Lessons of Desire [マスマーケット]

The comparison to a conqueror would apply in Madeline Hunter's LESSONS OF DESIRE if Elliot Rothwell actually did anything. Instead, he harbors a lot of emotional angst and he acquiesces to everything according to Phaedra's terms and conditions. I have to admire Madeline Hunter for writing a heroine so different from the historical-romance norm such as Phaedra Blair, but I can't say I liked Phaedra and Elliot together. The book belongs to Phaedra Blair, her eccentric individuality, her dogged pursuit to print her late father's explosive memoirs, and her investigation to discover her late mother's last lover. On his deathbed, Phaedra's father claimed this last lover of her mother's eventually caused her mother's morose decline. Elliot Rothwell accompanies Phaedra on this journey to discover her mother's last lover. Elliot tries to dissuade her from printing portions of the memoirs which vilify his family, but he mostly cheers her on from the sidelines. Throughout the second half, Elliot inappropriately grovels at Phaedra's feet quite a bit too. Even following the very last page of this 386-page paperback, it didn't seem like Phaedra really wanted to marry him. Although she finally agrees and thinks she wants marriage with Elliot, she unfairly tests Elliot quite a bit. She makes him beg and voice copious words of love and affection before nonchalantly agreeing to marriage. Phaedra really doesn't deserve Elliot, and I was a little sickened by Elliot's constant debased groveling at Phaedra's feet.

I found the plotting, prose and settings below-average in this novel, but my dislike of the characters may have something to do with that feeling. For many romance books with relatively weak plotting, it's usually a hit-or-miss deal resting on whether the characters work for you or not. Madeline Hunter is better in this respect than most because she usually intersperses some intriguing plotting aside from a gritty romance itself. In LESSONS OF DESIRE, I felt the incongruous h/h interaction took away from the plotting dealing with Phaedra's memoirs. STEALING HEAVEN (*****) also featured a confident, experienced heroine at odds with her hero. There however, the hero turned heaven and earth upside down for his heroine, and it was very compelling. The combative tension there was mutually acknowledged and anticipated by both. In LESSONS OF DESIRE, Elliot doesn't really do anything, and his excessive groveling at the end seemed very inappropriate for a woman who clearly doesn't want marriage. Her last-second turnaround towards marriage wasn't very convincing either.

In many ways, LESSONS OF DESIRE represents the antithesis of RULES OF SEDUCTION and its heroine. RULES OF SEDUCTION's Alexia was practical, sensible and amenable to marriage, while LESSONS OF DESIRE's Phaedra is the polar opposite. Phaedra doesn't believe in the very institution of marriage.

Phaedra Blair believes in a philosophy espoused by her late mother, "free love" (a forward concept for the time period). Later in the novel, Elliot accurately recognizes the philosophy for what it is: "free pleasure." Phaedra also scorns a marital relationship which in her view chains a woman to a man. Poor Elliot; more than once, Phaedra fervently rebels against marriage with Elliot. When Elliot disconsolately provides Phaedra with the names of lawyers who help women in divorce cases, Phaedra hypocritically feels a "twist of disappointment" that Elliot would not contest her wishes for undoing their marriage. When Elliot writes to her expressing concern for her safety at her home, Phaedra almost blames Elliot for not asking her to come live with him. All this after Elliot practically begs her to continue with the marriage only to have her reject the marriage, and by extension, him! And over what? A feminist philosophy which repudiates the notion of marriage and how it always has to be: the woman chained to the man. If anything, it was Elliot enslaved by Phaedra, not the other way around. I thought it was incongruous to have Elliot use the words "love" first when it was always Phaedra who rejected and rebelled from him.

Elliot chances on too many opportunities to protect Phaedra from herself but he never seizes them. The book makes Elliot too much of a romantic goody boy: in Italy, he arranges to liberate Phaedra from an imprisonment of her own making twice, he protects her, he submits to her conditions for intimacy, he accepts Phaedra's lifestyle of "free love" and defends Phaedra's mother and her way of life when Phaedra expresses hatred towards her mother, he honors Phaedra's oath to print her father's controversial memoirs, he never coerces the witness Merriweather to retract statements which impugn Elliot's family, he never asks Phaedra to omit the portions of the memoirs which malign his family's name, he doesn't even abscond with the manuscript when Pheadra didn't want to print them herself.

Some of the transitions from a grave, quarrelsome tension to a sensual undercurrent seemed unsuitable at best, very jarring at worst. They're arguing over the gravity of how these memoirs could sully families' names and all of a sudden there's all this sexual chemistry. Other times, Elliot's thoughts over his mother's cheating and his father's cold imprisonment segues into his desire for Phaedra (p. 69). It didn't work for me, but maybe it did for others.

Finally, I didn't like this book weighing the greater evil between their father-the-jailer and their mother-the-adulteress. Elliot's mother loves another and in response, his father incarcerates her. Of the two evils, LESSONS OF DESIRE taints Elliot's father the late Marquess of Easterbrook's actions as the greater evil. I'm not so sure. He tragically loved someone who loved another. The father responded unfairly, but I don't believe their mother's betrayal in wedlock was somehow "less wrong."

I usually really enjoy Ms. Hunter's books - but this one was weak. First - the heroine was what myself and my romance-reading girlfriends refer to as a "feminist ninny". Not a genuine feminist - one of those ones who seem to populate romance novels purely because they are supposed to create drama through their "difference". What they actually create is a lot of irritating banter-for-the-sake-of-merely disagreeing banter; and they disagree with the "hero" just because his opinions are those of a man. They also make stupid decisions, based on their rigid "principles", which are actually just plain foolish, and even dangerous. My other major issue is - nothing really HAPPENS in this book, plot-wise. It - and its heroine - rapidly grow tedious. Ho - hum!

I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately I was very disappointed, mostly because of the heroine. She is not someone I would know or want to know. I am no prude, but in my opinion, "free love" and romance are oxymorons.

Even though Ms. Hunter went to great lenghts in her depiction of how Phaedra was raised to be a free thinker, I found her to a selfish, closed minded ideologue. She did not care about how her choices impacted those she cared about and who cared about her. She was unyielding in her opinions and not open to discourse unless it reinforced her own positions.

The strangest thing about her philosophies was that she refused to reconsider them even though she was fully aware of the negative impact her mother's lifestyle and choices had on her.

I would not call her a free thinker. She was a mouthpiece for her mother, but what were her own opinions? A free thinker does not agree with everything they are told. Rather, they think independently and critcally and come to their own conclusions.

My own conclusions are that Phaedra is one of the worst heriones ever featured in a romance novel and that wasting a fine hero like Lord Elliot on her is like throwing throwing pearls before swine.