New Publication: Romance Readers and Interpersonal Sensitivity

Laura Vivanco

In an article that's still in press, titled "What You Read Matters: The Role of Fiction Genres in Predicting Interpersonal Sensitivity," Katrina Fong, Justin B. Mullin and Raymond A. Mar explain that they

investigated the role of four fiction genres (i.e., Domestic Fiction, Romance, Science-Fiction/Fantasy, Suspense/Thriller) in the relationship between fiction and interpersonal sensitivity, controlling for other individual differences. Participants completed a survey that included a lifetime print-exposure measure along with an interpersonal sensitivity task. Some, but not all, fiction genres were related to higher scores on our measure of interpersonal sensitivity. Furthermore, after controlling for personality, gender, age, English fluency, and exposure to nonfiction, only the Romance and Suspense/Thriller genres remained significant predictors of interpersonal sensitivity.

I've got a bit more about this, and the perception and reception of romance among non-romance-readers, at my blog.

Reading and Puzzle-Solving

Laura Vivanco

A Disentanglement Puzzle

Over at OnFiction Raymond A. Mar reports on some new research about reading:

We all know people who are heavily influenced by whatever they happen to be reading or watching, crying at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, there are those who seem to have no difficulty withdrawing from a narrative world, seemingly unfazed by sad films and scary books. One interesting avenue of work has found that those who are intrigued by puzzles and enjoy complicated problem-solving--a trait known as “need for cognition”--are also more likely to be deeply engaged with a story. [...] In other words, the complexities of a narrative appear to be just another puzzle that some people enjoy unlocking.

Raymond's got more details in his post.


The photo is the work of Matěj Baťha who made it available via Wikimedia Commons with a Creative Commons licence.

Pleasure Reading and Cognitive Work

Laura Vivanco

We’ve had emo-alphas forever. But what we haven’t had is the totally-spelled-out-and-explained-in-words-of-one-syllable emo-alpha, the emo-alpha male who is no longer a mystery. How can he be, when he’s telling you about himself all the time? [...]

Clearly the in-your-face, obvious, wordy explanations of the hero and his angst/pain/redemption work for a lot of readers. They don’t work for me.

And that’s why, henceforth, I’ll nod my head when people rave about the next book with the emo-alpha hero. I know what they’re talking about now, and I know why they like it. But I’ll pass, thanks. I like my authors to leave me some of the emotional and cognitive work. (Sunita at Vacuous Minx)

When I read Jennifer L. Barnes's recent article about "Fiction, Imagination, and Social Cognition" I was reminded of Sunita's insight into the differences between romances which demand a fair amount of "cognitive work" and others in which the characters' emotions are spelled out. Barnes observes that

Zunshine (2006) put forth the theory that fiction is pervasive and appealing because fictional stories feed a ‘‘hungry’’ or ‘‘greedy’’ mechanism for getting inside the minds of others, often referred to as ‘‘Theory of Mind.’’ We watch films and read books, she would contend, because we have a need to process mental states: we want to hear stories about people, imaginary or not, so that we can imagine, think about, and dissect their mental states and relationships. (300)

Barnes suggests that "autism spectrum conditions (ASC),particularly high functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome, should be of great interest to researchers exploring the cognitive science of fiction" (301) because they "may provide an ideal test case for many theories of fiction" (301).

It would seem that individuals with ASC are less able to do the kind of "emotional and cognitive work" which Sunita enjoys:

Individuals with ASC were less successful than controls at providing context-specific explanations for characters’ behavior, while they had no such difficulty providing explanations for the events in purely physical stories. (305) 

and

Individuals with ASC may pay attention to what people say, but sometimes fail to grasp what they mean, and it is unclear whether or not they actually find fictional stories– rife with non-literal utterances and complicated social relationships – to be enjoyable or appealing at all. (307)

Barnes asks:

How many stories in our popular culture hinge on a lie? How many minutes of Grey’s Anatomy or House could a person possibly watch without running into a sarcastic utterance? What would modern fiction look like if every word of dialogue was literally true, if no-one had ulterior motives, if people never attempted to mask what they were feeling, if there were no subtle or complicated social mores? These results seem to support Zunshine (2011)’s claim that consuming fiction not only requires complex theory of mind skills, but that fiction itself bears the indelible stamp of an audience hungry for embedded mental states: he thinks that she thinks that he doesn’t love her, he’s lying to mislead her about his true motivations, and so on. (306)

Perhaps, though, some fiction is particularly successful because it does lay open the truth of the characters' emotions and so the reader does not have to do so much "emotional and cognitive work"? Perhaps it appeals both to those who find such work difficult, and to those who prefer, at least on occasion, to avoid this kind of work and instead find pleasure in other aspects of the text? Perhaps they allow readers, once again, to enjoy the kinds of insights that were previously achieved through the use of a reliable, omniscient narrator?

• Barnes, Jennifer L. "Fiction, Imagination, and Social Cognition: Insights from Autism." Poetics 40.4 (2012): 299-316.

The images are from Wikimedia Commons. The first is a photo of "Le Penseur at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor" taken by Yair Haklai and the second is a photograph of Erzsébet Korb's Girl's Portrait (Thinker, Contemplation).

Personality Tests

Laura Vivanco

"I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too"

There's been quite a bit of theorising and discussion about readers' personalities and preferences which I wanted to see if I could piece together. Since I'm going to touch on controversial topics and describe reader responses which are not my own, comments which offer clarification and corrections will be particularly gratefully received.





Which of these two columns best describes your personality?

Column One	Column Two
Very independent Not at all emotional Very objective Not at all easily influenced Very dominant Likes math and science very much Very active Very competitive Very worldly Very direct Very adventurous Can make decisions easily Almost always acts as a leader Very self-confident Very ambitious	Very talkative Very tactful Very gentle Very aware of feelings of others Very religious Very interested in own appearance Very neat in habits Very quiet Very strong need for security Enjoys art and literature Easily expresses tender feelings [adapted from Broverman et al,  page 63.]

If you're a woman who feels as though you ought to say column two, but would really like to let loose the column one characteristics you've repressed, perhaps you’re the kind of reader whom Laura Kinsale and Linda Barlow describe in their essays in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women.
In “The Androgynous Reader,” Laura Kinsale asks

What does it mean to a woman to feel – to want keenly to feel – what the male character feels as she reads?

I think that, as she identifies with a hero, a woman can become what she takes joy in, can realize the maleness in herself, can experience the sensation of living inside a body suffused with masculine power and grace [...], can explore anger and ruthlessness and passion and pride and honor and gentleness and vulnerability [...]. In short, she can be a man. (37) 

Kinsale believes that what many readers “savor [...] is the freedom to expand into all the aspects, feminine and masculine, of their own being” (40). In “The Androgynous Writer: Another View of Point of View,” Linda Barlow, who is

not ashamed to admit that I’ve always been one of those die-hard fans of the old-fashioned, hard-edged romances which feature a feisty heroine who falls into love and conflict with a dangerous hero with sardonic eyebrows and a cruel but sensual mouth. (45)

argues that this type of romance hero is actually “a significant aspect of feminine consciousness itself” (46) and she adds that he provides female readers with

the means of facing and accepting the angry, aggressive, sexually charged components of our personality that we have been taught to associate with masculinity. From childhood, males have more outlets for their aggressions – sports, horseplay, roughhousing, the rite of passage schoolyard fight and resultant black eye that parents (especially fathers) seem willing to tolerate. They also have more outlets for their sexuality, the expression of which is not only tolerated but encouraged. Females, on the other hand, are instructed from childhood to control, repress, or even split off their aggressive and erotic drives. (49-50)

In other words, he embodies the traits in column one. If Kinsale and Barlow are right, then while romances which pair ultra-feminine (albeit feisty) heroines with ultra-masculine heroes ostensibly endorse gender stereotypes, they simultaneously allow readers to experience a fuller range of emotions and behaviours than they are permitted by gender stereotypes.
Recently there have been discussions about how "the m/m genre is in a very large part, hostile to (fictional) women" (Voinov) and there has also been controversy (beginning here and continued here and here) about readers of m/m romance who really only want to read cis-m/cis-m romance. ["Cis" is a term used to "refer to someone who is comfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth. Same for cissexual. If you’re comfortable with the sex assigned to you at birth, you’re probably cissexual" (Bran).]
Neither Kinsale nor Barlow discuss m/m romance but I can't help but think about their theories on androgynous readers and wonder if trans* protagonists are being rejected for similar reasons to those which cause some readers and writers to turn to m/m fiction. Could it be that the presence of a heroine would serve as a constant reminder to an "androgynous reader" that women are still expected (to a greater or lesser degree) to express the characteristics in column two? And is it perhaps possible that a trans* protagonist in a m/m romance would also make explicit issues of gender which the "androgynous reader" would rather not deal with when attempting to "realize the maleness in herself"?
Joanna Russ once observed that female authors writing m/m slash are

in disguise. They’re disguised as a man. I once noticed that in slash there are so many references to these characters’ penises that it’s like a little label that says “Hello, I am” and the name. [...] I think it’s something like this. As I said, the characters are not exactly male. They’re disguises of some sort, kind of like “I have the proper genitals so I am male, please remember that.” (Francis and Piepmeier)

Could it perhaps be that some "androgynous" authors and readers feel that the anatomy of trans* protagonists would not serve so well as a disguise for female authors and readers? In addition could the "abhorrence of what's called 'girly bits' or 'girl parts', or 'vay jay'" (Voinov) in m/m romance and a marked preference for cis-male protagonists, stem from the cultural associations of different types of genitalia? Braun and Wilkinson "posit that experiences of the biological body are constructed by social/cultural/historical context and that interpretations of bodies need to be considered within context" (18). Part of that context is that

The vagina is often represented as part of the female body that is shameful, unclean, disgusting. [...] Women 'are brought up in a society which tells us that our bodies smell' (Smith, 1987, p. 21). Genital slang often invokes smell (e.g. stench trench) (Braun & Kitzinger, 1999a; Mills, 1991); to be called a 'smelly cunt' is a horrible insult (Smith, 1987). Laws (1987, p. 13) noted that 'many women hate their discharges, and find them very smelly and unpleasant . . . These attitudes come from our culture’s making out that women’s bodies are dirty, mysterious, oozing strange fluids - different from men’s, therefore wrong.’ (21-22)

In contrast, as Kyra Kramer and I have noted,

while “generally ethnographers have concluded that few men actually equate their manhood with their genitalia, nonetheless many studies indicate that they are a favorite point of reference” (Gutmann 396). Regardless of the cause of the conflation,

The penis is what men have and women do not; the phallus is the attribute of power which neither men nor women have. But as long as the attribute of power is a phallus which refers to and can be confused […] with a penis, this confusion will support a structure in which it seems reasonable that men have power and women do not. (Gallop 97)

Perhaps to some readers and authors no less than two penises capable of provding the reader with a "money shot" can symbolically ward off "shameful, unclean, disgusting" femininity and allow access the access to the personaity traits in columnn one?
-----

• Barlow, Linda. "The Androgynous Writer: Another View of Point of View." Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Ed. Jayne Ann Krentz. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992. 45-52.

• Bran. "The Language of the Rainbow: Introduction." Embrace the Rainbow. 8 March 2012. 

• Braun, V. and S. Wilkinson. "Socio-cultural Representations of the Vagina." Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology 19.1 (2001): 17-32.

• Broverman, Inge K, Susan Raymond Vogel, Donald M. Broverman, Frank E. Clarkson, and Paul S. Rosenkrantz. "Sex-Role Stereotypes: A Current Appraisal." Journal of Social Issues 28.2 (1972): 59-78. 

• Francis, Conseula and Alison Piepmeier. "Interview: Joanna Russ." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.2 (2011).

• Kinsale, Laura. "The Androgynous Reader: Point of View in the Romance." Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Ed. Jayne Ann Krentz. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992. 31-44. 

• Vivanco, Laura and Kyra Kramer. "There Are Six Bodies in This Relationship: An Anthropological Approach to the Romance Genre." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1 (2010).

• Voinov, Aleksandr. "The purity of fear, prejudice, and intolerance (the m/m rainbow has only one colour: gay)." 21 March 2012. 

The image is of "The Gripsholm Portrait, though[t] to be Elizabeth I of England" (via Wikimedia Commons). The caption is taken from a speech she gave in 1588 as the Armada approached England's shores.

Not a Family Planning Guide; Not Art Either?

Laura Vivanco

In the same week that there was extensive reporting of Susan Quilliam's condemnation of romance novels because "the values of romantic fiction – particularly at its inception – sometimes run totally counter to those which we Journal [of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care] readers espouse" (180), there was

another diagnosis, by a fellow psychologist, to the effect that fiction is actually good for you. Promoting his new book Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction on Radio 4 last week, Professor Keith Oatley, said that reading fiction assisted people's "social understanding" and helps, in the manner of a flight simulator, with the development of empathy: "The more time you spend, the better you are at understanding other people". (Bennett)

Unfortunately, I don't think Oatley's findings can be used to defend the romance genre. If anything, Oatley and Quilliam would seem to be in agreement that the romance genre has "values" and, albeit for very different reasons, this leads them to question its merit.

As Suzanne Keen has noted, "popular fiction [...] has not often been praised for the beneficial effects attributed to great literature" (ix) and Oatley's book continues in this tradition by making a distinction between popular culture fictions such as romance, and true art. Oatley mentions that

Related to the psychology of persuasion and enculturation is, of course, the psychology of advertising and propaganda. In a related way, many action stories and romances come in this category. Robin Collingwood [...] regarded such genres as action and romance as non-art, because they are not explorations. They follow formulae, and their writers intend to induce particular kinds of emotion. If successful they are entertaining. That's their intention. But they are not art, and they are not - in my view - the kinds of works that are likely to increase understanding of ourselves or others, at least when the formula of the genre is adhered to in the usual way.
But art - I'll offer a criterion - does not recruit people to believe or act or feel in a particular way. (174)

Firstly, I can't help but feel that this definition of art is very dependent on assumptions made about the intentions of the authors. Without asking authors what their intentions were, how can we know for sure which authors "intend[ed] to induce particular kinds of emotions" and which didn't?

Secondly, even if we accept that certain genres can, as a whole, be deemed to have set purposes, defining as "art" only works in which the author did not intend to "recruit people to believe or act or feel in a particular way" does, it seems to me, exclude large swathes of what many people would consider to be literature. Satire would presumably no longer be art. Nor would "thesis novels." Elegy and tragedy may perhaps also be excluded as they are too likely to evoke sadness and catharsis, while comedies can be deemed unartistic on the grounds that they are designed to evoke laughter.

Presumably works should also be disqualified if their authors hope they will assist in the development of readers' "social understanding" and/or capacity for empathy. Keen reports that

according to Coleridge, he and Wordsworth agreed in their collaboration on the Lyrical Ballads (1798) that the first of two cardinal principals of poetry was "the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature" (Biographia Literaria 5). Shelley concurred about the civilizing effects of reading poetry. (50)

and

George Eliot had a notion of character-construction as calling forth "tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy" in her readers (Eliot to John Blackwood, 18 February 1857; Letters 2, 299). [...] Her sense of her own contribution to her readers' moral development comes through in one of her letters to Charles Bray, in which she writes that "the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures." (Keen 53-54)

It would seem that Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley and Eliot hoped to "recruit people to believe or act or feel in a particular way" and therefore, judged by Oatley's criterion, their works are presumably not "art."

Thirdly, given that some readers will always respond in ways which the author could not have anticipated, the intended purpose of a work may in any case not have much bearing on whether it increases a particular reader's understanding of themselves or others.

Fourthly, as Keen observes,

middlebrow readers tend to value novels offering opportunities for strong character identification. They report feeling both empathy with and sympathy for fictional characters. They believe that novel reading opens their minds to experiences, dilemmas, time periods, places, and situations that would otherwise be closed to them. (ix)

I rather suspect that many romance readers would concur with this description of the pleasures and benefits of reading. Janice Radway, for example, "was surprised to find that immediately after extolling their benefits as an 'escape,' nearly every reader informed me that the novels teach them about faraway places and times and instruct them in the customs of other cultures" (107) and Sarah Wendell, in her forthcoming Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels, apparently argues that they "might have more to say about love than we give them credit for." This being so, it seems possible to argue that romances, too, can "increase understanding of ourselves or others."

• Bennett, Catherine. "But Mr Darcy, shouldn't we be taking precautions?: Damning romantic fiction for failing to educate its readers is both patronising and nonsensical." Observer, 10 July 2011.
• Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.
  
• Oatley, Keith. Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
• Quilliam, Susan. " 'He seized her in his manly arms and bent his lips to hers…': The Surprising Impact that Romantic Novels Have On Our Work." Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 37.3 (2011): 179-181.
• Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 1984. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: U of North Carolina Press, 1991.
  

The photo of candy floss being consumed was taken by "One Hell Of A Loser" and was made available under a Creative Commons licence.

Characters Who Reflect Our Values?

Laura Vivanco

Kate Hewitt left an interesting comment in response to my last post:

the bottom line seems, to me, to be that we want the characters in our fiction to reflect our own values and when they don't we find it frustrating or disappointing [...] every author is going to bring his or her own value system to his/her books, whether intentional or not. It's up to the reader to decide if he/she can accept the morals/values of the book he/she is reading and then enjoy it as fiction.

Her comment raises so many questions about the values of romance readers, romance authors and of the genre itself, that I decided it was time to create a new space in which to discuss them.

The Romance Genre

According to Pamela Regis, every romance includes some degree of judgement about the society which forms the background to the lovers' struggle:

Near the beginning of the novel, the society that the heroine and hero will confront in their courtship is defined for the reader. This society is in some way flawed; it may be incomplete, superannuated, or corrupt. It always oppresses the hero and heroine. (31)

Although the societies depicted in romances vary, one thing which does not is the high value placed on romantic love. According to the Romance Writers of America, it is essential for a romance to have

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

What, though, does "emotional justice" mean? Some romance protagonists are "rewarded with [...] unconditional love" even though they have behaved towards other people in ways that they themselves later acknowledge to have been unjust.

Romance Authors

Kate, in her initial comment, states that "every author is going to bring his or her own value system to his/her books, whether intentional or not" and Jo Beverley has written that "An honest writer must include her own philosophies in her work" (33). Readers should, however, be careful before making assumptions about authors' values. After all, characters may express opinions which are not shared by the author. In addition, Leslie Wainger's advice to romance authors raises the possibility that some romance authors are writing with their readers' (real or imagined) values in mind:

basic expectations that every romance reader shares and that you, as an author, implicitly promise to fulfill are simple and leave you a lot of room for creativity:
A sympathetic heroine: The heroine is the key to every romance. The reader’s sense of identification with the heroine draws the reader into the book and keeps her reading. Your heroine needs to be sympathetic – strong without being hard, vulnerable without being weak, intelligent, ethical, interesting, capable (but not perfect), beautiful (but not unreal) – in short, a surrogate for your reader as she wants to see herself. [...]
A strong, irresistible hero: Both your heroine and your reader need to fall in love with the hero. He has to be strong without being overbearing (or borderline abusive), yet vulnerable enough to need the heroine; as intelligent, ethical, and capable as she is; fascinating; and, of course, good-looking (and good in bed, even if the reader never sees his skills). (19, emphasis added)

Wainger's advice does seem somewhat problematic. Readers' relationship with heroines may be rather more varied than Wainger seems to be suggesting here and she doesn't define what "ethical" behaviour actually is. I wonder if she realised that there isn't a single standard of "ethical" behaviour and decided it would be far too difficult to try to define a single standard which would be acceptable to all readers.

Romance Readers

Bridget Fowler has observed that

most readers do not confuse the genre with realism. Moreover, the development of the romance suggests its readers are not passive. Its paradises change, along with women's new material experiences and their greater exposure to the arenas of modernity. Such readers are still active and critical thinkers who repudiate writers too removed from their own image of society. [...] I have shown that in Scotland certain writers are repudiated. For example, the link between Barbara Cartland's world-view and that of Thatcherism is both transparent to popular readers and the cause of Cartland's low reputation. The world of the dominant class she depicts is either seen as too alien to their experience or as the source of the poverty and social problems that harass them. (174)

Readers, then, distinguish between fiction and reality. We know that the societies depicted in romances are not real and it seems to me that many romance readers tolerate a great deal which does not "reflect our own values." One reason for this may be the distance between fiction and reality. Another may be that romances tend to be written in a way which "draws the reader into the book" and encourages the reader to sympathise with the characters. Readers may also feel that the emotional benefits they derive from elements such as a high level of conflict, sexual tension and an "Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending" are sufficient to outweigh the discomfort felt when characters don't "reflect our own values." Or we may in fact read partly in order to encounter new perspectives, and different values.

Robin, responding to Kate, says that while she

cannot speak for other readers, [...] I definitely am not looking for characters to reflect my own values. In fact, I often love most those characters whose values are very different from my own. Discussing SEP's Ain't She Sweet with people this past week always brings this up for me, because Sugar Beth is a character I could not relate to *personally* but loved and rooted for and wanted to see her happy. In fact, SEP is one of those authors whose books alternately delight and horrify me, but whose skills as a storyteller and writer can take me places I might not otherwise want to go. And what a delightful experience it is to be taken to those new places, even when they're not places I'd ever want to go in real life.

Clearly, though, some readers do have "hot buttons" which will stop them reading a book, and some of those "hot button" issues may relate to "values."

So, do you want the characters in romance novels to reflect your values? How often do they reflect your values? How much deviation from your values are you willing to tolerate? And what aspects of a novel are likely to increase your tolerance for characters who don't share your values?

-------

• Beverley, Jo. "An Honorable Profession: The Romance Writer and Her Characters." North American Romance Writers. Ed. Kay Mussell and Johanna Tuñón. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow P., 1999. 32-36.
  
• Fowler, Bridget. The Alienated Reader: Women and Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century. Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
• Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P., 2003.
• Wainger, Leslie. Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004.

A Quick Quote

Laura Vivanco

I happened to be reading an article by Umberto Eco which has nothing to do with romance when I came across the following, about old and new types of fiction, which did seem relevant to the study of romance:

the account greatly favored by antiquity was almost always the story of something which had already happened and of which the public was aware. One could recount for the nth time the story of Roland the Paladin, but the public already knew what happened to the hero. New additions and romantic embellishments were not lacking, but neither would they have impaired the substance of the myth being narrated. [...]
The "civilization" of the modern novel offers a story in which the reader's main interest is transferred to the unpredictable nature of what will happen and, therefore, to the plot invention which now holds our attention. The event has not happened before the story; it happens while it is being told, and usually even the author does not know what will take place.
At the time of its origin, the coup de théâtre where Oedipus finds himself guilty as a result of Tiresias' revelation "worked" for the public not because it caught them unaware of the myth, but because the mechanism of the "plot," in accordance with Aristotelian rules, succeeded in making them once more co-participants through pity and terror. The reader is brought to identify both with the situation and with the character. In contrast, there is Julien Sorel shooting Madame de Rênal, or Poe's detective discovering the party guilty of the double crime in Rue de la Morgue, or Javert paying his debt of gratitude to Jean Valjean, where we are spectators to a coup de théâtre whose unpredictable nature is part of the invention, and as such, takes on aesthetic value. (15)

It seems to me that romance novels resemble the older stories inasmuch as their readers know in advance what the ending will be. There may be considerably more room for "additions and romantic embellishments" given that the entirety of a romance's plot is not already known to the readers but I suspect that in very large part romances "work" for their readers "because the mechanism of the 'plot,' [...] succeed[s] in making them once more co-participants" in the emotions experienced by the protagonists.
----

• Eco, Umberto. “The Myth of Superman.” Trans. Natalie Chilton. Diacritics 2.1 (1972): 14-22.

Cameras, Action, Romance Novels!

Laura Vivanco

According to Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan,

everyone has a very firm idea of what the average romance reader is like. We bet you already know her. She's rather dim and kind of tubby - undereducated and undersexed - and she displays a distressing affinity for mom jeans and sweaters covered in puffy paint and appliquéd kittens. (4)

If you'd like to see a picture of this typical romance reader, created by Joanne Renaud for the Smart Bitches' book, you can click across here. Wendell and Tan didn't mention the cause of the tubbyness, but it may be due to those bonbons that we romance readers apparently can't resist:

We still persist in the stereotypical belief that women who read romances can't get a date on Friday night. Instead, they lounge around all day eating bon-bons while they read their little books. This is simply untrue. (Bouricius 32)

According to Rachel Anderson, the genre "is usually condescendingly dismissed by those with highbrow pretensions as being harmless wish-fulfilment for ageing spinsters, or relatively harmless escapism for the ill-educated masses" (12-13). I suspect the stereotype varies a bit, perhaps from one country or time-period to another: Anderson was writing in the UK in the 1970s, whereas Wendell, Tan, and Bouricius were published in the US in the 2000s.

I'm not sure where these stereotypes of the romance reader come from, or how they're perpetuated, but since I'm interested in societal perceptions of romances and romance readers I was intrigued by Kirsten Valentine Cadieux's post about the recently released RED. She

was delighted to discover that a central narrative device of the film's setup is a somewhat elaborate, if simple, pattern in which the male romantic lead inquires about the current habits of the female romantic lead [...]; he then proceeds to read along with her trashy romance novels.

In the movie Mary-Louise Parker plays the part of Sarah, "a sweet, mild-mannered government HR rep and lover of romance novels who is inadvertently drawn into the film's dangerous world of intrigue" (CBR):

"She's a small town, Midwestern girl, and I think she's really positive and there's not a whole lot of dark in there," Parker said of Sarah during the press junket for "RED" in New York City. "She's a really bright, positive person, she reads romance novels and she kind of imagines herself "in" one of them. So when all of this happens, I think to her it's a dream come true. Even the horrible parts of it, like getting her mouth duct taped, there's some element to that that's thrilling and wonderful." (CBR)

Unfortunately, since I try to avoid depictions of violence, I won't be able to see for myself how the two romance readers (Sarah and Frank) challenge and/or reinforce particular stereotypes about romance readers.

When I looked to see if there were other movies with characters who read romance, I came across the following description, written by Dyanne, at The Romance Reader:

AMERICAN DREAMER - Stars JoBeth Williams and Tom Conti. Very funny - I love this movie! JoBeth Williams' character is a housewife who loves to read romantic thrillers by Rebecca Ryan and so she enters a Rebecca Ryan writing contest. She wins a trip to Paris and on her way to the awards luncheon gets knocked on the head -- when she awakens, she believes she is Rebecca Ryan.

I haven't seen that one either.

So is there anyone here who has seen either of these movies? If so, what did you think of their depiction of romance readers? And do any of you know of any other movies with romance-reading characters? Finally, is Jayashree Kamble overstating the case when she writes that

stereotypes about romance fiction are so deeply inscribed in popular discourse that they are regularly referenced by the entertainment media, such as television shows and movies, for comic effect. In every case, romance novels are portrayed as titillating fantasies written and read by oversexed or undersexed women. Romance readers often also come across in these electronic media as possessing little intelligence and discernment and as being incapable of separating themselves from the text. In most cases, these media are popular texts themselves and ridicule the romance genre as a way to elevate their own status by contrast and detract from their own formulae. (27-28)

---

• Anderson, Rachel. The Purple Heart Throbs: The Sub-Literature of Love. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974.
• Bouricius, Ann. The Romance Readers' Advisory: The Librarian's Guide to Love in the Stacks. Chicago: American Library Association, 2000.
• Kamble, Jayashree. Uncovering and Recovering the Popular Romance Novel. University of Minnesota, Ph.D. dissertation. December 2008. [Details here and available for download as a pdf here.]
  
• Wendell, Sarah, and Candy Tan. Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Fan Fiction and Romance

Earlier this year, K. A. Laity wrote a guest post for Teach Me Tonight about Joanna Russ and slash fiction and since I recently came across Katherine Morrissey's 2008 MA dissertation, "Fanning the Flames of Romance: An Exploration of Fan Fiction and the Romance Novel," I thought I'd return to the topic. Morrissey found that

The majority of popular stories, the pieces of fan fiction which participants identified as their favorites, were nearly all focused on romantic stories. More significantly, most of these stories featured slash pairings. This differed from the broader reading practices reported by fans. When asked about their overall preferences, participants said that they read similar amounts of the major story types (specifically het, slash, and gen) and a smaller group of readers read femslash or lesbian focused stories. [...] While fans may be open to reading across categories, favorite stories, the ones readers return to and remember, were nearly all focused on male homosexual romance. This contrasts significantly with the focus on heterosexual pairings and female protagonists found in romance novels. (62)

This is something of a generalisation, given the long history of lesbian romance novels and the recent flourishing of m/m romance. Nonetheless, it seems safe to say that heterosexual pairings do continue to dominate the romance genre. Morrissey also found that despite the fact that "Romantic themes nearly always had a presence" in fan fiction, "most fans did not read romance novels. If they did, fan fiction stories were read more. For this population, fan fiction's approach to romance has significantly greater appeal" (78). Morrissey therefore compares and contrasts fan fiction with romance novels in order to answer the question "When fan fiction is examined side-by-side with romance novels, what are the textual similarities and differences that emerge in these romantic stories?" (2).

While it may be entirely correct to state that "Fan fiction and romance novels constitute two bodies of romantic literature being produced for and by women within dramatically different environments" (ii), direct comparisons between the two are somewhat problematic inasmuch as romance novels are not representative of all "romantic literature being produced for and by women" in the commercial fiction environment. If one were to seek out an area of commercial fiction which is comparable to romantic fan fiction, one should perhaps include all the commercial genres "produced for and by women," including "family sagas" of the kind written by Catherine Cookson, women's fiction, chick lit, the "bonkbuster," and "‘erotic fiction for women by women’ as exemplified by Virgin Publishing’s Black Lace imprint" (Sonnet)¹ or Harlequin's Spice imprint:

engrossing stories about women's lives, experiences and relationships, woven through with several explicit sex scenes that have context within the plot. We expect writers to be graphic—using the kind of frank language typical of the genre—as well as daring, exploring any and all sexual situations, even ones considered "taboo." [...] Spice Books are not traditional romances, nor do they require a happily-ever-after ending.

Despite the fact that Morrissey mentions Harlequin's Spice imprint, she nonetheless draws a distinction between romances and fan fiction based on

the fan's traditional comfort with the sexual content of their romance narratives. While romance novels have historically been careful to place sexual encounters within marriage (or the promise of an inevitable marriage), fan fiction textors [i.e. the creators of fan fiction] and readers happily produce stories in which sex may be enjoyed in a variety of circumstances and often write about sexual encounters without a larger courtship narrative accompanying them. (18)

By contrast, she suggests that romances,

By encoding sexuality and desire within marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality, [...] adhere to dominant social norms and constrain the diversity of sexualities and practices represented. Readers seeking more explicit and open sexual texts may go directly to the erotica genre of literature instead. However, as erotic texts for women establish themselves and loosen social stigmas, romance publishers also adapt, as is indicated by their increased focus on erotic romance. (51)

However, not all romances encode "sexuality and desire within marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality" and some people may choose to read erotica not "instead" of romance, but in addition to it.

Morrissey seems to hold certain basic assumptions which I think require a little bit more nuance. For example, Morrissey concludes that

Romance novels provide readers with fantasy experiences and an escape to happier or more exciting realities. The goal of these fantasy experiences is immersion. [...] While placing stories in historic settings or fantasy worlds far removed from a reader's daily life is an important method for initiating immersion into romantic fantasies, two additional storytelling techniques, focusing on food and costuming, cement this process and connect the reader's body to the heroine's. (48-49)

This seems to assume that female readers closely identify with the heroine and/or she becomes in a sense a "placeholder" into which they can insert themselves in order to share her experiences. This may be true for many readers but as I've mentioned before, it isn't true for me and I suspect I can't be the only one who adopts a more "fly on the wall" perspective. Indeed, Morrissey herself later writes that "The heroine may traditionally be offered as an identification point in romance novels but readers can choose to identify with the hero, both characters, or do something entirely different" (98-99).

The existence of romances about friends who become lovers and marriages in trouble seems to call into question Morrissey's assertion that

In romance novels, protagonists begin as strangers to each other. They may have been acquainted in the past, or in passing, but there is always sense of two individuals seeing and approaching each other for the first time. Contrasting this, in Stealing Harry, the two leads are life-long friends. (90)

It may well be true, as Morrissey states, that the most popular fan fictions

are significantly longer than most romance novels. They are also ongoing, updated over the course of years, another noticeable difference from romance novels, which typically focus on a romantic couple once and then move on. These contrasts with romance novels suggest that fan fiction readers may be looking for alternatives to romantic conventions, as well as more variety in the types of romance they consume. (64)

This does, however, seem to ignore the many romance series that exist, in which protagonists from previous novels in a series reappear as secondary characters in another, or secondary characters from one book are transformed into the protagonists of later ones. In addition, there are also series in which a single romance arc extends over various novels: J. D. Robb's In Death books, for example, are very popular with many romance readers, as are Dorothy L. Sayers's Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane novels, and Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.

Morrisey goes on to state that

Romance novels end with established, monogamous relationships. Partners marry, build homes together and create families, moving onto another stage in their lives. At the end of most romance novels, a relationship is permanent. (81)

whereas fan fictions

balance happiness and progress with a sense of realism. The message is that relationships are hard, they require work, but the characters are probably still up to the task. These less utopian endings present relationships a little bit closer to those in the real world. (84-85)

However, given that many people in the "real world" do form permanent romantic relationships, "marry, build homes together and create families," is the fact that romance protagonists also do these things really an indication of a lack of realism?

Morrissey also contrasts romances with fan fictions on the basis of statements made by

Commercial romance authors and defenders Ann Maxwell and Jayne Ann Krentz [who] discuss several traditional romance novel story types in their article, "The Wellsprings of Romance," and critique what they identify as two emerging modern hero archetypes or myths, the "househusband" and the "Alan Alda clone." One is a homemaker, the other a supportive partner and listener. Maxwell and Krentz acknowledge that these characters may have some attraction to readers, but issue a caution, "[...] these myths lack an ingredient that is vital to popular fiction: conflict." (85)

Morrissey therefore concludes that

The presence and popularity of fan fiction stories incorporating [...] more balanced, less aggressive and dominant characters challenge Maxwell and Krentz's assertion that these protagonists do not provide the right dynamics to entertain their readers. It is not that they stories lack conflict, as they suggest, the textors have just found different character journey's to build stories and relationships around. In many of the slash stories dramatic tension is connected to sexuality and societal expectations, in others the story setting and plot provide the characters with their challenge. [...]
The popularity of these different stories is an important reminder that the heroic alpha-male character does not hold romantic appeal to all readers. Instead, readers are interested [in] various depictions of masculinity. Stories can be written about partnership, family building, and a couple's growing understanding and connection through communication as well as conflict and power struggles. This does not mean that fan fiction stories cannot also play with power and control. Neither does it mean that conflict will not exist between two protagonists. It simply means that romance is not being limited to one particular relationship type. Again, within fan fiction stories, the romance formula is being broadened and diversified. (88-89)

I would suggest alpha male heroes don't appeal to all romance readers either, and that the reason Maxwell and Krentz were so trenchant in their statements was due to the fact that, at the time they were writing, there had been an increase in the genre of "hero archetypes" other than the alpha male which these authors preferred. Their statements, then, can perhaps be read as evidence that the romance genre itself is "diversified." I would go further, and claim that it has never been "limited to one particular relationship type": the beta hero

is not a recent invention. Edward Ferrars in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) is

too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open affectionate heart […]. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life. (Vivanco and Kramer)

It should be acknowledged that Morrissey is aware both of some of the limitations of her source material, and of the dangers of generalising about genres which include vast numbers of texts:

The difficulty in writing about entire categories of literature is that there are always so many more topics to be discussed. For every generalizing statement, there are further contradictions to be accounted for or explained. Thousands of romance novels are published each year and a seemingly infinite amount of fan fiction stories are available online and off. Only a small sample of romance novels and fan fiction could be examined for this project. (105)

I suspect that Morrissey's conclusions are far stronger when they focus solely or primarily on fan fiction: they are based not only on a reading of a selection of primary and secondary sources but also on her survey of fan fiction readers which "received nearly 1000 responses in the first twenty-four hours alone and this pace remained steady throughout the two-week process. At close, the survey had 7,748 participants" (58). As mentioned, she discovered that "The majority of popular stories, the pieces of fan fiction which participants identified as their favorites, were nearly all focused on romantic stories. More significantly, most of these stories featured slash pairings" (62). She also discovered that "Most of [the] survey population was younger that that of romance novel readers. The majority of survey participants were eighteen, but the dominant age group ranged between eighteen and twenty-eight years of age" (65). It is probable that there are younger readers and writers of fan fiction who were excluded from the survey, since it stated that "You may NOT participate in this survey if you are under 18 years of age. By completing this survey you acknowledge that you are OVER 18 years of age" (109). She also found that there was a "near complete absence of men within the survey population" (66) and that while "The majority of the survey population was [...] heterosexual (68%), [...] over a quarter of the group identified as bisexual or homosexual (23% bisexual, 4% homosexual)" (66).

With regards to the content of the fan fictions, Morrissey claims that "without the publishing industry as a dominant gatekeeper, textors are able to engage in greater experimentation with story structure" (76). She gives as an example "the most popular [of the fan fictions mentioned in her survey,] Speranza's Written by the Victors (Stargate Atlantis) uses an innovative story structure. This story is presented in two formats. Half of it is told through excerpts from fictitious articles, book reviews, and academic debates, the other half is traditional fiction" (80). She also mentions that

As a form of literature now produced primarily online, fan fiction textors are taking greater advantage of the opportunities digital creation provides. There is a long history or fan art and video creation within fan communities. Now, these objects can be combined with stories to enhance the reading experience. Images and artifacts are created in photoshop to develop stories further. Textors do not need to limit themselves to describing a character's apartment, they may now link to pictures of it, and to the coffee shop down the street. Stories constructed in smaller sections can be linked together into a larger story in whatever order the reader wishes to place them in. (104)

Morrissey herself suggests that "recent changes in the romance publishing industry suggest that the opportunities found online may be influencing traditional publishers as well" (104) and this does indeed seem to be the case. Publishers have begun experimenting with incorporating a variety of features into books originally written for publication in paper:

E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can’t agree on what to call them.
In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an “enriched” book. Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein.

All of them go beyond the simple black-and-white e-book that digitally mirrors its ink-and-paper predecessor. The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers. (Bosman)

Harlequin, too, has been experimenting with enriching ebooks:

Have you ever read something in a novel and wished you could see a picture, find a definition, or learn more about it without having to look it up? Now you can with Harlequin’s Enriched eBooks. This special electronic book is enhanced with web links to information about the setting, ceremonies, and other unique elements in Hotly Bedded, Conveniently Wedded, along with an author note, recipe, and photos from author Kate Hardy!

Morrissey also suggests that unlike romances, in which the protagonists' appearances are often described at length,

within the works of fan fiction [...] descriptive moments were primarily limited to character makeovers. [...] The absence of these scenes within fan fiction stories may be explained by fan cultures' general familiarity with the appearance of the original characters. [...] No matter what the origin, however, the importance of awe inspiring, dramatic physical beauty is diminished within many of these stories. This leads to depictions of attraction in which physical appearance has a presence, but its role is not as strong, or as consistent, as it is in romance novels. (92-93)

This seems an interesting hypothesis, and I would have been fascinated to read more about it. If any of you are fans who also read romances, I'd love to know your opinion of this point. Many fandoms are wholly or partially based on TV shows and movies, and many actors are more attractive than average so I wonder if fans may already have formed their own assessment of the actors'/characters' physical attractions. On the other hand, jennygadget has commented that slash fictions are more likely to

describe men's bodies in a more submissive and wanton way, rather than as pervasively dominating. [...] The way men's bodies are objectified in romance seems to more mirror how they are idealized in comic books.

Morrissey also speculates that fan fictions with heterosexual pairings reveal an

ongoing confusion over women's power and agency within relationships and suggest similar confusion for women in the real world.
One way of circumventing these issues is to eliminate the male/female dynamic and replace the woman with another male. Suddenly moments of aggression, parenting, empathy, action etc. do not carry with them the attachments and ramifications they have within the male/female dynamic. (87)

This is a hypothesis which might also be relevant to the study of m/m romances.

Finally, since this has been a post about slash fiction, romance and an MA thesis, I thought I would take the opportunity to mention another, but much more recent MA thesis: Meredith S. Faust's ""Love of the purest kind": Heteronormative Rigidity in the Homoerotic Fiction of Ann Herendeen" (2010), which is available online from here. To date Herendeen has had two novels published. She has stated that the first, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2008), "was inspired both by my reading of historical romance and by [...] “slash fiction.”" However, as far as slash is concerned, Herendeen finds that

there's one aspect of them that doesn’t appeal to me: it’s all “look but don’t touch.” Here are women writing about men having sex with each other, for the delectation of women readers, but all the main characters are men and the women never get any of that action.

In her first novel, therefore, she

slashed a genre, not a specific story or set of characters. And then, I slashed the slash. I introduced the hero as gay from the beginning, and showed him in love with a man and attracted to men—that's the first slash. But then I slashed again, writing a heroine back into this all-male paradise.

Her second novel also includes both heroes and heroines, but this time she isn't slashing "a genre": her Pride / Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers (2010) is quite explicitly based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
----

• Berens, Jessica. "She's gotta have it." The Observer, Sunday 10 September 2000.
• Bosman, Julie. "E-Books Fly Beyond Mere Text." The New York Times, 29 July 2010.
• Faust Meredith S. ""Love of the purest kind": Heteronormative Rigidity in the Homoerotic Fiction of Ann Herendeen." MA Thesis, Department of English, DePaul University, 2010. [Pdf downloadable from here.]
• Morrissey, Katherine. "Fanning the Flames of Romance: An Exploration of Fan Fiction and the Romance Novel." MA Thesis, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University, 2008. [Pdf downloadable from here.]
  
• Sonnet, Esther. "‘Erotic Fiction by Women for Women’: The Pleasures of Post-Feminist Heterosexuality." Sexualities 2.2 (1999): 167-187. [Abstract]
• Vivanco, Laura and Kyra Kramer. "There Are Six Bodies in This Relationship: An Anthropological Approach to the Romance Genre." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1 (2010).
  

1 Interestingly, slash fiction is known to have influenced at least one of the books published by Black Lace. In 1999 Black Lace's editor, Kerri "Sharp edited Wicked Words, a collection of erotic short stories that became the first British book to introduce slash lit to mainstream publishing" (Berens). It includes work by

Kitty Fisher. Her short story 'Shadowlight' was modified for Black Lace, but reflects the traits of slash in that it is a sci-fi narrative about an affair between two men.

Rape and the Romance Reader

Laura Vivanco

Janet/Robin at Dear Author has put up a post in which she explores the role of the reader, and in particular the reader's consent, in relation to rape/forced seduction scenarios in the romance genre. Given that, as Janet notes, "Traditional literary criticism of Romance [...] has not been particularly kind to the genre nor considerate of the idea that sexual violence has uses beyond mere escapism or sexual oppression," I think it's perhaps worth contextualising this discussion a little.

As Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have written,

If there's a legacy that has lasted much longer in the popular conception of romance than its actual continued presence, it'd be the existence of rapist heroes in romance. [...] The truth of the matter is, although rape scenes have largely disappeared from romance novels published from the early 1990s onward, they were ubiquitous in romance novels from the early '70s to the mid-'80s. (136-37)

However, as was noted by Lynne Connolly,

For some reason, the “rape into love” types of stories have never been popular in the UK, never sold. So we missed the swathe of books in the early 1990's that depicted such scenes.

The romances Janet discusses in detail, "Christina Dodd’s 1997 A Well-Pleasured Lady," "Sara Craven’s 2009 The Innocent’s Surrender" (a Dear Author review, written by Jane, can be found here), and "Anna Campbell’s Claiming the Courtesan, published in 2007" (Janet's review of it can be found here) are relatively recent romances. Some readers may feel they contain rapes, but other readers may disagree; a discussion of rape in the romance genre is still pertinent because of the continued existence of "forced seductions," which for many readers are indistinguishable from rape. Janet acknowledges that

There is an ongoing debate in Romance-reading communities over whether a rape fantasy is the same thing as a “forced seduction,” but for the purposes of this analysis I am collapsing any potential differences because the very label of “forced seduction” echoes at least two, and perhaps all three of the clinical elements of the rape fantasy. [which Janet has previously listed as being "force, sex, and nonconsent” (“Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and Research,” Joseph W. Critelli and Jenny M. Bivona, 2008)]

So, having got those details out of the way, I'll get back to Janet's argument. She explains in a comment that she was interested in

the way in which Romance seems to dance on the boundary between rape as a criminal violation against the heroine and the rape fantasy, which is purely a *sexual* fantasy.

In the first case, the power is firmly in the hands of the rapist, and we don’t speak of criminal rape as a sexual crime, but rather as a crime of violence and control. In the case of the rape fantasy, the power lies with the woman who undertakes the fantasy, and even when she appears to subjugate her will to the ravisher, she is cooperating and enjoying the encounter.

That there continues to be so much polarized discussion of which is which in what books ultimately forced me to shift focus away from the hero and heroine to the reader. What is is, in the reader, that makes a scene okay or not? What makes a scene criminal violence or sexual fantasy?

In the post itself, Janet suggests that:

the rape fantasy, as a romanticized erotic interlude between the hero and heroine, will function as romantically successful, empowering, or liberating to the extent that the heroine and/or the reader responds to the incident and interprets/values its consequences within the context of the relationship and the story itself. For me, the key element in valuing these rape fantasies (sometimes referred to as forced seductions) is the extent to which the reader consents on behalf of the heroine, not only to the hero’s forceful taking, but also to the happy romantic ending that the couple share. Whether these incidents of sexual force are politically liberating or limiting in regard to female sexuality and patriarchal dominance is a distinct if related question, and one to which I will posit the answer as both.

You can read Janet's post in full here.

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• Wendell, Sarah, and Candy Tan. Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels. New York: Fireside, 2009.

The image is of a section of Sandro Botticelli's Primavera. It came from Wikimedia Commons. The section shown here depicts a scene at the far right of the painting in which

the west wind Zephyrus tries to seize the nymph Chloris. Ovid's Fasti relates that Zephyrus raped Chloris, married her, and then transformed her into Flora, whom Botticelli depicts to the left of Chloris. Typical of "heroic" rape imagery, it depicts neither overt violence nor sexual intercourse. Indeed, Chloris seems to suffer no great harm.... (quote from this page of quotations from Diane Wolfthal's Images of Rape: The "Heroic" Tradition and its Alternatives (2000).)

Call for Papers: Romance Novels Through the Internet Age

Laura Vivanco

I've just come across the following call for papers, from Michelle Iwen of Cardiff University and Nicole Pfannenstiel of Arizona State University:

A New Generation of Readers: Romance Novels Through the Internet Age (edited collection)

We are currently soliciting contributions for a peer-reviewed edited collection tentatively titled, A New Generation of Readers: Romance Novels Through the Internet Age. The essays in this collection will focus on the often sophisticated engagement of internet literacy in romance fan communities. Using Janice Radway’s work as an historical baseline, the collection seeks to discuss the ins and outs of communities and their memberships. The collection will examine trends in modern romance consumption as influenced by internet community building featured in sites such as the popular romance blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, or the more generalized book community, Goodreads, among others. It will also discuss the function of these communities to the readers and writers.

We encourage interdisciplinary critical contributions which focus on contemporary romance, their readers, and community formation. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:
• Function of romance blogs and publication trends
• Post-modern narrative and genre trends (paranormal, urban fantasy, geek romance, erotic, etc.)
• Amazon.com Recommends, Borders Recommends, etc. – how readers are instructed to buy books
• Why read - Escapism vs. Identification
• Discourse practices of virtual romance communities
• Romance community scholarship – gender studies, reader response, economic theory

Please send an abstract of 300-500 words and a very brief biography to the editors, Nicole Pfannenstiel and Michelle Iwen, at IwenME@cardiff.ac.uk and niki@asu.edu. Abstracts are due by November 1, 2010 and completed papers will tentatively be due May 2011.

The call for papers was originally posted here.

Reading, Ideals and Depression

Laura Vivanco

In a post about ethical criticism, Jessica has outlined different possible ways in which to approach the ethical criticism of literature. In her own ethical criticism Jessica herself does not intend to examine the possible 'consequences' that reading may cause, 'for example, causing readers to accept morally salutary or problematic attitudes'. Nonetheless, she notes that

Romance readers talk a lot about the good effects of romance reading on their beliefs, attitudes and desires. They might say reading romance has helped them to be better communicators, to understand men, to demand their due from their partners, to get in touch with their sexuality, etc. That’s cool. But if we are going to do that, we also need to consider whether romances have had any negative effects. In other words, if you are going to play the “effects on readers game” you cannot rule out a priori (for example, by saying things like “Women are not just passive readers, i.e. dopes. We know the difference between fantasy and reality. Don’t infantalize and patronize us.”) any and all claims about negative effects on readers of romance novels.

Consider: how could it be that you only learned good or positive things from romance novels?

There are two options, as far as I can see. (1) Romance novels, the entire genre, only endorse good positive healthy attitudes towards gender, romance, love, sex, and everything else they take as their subjects (however those good attitudes are defined). That seems manifestly unbelievable to me, given my own experience as a romance reader, and given how large and diverse the genre is. That comes close to saying there is only one romance novel – one very morally good romance novel — and it has been written over and over.

Or (2) you know quite well that there is a lot of stuff you wouldn’t endorse in a romance novel, some of it apparently endorsed by the (implied — more on that later) author, but either (a) you don’t read those books, or (b) if you do, you don’t “learn anything” from them, because you filter the bad stuff out. Ok, but then, you aren’t “learning” anything from romance novels. Rather, you are applying a moral framework you already possess to your selection of texts, or to your reading of texts, only letting what you have already decided are “good” messages in. In that case, it would be more accurate to say that your reading of romance novels reinforces or deepens or lends specification to moral beliefs you already hold. I think that is much closer to what is really happening, personally. But if it is, then we have to accept that if a reader holds pernicious moral beliefs, she can find some warrant, some deepening, reinforcing or specifying, of those bad moral beliefs in romance novels, too.

My feeling, as I mentioned in my response to Jessica's post, is that while of course we can try to select books which don't contain material which we'd find particularly distressing and/or offensive, it's likely that we're still going to come across 'bad stuff' in many novels and I'm not at all convinced that we can succeed in filtering all of it out all of the time.

The good effects of the genre have often been described in terms related to depression and its cure:

Alan Boon, the acknowledged genius behind [...] Mills & Boon romance, admitted the restorative quality of the novels which he edited for some forty years: 'It has been said that our books could take the place of valium, so that women who take these drugs would get an equal effect from reading our novels.' (McAleer 1999: 2)

Valium, though, like most other medicines, can have some unpleasant side-effects. In other words, the 'good stuff' may also contain some 'bad stuff'.

If we turn to a recent article by Kira Cochrane about women and depression we can find the following quote from 'psychologist and author Dorothy Rowe, a leading expert on depression':

"There's still this idea that you've got to be a wonderful mother, but you also have to have a brilliant career, and you've got to look attractive all the time," she says. "There is no way that you can maintain that and bring up children. But it's still being presented to women all the time, in every magazine, on every screen, that you should."

In the same article 'The former Scotland editor of the Observer, Lorna Martin, [who] wrote Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' is quoted as saying that:

"There's massive pressure on women these days to hold down a good, rewarding, fulfilling job, but also to be a good mother, and then to look good, and to look after yourself. I think there comes a point where your body can't take it."

In other words, it's suggested that popular culture may contribute to the creation of depression. Could romance, the 'valium' of popular culture, do this too? I suppose it depends on how much you think fiction can influence readers and whether you agree with Rowe that the depictions of women 'in every magazine, on every screen' (and, presumably, in many books) create or sustain ideals which are difficult for real women to meet, and can therefore contribute to depression. What I think is certain is that there are plenty of romances whose heroines have fulfilling jobs/hobbies/work in their communities, are (or it's implied will be) wonderful mothers, and are beautiful/well-groomed/very attractive to their spouse or partner.

Is it possible that these heroines add to the pressure on women to live up to a particular ideal of womanhood? I think they may. The presence of gender stereotypes in romances between heterosexual protagonists is something that I've seen mentioned as one of the reasons why some women may prefer to read and/or write romances between male protagonists. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of the urls where these comments were made, and I'm certainly not saying this is the main, or only reason, for the popularity of m/m romance. But if at least some readers are choosing m/m over f/m and f/f in order to avoid gender stereotypes about women, then that would be an example of how readers can filter/select their reading material in order to block out what they feel is 'bad stuff'.

Romance heroines themselves, however, rarely buckle under the pressure to succeed. As Sarah at Monkey Bear Reviews has observed,

There appear to be several taboo topics in romance novels. One of these is depression. If we assume it is something we are all likely to experience at some point in our lives, to one extreme or another, it surprises me that it is not an issue which romance authors are prepared to tackle. [...] I’m talking about a story which focuses on the sort of character who is largely ignored and immediately dismissed as dislikeable because they languish on the sofa and require smelling salts. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out why they are way they are? Don’t they also deserve a HEA?

I think they do.

Which is perhaps why I found Julia Quinn's To Sir Phillip, with Love very difficult to read. I'll leave you with a quote from the prologue and you can decide for yourself if you think it's an example of 'bad stuff'. The prologue gives the reader some information about Sir Phillip's dead wife Marina:

Marina had been melancholy. Marina had spent her entire life, or at least the entire life he'd known, melancholy. He couldn't remember the sound of her laughter, and in truth, he wasn't sure that he'd ever known it.

Nowadays, I'm fairly certain a character like Marina would be recognised as having clinical depression. After Marina has attempted suicide by throwing herself into the lake, Sir Philip thinks

How dare she refuse his rescue? Would she give up on life just because she was sad? Did her melancholy amount to more than their two children? In the balance of life, did a bad mood weigh more than their need for a mother? [...]

"I can't," she whispered, with what seemed like her last ounce of energy.

And as Phillip carried his burden home, all he could think was how apt those words were.

I can't.

In a way, it seemed to sum up her entire life.

The heroine of the novel is not the depressed Marina. She dies and is replaced by the cheerful, competent, intelligent, Eloise whom Sir Phillip finds very attractive and who knows how to manage his rebellious children perfectly.
----

• Cochrane, Kira, 2010. 'Why do so many women have depression?', The Guardian, Thursday 29 April.
• Jessica, 2010. 'Ethical Criticism of Genre Fiction Part 1 (my PCA Paper)'.
• McAleer, Joseph, 1999. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
  
• Quinn, Julia. To Sir Philip, with Love. [Quotations taken from the excerpt on Julia Quinn's website.]
• Sarah, 2009. 'Romance Novels and Depression: A Taboo Topic?'.
  

The illustration is of a ditch water filter, from Wikimedia Commons.

PCA Romance Panel 5: The Safe Spaces of Romance: Smart Bitches, Dear Author and a New Romance Documentary

Jessica's put up notes for this panel now. Jane Litte refers to two blog posts. The first is this one by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, and the second is this one, by Laura Clawson at Daily Kos. The other papers are by Pamela Regis and Laurie Kahn.

Edited to add: Jane Litte has also put up a detailed post about this panel.