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When it was released in 1944, Forever Amber created a sensation much as Peyton Place did in the 60's.Â
Plot
Forever Amber tells the story of orphaned Amber St. Clare, who makes her way up through the ranks of 17th century English society by sleeping with and/or marrying successively richer and more important men, while keeping her love for the one man she could never have. The novel includes portrayals of Restoration fashion, politics, and public disasters, including the plague and the Great Fire of London.
Publication
The fifth draft of Winsor's first manuscript of Forever Amber was accepted for publication, but the publishers edited the book down to one-fifth of its original size. The resulting novel was 972 pages long.
Critical reception
While many reviewers "praised the story for its relevance, comparing Amber's fortitude during the plague and fire to that of the women who held hearth and home together through the blitzes of World War II", others condemned it for its blatant sexual references.
Fourteen U.S. states banned the book as pornography. The first was Massachusetts, whose attorney general cited 70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, 7 abortions, and "10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men" as reasons for banning the novel.
Winsor denied that her book was particularly daring, and said that she had no interest in explicit scenes. "I wrote only two sexy passages," she remarked, "and my publishers took both of them out. They put in ellipsis instead. In those days, you know, you could solve everything with an ellipsis."
Despite its banning, Forever Amber was the best-selling US >novel of the 1940s. It sold over 100,000Â copies in its first week of release, and went on to sell over three million copies.
Forever Amber was also responsible for popularizing "Amber" as a given name for girls in the 20th century.
The book was condemned by the Catholic Church for indecency, which helped to make it popular. One critic went so far as to number each of the passages to which he objected.
The film version was finally completed after substantial changes to the script were made, toning down some of the book's most objectionable passages in order to appease Catholic media critics.
By today's standards, the work is a practice in sexual understatement. Though it portrays accurately the decadence of Charles II's court, it never explicitly describes anything, relying instead on innuendo and the reader's imagination. Â
The book has been compared to Gone With The Wind, and it does possess some similarities with Scarlett O'Hara and Amber St. Clair both facing adversity of the worst kind during their particular historical periods.
While O'Hara struggles through the devastation of the South during the Civil War, St. Clair survives The Plague and the Great Fire of London. Both are their most heroic during their greatest trials. Each has a great love whom she cannot forget.
However, neither is a particularly sympathetic figure. Just as one gets frustrated with O'Hara, the reader will also get frustrated with St. Clair.
She bears three illegitimate children, engages in numerous affairs, has several abortions, marries three times to advance her social position in Restoration England, and eventually becomes one of the king's mistresses.
What makes this novel a classic is how engrossing it is, how relevant it is for the reader today, and how historically accurate it is.Â
I recommend it as a read for everyone who has an interest in English history or who simply loves a great read. And if you read it some time ago, it's time for a re-read.
