Rightful Possession Romance by Sally Wentworth

I’m reviewing Rightful Possession because I wanted to understand how Sally Wentworth make the story work when it should not. I’m going to analyze the story events, characters and structure in this long review because Rightful Possession is the essence of a successful Harlequin romance.

5 Stars

The plot here is straightforward but the romance and the story are not. Basic plot is:

1. Genista is an airline hostess (flight attendant), a job still semi-glamorous in 1978 when Rightful Possession is published. Genista shares a flat with Lynn, her best friend and fellow stewardess.
2. Genista’s brother Kevin invents stuff but has no money sense. An acquaintance tells him he can get his invention tested but the “friend” says he can’t access his money until tomorrow and can’t Kevin find the cash today and get repaid tomorrow. Kevin embezzles the money from his employer’s payroll, figuring he can repay the money the next day and never hurt anyone. Of course the con man runs off with the cash. Kevin is jailed in Paris after employer files charges.
3. Genista flies right over to her brother, hears it’s only a small amount of money, goes to see the company owner, Marc. Marc refuses to let her brother off, and when Genista offers repayment herself, explains that Kevin’s “small amount” was 10,000 pounds, an enormous sum, roughly $200,000 in today’s money. Marc tells her to stop wasting his time and Genista loses it, tells him off. (She’s exhausted by this point after working the entire previous day and night.)
4. Marc offers her a deal. He needs a hostess who understands and can work with international business people, who speaks multiple languages. He’ll marry her in “an almost business deal”, where she shows up to do her wifely duties then fades away until he needs her again. Genista assumes “business deal” means hostess duties, not sleeping with him but Marc means the full wifely shebang.
5. He insists on Genista replacing her wardrobe with deluxe designer outfits, marries her, then they go to his Greek island for a few days. There they have the major disagreement as to her duties. Marc agrees to give her another day to get used to the idea.
6. Genista escapes the villa, walks to the small port and gets passage off the island with a fisherman while Marc is out sailing. Unfortunately fisherman can’t leave until evening and Marc discovers she’s gone and manages to catch them in mid-sail, drags her off and drags her to bed.
7. Genista tries to tell him she’s never slept with a man before but Marc won’t believe it given the reputation stewardesses had (this is about 10 years after the sleazy Coffee Tea or Me?) and rapes her. Once he realizes she told the truth he tries to court her, show her what love can be, but she refuses to respond and he loses patience and rapes her again.
8. Once Marc’s asleep Genista goes out to the beach, swims out in the bay, gets a cramp and is in danger with tide carrying her out. Marc rescues her and accuses her of trying to drown herself; Genista tells him yes, she’d rather die than spend another night with him. He is horrified.
9. They go back to his French chateau and she picks up her hostess duties. Marc promises to leave her alone.
10. Housekeeper Madam Hermant tries to undermine Genista, refuses to take direction on a dinner party, until Genista tosses that aside and insists on taking over. The next parties are great fun and Marc is pleased and Genista begins to enjoy this aspect of her job. Marc is always affectionate at these parties and praises her to his guests, which disgusts Genista because she sees it as hypocrisy.
11. Marc buys her a diamond bracelet and she has to face facts. She’s stuck with Marc and 5 years is a long time to hate anyone. She lets go of her hate – still dislikes and distrusts him – but decides to make the best of things. This is the major turning point.
12. Genista discovers she can slip off the watchdog chauffeur by going to the beauty salon and slipping out the back door. She meets up with both Lynn and her brother this way and tells them she had to marry Marc for repayment but doesn’t tell either of them about the rape or how much she detests him.
13. It helps that Marc’s old friend Ally shows up, pays extravagant compliments and offers her friendship.
14. Things proceed in a more-or-less normal fashion. Genista enjoys her work and is beginning to see Marc in a better light although she still despises him for raping her and pretending to care about her in public. He’s always cordial in private but reserved. Genista starts to see that they could be reasonably happy together, although the sex part is still a wall between them.
15. Genista pawns her bracelet to give Kevin money for his invention. Madame Hermant finds out and makes trouble.
16. Marc takes Genista back to the island where she realizes she’s falling for him. They kiss and he starts to make love to her until she tenses up and he lets her go before going back to the village. She has mixed feelings now, wanting something more than a dreary business relationship but not quite ready to love.
17. Marc’s former fiancée, Adrienne, shows up. Marc avoids her at parties but Madame Hermant tells Genista that Marc and Adrienne are waiting only for Adrienne’s husband to die before they marry. This puts Genista’s wakening feelings on ice. Marc gets hurt in a polo match and Genista runs to the first aid room where she sees Adrienne and Marc passionately kissing.
18. Brother Kevin shows up. He sold his invention and can pay back Marc and redeem Genista’s bracelet. Genista has a special party for Marc the next day on a jet, gets her passport and arranges with Lynn to help her get away at the airport. (This is long before the days of strict security and passengers walked on the tarmac.) She leaves her bracelet and cash and bank statements for Marc and gets away. She resumes her stewardess job.
19. Two months pass and Adrienne’s husband dies. Genista writes Marc’s lawyers to offer her cooperation in a divorce to set Marc free to marry Adrienne. Marc has been chasing around North Africa looking for Genista because he thought she went with Ally, but with the letter he now knows where to find her. He gets on a flight with her and manages to corner her to talk. He reveals he is in love with her and has been.
20. Happy ever after.

As said, straightforward plot. She yells at him, he coerces her into marriage, forced sex, anger and hate followed slowly by tolerance then liking then finally love, other wannabe woman, escape, finally he finds her and they settle all. So why does Rightful Possession work? And how does Wentworth manage to make the transition from #7, marital rape, to #16, dawning love feel realistic?

The Set Up. Sally Wentworth uses few pages and incidents to set up the situation and introduce the characters then goes right into the story and lets events and people unfold. She makes every event work to advance the plot and the story.

She tells us nothing and shows us everything by actions and dialogue. For example, when Genista escapes the villa she walks several miles over rough country to reach the port, showing us she is determined and not easily cowed. When Marc thinks she is softening towards him he calls her his little love and says how he has been longing and waiting for this. (Of course he says this in French, thank you translation programs!)

We get clues that Marc cares for Genista because he publicly acts to cherish her and he is patient and tolerates her unrelenting hostility. We can’t tell for sure whether he’s just putting on an act, which Genista believes for several months, or whether there is actual caring. Our beliefs mirror Genista’s. At first we see Marc as hypocritical, then as potentially caring for her, then again even more odious after Genista sees him and Adrienne kissing at the polo match. We still wonder, because after all this is a Harlequin and they are supposed to have happy endings, but how will Marc push this one by?

How indeed. Sally Wentworth has created a believable about face for Genista with a loving husband who simply can’t or won’t tell her how he feels. After Marc finds Genista gives the slip to her chauffeur/bodyguard, he tells her that he fears kidnap. Genista says that is silly since he wouldn’t pay a ransom for her. Marc points out that the kidnappers wouldn’t know that but the telltale is that he takes such a violent breath that his cigarette glows bright red.

Handling the difficult part. However do you go from despising and hating the man who forces you – rape – to falling in love with him? Even after re-re-rereading Rightful Possession I’m amazed that Sally Wentworth pulls this off. A few things help make the transition believable.

Wentworth grays out the actual rape; in fact jumps right from Marc draging Genista off the boat to Genista leaving bed to go to the beach. She remembers the aftermath when Marc tried to make up for raping her before once again losing his temper and forcing her. She recalls his at-first tender and caring and remorseful actions and how she was tempted to respond with zero details. (Thank you.) Genista recalls the second time when Marc tried to make love to her in deeds and words with mixed emotions.

Wentworth created Genista as a sympathetic, credible, realistic person. She’s mature and wise enough to realize she cannot go on hating Marc for 5 years, that it will rebound on her as much as on Marc. She doesn’t trust him or believe he is sincere, but she learns to enjoy his company and relax with him.

Ally and others see Marc as a wonderful caring man and eventually Genista “sees him for the first time as a devastatingly charming and handsome man”. When your friends like and respect someone it’s hard to keep seeing only their faults; that gives Genista time to reflect on her hostess job, her time with Marc, Marc himself and face the brutal encounter.

Is this Stockholm syndrome, where a captive tends to sympathize with their captor, even to allying with them? I did not read it that way. Genista stayed with Marc out of a sense of honor, not because of force or emotional maniuplation, she never pities him or sees him as a victim, she make a conscious decision to stop hating him. She was never ignorant of his faults nor did she have bad feelings towards people who wanted to help her leave. When Lynn offers to help her Genista considers it but stays only because shes feels obligated to repay Kevin’s debt not because she likes Marc or wants to be with him or feels sympathy for him.

Stockholm victims tend to emotionally align to their abuser, to appease them, to behave to the abuser’s requirements. Genista never stops being free in her mind and she continually escapes via the hairdresser dodge to spend time as she pleases. After the first horrorible night together Genista never sees herself as a victim, and once Marc promises to leave her alone she stops feeling any self-pity. Once Kevin can pays his debt she is joyous, she can be free.

Using the story and plot together. Given the story is the people and the plot the actions, Wentworth weaves these together so one props up the other and both are stronger. Marc’s actions – leaving Genista alone, buying her a beautiful bracelet as a gift, praising her to his friends, relinquishing her to Ally’s care, having fun together, spending time together, endless courtesy – come through as caring. We see him through Genista’s eyes and how she responds to his actions and the attitude she infers to him.

It sounds simple to combine story and plot but few authors do so successfully in any genre. Perhaps it’s easier in romance where readers expect a plot to move along a more-or-less predetermined arc, because instead of seeing conventions as a straightjacket, authors can use them for the skeleton and spend their energy building muscles and blood. Wentworth has written several other excellent romances where she uses similar approach, notably Betrayal in Bali, letting the standard plot be the template and using her imagination and skill to fill it in and create a believable, excellent novel.

The Characters Genista, Marc and Ally are three-dimensional, well-developed people. Often authors sketch the secondary characters and do little more even with the two protagonists, but Wentworth makes us see them as individuals. Wentworth lets the plot and dialogue do the work to exposit the characters; there are few inner musings or “well, here’s what happened when I was six” discussions.

It’s easy to identify with Genista, a woman trapped in a nightmare marriage, who manages to step beyond the horrible events and turn her marriage into something worthwhile that she and Marc enjoy.

Genista realizes that she can choose how she responds to Marc, how she thinks about and faces up to the fact husband raped her. She does not hide her head in the sand or pretend it’s not deadly serious, a terrifying, horrible thing, but she is adult and makes her choice to at least tolerate Marc and try to make something out of her enforced marriage.

Immediacy Sally Wentworth makes us feel like we are right there, part of the action, not watching a play. A couple of my favorite romance authors do this very well. Wentworth makes this happen here and it helps us thaw along with Genista and to turn what was originally 5 years of hateful intimacy with a man she detests into a tolerable, sometimes enjoyable life and friendship and later into love.

Wentworth avoided common plot tropes. Genista does not get pregnant, she does not run away, instead leaves only when she can pay the debt, Other Woman Adrienne does not visit Genista to gloat and threaten, no one dies, Genista is happy that her prior boyfriend is marrying her best friend, no one gets clunked on the head and loses their memory. I was slightly surprised that she did not get pregnant from her one night with Marc and believe that made for a much stronger story. Wentworth was able to pare the story down to Marc or no Marc, love or hate.

Was the govel sufficient to justify a happy ever after? Marc laid his heart on the line when he took Genista to the hotel and he made it clear he was horrified that his actions drove her to attempt suicide (as he thought it). He never really apologized although he did make it clear he regretted trying to force her, realized it backfired then and would backfire every time. Is that a sufficient grovel? That’s up to you. I would have liked more and stronger regrets.

Summary Even after reading Rightful Possession several times I’m in awe at how Sally Wentworth made Genista’s transition from victim to loving wife seem so real. I’m even more in awe that she made the conversion from rape to love feel real.