Falling in love through letters in The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband

00;00;03;12 - 00;00;27;07
Leonora
Hello, ladies. You're listening to Fancy for Romance, a podcast for historical romance fiction lovers. And I'm your host, Leonora, a fellow fan. I'm super excited because this is the first episode and I get to share my insights on my favorite romance genre with other women who love it too. And trust me around me, there is no one who gets it.

00;00;27;12 - 00;00;39;09
Leonora
So I thought, why not start a podcast? Today's episode is called Falling in love through letters, we are going to be diving in to Julia Quinn's The Girl With The Make-Believe Husband.

00;00;43;07 - 00;01;04;10
Leonora
So to set some expectations. There will be a few spoilers here and there, but I'll make sure not to give anything major away in case you haven't read the novel. Second, I suck at names and these are names with weird spelling so to avoid being tongue tied or mispronouncing the names in general. I will refer to the main characters as female lead and male lead.

00;01;05;01 - 00;01;34;10
Leonora
So without further ado, in my own less than eloquent words, here comes the summary. Female lead gets word of her brother injured in the battlefield. Her father has recently passed. And to give you a little bit of context, the great grandfather entailed the property so that only males of his lineage can inherit the land. Cousin enters stage and does what cousins do when their uncles have recently passed and the uncle has entailed property that could potentially be his.

00;01;34;13 - 00;01;51;02
Leonora
He comes to see what he can get and suggests to the family that they should probably marry to his own benefit, of course, because if they marry, he gets to stay on the land and then he can hope and pray that brother dies and stay with it faster. She decides no and goes to America looking for her brother. And you know what?

00;01;51;03 - 00;02;14;22
Leonora
I don't blame her because her cousin is greasy AF. Like the few interactions they have in the novel. I also wouldn't mind five weeks traveling in a boat with the possibility of dying at sea. Of course, in the middle of a war. So she sets off to the Americas. She doesn't have any luck finding her injured brother, but she does happen to find her brother's BFF, which is injured in the hospital, unconscious.

00;02;14;29 - 00;02;36;10
Leonora
And you know what she does? She declares herself his wife, though she never seen him before and only knows of him through letters. This is where our story begins in 1779, Manhattan Island with our male lead waking up from oblivion to find that not only does he not remember three months of his life, but he also has a wife he does not remember.

00;02;36;11 - 00;03;09;29
Leonora
And our female lead is desperately searching for her brother. This got me thinking. Is it possible? Now for me, the letters were a sweet approach. I liked that they actually kind of knew each other beforehand through writing, which is, you know, sweet. Mind you, writing letters was obviously the only form of long distance communication at the time. And for proprieties sake, she was technically writing to her brother as she can't write to the male lead directly because that would be the height of improper.

00;03;10;00 - 00;03;31;11
Leonora
What's also fun is that her brother kind of played matchmaker, which let's give her brother props for hooking her up with a good guy and the son of an Earl as an added bonus. Now, ladies, again, this got me thinking. Is it possible to fall in love with someone through letters? Could her characters actually factually do this? After reading, I did a bit of a deep dove.

00;03;31;13 - 00;03;54;29
Leonora
We got a pretty good in this century. You can literally grab your phone and write to anyone and receive a response potentially in seconds. We have the power of video calling. So if you're writing with someone, which by writing, of course, I mean texting the next thing you could do would be video call. Plus, with the advent of airplanes and you can go and meet said person in hours time, of course, depending upon location.

00;03;55;01 - 00;04;16;10
Leonora
Now we're talking about 1779 and only letters and boats were a thing at the time. Therefore, according to the book, for the letters to cross the pond, it would take two weeks to get to the ship, five weeks at sea, and then another two to get to the person, which I believe again is the timeline the book gave us, roughly based on the characters locations.

00;04;16;13 - 00;04;35;21
Leonora
It takes approximately nine weeks to get a letter, and that's a crazy long time. Therefore, every time they wrote to each other approximately two months and a week would pass to receive a letter. In a year you would have roughly written to each other only six times. If you can believe that, you could only write to each other six times in a year.

00;04;35;21 - 00;04;59;21
Leonora
And that is if you're not sending letters in between and only writing to respond to what one person wrote. So technically, you are writing three letters and receiving three letters in one year. In the book, I counted 21 letters that were sent. Given the estimate, they wrote each other approximately three years, give or take. Now, only three letters in the story weren't a response letter.

00;04;59;29 - 00;05;22;15
Leonora
That leaves 18. That were. All of these letters are shown to us in the beginning of the chapters, except for one, which I will go into further detail later. And of all of those letters, only a few were directly dedicated to the male lead. And as a side note, let's give Big Brother some love, because from letter one, he introduces her to the male lead.

00;05;22;22 - 00;05;41;22
Leonora
Now, in the book, we only have two times where she writes the male lead. Most of her correspondence is her writing to her brother and for her brother to tell the male lead something. From the two only one letter between them is in the middle of a chapter, and that's the only standalone letter we see from our female lead to male.

00;05;41;27 - 00;06;02;24
Leonora
It's also shown to us out of timeline order because this letter is her response to him writing about the wildflowers. And that letter from him is is shown until chapter 12. While her response is shown in Chapter nine. Male Lead wrote to her in her brother's letters three times, which is to say everything else was mentioned to her by her brother through his writing.

00;06;02;25 - 00;06;26;15
Leonora
So again, with these few interactions, the question arises could they have fallen in love through the letters? I personally think that the concept was super sweet and it works with how the story was written. But logistically, after deep diving, I feel like it's a stretch, to say the least. You know, for them to have fallen in love through the letters and themselves, I think infatuated, charmed perhaps would be more appropriate terms.

00;06;26;16 - 00;06;47;06
Leonora
Now, I do believe that because of the extremities of war, our male lead attaches himself to the idea of her and enjoyed her wit in writing. But with so few interactions, it's still a stretch to say they fell in love through the letters themselves. But the thought of it is so much more romantic. And with the way the story was written, the letters are at the beginning of every chapter.

00;06;47;07 - 00;06;54;29
Leonora
So as our characters are falling in love throughout the story, we get small glimpses of their past interactions through the letters.

00;06;54;29 - 00;07;08;22
Leonora
That said the female lead is pretty cool. She's courageous, like she literally crossed the ocean on a boat in the middle of a war. Okay, I'm going to repeat the middle of a war, right? That's courage.

00;07;09;02 - 00;07;29;24
Leonora
She did that all by herself. When, mind you, she had never left her hometown before. So I want to give her props for that. Also, this is 1779, which makes the fact that she did stand up for herself all the greater. Because society would have dictated that she marry her cousin and be grateful he wanted to marry her in the first place.

00;07;30;08 - 00;07;35;15
Leonora
To be grateful for the fact she won't end up a spinster or worse out on the streets.

00;07;35;15 - 00;07;54;02
Leonora
My girl also stood up to an officer, lied to said officer, just so she could have the chance to care for her brother's friend, which if male lead would have called her out on her lie, things could have gone really bad for her, but she threw caution to the wind to help someone she knew in need.

00;07;54;11 - 00;08;16;00
Leonora
Now I know what you're thinking. We could argue that her motives were not completely selfless, but I still give her props overall. I think main character was chill, and she has a few human moments that I think are pretty relatable. Like her opting out of brushing her teeth out of embarrassment. That was funny. And the scene I really thought gave her humanity as a character.

00;08;16;10 - 00;08;50;12
Leonora
Was her remembering Verity, the unmarried mother in the village, and wishing she would have done differently. Or, as Julia Quinn states so eloquently and I quote, “Society has its dictates for a reason. Or at least she'd always thought so. Perhaps it was more correct to say that she'd never really thought about the dictates of society. She'd simply followed them” end quote. It took her feeling like she could potentially be verity to realize the harsh reality that she had to deal with and to question the rules society dictated.

00;08;50;18 - 00;09;13;23
Leonora
Now, this had me rolling, my girl. She tried to break up with him through a letter, which was fitting as a theme of the book. I must say it was so true to life, because I know I've heard and I know you've heard about text breakups. They are a thing. So I found that hilarious because the reality is it's hard to say things face to face sometimes.

00;09;13;28 - 00;09;23;02
Leonora
Now, I don't believe she did the right thing, but what I'm saying is it's a realistic cop out. And I can see why she did it. And I think it was funny.

00;09;23;02 - 00;09;33;18
Leonora
The male lead is almost a paragon. I mean, he throws a few tantrums here and there, but overall, this character is almost too good to be true.

00;09;33;21 - 00;09;51;20
Leonora
He is blindly smitten and with the female lead like he likes her. He's the type, you know, bring the moon down for her. I really don't have many comments on his character. He is overall a pretty good guy, pretty vanilla. And I say that in a good way. Where he stands out as a character for me is in this smexies.

00;09;51;20 - 00;09;54;13
Leonora
And so I'm going to jump over to that section now.

00;09;54;13 - 00;10;17;08
Leonora
We get two scenes to look forward to and the first one was sweet. They have a sort of first date and then follow passion. They both want it and they like each other. This is romance. It's really sweet. The second scene was brief, but I will give a round of applause to the male lead on this one, because this guy, he believes in consent.

00;10;18;01 - 00;10;42;27
Leonora
And this is where he stood out for me as a character. She literally gains some sense halfway through the act and is like we need to stop. Because you know what? Pregnancy not a good idea and she tells him to stop. And he listens. He stops at her request. It shows selflessness and restraint. So let's give him a round of applause for that.

00;10;42;28 - 00;11;09;22
Leonora
And of course, Julia Quinn, too, because too often in the genre, the guys just won't listen. So it was a refresher that consent is valued like I have read a ridiculous amount of historical romance and stopping in the middle of the act while he is in her is not common, to say the least. Now, the flipside protection, first and foremost, always.

00;11;09;22 - 00;11;34;02
Leonora
This is just a story. Pulling out will not stop pregnancy. Whatever you're going to do, use protection. The last section I want to talk about is the fun things you Google because of historical romance. And I've got to say, I had to relook up the end of the war, which was hilarious and slightly embarrassing because I literally read 1779 and immediately thought, Wait.

00;11;34;11 - 00;12;00;02
Leonora
Okay, wait. July 4th, 1776 is the Declaration of Independence. That's the thing. My mind, reeled? I was like, Hold up. When did the fighting actually stop? So I had to Google it. Turns out that the fighting stopped with the Treaty of Paris on September 3rd, 1783. When I Googled it, my brain was like, Oh yes, the treaty of Paris.

00;12;00;05 - 00;12;28;22
Leonora
So it was with the Treaty of Paris that the U.S. was recognized as an independent nation. So the fighting officially stopped in 1783. Now, going back to the story, which takes place in 1779, yeah, they were still killing each other at the time. Now, another interesting thing I looked up is laudanum. This is something you will find in historical romance a lot whenever the characters are either shot or stabbed with a sword, depending on the period.

00;12;28;23 - 00;12;54;03
Leonora
It's mostly used for pain and sometimes insomnia, when the characters can't sleep or got headaches. The term is now used only to describe the alcoholic tincture of opium. A 10% solution of opium powder dissolved in high proof, distilled spirits, which is what the author describes in the story. And this brings us to the end of a Fancy for Romance podcast.

00;12;54;03 - 00;13;16;03
Leonora
Episode one Falling in Love Through Letters. Thank you so much for listening to the end. I appreciate it so much, ladies. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and share with a friend who loves historical romance. If you want more of this type of content, check us out on Instagram at Fancy for Romance. See you in the next episode.