Two Devils

Inside the gothic nightmare of Teresa Denys

Romance fans can tell you two things about Teresa Denys, the author of the cult classic gothic romance novels The Silver Devil and The Flesh and the Devil. The first is that she died tragically young in the late 1980s (the reprint of The Silver Devil says she was working on a third novel that never materialized), and the second is that Teresa Denys is the pen name of Jacqui Bianchi, a major editor at Mills and Boon who discovered category romance superstars like Emma Darcy.

The appeal of category romance is brevity and comfort through brand recognition. They’re often serialised, with the publishing line emphasised over the author, focusing on a particular niche or tone that many authors can copy through the span of hundreds of books.

By day, Jacqui Bianchi edited books that thrived in formula, and by night she wrote genre-bending, hair-curling gothic romance novels. She understood her craft well enough not just to know how to break the mold, but when she should.

Both The Silver Devil and The Flesh and the Devil are not just gothic romances, they’re also bodice rippers, which is a term that started as a pejorative and has evolved into a crucial genre identifier. The image of a man ripping a corset is easy to write off as overwrought sexuality for those that don’t care to read the text, but anyone that does recognises it for the act of violence it is. Bodice rippers aren’t just clinch covers, they aren’t contained to heaving bosoms and tumescent bulges. Bodice rippers are rape, sexual violence, and abuse by the love interest. But what most people don’t tell you is that bodice rippers are also the aftermath. How do we become whole again? What does justice look like in an inequitable world?

Add in the gothic element, and the questions become even darker: What if I’m not reacting appropriately to my abuse? What if I don’t care?

The Silver Devil begins in 1600s Italy, with a young and beautiful woman, Felicia, working in a tavern. Felicia’s mother — her tether to familial affection— has died, and now she’s at the mercy of her half-brother and sister-in-law, a nightmare couple that uses Felicia’s illegitimacy as a means for constant abuse. It’s quite possible that she would die in that wretched building if she wasn’t seen by Domenico, the future Duke of Cabria. Domenico decides that he wants Felicia, and he pays for her to be brought to his castle to live as his mistress. Once she’s there, Felicia is told that Domenico loses interest in most of his mistresses after hours, and her fate —should his interest wane — would be disastrous.

Felicia has a Scheherazade-type task of holding onto Domenico’s notice, but she still braces herself for the day she fails. Meanwhile, Domenico grows obsessive over her. To keep her in line, he enacts punishment by proxy: some of the most horrifying things he does in this book are to the other men that Felicia casually interacts with. Domenico draws a direct line of cause and effect for Felicia: if she is fickle, she’s also responsible for other people’s suffering.

The kindhearted and meek Felicia we meet at the beginning of the book is not the one that ends up embracing Domenico’s love, calling it “a glory of happiness that holds a drop of poison.” Domenico never reforms, he doesn’t even apologize. Instead, we’re left with a newly complicit Felicia.

He held his hand out to me without speaking; and it was then, as I went to him like a falcon flying to his fist, that I realized I loved him.

Because the heyday of the bodice ripper is long-past, it’s easy for critics to view its demise as natural progress, which ignores the fact that a lot of the violence in bodice rippers have left the realm of historical romance for other subgenres, primarily dark fantasy and mafia romance.

To say we’ve progressed past the need to depict violent relationships with our full chest, we also have to ask ourselves: do we truly believe that readers of the 70s did not know that physical abuse is not a sign of love? Do we truly believe that because marital rape was legal in some states, it was largely viewed as moral? It’s a patronizing sentiment that buys in to two lies: that progress is linear, and that depiction can only ever equal endorsement.

In order to understand the appeal of a bodice ripper, you have to understand that genre romance does not dictate a moral or ethical relationship. Genre romance can seek to unsettle you, horrify you, and break you, all within the umbrella of a happily ever after.

In The Flesh and the Devil, the heroine, Juana, couldn’t be any more different than Felicia. She’s prideful and on the come-up, and she loses her first major battle when she’s forced to marry the Duque, Bartolomé, instead of her childhood sweetheart. Juana’s reluctance is chalked up to childish petulance, but when she finds out that Bartolomé is erratic and violent, she thinks that her family will finally intervene.

Instead, she’s left under the heel of the Duque’s mercenary, Felipe, a scarred Englishman that has inexplicable power over his aristocratic employers. Felipe doesn’t offer an easy escape to Juana: for her debt, he plans to collect early and often. And thus, Juana is indebted to a mere servant, a man that she despises but is pulling her strings like the marionette she is.

When Juana finally has the chance to escape Felipe, she comes to this realization:

In that same instant she knew the answer with the hard adult clarity that she had so lately learned. It was because it was more vital that she should stay hidden, and that her father and sister should pass her by unknowing; for she was not of their kind and had never been, dearly though they might love her.

Both Juana and Felicia are heroines that are betrayed by people that should love them unconditionally. They balk at their fate, but ultimately their gender renders them powerless to the whims of men. They both fall in love with someone who is despicable, but it’s hard to criticize a choice that isn’t a choice at all. Juana is no longer the woman her family would accept, nor would she want to return to their fold knowing how easily she was cast off. Similarly, Felicia never had a life before Domenico. To love him is to make a deal with the devil, but it’s the devil that she wants.

It seems silly to me to say that genre romance should be an arbiter of morality when that would deprive it of what makes it so human. Denys works in extremes: her books are high-stakes and gut-wrenching, but even the most warm-blanket of a romance novel deals in human folly. The happily ever after is restorative, a much-needed empathetic gesture that doesn’t endorse, but seeks to understand.