Wednesday, July 05, 2006

We Are Family

Ann Barr Snitow, in her 1979 essay 'Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different' wrote that:

The heroine is alone. Sometimes there is another woman, a competitor who is often more overtly aware of her sexuality than the heroine, but she is a shadow on the horizon. Sometimes there are potentially friendly females living in the next bungalow or working with the patient in the next bed, but they, too, are shadowy, not important to the real story, which consists entirely of an emotionally isolated woman trying to keep her virginity and her head when the only person she ever really talks to is the hero, whose motives and feelings are unclear. (1983: 249)*
Not having read many romances from this period, I'm not sure whether this ever was actually an accurate description of romances (I suspect there will always have been exceptions). Nonetheless, it does remind me of the gothics. Could it be that the heroine's isolation, which was important in creating the plot and atmosphere of the gothics, influenced the portrayal of female friendships in other forms of romance at the time?

Snitow's description certainly isn't true of modern romances. Nowadays, as has recently been pointed out by Sharon Long, there are plenty of romance series where
Everything is hunky dorey in romance land. The women of the group get along famously. Like sisters even. They all HEART one another on sight and know that the guy has done the best job ever in choosing his mate.
Could this be due in any way to the influence of feminism? Is it an expression of belief in female sisterhood? Certainly there would appear to have been some feminist influence on romance. Kay Mussell, for example, has described the more equal relationships between heroes and heroines as 'clear evidence of the influence of feminism on romances'. Female friendships, however, are not simply valued by feminists. Peter Darbyshire**, writing about certain inspirational romances, despite concluding that they 'vilified' (2002: 80) feminism, nonetheless also finds in them strong bonds between women:
Female characters frequently live at home or with members of their extended family in these books, and these characters are almost always all involved in nurturing, supportive relationships with one another. [...] it is often the grandmother or mother figures that instruct the heroines to be subservient in their relationships with men, thus locating the origins of the reaffirmation of traditional patriarchal values in female characters. (2002: 80-81).
Whether or not one agrees with his opinion of inspirationals, it does serve as a reminder that female relationships are valued (perhaps for very different reasons) by people with a wide range of ideologies.

Is it, as suggested by posters responding to Sharon Long's comments that female friendships are an extra part of the 'wish-fulfillment' that romance provides, another aspect of the Happy Ever After ending? Are such friendships among women really so uncommon that they're more fantasy than reality? Sharon Long certainly seems to think so:
Let’s face it. Women do not get along that well in real life. Women are bitchy. They are competitive. They do not tend to LOVE one another on sight. Sure it happens. Every once in a blue moon, but the cold hard facts are that women, especially when you group them into a pack, do not all love one another and get along famously.
Another response to her comments was that the women described in these series are going to be family members through marriage, and this does mean that they'll be predisposed to attempt to establish friendly relationships.

The prevalence of both the the friendless, family-less heroine of the past, and the loving families who welcome new sisters with eagerness and instantaneous affection raise questions about what readers and authors want family and female friendships to be (just as the 'secret baby' stories seem to be exploring how important it is to know one's biological family, in particular one's biological father). Quite how one interprets such depictions will depend on a close reading on the individual texts. Some authors may simply be following a trend, others may be drawing on their own personal experiences of female friendships, yet others may be expressing their ideals (and those of their readers) regarding relationships between women.


*For full reference see RomanceWiki bibliography.
** For full reference see the first page of the Romance Wiki bibliography.

7 comments:

  1. I guess my first comment on reading this is, where are the statistics? A lot of generalizations have been made, but I don't see any numbers.

    The prevalence of both the the friendless, family-less heroine of the past, and the loving families who welcome new sisters with eagerness --- "prevalence" implies that this is the norm, or at least the "more than average." But I recall a certain Phil Donahue show lo these many years past on which Phil read (love scene) snippets of a Janet Dailey novel, Night Way and then excoriated the book for crimes it didn't commit. Dailey attempted to defend the book, but neither Donahue nor his feminist, anti-romance academic "expert" -- I think it was Ann Douglas, but I'm not sure -- would allow Dailey to get a word in edgewise. It didn't matter; the audience knew both Donahue and academic expert didn't know what they were talking about.

    Quite how one interprets such depictions will depend on a close reading on the individual texts. Many readers won't do a "close reading"; they'll just read. Are they then incapable of making interpretations? Or do only the interpretations based on "close reading" count?

    Some authors may simply be following a trend, others may be drawing on their own personal experiences of female friendships, yet others may be expressing their ideals (and those of their readers) regarding relationships between women.


    If this suggestion is in any way connected to the immediately preceding sentence about "close reading," I wonder just how "close reading" of the text is going to reveal the author's motive and political agenda? What if she had a political agenda but failed in her expression of it? Does that mean that whatever she expresses -- or whatever someone else thinks she expresses -- is the truth?

    I don't mean to sound peevish; I'm really not. But as a kind of "fringe" or "freelance" academic, I have a bad tendency to become defensive about the integrity and indeed the agency of the non-academic readers and writers out there.

    "Secret baby" stories may owe some of their power-to-influence on the prevalence [sic] of fathers' rights groups, conservative religious groups, even anti-abortion propaganda. Is any of this examined in an examination of secret baby stories, or are they assumed to have been created -- and published and read -- in a cultural vacuum?

    Do we know, for example, if The Flame and the Flower, published in 1972 just as second wave feminism was taking off in the U.S., was backlash against women's lib, a hearkening back to woman as property of man, or was it a voice of sexual liberation, of hey, women can have sexy books too? Do we know for sure? Or is it maybe some of each?

    I'm just throwing this out because whenever generalizations are made about romance novels, my radar goes into high gear.

    (Does radar have gears? *G*)

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  2. Hi, Linda! A couple of your comments have me thinking, too.

    "I guess my first comment on reading this is, where are the statistics? A lot of generalizations have been made, but I don't see any numbers."

    Fair enough--but given the context here (a blog of "musings," and not a formal study), I'd like to give us all the benefit of the doubt, at least until someone's generalizations butt up against my own solid experience. When Laura writes about "the prevalence of both the friendless, family-less heroine of the past, and the loving families who welcome new sisters with eagerness," I recognize both categories of novel, even if I can't vouch for their market share at any given time. It's a working hypothesis, and one that sounds reasonable to me; certainly it's not a distortion on the order of the Phil Donahue incident you describe. On the other hand, there are a LOT of books out there. Are there particular counter-examples you have in mind?

    Laura writes: "Quite how one interprets such depictions will depend on a close reading on the individual texts."

    You respond: "Many readers won't do a "close reading"; they'll just read. Are they then incapable of making interpretations? Or do only the interpretations based on "close reading" count?"

    Well, I betray my bias as a professor here, I suppose, but I'd say that "just reading" isn't a very useful description! When my students say they "just read" a text, they usually mean they read for the plot and a fairly general sense of the characters. Often they have missed a lot, even about these, so that "just reading" sounds an awful lot in my mind like "casual reading," or even "careless reading." So yes, I'd have to say that interpretations based on close reading are generally better, and "count" more to me than the others do. They do to you, too, if your story about the Phil Donahue show is any indication! (The generalizations you decry fall apart in the face of close reading, no?)

    Laura writes: "Some authors may simply be following a trend, others may be drawing on their own personal experiences of female friendships, yet others may be expressing their ideals (and those of their readers) regarding relationships between women."

    You respond "I wonder just how "close reading" of the text is going to reveal the author's motive and political agenda."

    That's the old "intentional fallacy" argument, no? The questions you raise--"What if she had a political agenda but failed in her expression of it? Does that mean that whatever she expresses -- or whatever someone else thinks she expresses -- is the truth?"--are the same objections one can raise to any ideological reading that puts its focus on the author (what she meant to do) as opposed to the text (what it demonstrably does). But I'm not sure Laura's real interest here IS in the author's intent, rather than in what we as readers and critics might want to make of this turn in the fiction.

    You write ""Secret baby" stories may owe some of their power-to-influence on the prevalence [sic] of fathers' rights groups, conservative religious groups, even anti-abortion propaganda. Is any of this examined in an examination of secret baby stories, or are they assumed to have been created -- and published and read -- in a cultural vacuum?"

    Umm.... in whose examination of them? Whose assumptions do you mean? If you're referring to Laura's post, I'm not sure her single sentence counts as an "examination"; as for the questions you raise, they'd be great ones for someone to explore (maybe in a paper for the PCA conference?), but I'm not sure they're beeing slighted yet!

    (On the other hand, is the ideological, cultural-studies approach to these books the only one that you think is worthwhile? Maybe a really good "in a cultural vaccum" essay COULD be written on them. The proof of the pudding and all that.)

    You end with this question:

    "Do we know, for example, if The Flame and the Flower, published in 1972 just as second wave feminism was taking off in the U.S., was backlash against women's lib, a hearkening back to woman as property of man, or was it a voice of sexual liberation, of hey, women can have sexy books too? Do we know for sure? Or is it maybe some of each?"

    Surely this isn't an either / or question! When I teach the novel, in fact, I like to situate it in precisely the mix you describe and encourage my students NOT to reduce it to a single, simplistic "message." (I must admit--I use close reading to do it! Is that bad?)

    Must run!
    E

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  3. (I must admit--I use close reading to do it! Is that bad?)

    LOL -- no, not bad at all! *G* Because of course that's what we all do, those of us who don't just read casually -- whether it's a romance novel or the National Enquirer -- and move on to the next thing.

    And again, I have to apologize for my lack of academic background: I was a reader and a romance writer long before I went back to college, so I took a heavy load of a.) experience and b.) bias with me into the classroom.

    So what I'm really trying to do, and maybe not with unmitigated success, is play a kind of devil's advocate. I'm voicing the questions that rise in my head as a reader, as a writer, and as a reader/writer turned quasi-academic, not so much to debate a point as to stimulate discussion and get my own head on straight! *G*

    What I recall most from the old Donahue show -- and I think that was the only episode I ever watched -- was the animosity between the readers in the audience and Janet Dailey on one side and the academic expert on the other. I understood it then, I understood the failure of the academic to "connect" with her target even though many of the points she was making were ones they might have agreed with. She put them on the defensive from the get-go.

    As a feminist, as someone who has read many romance novels that left me shrieking in horror at some of the repressive, anti-woman (going WAY beyond even anti-feminist) attitudes portrayed, I guess my objective is to strengthen the dialogue between academic examination of romance fiction and the readers themselves.

    Radway, in the original edition, got a lot of things wrong, but at least I give her credit for engaging with the readers. And when I read just the opening pages of Susan Douglas's Where the Girls Are: Growing up female with the mass media , I understood how the same conflicting messages and the same conflicting emotions can be generated by
    romance novels.

    There's a posting right now on the All About Romance board - www.lovesbooks.com - from a reader who clearly states she likes Regency romances because they reflect her personal moral values about sex and marriage. As a feminist, I'm horrified *G*, but as a student of the genre and its milieu, I'm intrigued.

    And of course this is only a blog, only "musings" and responses, and I know I always come across as much more combative than I really am. In person, I'm pretty much a wimp. . . .

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  4. I guess my first comment on reading this is, where are the statistics? A lot of generalizations have been made, but I don't see any numbers.

    As Eric says, these are musings, and I'm quoting from other people (one who was commenting on romances from a period whose romances I haven't read in any great numbers, and one a modern romance author commenting on trends she's spotted, particularly in connected books). The observations did fit with my observations, namely that in many of the older books I've read, the heroine often seems fairly isolated and doesn't have a large, supportive family. I'd include Heyer in that because although many of her heroines have families, quite a few of the heroines are away from home or are older sisters struggling to look after their young siblings or have siblings/parents who don't give them a lot of help/support emotionally. And even while saying this, I know that The Masqueraders has a close brother/sister relationship, so it is a generalisation with the usual exceptions to it.

    In the modern romances I've still come across the scheming mistress/other woman type, but I've also read quite a lot of stories where there are strong family bonds, important female friendships, and stories where the ex-mistress actually promotes the relationship between the hero and heroine. Of course, without doing a systematic study I can't give any numbers, and there are so many romances published that it's hard to keep up, which is why one ends up building one's impressions at least in part based on what other people say (including authors and other romance readers).

    the audience knew both Donahue and academic expert didn't know what they were talking about.

    Are you implying that I'm setting myself up as an 'academic expert' and that I don't know what I'm talking about? ;-) It's quite possible that I don't know what I'm talking about, which is why I invite comments. I'm hoping that other people will come in and give their opinions. The title of the blog is 'Musings on Romance Fiction from an Academic Perspective'. I certainly wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I have got an academic background, and I'm doing some musing. If I were writing an academic paper I'd (a) spend far, far longer honing each sentence and I'd provide far more quotations, footnotes etc and (b) I would be much more likely to be doing textual analysis. A blog seems like a better place to ask questions and advance some hypotheses and generalisations in the hope of beginning a dialogue and finding out other people's opinions.

    I guess my objective is to strengthen the dialogue between academic examination of romance fiction and the readers themselves.
    From what you say later about Radway, I get the impression that you're distinguishing between 'academics' on the one hand, and 'readers' on the other hand. What I think is going on here, on this blog, is that those of us who've been blogging are doing so both as readers and as academics. I identify as a romance reader. I rarely read any other genre for leisure reading, in fact. And I spend quite a lot of time visiting sites such as AAR and the SmartBitches and author blogs, because I'm interested in what other romance readers are saying, and in what romance authors have to say. The distinction Radway makes between 'romance readers' and academics, and also the distinction between academics and romance writers just aren't sustainable given the existence of romance readers who are academics and romance authors who are academics.

    Many readers won't do a "close reading"; they'll just read. Are they then incapable of making interpretations? Or do only the interpretations based on "close reading" count?
    There are degrees of 'close reading' and I think most readers read closely enough to be able to make interpretations. What I was trying to say is that one book's 'female friendships' may have a rather different slant from another book's 'female friendships'. Readers notice, for example, when a romance is an inspirational, and they'll notice differences between that and, say, a Blaze. I've read 'secret baby' stories where the main issue was to re-establish trust between the parents and others where a very important issue seemed to be to explore issues such as adoption and what it means to have a 'natural' family. I'm sure readers notice that sort of difference of emphasis. So when I say that a 'close' reading is necessary, I mean a reading that's based on more than a simplistic classification based on whether a book has a particular type of plot. For example, I think it's unwise to lump all stories with a secret baby together, and it would be just as unwise to make the assumption that all stories with female friendships depict female friendships in the same way. Some romances depict families who are basically supportive, others have families who mistreat the heroine (and yet she nonetheless continues to love them) and some depict cruel family members being told that they will no longer have any power over the heroine. All of those situations are about 'family', but each scenario sends a different message about what family can be/ought to be and how one ought to deal with them when they're not. And those are just a few scenarios out of the many possible ones relating to families.

    I wonder just how "close reading" of the text is going to reveal the author's motive and political agenda? What if she had a political agenda but failed in her expression of it? Does that mean that whatever she expresses -- or whatever someone else thinks she expresses -- is the truth?

    I would really shrink from stating that I know the 'truth' of what was in a text or in an author's mind. However, I think the more of a particular author's works one reads, the more likely one is to get to know the themes they return to, the style they use etc. One may also draw certain conclusions from the type of romance they're writing (e.g. if it's an inspirational, one would almost certainly be justified in thinking that there was some sort of religious/spiritual message/theme in the work). And some authors express their opinions on politics (maybe in the broadest sense, rather than party-political) on their blogs and/or non-fiction essays. However, from what I've read, authors do respond/are aware of what they think their readers want/what their publisher will accept - they have to, to at least some extent, if they want to keep on being published. They may sometimes go ahead and write the 'book of their heart' regardless, of course, and some may be fortunate in that the books they want to write are wildly popular and adored by the publisher, so that they're never asked to cut anything out or tone it down, but I think editors and readers do have some influence on some authors. And then there are things that the author puts in without actively intending to, because they come from her subconscious. Then, as Eric said, there are reader interpretations. So, I wouldn't ever say I knew 'the truth' about even one book, never mind an entire genre.

    Do we know, for example, if The Flame and the Flower, published in 1972 just as second wave feminism was taking off in the U.S., was backlash against women's lib, a hearkening back to woman as property of man, or was it a voice of sexual liberation, of hey, women can have sexy books too? Do we know for sure? Or is it maybe some of each?

    That's exactly the sort of musing I was doing when I wondered what sort of factors might be influencing differing portrayals of female relationships. I was trying to suggest their might be a variety of reasons, and that it's not possible to make generalisations about all romances. That's why I was saying that 'close reading' is important - because one has to read a book at a time, an author at a time, rather than drawing conclusions about the whole genre as though it were monolithic. And no, we can't know for sure, but we can make informed guesses based on 'close reading'.

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  5. Laura, thank you so much for your wonderful, thoughtful, lengthy response. (And no, I don't think you're an expert who doesn't know what she's talking about! *G*) As I said, I'm just looking for dialogue on these issues.

    My only comment at this point would be regarding the "audience" for academic discussion. Yes, it's wonderful to have academics who are readers of romance and writers of romance who are academics, but I'm thinking about all the non-academic readers out there who still feel a hostility from academia, especially from feminist academia (and who might somehow or other stumble across this blog). And I also think there are things academics can learn from the non-academic readers. I honestly believe there's room for a dialogue there, somehow, and I guess maybe that's my main interest in this blog.

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  6. Thanks Linda. I'm blushing now (but still not quite the colour of the background to the blog ;-) )

    My only comment at this point would be regarding the "audience" for academic discussion.

    My feeling, from reading other romance blogs/sites is that there are plenty of romance readers (I include myself among them) who like to discuss and think about the romances they read. I'm hoping some of them will find their way across here and join in the discussions. I expect some of the students taking courses on romance might pop in too.

    I'm thinking about all the non-academic readers out there who still feel a hostility from academia, especially from feminist academia (and who might somehow or other stumble across this blog).

    I'm hoping that they'll feel encouraged to join in and comment. They might not previously have heard of academics like Pam who've written so positively about the genre, but hopefully a blog like this will demonstrate that there are academics who aren't ashamed to be identified as romance readers and who do think that romance is worth studying and valuing.

    I also think there are things academics can learn from the non-academic readers. I honestly believe there's room for a dialogue there, somehow, and I guess maybe that's my main interest in this blog.

    Oh, I agree. For one thing, many of them will have read far, far more romances than I have, so they'll have a much better idea of trends and developments in the genre. They'll often have a good idea of which books are popular and offer recommendations. I know that I came across Jennifer Crusie's books because of reading other people's comments on them. And not being from the US, I keep having to ask for information about words that have a different meaning in US English, or cultural references I don't get, or social conditions. That's just a few examples of things I've learned from non-academic readers of romance, and I'm sure there are plenty more things I can't remember right now, and even more I'll learn in the future.

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  7. And there are the romance authors, of course. I hope they're in the 'audience' for the blog too, and find something of interest here. Of course, romance authors are often romance readers too, and some are academics/have an academic background (you and Sandra know all about that).

    I think I missed out authors in my last reply because I'm still a bit in awe of authors. Maybe not of individual authors, but of authors in the abstract, because I could never, ever manage to write fiction.

    We've had authors commenting on some of the posts here already, and it's been really interesting.

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