The Bachelor List Book

First of all, there is no bachelor list in this book. There is a brief line in which one of Constance's sister suggests they compile a list of bachelors to help with their matchmaking business, which they don't start until almost halfway through the book, and which is all but completely tangential to the actual romance plot, but they never make such a list. The bachelor list is a lie.

Unfortunately, that sums up a lot of The Bachelor List . Duncan sisters Constance, Prudence, and Chastity are talked up as independent, suffrage-minded women (especially Constance), but they don't always live up to the hype. In light of their stated (and re-stated) values, I found their situation singularly curious. Following the death of their mother (the founder of The Mayfair Lady), their father makes a bunch of bad investments, loses a bunch of money, and lives in a state of denial about their finances, continuing to spend money of things like a motorcar or fine wine, despite the mountain of debt. The Duncan sisters turn their mother's free magazine into a paid one (charging a few cents a copy) and then spin a matchmaking service off of it to try to make ends meet. But the story never satisfyingly answers any kinds of questions like how wide the paying audience for the paper is or how much their matchmaking clients pay them (honestly, except for the pro bono case of Amelia Westcott, they don't seem to do a whole lot to earn a fee), leaving their ventures with this childish, pipe-dream feel. On top of this, they don't do anything to actually moderate their lifestyle. Sure, they jump on their father whenever he wants to do something extravagant, but they continue to wear all the latest, expensive fashions, with barely any mention of re-styling/purposing older garments or fabrics, and they spend an AWFUL lot of time eating out at cafes and restaurants. Beside not redecorating their parlor, I can't think of a single way they are trying to reduce their expenses. Constance tells Max near the end of the book that she and her sisters support themselves independently... but we never see any evidence that such is the case. If so, one has to question why they live at home, eating their father's food, being attended by their father's servants, using their father's horses and carriages, and wearing clothes paid for by their father.

They claim not to care about society's rules (case in point, the way apparently all three of them decided they had to get laid after their mom died... because that totally made sense, and just went out and found willing guys for it). Three adult sisters living together in a small, female establishment is definitely not beyond the realm of the possible for the time. If they are really as radical and independent as they claim, they should reshape their lives and not be dependent on humoring a man who wants to live in a day dream (or woman up and confront him with the truth). Instead, you get the impression that the Duncan sisters enjoying talking the talk of women's lib, but enjoy the privileges of their social position too much to really challenge society.

While there are some interesting moments between Max and Constance, the author chooses to make their relationship much, much too sexual waaaaaay too early in the story. The intimate scenes are off-puttingly crude, and the overall effect is for both characters and story to ignore the basic incompatibility of values between Constance and Max. While they do come to respect each other more as people, they never actually come to agreement on any of the big questions they disagree on-- like are women fundamentally equal to men? There's no compromise, there's no coming around, there's just a basic compatibility problem that they are just ignoring because they want to be together. If Constance becomes an activist in women's suffrage, it WILL affect Max's political career. Does he care about her more than he cares about that? Does she love him more than she wants societal change? The book never bothers to answer these questions. In fact, it feels so unresolved, despite the H/h's engagement, that I was still expecting some kind of eleventh hour drama to occur and force some of these issues to light, when the book abruptly ended.

The title (and its utter irrelevance to the story) is far more revealing than one might think. In every way, The Bachelor List demonstrates that it is far more interested in dropping in marketing-friendly concepts (matchmaking services, suffragettes, sexually-liberated heroines, bachelor lists...) than actually doing anything interesting with them.