindly towards her—purchasing thoughtful gifts, sparing no expense in purchasing a new wardrobe for her, caring for her when she was sick, standing up for her when she was verbally assaulted by his jealous ex—he would invariably ruin the moment by turning around and saying something rude and hurtful. And for what purpose? I imagine the intent was to show that he was falling in love with her, but I don’t buy that crock of shit. Kind then cruel, hot then cold; that is the recipe of an abusive manipulator, not someone who is falling in love. And keep in mind, you raped her. So why mock and taunt her? >:/
Anyway, the turning point in the story seems to occur when he goes on a month-long business trip and they both spontaneously decide to start being nice to each other when they are reunited. The story became slightly more tolerable after that point but by then I was so much in hate with the characters that I didn’t find it to be a redeeming or believable change of pace.
Secondly, unrelated to rape and the supposed “ideal” sexual dynamics in the 1970’s, I was also offended by how the author addressed the issue ofslaves servants in this story. The book was published in 1972, right on the heels of the Civil Rights Era, so I found it so terribly convenient that Brandon and several of the other white characters were such forward thinking people as to be opposed to slavery, in spite of the setting in South Carolina in 1799-1800.
Apparently it is one thing to be so overcome at the sight of a woman that you can’t help but rape her three times in one night but owning slaves??? Oh-ho-ho! That is just unforgivable, son! I found the discrepancy between such an old-fashioned attitude to rape and the more modern attitude to slavery jarring. And I found the black characters to be painful stereotypes. They are described as being childlike and jolly and so fucking fake that whitey over here felt mortified. Being so decidedly anti-slavery was incongruent with the story’s setting but supposedly appropriate given the book’s publication date and yet, the black characters are constantly referred to as “Negress” and “Negro”. Uh, really? I’m sorry, but it just didn’t add up for this reader.
I’m giving it an extra star because I wouldn’t mind giving the author another shot—when I separate the offensive material from the storyline itself, I suspect that a different plot and setting might have more adequately captured my interest, but unfortunately, I can’t say that I read the same book as the multitude of readers who are giving this book 4 and 5 stars. I truly do not get it.
He unsuccessfully attempts to rape her and after she escapes from his home she is captured by two Yankee seamen who mistake her for a streetwalker. They take her aboard their ship where she is raped repeatedly by the 35-year-old captain and illustrious hero of the story.
Here’s a taste of rape, 1972-style:
“Relax…Just lie still and don’t fight me. Later you can learn what pleases a man, but for now just lie still…”
“You don’t appear to be a cold wench, ma petite…only for the moment a reluctant one. Soon you’ll learn to enjoy it. For now just learn to accept it.”
And when she sobbingly tells him she hates him, loathes him, despises him, he actually laughs and says, “You’ll change your mind…Someday you’ll be begging for it…Just wait, Heather, and we’ll see which one of us is right.”
Following the rape, he tells her he intends to install her in a private household as his London mistress. She doesn’t find this proposition acceptable so she escapes from the ship and returns to her aunt and uncle’s cottage, where she is grudgingly taken back in. Life reverts back to the way it had been except that Heather is now suffering the symptoms of early pregnancy, although she doesn’t realize the truth of it herself. It isn’t until her aunt catches a glimpse of her in the bath when the reality of her circumstances are finally acknowledged; Heather has been impregnated by her rapist. So of course the logical next step in this type of scenario is a forced marriage.
Heather, being a victim of the era, is spineless, subservient and too stupid to live so she meekly goes along with the plan. She rides to London with her aunt and uncle and through the connections of a powerful family friend, the rapist, Captain Brandon Birmingham, is forced to man up and unwillingly dragged to the altar with Heather Simmons, the ever-deferential.
He is angry at being trapped into marriage and believes Heather played a role in orchestrating their forced nuptials. So in order to punish her for having wronged him, he tells her he will never sleep with her. When he initially informs her of his intent to withhold the hot sexxin’, he actually seems to believe he is denying her something she would have wanted. So when she is relieved that she won’t be required to perform her wifely duties, he is actually surprised. I wanted to throttle him! Come on, you arrogant asshole, she was a fucking virgin. You raped her. Thanks to you, her only experience with sex has been a physical and emotional violation of the worst sort. Why is it so shocking that she wouldn’t want you?
Then, for the next couple hundred pages following the wedding, Brandon takes his liberties in taunting her, mocking her and being cruel. And even on the occasions when he acted kindly towards her—purchasing thoughtful gifts, sparing no expense in purchasing a new wardrobe for her, caring for her when she was sick, standing up for her when she was verbally assaulted by his jealous ex—he would invariably ruin the moment by turning around and saying something rude and hurtful. And for what purpose? I imagine the intent was to show that he was falling in love with her, but I don’t buy that crock of shit. Kind then cruel, hot then cold; that is the recipe of an abusive manipulator, not someone who is falling in love. And keep in mind, you raped her. So why mock and taunt her? >:/
Anyway, the turning point in the story seems to occur when he goes on a month-long business trip and they both spontaneously decide to start being nice to each other when they are reunited. The story became slightly more tolerable after that point but by then I was so much in hate with the characters that I didn’t find it to be a redeeming or believable change of pace.
Secondly, unrelated to rape and the supposed “ideal” sexual dynamics in the 1970’s, I was also offended by how the author addressed the issue of
Apparently it is one thing to be so overcome at the sight of a woman that you can’t help but rape her three times in one night but owning slaves??? Oh-ho-ho! That is just unforgivable, son! I found the discrepancy between such an old-fashioned attitude to rape and the more modern attitude to slavery jarring. And I found the black characters to be painful stereotypes. They are described as being childlike and jolly and so fucking fake that whitey over here felt mortified. Being so decidedly anti-slavery was incongruent with the story’s setting but supposedly appropriate given the book’s publication date and yet, the black characters are constantly referred to as “Negress” and “Negro”. Uh, really? I’m sorry, but it just didn’t add up for this reader.
I’m giving it an extra star because I wouldn’t mind giving the author another shot—when I separate the offensive material from the storyline itself, I suspect that a different plot and setting might have more adequately captured my interest, but unfortunately, I can’t say that I read the same book as the multitude of readers who are giving this book 4 and 5 stars. I truly do not get it.
September 22, 2014
Yes, Brandon can be a class A jerk and extremely arrogant. Heather is very sweet, innocent, and meek. Actually, I found Heather refreshing since so many of the heroines are feisty beyond reason and not at all an accurate protrayal of women of their time. This book hits many of my "kinks" - captor/captive, mistaken identity (he thinks she's a prostitue), noncon, a much older hero (she's 17/18 and he's 35) . THis is a fantasy. Period. Realistic has nothing to do with it. If that's what you want, this is not the book for you.
What I love is that Brandon is so hopelessly whipped and is so stubborn about admitting it. He makes a jackass of himself by "punishing her" by refusing to have sex with her once married. He's such an idiot and his brother is merciless in pointing it out to him. It is he who is punished by that, her only experience was by his force the first time they met. So, that's what she believed sex was like. She didn't care if he didn't want sex, because it scared her. Of course her attraction to him (which is always there) blossoms.
Brandon is so tied in knots because he's so used to being pursued and here's this girl who he wants so badly and she wants nothing to do with him at first. She does not want to be his mistress, she does not want his fancy clothes, she does not want to sleep with him, and despite his beliefs about her part in the blackmail, she does not want to marry him. He is so full of hot air and foolish pride. He is also extremely protective of Heather and wants to give her everything. As many have said, he ends up putting her on a pedestal which was sweet. Also, I kinda liked his paternal attitude. she really brings out the protective instincts in him and I love when he takes care of her while she is ill on the voyage from England.
As far as the rape. It is disturbing because he's so arrogant once he realizes she's not a prostitute. He decides she'll be his mistress and will come to love it once he showers her with material things and gives her servants, etc. He is not considerate of her feelings on the matter and just decides she is his and that she'll learn to love it. He is not, however, brutal by the standards of that genre. He never hits her. He actually tries hard to give her pleasure, but she is too innocent/scared to be aroused. Then she runs away from him, which does serve him right.
****ADDED RE: Abridged Cassette version: bought this because it's one of my favs and I wanted to be able to listen to it while I cleaned or drove. Wow! The abridged is such a watered down version. Sometimes Woodiwiss can, IMHO be wordy, so I thought this would eliminate that and possibly skim over some of the parts in the beginning before they got together. Unfortunately this was TOO condensed. The entire story can be listened to in 90 minutes. Anyone who's read the book knows this is extremely short. So much detail and tension was lost. It went from the classic it is to something like a fluffy little Hqn historical.
What I love is that Brandon is so hopelessly whipped and is so stubborn about admitting it. He makes a jackass of himself by "punishing her" by refusing to have sex with her once married. He's such an idiot and his brother is merciless in pointing it out to him. It is he who is punished by that, her only experience was by his force the first time they met. So, that's what she believed sex was like. She didn't care if he didn't want sex, because it scared her. Of course her attraction to him (which is always there) blossoms.
Brandon is so tied in knots because he's so used to being pursued and here's this girl who he wants so badly and she wants nothing to do with him at first. She does not want to be his mistress, she does not want his fancy clothes, she does not want to sleep with him, and despite his beliefs about her part in the blackmail, she does not want to marry him. He is so full of hot air and foolish pride. He is also extremely protective of Heather and wants to give her everything. As many have said, he ends up putting her on a pedestal which was sweet. Also, I kinda liked his paternal attitude. she really brings out the protective instincts in him and I love when he takes care of her while she is ill on the voyage from England.
As far as the rape. It is disturbing because he's so arrogant once he realizes she's not a prostitute. He decides she'll be his mistress and will come to love it once he showers her with material things and gives her servants, etc. He is not considerate of her feelings on the matter and just decides she is his and that she'll learn to love it. He is not, however, brutal by the standards of that genre. He never hits her. He actually tries hard to give her pleasure, but she is too innocent/scared to be aroused. Then she runs away from him, which does serve him right.
****ADDED RE: Abridged Cassette version: bought this because it's one of my favs and I wanted to be able to listen to it while I cleaned or drove. Wow! The abridged is such a watered down version. Sometimes Woodiwiss can, IMHO be wordy, so I thought this would eliminate that and possibly skim over some of the parts in the beginning before they got together. Unfortunately this was TOO condensed. The entire story can be listened to in 90 minutes. Anyone who's read the book knows this is extremely short. So much detail and tension was lost. It went from the classic it is to something like a fluffy little Hqn historical.
July 15, 2010
I'm afraid I didn't like either of the characters in this book. He was a jerk who RAPED her at their first encounter -- repeatedly -- and she was a mouse with no backbone. Mostly, I didn't like him. He never redeemed himself for what he did to her in any way and I have no idea why they fell in love. She'd been running from another rape attempt when she fell into his clutches, but apparently that rape attempt was not ok...because he wasn't good looking? I'm not sure what differentiated the two. Our dear ship captain, being wealthy and attractive, can get away with rape? I might even have forgiven the first time because he thought she was a prostitute and there was a legitimate misunderstanding happening, but after that he knew exactly what he was doing. He was an awful, awful person with a horrible temper and no redeeming qualities.
I was also really sick of hearing about how attractive Heather was, probably because I was given no other reason to like her. Upon reaching his home, people said at first sight that she was a fine wife for him. Just from seeing her. Ok...but she's done nothing except be a passive little mouse who's let other people live her life for her.
In fact, I generally felt that too much emphasis was placed on what people looked like and not enough on what they acted like. More than one woman was insulted for being large or fat, unlike our dear, perfectly proportions little Heather. Granted, her aunt was horrible to her, but that doesn't make it ok to criticize her fat bottom. It didn't do anything to Heather -- her foul mouth and angry hands did.
I don't recommend.
I was also really sick of hearing about how attractive Heather was, probably because I was given no other reason to like her. Upon reaching his home, people said at first sight that she was a fine wife for him. Just from seeing her. Ok...but she's done nothing except be a passive little mouse who's let other people live her life for her.
In fact, I generally felt that too much emphasis was placed on what people looked like and not enough on what they acted like. More than one woman was insulted for being large or fat, unlike our dear, perfectly proportions little Heather. Granted, her aunt was horrible to her, but that doesn't make it ok to criticize her fat bottom. It didn't do anything to Heather -- her foul mouth and angry hands did.
I don't recommend.
May 26, 2022
I read this years ago when I was probably a young teenager. I loved this book then. As I read it now I am (a bit) aghast at the fact that Brandon basically raped Heather and took her virginity and he did it again. I don't think that will fly in modern times like these.
Of course I read somewhere that this is one of (if not the first) original 'bodice rippers'. I guess it would be since it was first published in 1972.
**Last read on 7/1/2015**
I still love this book. Not sure why I had it at 4 stars when it is one of the classic Kathleen Woodiwiss book. I'm changing my rating to 5 stars. I think it is because now I read a lot of erotica and the sex scenes here are very tame, but I think the book as a whole has a great story so if I judged the story by itself it would have 5 stars so I'm changing it to 5 stars.
Of course I read somewhere that this is one of (if not the first) original 'bodice rippers'. I guess it would be since it was first published in 1972.
**Last read on 7/1/2015**
I still love this book. Not sure why I had it at 4 stars when it is one of the classic Kathleen Woodiwiss book. I'm changing my rating to 5 stars. I think it is because now I read a lot of erotica and the sex scenes here are very tame, but I think the book as a whole has a great story so if I judged the story by itself it would have 5 stars so I'm changing it to 5 stars.
December 7, 2023
2.5 stars
Well. Where do I start? I knew this had non-con in the beginning, and it definitely did. But what really got me with this book was the plot and the heroine. There was so much potential, and the plot was so boring. And so was the heroine! There was nothing really to her character other than she had no control over her life and was forced to do whatever the hero wanted until she finally fell in love with him. You're telling me she wrote Shanna with such a headstrong (at times too headstrong) heroine and a crazy plot wrote this? I need SOMETHING to happen other than them hanging out. Even the journey from England to America was just them hanging out. I guess I thought it would be an epic and sweeping romance and nothing abut this was epic or sweeping.
It was interesting to read as a piece of romance history, but I just didn't love it.
Well. Where do I start? I knew this had non-con in the beginning, and it definitely did. But what really got me with this book was the plot and the heroine. There was so much potential, and the plot was so boring. And so was the heroine! There was nothing really to her character other than she had no control over her life and was forced to do whatever the hero wanted until she finally fell in love with him. You're telling me she wrote Shanna with such a headstrong (at times too headstrong) heroine and a crazy plot wrote this? I need SOMETHING to happen other than them hanging out. Even the journey from England to America was just them hanging out. I guess I thought it would be an epic and sweeping romance and nothing abut this was epic or sweeping.
It was interesting to read as a piece of romance history, but I just didn't love it.
March 12, 2018
2,5
#RitaWoodiwiss
La verdad es que empieza mal, un cúmulo de desgracias que me han parecido demasiadas para empezar, a Heather le pasa de todo ya desde el primer momento. No hacía mas que pensar "a ver qué le pasa ahora" y he estado así durante casi toda la novela.
A partir de la mitad, mejoró algo pero tampoco es que me haya conseguido atrapar del todo como lo hicieron las otras dos novelas que he leído de esta autora. No me han atrapado ninguno de los dos protagonistas, me atraía más un secundario y éste no aparece hasta la mitad de la novela. A mi parecer se podía haber sacado más partido a la trama de intriga.
No la he querido comparar con Una rosa en invierno, que me parece una delicia, pero ha habido muchos momentos en los que pensaba en ella y en cómo, desde el primer momento me atrapó. Con esta novela no ha podido ser, en vez de querer saber más, tenía ganas de terminarla.
#RitaWoodiwiss
La verdad es que empieza mal, un cúmulo de desgracias que me han parecido demasiadas para empezar, a Heather le pasa de todo ya desde el primer momento. No hacía mas que pensar "a ver qué le pasa ahora" y he estado así durante casi toda la novela.
A partir de la mitad, mejoró algo pero tampoco es que me haya conseguido atrapar del todo como lo hicieron las otras dos novelas que he leído de esta autora. No me han atrapado ninguno de los dos protagonistas, me atraía más un secundario y éste no aparece hasta la mitad de la novela. A mi parecer se podía haber sacado más partido a la trama de intriga.
No la he querido comparar con Una rosa en invierno, que me parece una delicia, pero ha habido muchos momentos en los que pensaba en ella y en cómo, desde el primer momento me atrapó. Con esta novela no ha podido ser, en vez de querer saber más, tenía ganas de terminarla.
January 13, 2024
Well, I did it. I made it through the original HR, the Flame and the Flower. I thought I would never try it, but it was recently released in audiobook with Ashford McNabb as the narrator so why not give it a shot.
Overall, I liked it better than I thought I would. I knew it was going to have some brutal moments, but it was also rich in many ways. Rich in details, rich in story and vocabulary. I often delighted in the word choices.
I have thoughts on how this story unfolds that I likely will not get into. Would I consider it the most convincing romance I have read? Definitely not, but it did a good job of showing the other options for the heroine were not better and that life with the hero was the best option.
Overall, I liked it better than I thought I would. I knew it was going to have some brutal moments, but it was also rich in many ways. Rich in details, rich in story and vocabulary. I often delighted in the word choices.
I have thoughts on how this story unfolds that I likely will not get into. Would I consider it the most convincing romance I have read? Definitely not, but it did a good job of showing the other options for the heroine were not better and that life with the hero was the best option.
March 3, 2016
I wouldn't normally bother rating a book I didn't finish, but I got through half of The Flame and the Flower before giving up, so I have some pretty strong opinions and plenty to say. If my pain can spare some of you anguish, then it will all be worthwhile.
I was actually a little bit excited to read this book, even though I knew it had a reputation as being very of its time and, to today's readers, fairly offensive. But I don't have an extremely thin skin. After all, I love Outlander, in spite of the strapping debacle! Plus, I was curious about the novel that basically invented the modern day historical romance back in the early 1970s. I had high hopes that this might actually be a fun, engaging old-school yarn, in spite of its issues. Unfortunately, it's just a mess.
I was actually a little bit excited to read this book, even though I knew it had a reputation as being very of its time and, to today's readers, fairly offensive. But I don't have an extremely thin skin. After all, I love Outlander, in spite of the strapping debacle! Plus, I was curious about the novel that basically invented the modern day historical romance back in the early 1970s. I had high hopes that this might actually be a fun, engaging old-school yarn, in spite of its issues. Unfortunately, it's just a mess.
Read
May 8, 2023This book has been looming large on our Romance History Project book list for a while now: I knew we were going to have to read it, I knew it was going to be bad. I'm not sure I knew just quite how bad? It was bad.
CW for discussion of rape throughout
The Flame and the Flower is a book that lives in the current romance ecosystem primarily on reputation: which is to say, I suspect that a large number of current romance readers (at least those who make better decisions than I do) haven't read it, but that most people have at least heard of it. When you do hear of this book, it’s cited as the "original bodice ripper" or a "founding text" of historical romance. You also often hear that primacy contested, as a defensive posture. A lot of refusal to see this as a foundational text comes from wanting to push back on stereotypes about romance : it's not fair to keep talking about this one rapey, white-supremacist, poorly-written, traumatic tale of an abuser forcing a helpless woman to marry him, because that's what non-romance-readers think ALL romance is like. And ALL romance clearly isn't like that, so why do we keep saying this book founded the genre?
I ended up coming down in a confused kind of place about what it means to think of this text as foundational, and indeed what it means to still read it in 2023, rather than just consigning it to the dustbin of its current bad reputation. I'm going to point everyone in the direction of Hannah's excellent discussion of one reason why it's still important to talk about this book, which is that its tropes and character dynamics DO still pop up in many more recent romances.
Another reason I think it's important to talk about this book, though, is that I think romance as a genre has a really complicated relationship to criticism? In that the desire to defend the genre from the misogynist genre-bashing it gets from mainstream media outlets can sometimes cause a defensive response of stating that ALL romance is well-written, that it's ALL feminist, that it's ALL above reproach. Which can, rather paradoxically, bring us back around to avoiding the kind of rigorous critique that we wish "outsiders" would give the genre. I spend a lot of time talking online about good craft in romance - I think it's important to take the texts that I think of reflexively as "not good" and subject them to the same scrutiny (though perhaps not the same airtime).
Anyway my desire to take this book seriously as an object of literary/craft critique was also in part prompted by this article, which one of my intrepid co-buddy-readers found. It takes the basic premise of seeking a new approach to understanding the "rape trope" in old-school romance novels. The author asserts that our prevailing assumptions - that the rape trope taps into some sort of repressed female fantasy, that it came from deeply internalized misogyny on the parts of authors and readers, that it was the "only way" to portray a heroine discovering sex, because to have her seek it out and enjoy it was unacceptable in the 1970s - are all not only insufficient to understand its presence, but also problematically assume that romance novels are somehow a mimetic representation of women's lives and desires. Rather, the article posits, we can treat rape scenes in romance primarily as having a literary function, doing metaphorical or symbolic work. To do otherwise is supposedly to assume that romance is less deserving of the critical eye towards craft that we bring to scenes of violence or trauma in Serious Literature.
And honestly, I was both troubled and intrigued by this premise. I fully acknowledge this may not be an approach that others accept or want to engage with. Treating rape in literature as having a purely narrative function risks abstracting something that our society already doesn't want to treat as a concrete reality. It also pretty thoroughly ignores the fact that not all readers *can* access a reading space of "this is just a metaphor" safely and non-traumatically. I think it's perfectly valid to decide that some things are beyond the reach of metaphorization.
I am always captivated, though, by arguments that enjoin us to take romance seriously as literature. I believe that all kinds of choices in romance texts have a function beyond titillating women by reflecting their reality, their repressed traumas, or their fantasies. I'm not going to rehearse the entire argument of the article here, especially because it talks about a lot of other books besides TFATF. But I did wonder if it could help me read, I don't know, something other than a horrifically traumatic experience into what happens to Heather in TFATF. Is there some way to read this book as being about social power? Might that help me understand why it was so popular at the time, and still cited as so influential today?
The short answer is, sure, it's possible to read this book with a focus on craft and symbolism and the like, but it's... still pretty bad news? Heather starts the book in a place of total disempowerment. She's lost her parents, she has no prospects, she's being forced to do drudge work by a cruel aunt, and she has no models of what love or care look like. She has neither financial nor emotional resources of any kind. She is then further disempowered by Brandon's rape and subsequent impregnation of her. This rape and impregnation, of course, are what allow her family to blackmail Brandon into marriage, so that by the end of the novel she has, in a way, gained both the financial and emotional resources which she was initially lacking. She is a wife and a mother, and ends the novel contemplating a portrait of Brandon's mother, thinking about how they both shared a secret strength, unknowable to their men, that proved the backbone of their families. I think defenders of this book might want to structurally analyze that progression as empowering, in a cultural context where "actually consenting to sex and enjoying it" and "something other than a marriage and children" were largely off the table in the mainstream consciousness of an assumed conservative readership.
The problem, though, is that even analyzing that empowerment from a symbolic, story-structure perspective, it all completely falls apart. The failure here is threefold. First of all, even moving beyond whether we choose to problematize the home and heteronormative family as a source of women's power, Heather remains essentially reactive throughout the entire text. Her emotions, behaviors, and decisions are entirely and unremittingly provoked by behaviors initiated by Brandon or the other men who seek to rape her. Simply placing "marriage and family" at the end of a series of unavoidable plot traumas hardly, to my mind, reinscribes it as a source of strength in the heroine's journey.
Secondly, and not at all surprisingly, the source of Heather's "strength" (the hearth and home) is maintained through the labor of enslaved people, a fact which the novel is singularly uninterested in recognizing. Enslaved people are present in the narrative, their depiction is full of horribly racist tropes, yet the actual fact of the physical violence of their labor and enslavement is entirely elided by the text (which refuses to even use the word "slave" unless it applies to other people). It's quite telling, actually, from a craft standpoint, that the narrative has to create an enormous void around the labor that produces "hearth and home" as a physical space, in order for Heather to occupy it symbolically.
Thirdly, while Heather does eventually get to occupy her space of "empowerment" (a million scare quotes) off the back of a series of highly-visible violent traumas to her person and a series of highly-invisibilized violent traumas to the enslaved people around her... there is no simultaneous narrative reckoning via which Brandon loses his social capital. He retains his wealth, he retains his power, he is the legal head of the family. Again, as I argue with imaginary defenders of this book in my head, I can hear them object "but he is brought low by love! he learns to love Heather, and his failed attempts to physically control her person result in the knowledge that he has no emotional power over her or himself!"
The above-mentioned article kind of tries to make this point, and my problem with it is... this reading assumes that emotions have any kind of meaningful currency in this book. Whereas the reality -and this is another craft issue- is that it fails to assert any emotional permanency on the part of its characters. Nobody has feelings that last longer than three pages: they swing madly from anger to sadness to plotting revenge to begging forgiveness. There is, so far as I can ascertain, no gendered logic to their experience of feelings - no sense in which Brandon acquiring the ability to emote is deconstructive of toxic masculinity - because there is simply no logic to their experience of emotion, gendered or otherwise. And I'm not saying that if Heather and Brandon behaved with emotional consistency, it would sell the rest of this book to me. Rather, the problems stated above are exacerbated by other craft decisions.
I do think that what this all leads me to, though, is that the article I started off with is presenting a false dichotomy. I don't love the idea of treating romance only as a reflection of women's desires and fantasies, but I'm not sure it's helpful to course correct and try to read it as exclusively literary, with no referent to anything but itself. The attempt to read Heather as a figure with a heroic journey when she is both subjected to horrific violence by men AND enacting horrific violence on enslaved peoples is a contradiction that can only be upheld by creating other massive narrative inconsistencies (a romance on a plantation that can't say the word "slavery," a romance where the hero and heroine can't behave like people with emotional object permanence). Good craft does not occur absent the logic of the world we live in.
But here's the thing (and I promise this will be over soon). I've just spent 2,000 words deconstructing why I think this book is badly-crafted, in addition to its socially pernicious attitudes about sex and gender. Which ... doesn't help me understand why it was so popular? Clearly it was doing something for some large subset of readers at the time of its publication, and as problematic as I find the book, I don't think it's helpful to discount that rather than trying to understand it. I only have open-ended general musings in this direction. Of the books we've read for the Romance History Project so far, The Flame and the Flower is the one that most closely mimics the beats of romance as we know it today (focus on a main couple, relationship ups and downs, tropes like sexy bathtime and sickbed scenes, explicit sex). And I wonder if there isn't something to be said here about... TFATF as a waypoint in a long journey of readers being forcibly punished for their pleasure? You can have tropes, but only at the expense of watching and being forced to narratively accept horrible acts of violation? I'm sure the many people who love this book would disagree strongly with that reading. But as I'm not one of them, it's all I've got.
Tl;dr: yikes.
CW for discussion of rape throughout
The Flame and the Flower is a book that lives in the current romance ecosystem primarily on reputation: which is to say, I suspect that a large number of current romance readers (at least those who make better decisions than I do) haven't read it, but that most people have at least heard of it. When you do hear of this book, it’s cited as the "original bodice ripper" or a "founding text" of historical romance. You also often hear that primacy contested, as a defensive posture. A lot of refusal to see this as a foundational text comes from wanting to push back on stereotypes about romance : it's not fair to keep talking about this one rapey, white-supremacist, poorly-written, traumatic tale of an abuser forcing a helpless woman to marry him, because that's what non-romance-readers think ALL romance is like. And ALL romance clearly isn't like that, so why do we keep saying this book founded the genre?
I ended up coming down in a confused kind of place about what it means to think of this text as foundational, and indeed what it means to still read it in 2023, rather than just consigning it to the dustbin of its current bad reputation. I'm going to point everyone in the direction of Hannah's excellent discussion of one reason why it's still important to talk about this book, which is that its tropes and character dynamics DO still pop up in many more recent romances.
Another reason I think it's important to talk about this book, though, is that I think romance as a genre has a really complicated relationship to criticism? In that the desire to defend the genre from the misogynist genre-bashing it gets from mainstream media outlets can sometimes cause a defensive response of stating that ALL romance is well-written, that it's ALL feminist, that it's ALL above reproach. Which can, rather paradoxically, bring us back around to avoiding the kind of rigorous critique that we wish "outsiders" would give the genre. I spend a lot of time talking online about good craft in romance - I think it's important to take the texts that I think of reflexively as "not good" and subject them to the same scrutiny (though perhaps not the same airtime).
Anyway my desire to take this book seriously as an object of literary/craft critique was also in part prompted by this article, which one of my intrepid co-buddy-readers found. It takes the basic premise of seeking a new approach to understanding the "rape trope" in old-school romance novels. The author asserts that our prevailing assumptions - that the rape trope taps into some sort of repressed female fantasy, that it came from deeply internalized misogyny on the parts of authors and readers, that it was the "only way" to portray a heroine discovering sex, because to have her seek it out and enjoy it was unacceptable in the 1970s - are all not only insufficient to understand its presence, but also problematically assume that romance novels are somehow a mimetic representation of women's lives and desires. Rather, the article posits, we can treat rape scenes in romance primarily as having a literary function, doing metaphorical or symbolic work. To do otherwise is supposedly to assume that romance is less deserving of the critical eye towards craft that we bring to scenes of violence or trauma in Serious Literature.
And honestly, I was both troubled and intrigued by this premise. I fully acknowledge this may not be an approach that others accept or want to engage with. Treating rape in literature as having a purely narrative function risks abstracting something that our society already doesn't want to treat as a concrete reality. It also pretty thoroughly ignores the fact that not all readers *can* access a reading space of "this is just a metaphor" safely and non-traumatically. I think it's perfectly valid to decide that some things are beyond the reach of metaphorization.
I am always captivated, though, by arguments that enjoin us to take romance seriously as literature. I believe that all kinds of choices in romance texts have a function beyond titillating women by reflecting their reality, their repressed traumas, or their fantasies. I'm not going to rehearse the entire argument of the article here, especially because it talks about a lot of other books besides TFATF. But I did wonder if it could help me read, I don't know, something other than a horrifically traumatic experience into what happens to Heather in TFATF. Is there some way to read this book as being about social power? Might that help me understand why it was so popular at the time, and still cited as so influential today?
The short answer is, sure, it's possible to read this book with a focus on craft and symbolism and the like, but it's... still pretty bad news? Heather starts the book in a place of total disempowerment. She's lost her parents, she has no prospects, she's being forced to do drudge work by a cruel aunt, and she has no models of what love or care look like. She has neither financial nor emotional resources of any kind. She is then further disempowered by Brandon's rape and subsequent impregnation of her. This rape and impregnation, of course, are what allow her family to blackmail Brandon into marriage, so that by the end of the novel she has, in a way, gained both the financial and emotional resources which she was initially lacking. She is a wife and a mother, and ends the novel contemplating a portrait of Brandon's mother, thinking about how they both shared a secret strength, unknowable to their men, that proved the backbone of their families. I think defenders of this book might want to structurally analyze that progression as empowering, in a cultural context where "actually consenting to sex and enjoying it" and "something other than a marriage and children" were largely off the table in the mainstream consciousness of an assumed conservative readership.
The problem, though, is that even analyzing that empowerment from a symbolic, story-structure perspective, it all completely falls apart. The failure here is threefold. First of all, even moving beyond whether we choose to problematize the home and heteronormative family as a source of women's power, Heather remains essentially reactive throughout the entire text. Her emotions, behaviors, and decisions are entirely and unremittingly provoked by behaviors initiated by Brandon or the other men who seek to rape her. Simply placing "marriage and family" at the end of a series of unavoidable plot traumas hardly, to my mind, reinscribes it as a source of strength in the heroine's journey.
Secondly, and not at all surprisingly, the source of Heather's "strength" (the hearth and home) is maintained through the labor of enslaved people, a fact which the novel is singularly uninterested in recognizing. Enslaved people are present in the narrative, their depiction is full of horribly racist tropes, yet the actual fact of the physical violence of their labor and enslavement is entirely elided by the text (which refuses to even use the word "slave" unless it applies to other people). It's quite telling, actually, from a craft standpoint, that the narrative has to create an enormous void around the labor that produces "hearth and home" as a physical space, in order for Heather to occupy it symbolically.
Thirdly, while Heather does eventually get to occupy her space of "empowerment" (a million scare quotes) off the back of a series of highly-visible violent traumas to her person and a series of highly-invisibilized violent traumas to the enslaved people around her... there is no simultaneous narrative reckoning via which Brandon loses his social capital. He retains his wealth, he retains his power, he is the legal head of the family. Again, as I argue with imaginary defenders of this book in my head, I can hear them object "but he is brought low by love! he learns to love Heather, and his failed attempts to physically control her person result in the knowledge that he has no emotional power over her or himself!"
The above-mentioned article kind of tries to make this point, and my problem with it is... this reading assumes that emotions have any kind of meaningful currency in this book. Whereas the reality -and this is another craft issue- is that it fails to assert any emotional permanency on the part of its characters. Nobody has feelings that last longer than three pages: they swing madly from anger to sadness to plotting revenge to begging forgiveness. There is, so far as I can ascertain, no gendered logic to their experience of feelings - no sense in which Brandon acquiring the ability to emote is deconstructive of toxic masculinity - because there is simply no logic to their experience of emotion, gendered or otherwise. And I'm not saying that if Heather and Brandon behaved with emotional consistency, it would sell the rest of this book to me. Rather, the problems stated above are exacerbated by other craft decisions.
I do think that what this all leads me to, though, is that the article I started off with is presenting a false dichotomy. I don't love the idea of treating romance only as a reflection of women's desires and fantasies, but I'm not sure it's helpful to course correct and try to read it as exclusively literary, with no referent to anything but itself. The attempt to read Heather as a figure with a heroic journey when she is both subjected to horrific violence by men AND enacting horrific violence on enslaved peoples is a contradiction that can only be upheld by creating other massive narrative inconsistencies (a romance on a plantation that can't say the word "slavery," a romance where the hero and heroine can't behave like people with emotional object permanence). Good craft does not occur absent the logic of the world we live in.
But here's the thing (and I promise this will be over soon). I've just spent 2,000 words deconstructing why I think this book is badly-crafted, in addition to its socially pernicious attitudes about sex and gender. Which ... doesn't help me understand why it was so popular? Clearly it was doing something for some large subset of readers at the time of its publication, and as problematic as I find the book, I don't think it's helpful to discount that rather than trying to understand it. I only have open-ended general musings in this direction. Of the books we've read for the Romance History Project so far, The Flame and the Flower is the one that most closely mimics the beats of romance as we know it today (focus on a main couple, relationship ups and downs, tropes like sexy bathtime and sickbed scenes, explicit sex). And I wonder if there isn't something to be said here about... TFATF as a waypoint in a long journey of readers being forcibly punished for their pleasure? You can have tropes, but only at the expense of watching and being forced to narratively accept horrible acts of violation? I'm sure the many people who love this book would disagree strongly with that reading. But as I'm not one of them, it's all I've got.
Tl;dr: yikes.
February 5, 2021
This was my first Woodiwiss historical. Shared it with my sister and my friends, it was that good!
Years later, I tried to read it again and thought to myself: what was I so excited about?
Still a great read, if somewhat tame by today's standards.
Years later, I tried to read it again and thought to myself: what was I so excited about?
Still a great read, if somewhat tame by today's standards.
October 29, 2023
What we have here is a [MAJOR!] failure to communicate.
I know that is oversimplifying things but at its core the bad things (REALLY bad things) that happen in this book stem from failures of understanding. And the delay of the good things that happen also stem from miscommunications and assumptions. Or at least that is what I took away from it.
I picked up The Flame and the Flower on a GR friend’s recommendation because I want to expand the horizons of genres I read and I also want to see how genres have evolved over time. (That’s also part of the reason I’ve been reading memoirs, cozy mysteries, and westerns.) As I understand it, this book is credited as the first “bodice ripper.” So from that standpoint, I wanted to read this one to see how the genre stared. It was published in 1972. I can see why it is a love it or hate it kind of book. I’m also sensitive to the fact that it’s polarizing. It definitely has paradigm sensibilities different to what is today. But it is a historical romance set in 1799 so it seemed to me it would have to have different sensibilities and portrayals. Yes, it has bad stuff happening to poor Heather. I felt so so badly about that. Horrific stuff.
But I’m also judging it from the standpoint of a story set in, let’s face it, a brutal time, so yeah, it would have bad things going on. And I read it curious about the storytelling. And I also submit that as a historical novel telling a historical tale, in my humble opinion TFATF worked better as a piece of fiction than say for example, Piers Anthony’s Apprentice Adept trilogy, which was supposed to be futuristic, but kinda sorta read like a horny, awkward 12 old boy wrote it and could conceive of women as nothing but an object. Those books SHOULD have been enlightened, but most definitely were not.
Anyway, on to the story. I must say that the first few pages that described the English countryside, before any of the events occurred, really pulled me in. Then later, I wanted to smack Brandon in the face so many times and very hard. He was such a pompous, privileged, asshat dumbass. I wanted to look out for Heather and stop all the attacks and bad stuff. But that struck me as a good thing because they were pretty well drawn characters. It was a slow, slow burn in the romance department, which at the time surprised me, but upon reflection it makes sense. Although I did foresee that the stuff involving I also did not foresee the twists involved in that. That was a pleasant surprise. It had a more omniscient POV that you don’t often see nowadays. So overall, I'm glad I read it.
I know that is oversimplifying things but at its core the bad things (REALLY bad things) that happen in this book stem from failures of understanding. And the delay of the good things that happen also stem from miscommunications and assumptions. Or at least that is what I took away from it.
I picked up The Flame and the Flower on a GR friend’s recommendation because I want to expand the horizons of genres I read and I also want to see how genres have evolved over time. (That’s also part of the reason I’ve been reading memoirs, cozy mysteries, and westerns.) As I understand it, this book is credited as the first “bodice ripper.” So from that standpoint, I wanted to read this one to see how the genre stared. It was published in 1972. I can see why it is a love it or hate it kind of book. I’m also sensitive to the fact that it’s polarizing. It definitely has paradigm sensibilities different to what is today. But it is a historical romance set in 1799 so it seemed to me it would have to have different sensibilities and portrayals. Yes, it has bad stuff happening to poor Heather. I felt so so badly about that. Horrific stuff.
But I’m also judging it from the standpoint of a story set in, let’s face it, a brutal time, so yeah, it would have bad things going on. And I read it curious about the storytelling. And I also submit that as a historical novel telling a historical tale, in my humble opinion TFATF worked better as a piece of fiction than say for example, Piers Anthony’s Apprentice Adept trilogy, which was supposed to be futuristic, but kinda sorta read like a horny, awkward 12 old boy wrote it and could conceive of women as nothing but an object. Those books SHOULD have been enlightened, but most definitely were not.
Anyway, on to the story. I must say that the first few pages that described the English countryside, before any of the events occurred, really pulled me in. Then later, I wanted to smack Brandon in the face so many times and very hard. He was such a pompous, privileged, asshat dumbass. I wanted to look out for Heather and stop all the attacks and bad stuff. But that struck me as a good thing because they were pretty well drawn characters. It was a slow, slow burn in the romance department, which at the time surprised me, but upon reflection it makes sense. Although I did foresee that the stuff involving I also did not foresee the twists involved in that. That was a pleasant surprise. It had a more omniscient POV that you don’t often see nowadays. So overall, I'm glad I read it.
Read
September 24, 2021I'm sleepy and have had wine so please take my ranting in stride, scroll past it, or better yet read Melissa's cutting, and frankly amazing, review here.
I'm not going to rate this because I only read 5 of the 10 chapters. It takes a lot for me to not finish a book. Yes, life is too short to read books we don't enjoy, but you're looking at a person who spent two years trying to finish a 200 page Don DeLillo novel she couldn't stand. But this book is far worse than that one was.
I was feeling a bit bad that I convinced Melissa to buddy-read this with me, but now I'm quite glad I did. It was interesting to see where Avon got its start in the historical romance genre. It's hard to believe that the imprint that publishes and/or has published my favorites, Laura Kinsale and Lisa Kleypas, kicked things off with this disaster of a book.
Things I don't understand:
1. How literally every single Meredith Duran, Cecilia Grant, and Laura Kinsale book ever published has a lower Goodreads rating than this pile of shit.
2. How Lisa Kleypas can call this her favorite Avon romance. The Woodiwiss influence is evident in her mediocre Vallerands series, but I seriously hope it's just nostalgia making her say things like that. If you genuinely think this book is quality, Lisa, then you need to learn how to love yourself.
3. How this is a list of books that have lower Goodreads ratings than The Flame and the Flower: Venetia, When He Was Wicked, Not Quite a Husband, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, Again the Magic, Jane Eyre, Emma.
A 4.10 average rating, you guys!? Stay messy, people of Goodreads.
I'm not going to rate this because I only read 5 of the 10 chapters. It takes a lot for me to not finish a book. Yes, life is too short to read books we don't enjoy, but you're looking at a person who spent two years trying to finish a 200 page Don DeLillo novel she couldn't stand. But this book is far worse than that one was.
I was feeling a bit bad that I convinced Melissa to buddy-read this with me, but now I'm quite glad I did. It was interesting to see where Avon got its start in the historical romance genre. It's hard to believe that the imprint that publishes and/or has published my favorites, Laura Kinsale and Lisa Kleypas, kicked things off with this disaster of a book.
Things I don't understand:
1. How literally every single Meredith Duran, Cecilia Grant, and Laura Kinsale book ever published has a lower Goodreads rating than this pile of shit.
2. How Lisa Kleypas can call this her favorite Avon romance. The Woodiwiss influence is evident in her mediocre Vallerands series, but I seriously hope it's just nostalgia making her say things like that. If you genuinely think this book is quality, Lisa, then you need to learn how to love yourself.
3. How this is a list of books that have lower Goodreads ratings than The Flame and the Flower: Venetia, When He Was Wicked, Not Quite a Husband, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, Again the Magic, Jane Eyre, Emma.
A 4.10 average rating, you guys!? Stay messy, people of Goodreads.
February 4, 2010
Rating: 0 Stars out of 5
This was my first experience with a true "bodice ripper" and it will be my last. In the first chapter the heroine kills a man defending herself from attempted rape, runs for her life and ends up with the "hero" who then rapes her himself, repeatedly. And I don't mean a case of "your lips say no but your eyes say yes", I mean lips, eyes, fists and feet all say no. I didn't make it to chapter two. I skimmed a few pages here and there through the rest of the book. I actually found it very disturbing. Millions of copies of this book have been sold? Why?? There was a time when women actually found reading about rape-based relationships appealing?
This was my first experience with a true "bodice ripper" and it will be my last. In the first chapter the heroine kills a man defending herself from attempted rape, runs for her life and ends up with the "hero" who then rapes her himself, repeatedly. And I don't mean a case of "your lips say no but your eyes say yes", I mean lips, eyes, fists and feet all say no. I didn't make it to chapter two. I skimmed a few pages here and there through the rest of the book. I actually found it very disturbing. Millions of copies of this book have been sold? Why?? There was a time when women actually found reading about rape-based relationships appealing?
July 21, 2022
I remember reading this book in the 90’s. It was one of my favourite romantic novels.
But it is definitely not safe. Their first time he takes her by force.
But it is definitely not safe. Their first time he takes her by force.
November 11, 2017
Review of book read years and years ago ! Read a few times too...
Ok, let me begin by saying:
"All Hail to the late Queen, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss !"
I know the hero in this novel rapes the heroine and it got a lot of people upset but THIS NOVEL STARTED OFF A REVOLUTION THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR US ROMANCE READERS TO HAVE ACCESS TO OUR BELOVED STORIES.
This novel started off the bodice ripper trend but I love it for more than just that. I must have been about 16 when I read this. Yes yes, I know that this wasn't exactly good reading material but I had loved romance novels and had a very lax aunt who never bothered hiding her hundreds of books from me. LOL.
I know what Brandon did to Heather was not right but damn that man was hot ( and I am NOT advocating rape by handsome men. I am just a romance novel reader who separates real life from fiction). I read this novel years ago and I still remember that he had green eyes. He was one gorgeous man. He did have too much chest hair though. LOL. That seems to be a big trend with older romance novels. Diana Palmer practically causes her heroines to suffocate on the mat of fluffy chest hair on her heroes with their pornstar mustaches. LOL. Oh God I'm sorry for straying off the main point. But Brandon didn't have a mat of fluffy chest hair, unlike Palmer's heroes. He was just fine.
Heather was an angel ! Her description made her appear to resemble a teenage Elizabeth Taylor. Brandon and Heather were a gorgeous couple and Louisa the evil whore OW almost went crazy trying to get between them but never succeeded. Then there's this other wannabe OW. I can't recall her name but she's this ugly woman with a shrewish mother. Plain Jane wannabe OW has been in love with Brandon for years and had yearned for him to fall in love with her and marry her. That would never happen in a Kathleen Woodiwiss universe ! Plain janes do not get the hot guy in a Woodiwiss novel and I just love it ! My superficial little heart yearns for more romance novels with heroines like Heather. Sigh... Oh well...
Anyway, Plain Jane goes off the deep end after Brandon marries Heather. She starts going out with a lot of horrible guys and eventually one of them strangles her. Her wicked old mother tries to frame Brandon for the murder but there's no evidence and Heather is Brandon's alibi. Eventually the villain is caught and the other OW, Louisa is sent on her way after she sells her land to Brandon. Heather and Brandon live HEA with their cuddly baby son Beau. I just wished Heather's obese cruel aunt back in England could have died of an apoplexy or tuberculosis or the plague or something torturous. Or maybe she could have fallen into a big hole in the ground and broken her non existent neck. LOL. That would have been perfect.
Now I just wish I could remember all the details of all the other Woodiwiss novels I read all those years ago. I guess I will just have to re-read them.
Ok, let me begin by saying:
"All Hail to the late Queen, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss !"
I know the hero in this novel rapes the heroine and it got a lot of people upset but THIS NOVEL STARTED OFF A REVOLUTION THAT MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR US ROMANCE READERS TO HAVE ACCESS TO OUR BELOVED STORIES.
This novel started off the bodice ripper trend but I love it for more than just that. I must have been about 16 when I read this. Yes yes, I know that this wasn't exactly good reading material but I had loved romance novels and had a very lax aunt who never bothered hiding her hundreds of books from me. LOL.
I know what Brandon did to Heather was not right but damn that man was hot ( and I am NOT advocating rape by handsome men. I am just a romance novel reader who separates real life from fiction). I read this novel years ago and I still remember that he had green eyes. He was one gorgeous man. He did have too much chest hair though. LOL. That seems to be a big trend with older romance novels. Diana Palmer practically causes her heroines to suffocate on the mat of fluffy chest hair on her heroes with their pornstar mustaches. LOL. Oh God I'm sorry for straying off the main point. But Brandon didn't have a mat of fluffy chest hair, unlike Palmer's heroes. He was just fine.
Heather was an angel ! Her description made her appear to resemble a teenage Elizabeth Taylor. Brandon and Heather were a gorgeous couple and Louisa the evil whore OW almost went crazy trying to get between them but never succeeded. Then there's this other wannabe OW. I can't recall her name but she's this ugly woman with a shrewish mother. Plain Jane wannabe OW has been in love with Brandon for years and had yearned for him to fall in love with her and marry her. That would never happen in a Kathleen Woodiwiss universe ! Plain janes do not get the hot guy in a Woodiwiss novel and I just love it ! My superficial little heart yearns for more romance novels with heroines like Heather. Sigh... Oh well...
Anyway, Plain Jane goes off the deep end after Brandon marries Heather. She starts going out with a lot of horrible guys and eventually one of them strangles her. Her wicked old mother tries to frame Brandon for the murder but there's no evidence and Heather is Brandon's alibi. Eventually the villain is caught and the other OW, Louisa is sent on her way after she sells her land to Brandon. Heather and Brandon live HEA with their cuddly baby son Beau. I just wished Heather's obese cruel aunt back in England could have died of an apoplexy or tuberculosis or the plague or something torturous. Or maybe she could have fallen into a big hole in the ground and broken her non existent neck. LOL. That would have been perfect.
Now I just wish I could remember all the details of all the other Woodiwiss novels I read all those years ago. I guess I will just have to re-read them.
November 1, 2017
Heather Simmons es una joven que para salir de su vida de pobreza decide ir con su tío a Londres pero su viaje se trunca cuando sus expectativas no son lo que eran, además se cruza en su camino un capitán Brandon Birmingham, todo orgullo y cabezonería y entre ellos se cree una relación bastante particular.
Bueno dejando atrás el brutal spoiler que hacen en la sinopsis, porque para mí lo es, tengo que decir que esta novela primera de la serie Birminghan me ha gustado mucho. Es la segunda que leo de la autora después de “Una rosa en invierno” y aunque no la supera no es nada desdeñable.
“La flor y la llama” es de esas “novelas antiguas” donde tenemos una historia repleta de aventuras por las que tienen que pasar sus protagonistas y esto es algo que me encanta y que en la actualidad vemos poquito en este género pues prima más la relación amorosa y sus tejemanejes que presentarnos una historia con empaque. Y es que a veces nos puede más la novedad que buscar novelas de hace unos cuantos años, tendré que ponerme más a ello porque vale la pena.
En cuanto a los personajes, tenemos a Heather, ésta es como un ratoncito asustado casi en toda la novela, a veces llega a desesperar un poco pero supongo que en la época en la que la autora lo escribió primaban los personajes femeninos débiles por así decirlo, aunque ya descubriréis poco a poco a Heather y la terminaréis apreciando a pesar de lo asustadiza que es. En cuanto a Brandon, al principio lo odié como creo que es normal, los términos en los que conoce a Heather no son muy buenos, pero luego te gusta esa parte de él medio gruñona, con mucho orgullo, una parte de caballero, muchas partes de un todo que al final te acaban gustando.
Del resto de personajes me ha gustado que nos hable un poco de ellos y de cómo influyen sobre todo en Heather y en cómo van modelando su carácter.
La historia me ha parecido muy entretenida y pese a lo largo del libro no me aburrí en ningún momento, está escrita en detalle y eso se nota.
Bueno dejando atrás el brutal spoiler que hacen en la sinopsis, porque para mí lo es, tengo que decir que esta novela primera de la serie Birminghan me ha gustado mucho. Es la segunda que leo de la autora después de “Una rosa en invierno” y aunque no la supera no es nada desdeñable.
“La flor y la llama” es de esas “novelas antiguas” donde tenemos una historia repleta de aventuras por las que tienen que pasar sus protagonistas y esto es algo que me encanta y que en la actualidad vemos poquito en este género pues prima más la relación amorosa y sus tejemanejes que presentarnos una historia con empaque. Y es que a veces nos puede más la novedad que buscar novelas de hace unos cuantos años, tendré que ponerme más a ello porque vale la pena.
En cuanto a los personajes, tenemos a Heather, ésta es como un ratoncito asustado casi en toda la novela, a veces llega a desesperar un poco pero supongo que en la época en la que la autora lo escribió primaban los personajes femeninos débiles por así decirlo, aunque ya descubriréis poco a poco a Heather y la terminaréis apreciando a pesar de lo asustadiza que es. En cuanto a Brandon, al principio lo odié como creo que es normal, los términos en los que conoce a Heather no son muy buenos, pero luego te gusta esa parte de él medio gruñona, con mucho orgullo, una parte de caballero, muchas partes de un todo que al final te acaban gustando.
Del resto de personajes me ha gustado que nos hable un poco de ellos y de cómo influyen sobre todo en Heather y en cómo van modelando su carácter.
La historia me ha parecido muy entretenida y pese a lo largo del libro no me aburrí en ningún momento, está escrita en detalle y eso se nota.
March 16, 2020
Oh BOY. full review to come in a rant video.
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