Preferences and Prejudice

Laura Vivanco

I'd like to bring together the two topics we've been discussing most recently here at Teach Me Tonight, namely genre and sexuality. The two seem to be inextricably intertwined for some readers:

We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast. At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. [...] Naming a favorite book or author can be fraught. Go too low, and you risk looking dumb. Go too high, and you risk looking like a bore — or a phony. (Rachel Donadio in the New York Times, via a post by Mrs Fairfax at AAR)

John Mullan has observed that

When culture can be bought and sold, taste becomes an increasingly useful social marker. It was commerce that gave 'culture' to the middle classes, but commerce could also sully it. So the Georgians set about building a national culture - from the plays of Shakespeare to the music of Handel - that only the qualified could properly enjoy. As this culture widened, paradoxically the separation of high and low ('polite' and 'vulgar') sharpened.

And yet, between "high" and "low" culture, lies the "middlebrow," which arouses even greater disgust from a "highbrow" such as Virginia Woolf than the pure "lowbrow" ever would:

what, you may ask, is a middlebrow? And that, to tell the truth, is no easy question to answer. They are neither one thing nor the other. They are not highbrows, whose brows are high; nor lowbrows, whose brows are low. [...] The middlebrow is the man, or woman, of middlebred intelligence who ambles and saunters now on this side of the hedge, now on that. (Woolf)

However much her intent may have been to amuse, the fact is that Woolf is classifying people according to the types of cultural products they prefer, in a manner very similar to that of the modern individuals described by Rachel Donadio. They too single out for particular scorn the "would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes."

Could it be that the "middlebrow," attracts such disgust because by upsetting the neat binary opposition of "high" and "low" it perhaps hints that all cultural products might lie on a continuum? Does the existence of the "middlebrow", the offspring of cultural miscegenation between "high" and "low", cause concern because it provides evidence that the two terms seen as opposites are not, in fact, as different as the clear distinction between "high" and "low" would suggest?

Rosina Lippi has observed that,

the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is artificial and has more to do with social and class issues than anything else. [...] to call a novel 'literary' is the end result of a gatekeeping process with very few admissability criteria. [...]

I might call any given novel a mystery because it's got the elements that are commonly held to be part of that genre. Somebody who subscribes to a simplistic definition of 'literature' as serious or superior doesn't approach it that way. In extreme cases the question is more along these lines: do I feel comfortable admitting that I, with my superior taste and understanding, consider this novel worthwhile? If the answer is yes, then the justification given is: character driven [...], serious, insightful. Regardless of what elements of better-defined genres might be in evidence.

Lisa Fletcher, in the Introduction to her soon-to-be published book, Historical Romance Fiction, argues that romance poses a particular challenge to those attempting to maintain the distinction between "high" and "low" culture: "the permeability of the border between “high” and “low” culture is not simply displayed by, but characterizes romance" (4),

Romance, it might be said, plays the division between high and [...] “low” culture. As noted above, in this study I look at texts from both ends of this scale with a view to exposing their common ground. This study reveals that there are underlying similarities between all of the novels I discuss, most particularly in the way they use an idea of “history,” which preclude any easy distinction between them in terms of their literary sophistication or erudition. (7)

If this is the case, and if those people and texts which challenge dichotomies by hinting at a fluidity or continuum between binary opposites are particularly feared and mocked for it, could this help to explain why the romance genre has so often been derided and marginalised?

I am in no way wishing to suggest that discrimination on the grounds of race, sexual orientation or biological sex is identical to the sort of discrimination that has affected the modern romance genre and its readers. Nonetheless, I think some of the insights provided by theory written about these areas may provide a framework in which to think about how romance and romance readers have been viewed. It may also provide some romance readers with a framework for understanding other forms of discrimination. For example, Richard Dyer, writing about race, has noted that

stereotyping - complex and contradictory though it is [...] does characterise the representation of subordinated social groups and is one of the means by which they are categorised and kept in their place, whereas white people in white culture are given the illusion of their own infinite variety. (12)

One can perhaps see a parallel here to the way in which readers of certain genres (e.g. romance readers) have been stereotyped (as bored, stupid housewives, for example), as compared to the diverse body of readers of complex, "high," literary texts.

Smart Bitch Sarah recently raised the topic of feminism and romance:

In my more ambitious moments in writing on this site, I ponder whether romance and the online community of women who read and write it are a microcosm that mimics the larger state of women in the US, one that is representative of the political polarity and diversity of women in this country [...]

Sexism and RomanceLandia have a long dance-card full of history - are romance novels sexist? the opposite? both? neither? a duck with sheep’s clothing? a pocketful of kryptonite? - but conversely, racism and/in RomanceLandia is debated with shouting or whispers. Debates about romance novels written by or perhaps about black women and where they are shelved in comparison to white romance novels usually end up with much hollering online or use of capslock, or devolve into a complete lack of solution and much offense.

As I commented in response,

it’s really discouraging when groups that have known oppression and that recognise how it works when it’s directed at them, don’t recognise the similar processes going on when they turn around and oppress another group in a similar way. [...] even people who might not have privilege in one context [...] might have privilege in another.

Kimberle Crenshaw, examining the workings of racism and sexism, "understood that we can all stand together as long as we think that we are all equally affected by a particular discrimination, but the moment where a different barrier affects a subset of us, our solidarity often falls apart."

Sadly, an example of this sort of situation arose very recently. A feminist author's book contained racist illustrations (there's a follow-up post here). Many of those who commented on the situation, including Holly (who wrote the first of the posts I've linked to) used the words "intersection" and "intersectionality." The theory of intersectionality, "a term invented by Kimberle Crenshaw and utilized during the 1990s by sociologist Patricia Hill Collins" is a way of looking at differences between individuals:

Collins’ entire approach [...] shifts our understanding of social categories from bounded to fluid and highlights the processes of self definition as constructed in conjunction with others. Intersectionality implies that social categories are not bounded or static. Your social nearness or distance to another changes as the matrix of domination shifts, depending on which scheme is salient at any given moment. You and the person next to you may both be women; but that social nearness may be severed as the indices change to include religion, race, ethnicity, sexual practices or identities, class, and so forth. (Allan 10)

Identity, then, is complex and an individual's primary identity may change depending on the context in which they find themselves. Sarah described how this might occur within the context of sexuality:

For every individual, one or more alignments dominate the others, acting as the primary sexual orientation(s), with the others relegated either to secondary or to absent status, a subtle, complicated balance that has a different combination of fulcra for each person. For example, domination could override gender attraction as a sexual orientation: the gender of the partner being dominated is then immaterial to the arousal caused by the act of dominating someone, and the dom is, for all intents and purposes, bisexual.

Without wanting to trivialise the issues with which I'm making comparisons, I think one could use this insight to understand why, for example, one reader might usually enjoy similar books to those given good reviews by one reviewer, but might on occasion feel very differently from them about one particular novel. Perhaps that novel contained a theme or type of plot or character which that reader dislikes, but which is not so central to the reviewer's preferences. It also explains how and why some of us might slip between genres, and between "high" and "low": if a reader's preference is for love stories, for example, they may, as Fletcher has observed, find such stories in books which span what turns out to be not a cultural divide between "high" and "low" but a continuum of novels dealing, in their different ways, with a single topic. For a great many of us, it is probably the case that our identities as readers are not simple ones centered around "high" or "low" culture, but are made up of a variety of different preferences and inclinations, with each individual book able to satisfying only some of our preferences. Not many books, and maybe none at all, will contain our favourite plot or theme, stimulate us intellectually to just the right degree, seem well-written and leave us feeling utterly content with every aspect of the work.

In addition, "Intersectionality motivates us to look at just how our identities are constructed at the expense of others" (Allan 10), and that brings us back to serious issues such as those mentioned by SB Sarah. As readers, reviewers or literary critics who appreciate a genre which is often stereotyped and mocked, it can be easy to feel defensive and want to present an impression of harmony and unity. There's a tendency to want to proclaim, for example, that all romances are feminist and/or empowering to women. Such an approach, however, would mean ignoring the insights that might arise from that very experience of literary oppression and from thinking about intersectionality. Without joining those who dismiss the entire genre, I think we do need to be able to express legitimate concerns about ways in which some romances, or trends within the genre, might contribute to the marginalisation of some romance readers.

• Allan, Kenneth D. "Chapter 16 Web Byte-Patricia Hill Collins." Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory: Visualizing Social Worlds. This chapter is only available online because "'Web Bytes' are short yet substantial introductions to an additional 10 theorists not covered in the text."
• Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. [Accessed via Google Books preview]
  
• Fletcher, Lisa. Historical Romance Fiction: Heterosexuality and Performativity. Ashgate 2008.

I've chosen to illustrate this post by including a Venn diagram (from Wikipedia). This type of diagram is a way of representing sets which overlap, and identities which are created by the intersections of sets.

A Case Study on Genre: Rosina Lippi's Tied to the Tracks and The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square

Laura Vivanco

Rosina Lippi has decided to label her latest novel, The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square, and a previous contemporary novel, Tied to the Tracks, "romantic comedies."

Over the past few weeks there's been quite a bit of discussion here and elsewhere about genres, how to define them and how to distinguish them from each other. At the 2008 PCA conference An Goris observed that "Genre is [...] inherently dynamic and ever-changing; it may seem stable, but only 'stable for now'." But if they're "stable for now", are there any definitions we can agree on for now? And what purpose(s) do they serve?

At Romancing the Blog Barbara Samuel was wondering why although "Most romance writers who branched into women’s fiction are still delivering a pretty solid romantic story along with the great characters we’ve come to require in romance, [...] romance readers are quite wary" and don't seem to follow the romance authors who decide to write women's fiction.

So what is "women's fiction"? Barbara Samuel added that "women’s fiction is–by its very nature–about women, while romance is about the relationship, and the man, often even more than about the woman." So while romance guarantees "a central love story," women's fiction doesn't. And, as Katie pointed out, "a romance novel promises a happy ending, a women’s fiction novel may, but doesn’t have to provide it. Btw. that’s also one reason for me why I rarely read chick lit, having been burned once too often."

Rosina was asking about the differences between chick lit and romance, because she wanted to "get a sense of [...] how these two novels of mine are perceived. If they fit neatly into one category or another, or not." Beth responded by describing chick lit as books

in which the main protagonist is female, and the plot generally revolves around problems that she is dealing with on a personal level. Usually the heroine in young-ish (20’s or 30’s), has a job in the entertainment/PR/marketing/journalism/media field, and generally she is single. She often has issues with her family. In order to achieve her happy ending, she has to work through her problems and grow into a better person, and she usually finds love in the process.

So, having got a rough idea of how one might define "women's fiction," "chick lit" and "romance," and rather intrigued by the idea of trying to answer Rosina's challenge about how to label her contemporary novels, I set out to read them. (I should probably mention that I bought Tied to the Tracks, but Rosina sent me a copy of The Pajama Girls). The first thing I saw was, of course, the covers.

The cover of the hardback of Tied to the Tracks is on the left, the cover of the paperback's on the right. Neither says "romance" to me, though the one of the right looks to me like it could possibly be non-urban chick lit. They don't say "romantic comedy" either, though the paperback cover is possibly more headed in that direction than the rather dark picture on the hardback's cover. I'm sure this is rather subjective. What do you think? And the cover of The Pajama Girls, with its cushions, didn't say much to me at all about the book's genre, though I did think that I wouldn't want to lean back on them because they look too expensive. In Australia Tied to the Tracks appeared under Lippi's Sara Donati pseudonym and with a different cover. This one seems to me to convey an impression of history (which is appropriate, since the story is about a group of documentary makers) but at first glance it looked as though it might actually be set in the past, at a seaside resort (rather than in present-day, albeit fictional, Ogilvie, Georgia).

Covers do matter because as Sheldrick Ross and Chelton found in their study of readers

Once the reader starts to browse within a range of books, then the cover and the clues provided on the book itself become important. Titles are also important - readers said they were drawn both to an unusual, catchy title (in the case of an unfamiliar book) and to a familiar title that struck a chord. (53)

How do you react to the covers of Rosina's novels? Do you find a title like The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square appealing? Does it sound unusual or familiar to you? And does it have a different feel to Tied to the Tracks? For me, a title which refers to clothing and "girls" is more likely to make me think of women's fiction and/or chick lit.

Having finally dragged myself away from the cover art and titles and back to the contents of the novels, I asked myself how I'd describe Rosina's contempory novels. They don't feel like "romantic comedy" to me because that makes me think I should be laughing out loud. Mind you, I don't laugh at Jenny Crusie's novels either. So perhaps it's that I don't associate "romantic comedy" with occasional glimpses of wry humour. If I had to choose a label for these novels, I'd make up a new one. I think they're contemporary romantic emotional-mystery fiction. You can read an excerpt of The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square for yourself and see what you think.

What reading these novels made me realise was how much I take it for granted when reading romance that I'll have access to what at least one of the main characters (and usually both of them) are thinking. I expect to know what they're feeling and, pretty early on, why they're thinking and feeling that way. It's not that a romance can't keep any secrets in reserve till the end, or that they all break the "rule" about "show don't tell" but generally, while the main characters in a romance may not understand what they're feeling (and they certainly don't know they're heading for a happy ending), the author makes sure that the reader does.

Lippi makes both her characters and the reader do some hard work trying to understand what's going on, and that seems to create a degree of emotional distance between the reader and the characters. I think it's because it's more difficult for me as a reader to get caught up emotionally in a scene if I'm having to work really hard to decipher what the characters are feeling. Candy at the Smart Bitches, in her review of Tied to the Tracks, explained this better than I can:

The best books allow me to lose myself in the characters’ heads and inhabit their skins, and this book came close in a couple of spots, because Lippi is very skilled at building characters who are interesting and real, people you can imagine meeting and liking in real life, but I still felt oddly disengaged emotionally from Angie and John as lovers.

I think Candy's right about this being a feature of the best romances (or, at least, the ones I enjoy the most), but I'm not sure that it's necessarily a feature of "The best books" in all genres. In any case, I wouldn't describe Lippi's novels as romances.

It's because the reader is almost put in the role of a detective, trying to work out the truth from the clues given in the text, that I added the "emotional-mystery" element to my (very cumbersome) label of "contemporary romantic emotional-mystery fiction". That sense of having to do detective work is underlined by both the form of the novels and the occupations of some of the characters. In Tied to the Tracks the heroine is a documentary film-maker, invited to a small town in Georgia to make a documentary about Miss Zula. As Lippi has said,

Miss Zula is a mystery to most people, even those who have known her all their lives. Even to me. There's a very complex backstory about this woman who has forged her way at considerable personal cost, but that information dribbles out because she won't have it any other way.

Through the inclusion of excerpts from websites, books, the town's newspaper, notes that inhabitants of the town leave for the documentary-makers, and other material, the text of the novel also invites the reader to interpret and assess a mass of different texts in a way which parallels the work that the documentary makers must undertake in order to understand the many mysteries to be uncovered in Ogilvie.

The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square is also written using this technique, since parts of the story are told through messages left on John Dodge's answering machine, with the occasional letter or newspaper article included too. The mysteries in this novel are not so difficult to uncover as Miss Zula's, but they're much more obviously emotional mysteries, and that's underlined by the fact that the novel includes a number of characters who are psychotherapists.

Julia Darrow, one of the pajama girls of Lambert Square, and owner of the shop which sells fine linens (and, presumably, the rather fine pillows/cushions depicted on the cover of the novel) might seem to have an occupation which has little or nothing to do with detective work, but it too provides metaphors for the work the reader must do. When we first encounter her she soon turns

her attention to the three large cartons on the worktable. All from her buyer in Italy, six months' worth of her best finds. There was a pleasant shiver of anticipation when a box arrived from Rosa, the thrill that was usually reserved for children on Christmas morning. She adjusted the blade on her penknife and began the delicate business of separating fragile goods from the box they came in. [...] Julia peeled away layers of plastic, linen, and archival tissue paper to reveal a bedsheet with a five-inch border of elaborate silk embroidery, white on white. She reached for a fresh pair of white cotton gloves. (25)

While Julia carefully handles and assesses the fine linens, she herself may perhaps be thought of as "fragile goods" living inside a box: "maybe she was living inside a box, but it was a very large, very nice box" (219).

It's a bit difficult to give more explanation of the kind of detective work the reader has to do without either giving spoilers or quoting vast chunks of text, but there are hints throughout these novels that the characters (and by implication the readers) have to work at understanding what's truly going on. Here's an example from the excerpt of The Pajama Girls:

"When it comes to Exa Stabley," Mayme said, "here's what you've got to do. Listen to her like you would to a radio station. Sometimes you listen real close, and sometimes you let your mind wander off to more important things. The radio won't take offense, and neither will Exa."
Between Exa, Mayme and the rest of her female employees providing insight and direction, Julia had eventually learned how things worked in Lamb's Corner with a minimum of missteps. (23)

As with Exa, there are parts of the book to which you might need to "listen real close," whereas others might be interesting but less important to working out the central mysteries. And the fact that Julia needed to learn "how things worked in Lamb's Corner" is an indication of the complexity of the community in which she, Dodge, and the reader find themselves. Luckily for Dodge, the previous owner of the shop he's just bought sent him a list of descriptions of some of the main personalities, which helps him understand them and he is easily able to observe more for himself since "it was reading people that was his true talent" (7). He spends his first morning in Lambert Square sitting, doing this kind of "reading" while the reader of the novel literally reads along with him:

The plan was to stay right there for as long as he could manage to get away with it. [...] Sunglasses gave him the freedom to watch the crowd without causing alarm. He meant to look like just another stranger in a place where strangers were welcome. (15)

Some aspects of the detective work the reader has to perform are easier than others. Lippi drops some easy to spot clues with some of the names she chooses, for example. John Dodge, known as Dodge, has a habit of fixing up failing businesses and then dodging away, on to the next one. Another character, a child whose parents went through a bitter divorce, is known as Bean Hurt. But at other times the clues are more difficult to spot and interpret. In fact, while reading Tied to the Tracks the only occasion on which I felt I had a good grip on the subtext (see the illustration below) of what was really going on was when John and Angie, who were lovers years ago, meet again at a family party:

Angie saw the youngest of the grandsons, a little boy with a round potbelly, a head of streaky blond curls, and a fat strawberry of a mouth. He stood on a chair aiming an arrow at a bull's-eye set up on an easel at the other end of the veranda, all his concentration on the target. [...] As Angie stood up to get a better look, John Grant came around the corner. [...] John's face, familiar and strange and beautiful. How could she have forgotten that face? The answer was, of course, that she had not. She had forgotten nothing at all. In that split second when he met her eye, Angie saw that same flash of recognition [...].

Somebody screamed. John, who looked down at the blossom of blood on his neatly creased trousers, made no sound that Angie heard. He touched the arrow embedded in his upper left thigh, not quite center, tilted his head as if trying to make out a whispering voice, and then fell over. (57)

I wonder if part of the reason I can't understand the sub-texts in the conversation is that, as is mentioned not infrequently, many of the characters are Southerners, who express themselves via "southern circumlocution" (Tied 52). Mind you, John Grant in Tied to the Tracks doesn't seem to be very quick at working things out either. As he says, "I've never been good at reading the signs" (264) and "I'm missing something obvious. I know I am, for the simple reason that I always do, as you have pointed out to me before" (270) and we're told that "John was clueless" (270). I'm reminded of my reaction to Dorothy Dunnett's novels. While I could just about keep up with what was happening in the Lymond Chronicles and The Pyjama Girls, I felt almost literally clueless when it came to the Dunnett's Niccolo series and Lippi's Tied to the Tracks. As it happens, Lippi's "all time favorite historical novelist is Dorothy Dunnett."

Since I started studying the romance genre, I've read very little fiction outside this genre. Reading these two novels reminded me that, as Angela Toscano wrote in a comment at Romancing the Blog,

Reading is a risky endeavor. It can engage our feelings and our perceptions in ways we’d rather it didn’t; often it does this unexpectedly. There’s no guarantee that you won’t be dissatisfied. But then there’s no guarantee that you will. I think a good story is always worth that particular risk.

Sheldrick Ross and Chelton found that "Readers adopted various strategies to establish the right balance, between safety/certainty and novelty/risk" (52) and "After choosing by author, the second most popular strategy was to use genre" (53). Genre labels, then, can help to lower the risks that a reader takes. I'm beginning to think that the differences between genres don't depend solely on the subject matter of the books; different genres (and this may vary from sub-genre to sub-genre, or from one category romance "line" to another) seem to offer different emotional and/or intellectual rewards to the reader.

I'm fairly certain John Dodge in The Pajama Girls would recognise the importance of genre labels to many book buyers, although at the time of the novel he's "had enough of bookstores for a while" (7) and has turned his attention to pens and paper, the very materials with which books are (or have been) created. He's someone who

had been studying the body language of shoppers for years. It was all about figuring out what people thought they wanted, and if you approached it just right, actually selling them something they wouldn't feel bad about the next day, and at a profit. (7)

• Lippi, Rosina. The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008.
• Lippi, Rosina. Tied to the Tracks. 2006. New York: Berkley, 2007.
• Sheldrick Ross, Catherine and Mary K. Chelton. "Reader’s Advisory: Matching Mood and Material." Library Journal (February 1, 2001): 52-55.

I found the picture of Cupid here but unfortunately there's no indication there of which painting this is taken from. Do any of you recognise it?

Voyeurism?

For all that I said in the last entry about the positive aspects of the depiction of sex in romance, there can occasionally be something that feels a little voyeuristic about the reading experience. It’s not just the sex scenes, because as Jo Leigh said recently at Romancing the Blog:

A reader is hooked when reality shifts. When time in the corporeal world seems to stand still, and the world of the novel takes over. She no longer hears the trample of feet on the stairs or the barking of the neighbor’s dog. Instead, she has become a voyeur of the most intimate kind, eavesdropping on conversations, peeping into bedrooms, opening the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She’s privy to a world that is complete.

The term 'voyeuristic', though, can be used rather loosely. Here's a legal definition, taken from part of the section on voyeurism in the UK’s Sexual Offences Act 2003:

Voyeurism
(1) A person commits an offence if-
(a) for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, he observes another person doing a private act, and
(b) he knows that the other person does not consent to being observed for his sexual gratification.

The book that got me thinking about this topic in relation to sex scenes, was Barbara Delinsky’s Through My Eyes. The title may suggest that the reader is looking through the heroine’s eyes, and what occurs is therefore not voyeurism, since the reader is vicariously a participant not a voyeur. Nonetheless, the heroine, as the title suggests, retains a distinct identity which is separate from the reader’s. Her eyes remain hers, not those of the reader. This is a story told in the first person by the heroine, Jill. When she returns home after a trip to New York where she’s had sex with the hero, Peter, she thinks, during a conversation with her friend Swansy:

I didn’t really want to tell Swansy that Peter and I had spent the better part of our time together in bed, because I was afraid she’d get the wrong idea.
Then again, it wasn’t the wrong idea. It was exactly what we’d done. But what Peter had taught me about lust would burn Swansy’s ears.
Then again, maybe not.
But where a man and a woman were concerned, some things were sacred. (1989: 195)

Given that Jill is addressing the reader directly, it’s disconcerting that she can tell the reader things that she won’t tell her best friend. If something is sacred and, as Jill seems to imply, should therefore remain secret, why has the heroine previously narrated the sexual encounters in considerable detail to the reader? This passage raised the issue of voyeurism because the heroine is explicitly stating her right to privacy. And yet, not many pages before, and not many pages later, she describes her sexual activities, in the first person, to the reader. I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly engaged emotionally anyway by the characters, and this was enough to pull me completely out of the story, thus putting me on the outside, looking on. I finished the book because (a) I usually do finish books and (b) I wanted to blog about that passage, and I don’t like the idea of commenting on a book I haven’t read in full, but it made me feel awkward and self-conscious about what I was reading.

As one romance reader mentions, reading a sex scene in a romance may seem voyeuristic:

Linda Howard is my all-time favorite romance writer, and it is in part because she doesn't skip over the sex and simply have the man and woman wake up together the next day. Linda Howard makes it very plain how the hero and heroine feel about each other and that is what I love to read about. I feel like I miss some of the emotion when I am not 'there' for their physical love. Call it voyeurism if you will.

As this reader notes, however, the romance reader is interested in emotion (though there is often also an element, stronger in some sub-genres than others, of interest in physical acts for their own sake) and this is significantly different from what interests the true voyeur. The voyeur, it seems to me, is watching bodies, whereas the romance reader is given access to the characters’ emotions. In that sense, the romance reader is inside, looking out, whereas the voyeur is outside, and looking on. The difference between the two positions is illustrated in the prologue of Claire Thornton’s The Defiant Mistress. Gabriel, the hero, thinks he knows what he’s seeing:

A spyhole! [...]
the man turned Frances and began to unlace her bodice. She allowed him to remove it and made no protest when he fumbled at the neckline of her chemise. The man exposed her breast and bent his head to lay his mouth against the soft flesh.
Gabriel broke free from his horrified paralysis. He reared up and around, nearly blind with outrage and the pain of betrayed love (2005: 19-20)

The reader, however, knows why the heroine is allowing this to happen: Frances has been made to believe that if she does not, Gabriel will be executed for treason. The reader, then, can 'see' both Gabriel and Frances, and understands what the scene truly means, but Frances does not know Gabriel is there, and Gabriel does not understand why Frances is behaving this way. What Gabriel sees does create strong emotions in him, and what the voyeur sees creates sexual excitement in him/her, but in both cases their experience is unlike that of the romance reader, since their feelings are not based on an understanding of the emotions felt by the person they are watching. In The Defiant Mistress the actual misunderstanding, caused by lies they’ve both been told, is resolved relatively early on in the novel: it is the gradual re-establishing of a loving relationship and of emotional intimacy between the hero and heroine which forms the majority of the novel. This mirrors the way in which sex scenes in a well-written romance are not primarily about the facts of which body-part goes where, but about the emotions the characters feel during the scene, what the scene reveals about their relationship, and how it moves the plot forwards. True understanding doesn't come from observing from the outside, but from understanding what's happening emotionally, on the inside of the characters.

As Rosina Lippi says:

The basic truth is this: any and every scene needs to earn its place in the narrative flow, and sex is no different. No matter how much I love a character and a story, I'm not interested in following them everywhere. The author can safely leave out bathroom visits, cutting of toenails, the phone call about the electric bill, the spilled coffee, the songs on the radio while the character drives to work. Unless something significant happens [...] this stuff doesn't belong in the story. In the same way, you end up with generic, boring, unnecessary sex scenes stocked with color by number orgasms unless there's a compelling reason to include the scene in the first place.
Carefully constructed, thoughtful sex scenes are one good way to show what's right or wrong in a relationship; it's in high tension situations that characters let go, and really, what else is sex about? Where else is character revealed in such a direct way? It's not the only way to do this, but it can be a very effective one.

[In August 2004 Rosina selected a number of sex-scenes and analysed them. It’s fascinating (at least, I found it so) and all the entries can be found via this page. By 2010, Rosina had taken down most of her blog's pages, so they aren't visible any more. However, thanks to the Internet Archive some of the pages are still available: Introduction; Crusie's Welcome to Temptation; Ivory's Untie My Heart. ]

Another difference between the voyeur and the romance reader is that although fictional characters do not generally give consent (though they may do so implicitly if the story is told in the first person), they are not real, and it is the author who gives consent for his/her characters to be observed. However, given the way in which a good author makes the characters come alive, this may seem more like a legal distinction than one which reflects the experience of reading a romance.

Another important distinction is that however good a reader’s visual imagination may be, words are not images, and so a reader cannot truly be said to be ‘observing’ the characters. This point was made in a response to a letter to Salon, when the letter writer had stated that ‘To my mind, there is little difference between romance novels and girlie magazines -- they are both a form of sexual voyeurism’. The response of Salon’s Camille was that:

Porn prose, even by the Marquis de Sade, is slow and linear and will therefore never have the neon impact of a visual image, which hits a different part of the brain with atavistic, animal force.

Despite the distinctions I’d draw between voyeurism and reading a sex scene in a romance novel, there are times when I feel uncomfortable about what I’m reading. Because I don’t like this feeling, I’ve tended to put the book down, so it’s hard for me to analyse exactly what caused me to respond this way to the book, but I think it occurs when the writing is less than engaging, so that I feel as though I’m standing outside, looking in on the activities being described.

Anyone else felt this way? And do you think I’m right in the distinctions I’m making between voyeurism and the processes involved when reading sex-scenes in romance?

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Delinsky, Barbara, 1989. Through My Eyes (Ontario: MIRA).
Thornton, Claire, 2005. The Defiant Mistress (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).