When one's a reader of a type of fiction about which sweeping negative generalisations are made, it can feel satisfying to respond with equally sweeping but positive generalisations. Some of those negative generalisations probably do deserve to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Others, though, contain rather more than a grain of truth and so, having recently come across a number of freshly written critiques of romance, I felt it was appropriate to share them here. The first is Amanda Joyal's M.A. thesis, "From Victorian Literature to the Romance Novel: Disability and the Courtship Plot," which comes complete with its own counter-example. It
is largely concerned with popular romance novels as a site of criticism for disability because of its widespread popularity and locates Victorian fiction such as Jane Eyre and Olive as the predecessors of modern romance novels. Stereotypes of disability that pervade Victorian literature tend to be present in the modern romance; characters desire cures for their disabilities and operate as pitiable figures within the courtship plot. I analyze the ways in which the disabled protagonists of Yours Until Dawn, Stranger in Town, and Annie's Song must be rehabilitated by their partners in order to be a viable participant in the courtship plot. For male characters, this involves reclamation of their masculinity in order to compensate for the feminization of their disability. Disabled female characters seem to have very little involvement in their own rehabilitation and instead rely on their male partners. In contrast, the heroine of Mouth to Mouth needs no rehabilitation in order to be seen as a sexual partner. Laurel represents a unique case that disability scholars should pay more critical attention to.Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any more detail about the thesis, other than that it was completed in 2012 at the University of Wyoming.
The second is by Cora Buhlert, who takes a closer look at the defence of romances which is based on the idea that they're "expressions of women's fantasies":
E.L. James [...] said [...] that the [Fifty Shades] trilogy is fantasy and portrays the sort of fantasy that people would not necessarily want in real life. We’ve heard this sort of explanation before as an apologia for the rapetastic bodicerippers of the 1970s and 1980s or for the continuing popularity of romances featuring ultra-possessive alpha males. And I cannot discount these explanations, because people have wildly different fantasies, as is their good right. But nonetheless, whenever I read another apologia that a book/film/series with stone age gender relations is just an expressions of women’s fantasies of ceding control, because they have to be so strong in real life all the time, I inevitably shake my head and think, “Whose fantasy exactly? Cause it sure as hell ain’t mine.”The third is from acrackedmoon at Requires Only That You Hate. The language is strong and I'm sure we could all think of romances which would serve as counter-examples. That doesn't invalidate her critique though: if anything, her "hatred and geekrage" seems to me to demonstrate the extent of the pain which romances can cause some people:
I guess the main problem here is that a lot of what is considered romantic and swoonworthy in the Anglo-American part of the world, not just doesn’t do a thing for me, I actively dislike it. And I only wrote Anglo-American, because E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, is British. But mainly, books like Fifty Shades of Grey or Harlequin Presents (which have several British authors as well) or the rapetastic bodicerippers of yesteryear are an American phenomenon and reflect the conflicted American attitudes about sexuality, namely that the only way a woman is allowed to enjoy sex without being labeled a slut is if she’s forced into it by an overpowering man. The old bodiceripper style romances were never as popular in Europe (including the UK) as in the US and most European readers I have spoken to actively hated them.
I don’t know about other queer women, but to me the prevalence of romance–not as a genre by itself, but romance as a pop-culture entity–fucked me up pretty severely [...] if you’re telling me that romance is categorically feminist, you’re contributing to this large damage in an insidious, silencing way. The proponents of romance-is-feminist school of thought like to pass such fiction off as inherently progressive because it is written mostly by women and targets women as an audience: it pushes the idea that reading these books is liberating and sex-positive and, what’s more, reading them is good for you. Because feminism! Liberation from the yoke of repression and sexual dissatisfaction!Acrackedmoon is aware of the existence of lesbian and m/m romance; there are romances about people other than straight white women from the first world. Just, not a lot of them. Taken as a whole, popular romance fiction does marginalise certain kinds of stories and certain kinds of protagonists.
Tell me this and I’ll kick you in the fucking teeth.
Yes, romance presents possibilities: as long as those possibilities involve finding a man. Yes, romance explores and depicts female desire: as long as that is a desire to have a cock shoved into your orifices. Yes, romance is about the “everywoman” whom we can all identify with as long as you can identify with a straight white woman from the first world. It reinforces the hegemony of what is normal, and what’s normal is straight sex, straight female desire, centering your life around the fantasy man, and being culturally rooted in the west. Romance enforces the hegemony of ethnocentricism, heteronormativity, and cultural imperialism. It’s not the only thing that does this: so does SFF, so does every other form of popular media.
The image of various broom heads comes from Wikimedia Commons. It was originally published in the Dictionnaire encyclopédique de l'épicerie et des industries annexes (1904).
Thanks for posting this, Laura!
ReplyDeleteI don't think your explanation of the popularity of either the 70s-80s "bodice-rippers" or of 50 Shades is quite on the mark, although it's certainly a reason that one hears from many sources. I've read a number of those earlier novels, and despite their reputation, almost none of the ones I've read show a woman enjoying forced sex. Likewise, the heroine of 50 Shades is not a submissive, at least in the first novel, and she leaves the hero at the end, after he canes her. She's not "forced into it by an overpowering man," in any case. (There are two subsequent novels, which I haven't read yet, so I won't comment on them.)
It may well be possible that there's something nationally-specific going on here, although the fact that Black Lace Books (which featured a lot of BDSM content) is a British publisher suggests that the story is more complicated: something about where the borders are drawn between romance and erotica, for one thing.
What links the three pieces you cite with your own comments, though, is the issue of social exclusion: of feeling like one's own orientation / identity / experience has been rendered invisible, not just in any-old social space, but precisely in the forum that presents itself as "by women, for women." The sense that one has been blithely written out of the picture--or, worse, given the cut direct--is painful in any circumstances, but maybe particularly in this one?
(As a straight white middle-class man, I don't suffer this in romance circles, or anywhere else, very often--but I've had it happen in Jewish contexts, and a few ones that were designed to be for-men, by-men, so I have something to go on, anyway.)
"I don't think your explanation of the popularity of either the 70s-80s "bodice-rippers" or of 50 Shades is quite on the mark"
ReplyDeleteThat's not my explanation, though: it's a quote from Cora's post. In any case I don't think Cora was saying that all those fantasies are exactly the same, just that their success has often been explained in similar ways i.e. as being due to the way in which these texts express women's fantasies.
What links the three pieces you cite with your own comments, though, is the issue of social exclusion: of feeling like one's own orientation / identity / experience has been rendered invisible, not just in any-old social space, but precisely in the forum that presents itself as "by women, for women."
Yes, and that common thread running through them made me think that it would be helpful to post them side by side.
The sense that one has been blithely written out of the picture--or, worse, given the cut direct--is painful in any circumstances, but maybe particularly in this one?
Well yes, because if you're told that something represents your fantasies and empowers you, that raises your expectations. If you then discover on reading it that it mostly seems to exclude people like you and/or portray people like you negatively, I think it probably is going to be more painful than if you hadn't had those raised expectations.
Oh! I'm sorry, Laura--you're quite right. I read the post in my email feed, and the formatting didn't come through there.
ReplyDeleteSo yes, it's the argument that Cora cites which I don't think is accurate, not hers and not yours. Sorry about that!
A couple more posts have come to my attention which touch on the issues raised here. At Fangs for the Fantasy there's an analysis of the recent films based on Snow White. In them:
ReplyDeleteSnow White is no longer a prize to be claimed, no longer an object to be won and no longer a passive element in what is supposed to be her own story. And if she needs rescuing, she is quite capable of rescuing herself, thank you very much.
This is both so very needed and very empowering. [...]
The problem, of course, is that strong woman still means straight, able bodied, cisgendered and White. Snow White may not necessarily be waiting in her coffin for true loves first kiss, but we do know that there will be a love interest and it will most certainly involve a man. [...]
We do love how Snow White has evolved, and these were important, vital changes to her character and the pervasive passive princesses that has so glutted the genre and our culture.This needs praising, this needed to happen and we can find little fault with this. But we can’t take one advance in this one direction and declare victory. If we’re going to reinterpret these ancient stories and make them more inclusive, more representative and sending more positive messages then, great - let’s do that, but let’s do that universally. If we’re going to revisit these stories to remove some of the problematic elements, if we’re going to address some of those damaging tropes and we’re going to send a counter message - then let’s do that - but let’s do all of that for all of those damaging messages.
Over in the comments thread at Dear Author, though, some authors who've tried writing non-white protagonists suggest that a significant proportion of the romance readership doesn't seem to be open to reading about them.
ReplyDeleteLynne Raye Harris writes that:
I actually have a book coming up with a half-Indian hero. It’s Captive But Forbidden, out in July. And I have to say, thus far, I’ve been a bit discouraged at the pre-orders. I probably won’t write another mixed race hero. Not because I don’t want to, but because he doesn’t seem to be very popular with my readers thus far.
She adds that
of course [...] one book is not a good indicator of whether these books will sell or not. But I’m feeling very cautious because I’m not sure what it is that’s not appealing to readers about the book at the moment. They wouldn’t necessarily know the heroine might not appeal to them from the cover copy — but the hero is clearly ethnic with a name like Rajesh Vala.
[...] it is too early to tell, but just checking pre-order numbers, the book is trending at the bottom of the line for that month’s releases thus far.
Kelly Hunter, another Harlequin author, then commented that
I budget for a 30% drop in NA sales every time I write a SE Asian setting, or multiracial or non-white main character. Keeping bank balance, ed, muse and different world readerships happy is definitely a balancing act.
and
Those same stories have sold beautifully throughout Europe and just fine in Aus and the UK. Swings and roundabouts…
She was followed by Kerry Connor:
As another Harlequin author who wants to write more diverse heroes and heroines, I definitely understand Lynn Raye’s concerns. I wrote an Intrigue with an African American hero and heroine a few years ago, which had a beautiful cover and received good reviews (including here at DA). Unfortunately it didn’t do very well. It’s my lowest selling book, and since the books before and after it are among my highest selling, that fact stands out even more. My August Intrigue has a Latino hero and heroine, and I’m interested–and a little nervous–to see how it does. Hopefully the fact that he’s a cowboy (which do sell well) will help temper any possible negative effect. I also have a story with an Asian-American hero and heroine I’ve been sitting on for a while, figuring that stories with both (let alone one) are rare enough I should try to build my career a bit before I try to pitch it. But even if it’ll fly, I might have to think about whether it’ll be worth it. I want to tell the story…but at the same time, I need to eat. (Of course the heroine is also pregnant, and I know firsthand those sell well. I guess we’ll see…)
Regarding the issue of multicultural protagonists in Romance, I think that's an extremely complex issue and since I'm working out my own thoughts on it, I'll refrain from pouring out my (even more than usual) half-baked speculations here.
ReplyDeleteI DO think, though, that we need to resist (and I know I make this mistake, too), sweeping generalizations about the genre like "Romance enforces the hegemony of ethnocentricism," because IMO some *books* in the genre do, and some don't. And I think one of the real issues underlying the various iterations of this discussion is an over-estimation of the genre's homogeneity.
"Taken as a whole, popular romance fiction does marginalise certain kinds of stories and certain kinds of protagonists."
No question. As does every genre. Should we be critical of the implications of these marginalizations? Absolutely! But I think that's already happening among readers, even if we don't all agree on the wheres, whens, hows, and whys of it all. I also think we need to differentiate how some marginalization occurs because of the way the genre has evolved through its own literary history, and how its own roots put a high value on moral and emotional justice. Also, I sometimes note what I'd characterize as a strong Calvinistic sense of "earning" love by being "good enough." Because while the Calvinists favored predestination in salvation, they also believed that you could detect the Elect by, among other things, their character, their level of wealth, their status, etc. And American society, in particular, has internalized some remnants of this value system (I'd argue it's even Constitutionally codified, but that's kind of a side point), and I think that plays into some US-produced romantic narratives (i.e. not limited to what we refer to as genre Romance).
Okay, now onto my ranty point regarding this:
ReplyDeleteBut nonetheless, whenever I read another apologia that a book/film/series with stone age gender relations is just an expressions of women’s fantasies of ceding control, because they have to be so strong in real life all the time, I inevitably shake my head and think, “Whose fantasy exactly? Cause it sure as hell ain’t mine.”
First, the judgment underlying the entire quote Laura posted here is obvious in the word "apologia." And even though I'm not even one of the women who finds the forced sex fantasy a turn on, I feel so incredibly defensive when I hear the tone in the statement I just quoted. I feel defensive because a) there has been actual scientific research over the past 40 years or so demonstrating consistently that, oh, around 50% of women find this fantasy appealing (and if the numbers are in error, it's likely that they're artificially low, since the shame so many women feel in admitting their fantasy -- and doesn't that figure, when other women are calling them rape apologists -- likely suppresses positive responses). You don't have to have access to a university library to read some of it, either. Typing in this title -- Women's Rape Fantasies: An Empirical Evaluation of the Major Explanations -- will pull up a downloadable copy of that 2012 article, which refers to other research and has a nice bibliography. Also, Nancy Friday has been archiving the stories of women (and men) who like submission fantasies for 40 years, as well, and while her research is far from empirical, its anecdotal power complements the empirical research nicely.
So the short answer to Buhlert's question is A LOT.
Beyond that, I think the issue is important because women's sexual fantasies have always been under fire. Nancy Friday talks about the fact that when she first started doing her research, back in the 70s, women who had these fantasies were largely considered perverse (and this was within the mainstream psychiatric community, even). In fact, she was apparently told by more than one "expert" that 'women didn't have sexual fantasies. Which for me makes the issue of women judging other women for their fantasies doubly problematic. And one of the best things, IMO, to come out of the mainstream popularity of The Book That Shall Not Be Named is that women are publicly talking about their fantasies and feeling free to publicly own them. Hallelujah!
At the same time (deep breath), I think we need to be more careful when we talk about sexual fantasies to distinguish between a) the text itself, b) sexual fantasies that exist independently of a book, and c) the interaction between text and reader that allows the reader to experience something as a fantasy. I've discussed my own theory of reader consent in regard to the last issue elsewhere, so I won't rehash that here, but it may be that some of the backlash and the overgeneralizations and the defensiveness that always seems to crop up in these discussions is coming from a conflation of these very different levels and contexts of "fantasy." Some textual contexts are problematic for different readers, and it needs to be okay to talk about that, to analyze narratives and problematize narrative devices, etc. At the same time, pure sexual fantasy is largely an unconscious thing and not necessarily conducive to rational analysis.
So perhaps we need to start developing a shared vocabulary for talking about them separately and together. That way we could discuss the differences among textual contexts and how those contexts + the reader's engagement with the text shapes the reader's experience. It's a delicate operation, and sometimes it's difficult not to feel judged as a reader when mere text is being discussed, but I'm not sure how else to go about it.
"But I think that's already happening among readers"
ReplyDeleteI know it's already happening among some readers. Certainly those discussions have been taking place among some online romance readers.
That said, I'm not at all sure we make up a large proportion of the total number of romance readers. There are probably quite a lot of romance readers who either don't participate in online discussions of romance at all, or who don't visit (or haven't yet visited) the venues where these discussions have been taking place.
I sometimes note what I'd characterize as a strong Calvinistic sense of "earning" love by being "good enough."
Another factor, which Cora touched on, is fantasies of various kinds. What do readers find sexy? What kinds of settings do they like to escape to? Who do they want to identify with while reading? Obviously readers aren't a homogeneous group any more than romance novels are, but there do seem to be some fantasies which appeal to more readers than others.
Another factor, which Cora touched on, is fantasies of various kinds. What do readers find sexy? What kinds of settings do they like to escape to? Who do they want to identify with while reading? Obviously readers aren't a homogeneous group any more than romance novels are, but there do seem to be some fantasies which appeal to more readers than others.
ReplyDeleteThis is another area in which I think there are a lot more conjectures than actual answers right now. For example, I don't read to identify with characters, nor do many other readers I know. But clearly that's not universally true. Nor do I think we can make any meaningful blanket statements about what readers do and don't like based on what books readers buy and love, because IMO there has been very, very little good research done within the Rom community about the process of reading (i.e. utilizing really good reader response theory). How much of what readers buy is simply a function of what is marketed, for example?
I understand that when any one of us feels that the genre does not represent well what we want to see in it, it's tempting to move from the anecdotal(e.g. 'X had a bad effect on me' or 'I want to see more of Y') to the prescriptive (e.g. 'X is bad' of 'the genre doesn't do Y'); however, I just think we need to be careful not to give in to that temptation, especially when we don't really know how readers who don't weigh in online relate to the texts themselves (one reason I've always been wary of the 'average reader' descriptor).
On the topic of women's sexuality and fantasy, I wonder what you make of the popularity of "posh porn." I haven't read any, but it's obvious Fifty Shades wouldn't fall into that category so I wonder if Fifty's appealing to a different demographic. Or is it yet another US vs Europe difference and "posh porn" never became as popular in the US? Here's an article from The Observer from 2006 which compares chick lit, romance and "posh porn" also mentions their different approaches to fantasy:
ReplyDeleteA decade on and chick lit now seems curiously chaste, as lascivious as a warm mug of Horlicks. But a new kind of explicit bedside reading, both fictional and autobiographical, means the three-for-two counter in Waterstone's now displays the kind of X-rated material more traditionally found in a cornershop in Soho. Recent publications have included, among others, a memoir by a winsome-looking ballet dancer with a predilection for sodomy; a semi autobiographical novel by an anonymous Muslim woman about her sexual coming of age; a confessional account of teenage proclivities in Catholic Italy; a candid career guide to life as a Manhattan prostitute; and a novel centred on a single act of fellatio. For months, newspaper columnists feverishly debated the identity of Belle de Jour, a hooker whose eloquent internet blog, sold to a publisher for a six-figure sum, might or might not have been a fraud. [...]
Ayrton breezily calls this current fashion for sex fiction 'posh porn'. Although there are no exact figures for who buys these kinds of books, Ayrton does know who queues up for publicity readings: young women, under 30. This demographic is the holy grail of any publisher for the simple reason that they buy a lot of books. Here are stories that seem to speak to them. Ayrton: 'They recognise Catherine M, for instance, as some kind of mother figure of sexual liberation. They understand the separation between love and sex that she writes about. Chick lit doesn't correspond to their lives. Here are writers who, like them, have casual sex which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with their emotions.' [...]
According to Matthew Firth, an American writer and editor of an anthology about work and sex, modern sex fiction is very different from erotica (such as Black Lace) or romance (such as Mills & Boon). True, it can be arousing. Yes, it describes fairly standard sex scenarios. But where it differs, he says, is 'with respect to fantasy versus reality. Sex fiction is not about embellishing sexual activity, about depicting sexual situations most of us can only dream of. Sex fiction is writing about sex by accurately portraying how people fuck. The goal is authenticity.' (Louise France, "Bedtime Stories")
Fascinating article, Laura; thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's a US v. UK thing, except in terminology, because Americans are pretty interested in books about sex (Hedi Fleiss, that Kristin Davis, etc.). Also, would Erica Jong's Fear of Flying fit into the category?
It's tough for me to get past the quick impulse to label sexually explicit writing "porn," and in a way that seems pretty loaded. I broadly distinguish among Erotic Rom, Erotica, and porn this way: ER = exploration of love relationship via sex; E = exploration of self via sex; p = exploration of body via sex. General and not universally binding categories, of course, but they've been helpful for me in thinking about different types of sex writing, although I need to do much more thinking about the issues.
Firth's assertion, to me, underlines the problem with talking about these texts in a way that avoids the judgments. When he talks about the goal of authenticity, for example, my first thought is 'why is that important or distinctive or categorically valid?' And yet once we begin that further discussion, so much cultural baggage gets dragged in, from our perceptions of what women should or shouldn't feel about sex, to the fact that women's sex writing seems to be treated so differently from men's sex writing (Henry Miller, DH Lawrence, James Joyce, etc.). I definitely think the more mainstream discussions of sex writing by women reflect more openness, but I think it may be a while before we really understand all the cultural factors that have conspired to create this particular cultural moment. And yet cultural issues seem to be very much implicated, which brings us back to the baggage/judgment issues.
Although this isn't directly related, Steve Almond wrote an interesting piece on the chastening of literary fiction that came to mind when I read that Observer piece: http://therumpus.net/2010/01/katie-roiphe%E2%80%99s-big-cock-block/,
Almond writes that
ReplyDeleteI’m tired of reading novels and stories in which two or more central characters get naked and all we get is the morning-after orange juice. It strikes me as a huge missed opportunity, because people (and therefore characters) are never more themselves than when they’re exposed to the ecstasies and humiliations of what we in the biz call the nasté.
I really strongly disagree with the idea that "people [...] are never more themselves than when they’re exposed to the ecstasies and humiliations of what we in the biz call the nasté." I suppose it may be true for some people, but I'd rather think I can get to know the truth about people by talking to them and seeing how they behave in a variety of (non-sexual) situations. For one thing, that would mean I can get to know the truth about an awful lot more people than if I limit myself to the people I can have sex with. For another, Almond's view would seem to imply that people who can't or don't have sex are never truly/fully themselves.
I've read quite a bit of Almond's work, so that has probably shaped how I read the piece on Roiphe, but I don't think he's saying that people need to have sex to be fully themselves. I think he's saying that there is an unself-conscious vulnerability during sex that reveals something about people you might not be able to see otherwise. Just as different aspects of ourselves are uniquely revealed in other actions/reflections.
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking about how people sometimes asks what the purpose of sex in Romance is. Not that Romance has to be sexually explicit, of course. But I do think there is something unique communicated through sex that can be useful in developing a romantic narrative -- that it can be revelatory in purposeful ways. Just as, for example, putting someone in mortal danger or captivity or many other situations can be uniquely revelatory within a narrative.
I think he's saying that there is an unself-conscious vulnerability during sex that reveals something about people you might not be able to see otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how many people are wholly "unselfconscious" during sex, particularly early in a relationship (which is the kind of sex that tends to be depicted in romances). Sex is taking place in a context in which people often feel bad about their bodies and feel pressure to "perform" sex: "90% of British women feel body-image anxiety" (Observer) and
There is a growing concern among women that their genitals don't "measure up" to the ideal touted by the global pornography industry – which for the past two decades has been busy infiltrating mainstream society. In porn, removal of pubic hair is de rigueur, and so we see this norm transferred into mainstream beauty practices. With removal of pubic hair now standard, labia are more visible and open to scrutiny. Now every inch of a woman's body is objectified and subject to judgment. (The Guardian)
I do think there is something unique communicated through sex
Can you explain that? Sex seems to mean lots of different things to different people (and sometimes to the same person at different times). Some people, for example, insist that sex is about "making love" whereas others feel it's basically just a pleasurable form of exercise. Some feel that through sex a man and a woman become "one body" whereas others feel that selling sex is not much different from selling another kind of commodity.
Sex scenes may be able to convey a lot of information about what the characters believe about sex, and like any other scene they can convey information about the characters, but I'm not at all sure that there's "something unique communicated through sex" which can't be communicated in other ways.
I've been trying to figure out a way to answer this question without the TMI personal anecdotes, so in terms of RL, I'll just say that I don't think people ever have full, constant control over their actions, feelings, and responses, and that bringing people together naked and intending to have sex with each other puts them in a unique space. It doesn't mean that other vulnerable glimpses and unguarded facets of them are not on display in other contexts, but sex created layers of vulnerability and exposure (even if it's not 'I love you' sex) that you don't get in other contexts, IMO. Also, I don't know one person who doesn't have some self-consciousness about their body, but if that's all you're focused on during sex, well, I'd think you wouldn't be doing it very much, because it sure wouldn't be very enjoyable, lol.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of characters, though, I think sex can be used to communicate specific things, whether romantic in nature, or in terms of how a character relates to others, how they handle intimacy, vulnerability, pleasure, etc. Not that you can't get equally unique aspects revealed in other contexts, but I think the particular physical pleasures (and sometimes emotional pleasures, depending on the type of relationship involved) of sexual activity can be very narratively useful. Not necessary, but useful. And even a particular lack of enjoyment could be narratively useful, as well.
To me, cases like those of "Mark Stone" and other police officers who went undercover in the environmental movement and had sex with activists, suggest very strongly that sex does not reveal the most intimate parts of someone's personality.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the political is intensely personal, and so I feel that a lot of romances, because they avoid discussions about politics (not in the party-political sense) or deal with the issues very superficially, are lacking in real intimacy.
I apologize, Laura, if your response here is not to my comment, but I just wanted to clarify that I am not arguing that "sex . . . reveal[s] the most intimate parts of someone's personality." In fact, I'm inclined to agree with you there.
DeleteIn regard to intimacy specifically, I said that I think sex can reveal how someone deals with intimacy. And if I were writing a fictionalized narrative of that Mark Stone story, I couldn't imagine doing it without engaging the sex explicitly, because I think it's incredibly important as an expressive function of all sorts of vulnerabilities and power dynamics and politics (which, for me, distills down to power dynamics).
I'm actually not quite certain I understand your objection to the argument that sex can be uniquely revelatory about a character, unless you think my point is that every single time someone has sex their full inner life and self is revealed. Because I'm not arguing that. Just because something can be uniquely expressive and revelatory does not mean it has to be fully so every single solitary time, IMO. Or that one cannot see equally vulnerable things -- albeit of a different type -- in other facets of a character. For example, I have always felt that the way people sleep can be extremely and uniquely revealing, in part because of that unconscious + vulnerable thing.
As for your second point, I agree with you, although I'm not sure it's an issue of "real intimacy" for me as much as 'the full effect and gamut of intimacies.' And while I also agree that there are a number of Romances that substitute sexual intimacy for other types of intimacy, I don't see it as an all or nothing proposition, because I've certainly read many Romances where that is not the case, where different intimacies are explored and revealed. Although I think it would be great to see more romantic narratives that deal explicitly with politics and political issues.
Your comment went into the spam filter but I've fished it out now. Sorry about that. I have no idea why Blogger objected to it.
DeleteI'm actually not quite certain I understand your objection to the argument that sex can be uniquely revelatory about a character, unless you think my point is that every single time someone has sex their full inner life and self is revealed. Because I'm not arguing that. Just because something can be uniquely expressive and revelatory does not mean it has to be fully so every single solitary time, IMO.
Ah, that clarifies a lot. Yes, I did think you were arguing that. Sorry.
I think that, overall, romance novels nowadays do give the impression that sex is "uniquely expressive and revelatory". I wonder if it's because they're drawing on cultural ideas about "carnal knowledge" and "becoming one flesh." Angela Toscano, for example, has argued that in romance
Like the violent piercing of Cupid’s arrows, rape serves as the external and fated event that brings the lovers together. Its violent and invasive nature mirrors the violent and invasive nature of love through which the Other is encountered, recognized, named, and known.
Rapes in romance aren't very common but, albeit less violently, I think other types of sex scenes between the protagonists in romance do seem to give the impression that sex is the primary place in which "the Other is encountered, recognized, named, and known" (and also in which the Self is fully "recognized, named, and known).
I haven't read Cecilia Grant's A Gentleman Undone, but I was struck by the revelatory nature of the sex scene you quoted from in your review:
DeleteShe stared down at him, his judge and his ravisher, appalling as the eagle who’d feasted every day on Prometheus’s liver, and he as powerless as that Titan, chained to the rock, rent open, his darkest, most unspeakable secrets laid bare to her view.
Her eyes hardened. Her lips pressed tight. She leaned an inch nearer. “I love you,” she breathed, just loud enough for him to hear.
He gasped, one great rush of sustaining air. And he seized her with unyielding hands, and rolled her beneath him and drove himself into her, into her truth and her terrible strength and the pitiless love that was his only redemption in this world.
And came, claiming her, giving himself up to her, a woman so beautifully broken she could love a soulless man.
In that particular case, the revelations which occur during the sex scene would seem to be built on earlier revelations and intimacies and, particularly as I haven't read the novel, I can't comment on how much emphasis it places on intimate knowledge acquired via sex versus intimate knowledge acquired in other circumstances.
With some other romances, though, it can feel as though sexual intimacy is depicted over and over again because it's considered the ultimate intimacy, more important and more revelatory than all other intimacies. Romances like that make me feel grumpy. I apologise if I was transferring my grumpiness about that to your much more nuanced argument.
I wonder if what feels to me like an over-valuing of sex is a backlash against its denigration, but one which nonetheless implicitly accepts that sex, particularly for women, is something which is uniquely defining. Whereas once it was only the virgin (who was "known" only to her husband) who was celebrated, now we have sexually experienced heroines but in both cases it can seem as though a women's value is still being determined by her sexual status.
In mainstream m/f romances the sex a heroine has with the hero is still usually the most meaningful and revelatory of her life. And there's still a sense that losing one's virginity is essential to become a real/full woman, except that now it sometimes seems that in order to remain a real/full woman, the heroine must keep having sex. It's not usually stated explicitly, so perhaps I'm reading things into some books that aren't there, but there are definitely some romances in which it seems as though sex is defining in terms of making the heroine feel like "a woman."
And to get back to what acrackedmoon was saying, it seems to me that in general in romance the most revelatory sex involves characters literally as well as metaphorically penetrating each other's facades. Which would tend to mean that sex between lesbians isn't so likely to be considered as real, as revelatory, as penetrative sex in m/f and m/m romances.
And to get back to what acrackedmoon was saying, it seems to me that in general in romance the most revelatory sex involves characters literally as well as metaphorically penetrating each other's facades. Which would tend to mean that sex between lesbians isn't so likely to be considered as real, as revelatory, as penetrative sex in m/f and m/m romances.
DeleteAlthough I'm usually quick to judge Romance for its reactionary tendencies, I'm not convinced that her point here is accurate. Now I do think that Romance is often aimed at female pleasure, and I think that can have some interesting implications re. m/m, but I think you could make a strong argument that some elements and books in Romance challenge the politics of penetration. I felt this very much in Elizabeth Vaughan's Warprize, where the overt themes of transculturation really complicate that white, heteronormative paradigm.
I feel that the presence, purpose, and construction of sex and sexuality in the genre are so much more complicated than they may, at first sight, appear. Part of that may be that so much of the sex writing in the genre seems derivative and copy-cat (the shorthand in the genre is ubiquitous, and it can both assist readers in locating meaning and detract from that process, depending on the book, the reader, and the interaction between the two). Part of it may be that there seems to be a sense that sex is necessary in the genre, so maybe authors feel pressured to write more explicitly than they might otherwise feel comfortable doing? And some of it just may come down to how well a book is crafted. I think there are a number of issues here that need to be teased out before we could really draw genre-wide conclusions.
I have to admit that I'm just plain bored by a lot of the sexual content in the genre, not because I'm uninterested or believe it's unnecessary, but simply because I don't find a lot of it freshly and compellingly written. But then there is a book like the Grant book you quote from, where the sex and sexuality of the characters plays a major role in the story and in the relationship, and where their sexual encounters are crucial to the development of both. That's probably even more true of Grant's first book, A Lady Awakened, where sex literally constructs the relationship between the protags -- and where many of the early sex scenes are downright painful to read (necessarily so). Actually, if any book questions the politics of penetration, I'd argue that one does. Of course, I've read other books that gleefully embrace the norms acrackedmoon calls out.
"I think you could make a strong argument that some elements and books in Romance challenge the politics of penetration."
DeleteI haven't read any of Vaughn or Grant's novels, so I can't comment on those but I don't think I've come across many m/f romances where non-penetrative sex is presented as anything other than foreplay or a way of preparing a heroine for something better/more important that she'll be ready for when she's more experienced. I do, though, remember a scene in Rose Lerner's In for a Penny in which the heroine gave the hero oral sex and that was presented as being important in itself.
I think there are a number of issues here that need to be teased out before we could really draw genre-wide conclusions.
I'm sure you're right. I know I don't read widely enough to be able to draw firm "genre-wide conclusions" about this. For one thing, I don't have an ereader and haven't been tempted to read ebooks on my computer; I know I'm missing out on a lot of books as a result. Also, not a lot of US single-titles make it across to the UK and into my local library, and I don't feel I can really justify spending money on a book unless (a) I'm pretty sure I'll really enjoy it, (b) I think it'll be useful for my research or (c) I find it really cheap in a charity shop.
For me, the political is intensely personal, and so I feel that a lot of romances, because they avoid discussions about politics (not in the party-political sense) or deal with the issues very superficially, are lacking in real intimacy.
ReplyDeleteLaura, I provide nothing more than an anecdote, but after reading a m/m romance to its logical conclusion, I was surprised by its ending. The ending had the two looking at a Tiffany's catalogue, and a comment about wishing they could get married (but are not permitted to). I was entirely confused as to why they couldn't, and then, of course, remembered the book was American. I think this is a clear moment where a narrative engages not only with sex, but also the politics of sexuality.
I wasn't just thinking of "the politics of sexuality," although that can be part of it. I'm thinking more of the kinds of issues raised by Anne Elliot when she thinks about Mr Elliot:
ReplyDeleteThough they had now been acquainted a month, she could not be satisfied that she really knew his character. That he was a sensible man, an agreeable man, that he talked well, professed good opinions, seemed to judge properly and as a man of principle -- this was all clear enough. He certainly knew what was right, nor could she fix on any one article of moral duty evidently transgressed; but yet she would have been afraid to answer for his conduct. She distrusted the past, if not the present. The names which occasionally dropt of former associates, the allusions to former practices and pursuits, suggested suspicions not favourable of what he had been. She saw that there had been bad habits: that Sunday travelling had been a common thing; that there had been a period of his life (and probably not a short one) when he had been, at least, careless on all serious matters; and though he might now think very differently, who could answer for the true sentiments of a clever, cautious man, grown old enough to appreciate a fair character? How could it ever be ascertained that his mind was truly cleansed? (Chapter 17)
In some romances, though I have been acquainted with the protagonists' thoughts about each other's attractions, and have been given copious details about their sexual interactions, by the end of the novel I still can not be satisfied that I really know their characters. What do they think about "serious matters"?
I may know that the hero is a sexy man, a man who's imaginative in bed, and yet not be able to answer for his conduct in what to some people might think of as more mundane aspects of life. I, though, would like to learn the equivalent of his thoughts about Sunday travelling.
Just a quick FYI, in the midst of this fascinating discussion... as a graduate of the University of Wyoming, my Master's thesis was available through the library about 8 months after I submitted it, so if you are interested, Amanda Joyal's M.A. thesis should be available under a similar time frame... as long as they are still doing things the same way as when I graduated in 2009.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Tessa. I'm not sure my memory's good enough to remind me to go and look for it in 8 months' time, but hopefully the Google alerts I have set up to let me know about new publications about popular romance will let me know if/when it becomes available.
ReplyDeleteWell, I can't believe someone is talking about me. On that note, I'm more than happy to allow anyone who chooses to look at my thesis.
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