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Miranda Neville | I Wish I Were An Orphan
March 9, 2010
In the book I just finished writing, the heroine has two living parents who are
loving and functional. Not that she doesn't have her issues with them, but they
haven't (a) died and left her in poverty (b) sold her into sexual slavery, or
(c) forced her into marriage with a pox-ridden octogenarian to save the family
fortune. It occurred to me how rare it is in romance for a character not to have parent
issues of some kind. To have both hero and heroine in possession of two good,
living parents is almost unheard of. Off the top of my head, the only one I can
think of is Loretta
Chase's Not Quite a
Lady. (And one of them is a stepmother though not a wicked one). Julia Quinn's Bridgertons
are a famous example of a really loving family - I want Violet to be my mom -
but even with them, the father is dead and all the Bridgertons fall in love with
people who have difficult family backgrounds. The characters in my current release come from the more common unhappy families.
The heroine of The Wild
Marquis isn’t even sure who her parents were. The hero had a cruel father
(dead) and a neglectful mother (alive). Although they come from very different
backgrounds, their lack of family draws them together. In this excerpt Cain has
told Juliana how his father tossed him out of the house when he was sixteen.
"My mother is no more anxious for my company than my sire was. I live a life
of blissful self-indulgence and ease in the family’s London mansion and she
keeps Markley Chase as her province." He didn’t ask for her compassion but he had it. She knew the pain and loneliness
of being exiled from the only home she’d ever known. "So you haven’t been home in how many years?" "Three." "You are only twenty-four years old then, just a year more than me. I thought
you older." Not that Cain’s dissipations had marred his looks, but there was a
world-weariness, a certain cynicism in his face when in repose that communicated
a wealth of hard experience. "Thank you for the compliment. My debauchery must be affecting my features. I
shall have to speak to my valet about a skin tonic." She suspected something in his tale affected him far more deeply than he liked
to reveal, that his habitual glibness disguised a sorrow she felt the urge to
comfort. Then his expression shuttered for a brief but perceptible instant and he
regarded her with a careless grin, the blue eyes as mocking and dangerously
suggestive as ever. He’d erected a barrier against trespassers.. Our heroes and heroines need obstacles that must be addressed in the course of
the novel. Problematic parents are a great source of angst. No parents at all
can be even better. When orphans face difficulties they lack the support we draw
from our families. It’s easy for historical writers to kill people off (disease,
childbirth, carriage accidents...) but even in contemporaries we see a high rate
of parental mortality. As a child I remember loving books about orphans. I have two parents and four
siblings and I found the notion of being alone in the world exciting. Of course
I didn’t really want my family to disappear, but it was an appealing fantasy. In
the same way, I believe, many kids dream that they are really changeling
children of royalty or fairies. Can you think of examples of books where the heroine and hero have four nice
parents between them? What so you think makes orphans appealing? And if you are interested in finding out more about Juliana and Cain and how
they handle their parental issues, The Wild Marquis appears in
stores March 9.
Comments
16 comments posted.
Re: Miranda Neville | I Wish I Were An Orphan
No comments. I heard this wasn't working
(Miranda Neville 12:42pm March 9, 2010)
Hi, I've been trying to come up with a story with happy parents on both the hero and heroine lines and the only ones I know are some of the JAK books -- but usually one of the fathers is dead.
Oh, maybe a Mary Balogh?
(Sally Mae 1:25pm March 9, 2010)
It's funny I'd always realized that most
romances had family problems, but I'd
never realized how rare the happy
family is.
In Historicals you also have to have
killed off the father in order for your
hero to have the title. My current hero
had a very happy family, but poor old
dad had to die so that he could be the
duke.
Ah well -- maybe next time.
(Lavinia Klein 1:30pm March 9, 2010)
Woo-hoo - finally got in to make a comment. Miranda, when I went back to university a decade ago, I learned the orphan was a popular device in late 18th century & 19th century novels. Interesting that it's still popular. I've a feeling many writers do the orphan thing to keep from having a cast of thousands. :-)
(Vicky Dreiling 1:36pm March 9, 2010)
Sally: it's really hard, isn't it?
Good point about the title, Lavinia. Also, perhaps the existence of a powerful father figure can make the hero seem weaker.
Vicky. I'm so glad you persevered. It's so true that literature is full of orphans. Imagine Dickens if everyone had parents?
(Miranda Neville 3:12pm March 9, 2010)
Happy Release Day, Miranda. Can't think of any books off the top of my head where there were four nice parents between the couple, but Stephanie Laurens' Cynster series features some great parents. Orphans are appealing because you just can't not root for them.
(Jane Cheung 3:56pm March 9, 2010)
I thought my heroine had a happy family, but found quite recently she's adopted. Her real parents were killed in a boating accident when she was four. I had no idea - she's very well adjusted.
(Jennifer Carroll 5:44pm March 9, 2010)
Jennifer, you gotta love those handy accidents. How interesting that it came to you out of the blue
(Miranda Neville 6:07pm March 9, 2010)
Happy families are all alike. every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.--Tolstoy.
If the parent isn't causing conflict they may well be detracting from it by giving the main characters too much support so they don't suffer and struggle and drive the plot forward.
There's always the silly parent, a la Pride & Prejudice, too. But Darcy is an orphan. With parents he'd seem so much less alpha. Plus he wouldn't have inherited!
(Jenny Brown 7:27pm March 9, 2010)
Orphans don't come with strings attached - not as much. That's the appeal.
(Mary Preston 2:21am March 10, 2010)
I can't think of any books that have four sets of nice parents between the couple. Always conflict! Funny, I had never thought about that.
No one has a brady bunch family!
(Brenda Rupp 8:41pm March 10, 2010)
Four living and loving parents? That excapes me at the moment. If I can think of one later, I will return and post it. Right now I am burning the midnight oil. LOL
(Gladys Paradowski 11:36pm March 10, 2010)
I don't really pay that much attention to the family of the characters in books unless it really impacts the story. In the one I'm currently reading, the heroine seems to have parents she loves but is not unduly attached to, but her brother has been recently killed. The hero has been an orphan since he was 9, but he has been raised by a guardian who knew his parents.
I may have been somewhat irritated with my 3 younger siblings when I was young, but I became a second "mother" to the two youngest and have never really regretted that. And my parents were generally kind and supportive. I think I'll be paying better attention to family matters from now on.
(Sigrun Schulz 1:25am March 11, 2010)
P.S. I've put a "hold" on one of the library books.
(Sigrun Schulz 1:27am March 11, 2010)
Thank you for your post, Miranda. I think romance protagonists are often orphans for two reasons.
One, they're on their own. They must overcome their problems with no support from their parents, the very people who are supposed to help their children no matter what. This makes for a more difficult struggle, and a sweeter victory. Both factors lend themselves to greater emotional involvement on the part of the readers.
Two, in a genre in which connections between people matter, and the importance of family is a given, an orphan has a great sense of something missing. The parent-child bond has been broken by death. Implicitly or explicitly, the reader understands that this character must form another type of close personal bond, namely a romantic relationship. The need is so pressing that this character will go to greater pains and overcome more daunting obstacles than otherwise.
Of course, in real life I doubt this holds true. What makes a person put forth heroic efforts for the sake of love most likely has nothing to do with whether or not one has living parents.
Still, it's an effective literary device. And a popular one, seeing how often it's used.
Thanks again for bring up this thought-provoking topic. Good luck with your new release, and keep up the good work!
(Mary Anne Landers 1:44am March 11, 2010)
Hi Sigrun and Mary Anne. Excellent thoughtful answers. Still no sign of a four-good-parent romance. It seems to be a very rare bird.
I do like Mary Anne's theory that the loss of the parent-child bond intensifies the need for love. Works for me (at least, as you say, in books)
(Miranda Neville 7:55am March 11, 2010)
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