A recent review of Bettie Sharpe's free ebook, Ember, reminded me that I haven't put up any links to online romances for a while.
Ember is available from Bettie Sharpe's website, and can either be downloaded as an ebook or read online. It's a reworking of the Cinderella story which offers the reader a startling, alternative version of how the story of Cendrillon (the title it was given by Perrault) came into existence.
Sharpe's tale may, however, be truer to the original versions of the story for, as Terri Windling observes:
Oh, and for those who don't know, "nieves," which is mentioned in the last chapter, is Castilian for "snows," though the allusion is probably clear enough from the context that non-Spanish-speakers can work out the implications. Sorry to be cryptic, but I'm trying to avoid giving away any spoilers.
On the subject of re-imagining and retelling fairytales, Eloisa James wrote an article called "My Fairy Godmother, Myself" in which she argues that
And going beyond the "happily ever after" are Kate Hewitt's online short stories "A Breath of Fresh Air" and "The Locket," which have heroines whose long-term relationships are in trouble. In her "Dreams to Share" the heroine learns to look beyond the more obvious trappings of true love. In her essay Eloisa James says that
The illustration is Giuseppe Arcimboldo's The Librarian (c. 1566), from Wikipedia. Arcimboldo's probably best known for his portraits made out of vegetables. I can see echoes of his technique in Carl Warner's amazing still-life food photography and some of Jacquie Lawson's animated e-cards (particularly this one for the 4th of July and this one, for Thanksgiving). And there is a link back to Ember, in which there's some mention of possible unconventional uses for vegetables, and in which people's appearances can be deceptive.
Ember is available from Bettie Sharpe's website, and can either be downloaded as an ebook or read online. It's a reworking of the Cinderella story which offers the reader a startling, alternative version of how the story of Cendrillon (the title it was given by Perrault) came into existence.
Sharpe's tale may, however, be truer to the original versions of the story for, as Terri Windling observes:
The old tales, as Gertrude Mueller Nelson has succinctly expressed it (in her Jungian study, Here All Dwell Free) are about "anguish and darkness." They plunge heroines and heroes into the dark wood, into danger and despair and enchantment and deception, and only then offer them the tools to save themselves — tools that must be used wisely and well. (Used foolishly, or ruthlessly, they turn back on the wielder.) The power in fairy tales lies in such self–determined acts of transformation. Happy endings, where they exist, are hard won, and at a price.Windling mentions the older Italian version, Cenerentola, in which we have a Cinderella who murders one step-mother only to find her replaced with an even worse one. And let's not forget the Grimm's version, Aschenputtel, in which one of the step-sisters cuts off her own toe, and the other part of her heel, in their desire to fit their feet into Cinderella's tiny shoe. Their deception is revealed when the prince looks more closely and sees first that "the blood was streaming from" the foot of the first step-sister and then that "the blood was running out of her [the second step-sister's] shoe, and how it had stained her white stocking." This tale ends on the moralistic note that "for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived" but no such punishment is inflicted on the murderous Cenerentola. In comparison with her, Bettie Sharpe's Ember begins to seem considerably more virtuous than she thinks she is. Ember's no shy virgin, though, so anyone who would prefer not to read something containing strong language should stay away from this story.
Oh, and for those who don't know, "nieves," which is mentioned in the last chapter, is Castilian for "snows," though the allusion is probably clear enough from the context that non-Spanish-speakers can work out the implications. Sorry to be cryptic, but I'm trying to avoid giving away any spoilers.
On the subject of re-imagining and retelling fairytales, Eloisa James wrote an article called "My Fairy Godmother, Myself" in which she argues that
Cinderella was never about the prince. It was about the wonders of a magical transformation. [...] That turns out to be the key to rewritten Cinderellas: the heroine learns to honor and appreciate her pre-transformation self, forcing the prince to do so as well.I'm not really sure if that would be true of Ember, but maybe we can discuss that in the comments.
And going beyond the "happily ever after" are Kate Hewitt's online short stories "A Breath of Fresh Air" and "The Locket," which have heroines whose long-term relationships are in trouble. In her "Dreams to Share" the heroine learns to look beyond the more obvious trappings of true love. In her essay Eloisa James says that
We're trained to believe that princes fall in love as soon as a woman shows up in the right dress. But what if he doesn't? What if one night of dancing isn't enough? The way, frankly, one night at a club isn't enough in real life?Real life love-stories may not always look as romantic as the ones in which the hero spots the heroine wearing a beautiful dress and immediately falls in love with her, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're lacking in true love.
The illustration is Giuseppe Arcimboldo's The Librarian (c. 1566), from Wikipedia. Arcimboldo's probably best known for his portraits made out of vegetables. I can see echoes of his technique in Carl Warner's amazing still-life food photography and some of Jacquie Lawson's animated e-cards (particularly this one for the 4th of July and this one, for Thanksgiving). And there is a link back to Ember, in which there's some mention of possible unconventional uses for vegetables, and in which people's appearances can be deceptive.
I'm going to go dig out my books by Bettelheim and Marina Warner [wish I could find an affordable copy of Propp's Morphology in English]. The study of fairy tales [and other folklore] is, for me, just as engaging as the stories themselves, and I much prefer the older versions of those stories, before Perrault and Disney got their hand on them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great post, Laura, and the links to the reads --
I've never been fond of the Disney or Perrault versions, either. So many modern tellings of Cinderella portray passivity as some sort of virtue.
ReplyDeleteAs I said at my blog, one of the reasons I wrote Ember was to write a Cinderella story that was not about the cosmetic transformation or the ball or the competition between Cinderella and her stepsisters for the prince, but to explore the line that more modern fairy tales so often draw between good girls and bad women, between virtuous princesses and wicked queens.
I much prefer the older versions of those stories, before Perrault and Disney got their hand on them
ReplyDeleteThey're definitely more bloodthirsty and less ladylike. I'm wondering if I should really have titled my post something like "digging deeper into the fairytales", because it seems to me that Ember, and Kate Hewitt's stories too, in their way (though they're less obviously related to the fairytales in the first place), aren't rejecting the fairytales/romance, but they're looking for the gritty, darker truths which lie at the heart of the older versions and which are often obscured by the sweetness and conventional morality which sugar-coats the Disney and Perrault versions.
So when Ember says near the beginning of her tale that "This is no fairytale," and then reiterates this at the end:
You wanted to see heroes rewarded and villains punished. You wanted the Prince to be noble and his princess to be kind.
Poor dear. I warned you this story was no fairytale.
she's wrong (or partially wrong) on two counts. First of all, her tale is in many ways closer to the original fairy tales than some of the newer, sweeter versions, and secondly she's assuming that her listeners will be disappointed, and yet, as one can tell from the admiration expressed by reviewers such as Sherry Thomas at Dear Author, the tale has pleased a lot of people. So there's an implied reader/listener who's created by the narrative, but the real reader may well have a different, much more positive, response to Ember's tale.
I also think Ember does some very interesting things with the transformation theme. On the most obvious level there's a rejection of superficial, aesthetic beauty, which is depicted as a curse. In many fairytales, beauty is equated with virtue (so Cinderella is more beautiful than her sisters, Snow White is more beautiful than the Wicked Queen) and the curse is to be made ugly (like the Beast in Beauty and the Beast). The romance genre has played around with that in recent years (though some romances, such as Barbara Cartland's, have linked the two very closely together by featuring superlatively beautiful and highly virtuous heroines), and there are quite a lot of stories about a plainer heroine whom the hero comes to love despite her plainness. In fact, as is the case with Darcy's growing appreciation of Elizabeth's "fine eyes," the hero's increasing perception of the heroine as beautiful is often a sign of his love for her and her inner self.
We still have rather a lot of handsome heroes in the genre, though. And Ember provides a very interesting counter-point to that, because read as metafiction (and it is a story about storytelling/the creation of fictions), it could be read as subtly suggesting that perhaps romance readers should take a look at why they accept brutish, demanding behaviour in a hero - is it because they've fallen under the magic of his Charm?
I also rather like the way in which Ember presents us with different fashions in female beauty/clothing, because they remind us that beauty is to some extent a cultural construct. Ember's somewhat Spanish-inspired society has different fashion and beauty ideals from the French-inspired society from which Ember's step-mother and step-sisters come. One might also read the details of Ember's makeup (there's the use of ash and chicken's blood, and also the use of lead-based face-paint) as a critique of the beauty industry.
Going beyond the aesthetic aspect of transformation, Eloisa James is suggesting that the theme is really about how "the heroine learns to honor and appreciate her pre-transformation self, forcing the prince to do so as well".
The relationship in Ember exists because the prince is attracted to Ember's witchy self, which she is still somewhat ambiguous about, even at the end (note how she expects that the reader will not love her, even though her prince does). So rather than Ember "forcing the prince," he forces her into the relationship, and perhaps into a greater acceptance of herself as a witch and the possibility of a witch finding love.
Things get even more complicated when one tries to decide what Ember's pre-transformation self actually is. Her witchy self, after all, is a post-transformation self, since she wasn't born a witch. But this post-transformation self is the one with which she identifies. Ember, then, has two layers of transformation, the first into a witch, and the second into the disguise of Cinderella.
Ember never explains what her reason is for telling her story, though one can perhaps imagine that she was asked to do so by her implied reader. It's interesting to know what the real author's intentions were, namely to
explore the line that more modern fairy tales so often draw between good girls and bad women, between virtuous princesses and wicked queens
Of course, it's not just the "more modern fairy tales" that do that. Many modern romances do so too, and there's still a double-standard in romance. The Bad Boys and Dukes of Slut can get away with things which wouldn't usually be tolerated in a heroine. Ember's sexually fairly liberated, but in a way she could perhaps be interpreted as having internalised part of that "heroines should be good" rule, because she doesn't see herself as good, even though she has a strong sense of ethics (albeit a somewhat Machiavellian one). But since she is the heroine, and she does have a habit of casting nasty spells on people who annoy her (even after she's found True Love, which in some stories is a catalyst for redemption and character-change), the story in itself challenges the "heroines should be nice and ladylike" standard. And that takes us back to the way that the story creates an implied reader and then subtly encourages the real reader to distance herself from that implied reader and the implied reader's value judgements.
Their deception is revealed when the prince looks more closely and sees first that "the blood was streaming from" the foot of the first step-sister and then that "the blood was running out of her [the second step-sister's] shoe, and how it had stained her white stocking."
ReplyDeleteNah, Prince Charming isn't as clever as that: the intervention of the pidgeons is needed to make him realise that he has chosen the wrong bride:
Rucke di guck, rucke die guck,
Blut ist im Schuck:
Der Schuck ist zu klein,die rechte Braut sitzt noch daheim.,
which Zipes translates as
Looky, look, look,
at the shoe that she took.
There's blood all over and the shoe's too small.
She's not the bride you met at the ball.
Prince Charming obviously has a really bad memory for faces, poor chap.
In the 1812 version of the tale, the moralistic ending is missing, btw.: the story ends after the pigeon's last verse; we don't get to see the wedding or the pidgeons pecking out the stepsisters' eyes. That this new ending appears in the 1857 version, is in keeping with Wilhelm Grimm's continuous attempts to make their whole corpus of folk tales more moral and thus tools of education of children.
Here's a link to a page with scenes from "Aschenputtel" on postcards -- the photographs are rather intriguing, imo. And it's interesting to see the age difference between all these girls.
they're looking for the gritty, darker truths which lie at the heart of the older versions and which are often obscured by the sweetness and conventional morality which sugar-coats the Disney and Perrault versions.
ReplyDeleteDisney is sweet, yes. But not all of Perrault's tales are: his version of "Little Red Riding Hood" not only ends with the death of the girl, but it also contains explicit sexual allusions (for one thing, the wolf tells the girl to come to bed with him).
the intervention of the pidgeons is needed to make him realise that he has chosen the wrong bride
ReplyDeleteI know, but I was trying to cut out some of the details. Bad me!
Perrault's [...] "Little Red Riding Hood" not only ends with the death of the girl, but it also contains explicit sexual allusions (for one thing, the wolf tells the girl to come to bed with him)
I knew that too. Bad, bad me! My only excuse is that I had written such a hugely long comment that I was using those names as a shorthand, rather than being accurate. Which is not a very good excuse at all.
Thank you for pushing me back onto the straight and narrow path of academic accuracy, Sandra! I'll try to stay on it, even if I see some pretty flowers I'd like to pick.
Hi and thanks for mentioning my short stories. I will have to check out Ember. I love romances that deal with the gritty truths, as you said, of not just falling in love but maintaining the relationship, and I think they can even be found in books considered 'escapist'--sometimes that sounds like a dirty word!
ReplyDeleteKate
Thank you for pushing me back onto the straight and narrow path of academic accuracy, Sandra!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry if I came across as school-teacherish (at the moment I don't know the correct word for this, and it's far too late to reach for the dictionary)! You know I'm crazy about fairy tales and I just couldn't help myself. All these folklore seminars had to be good for something! (Something other than talking about healing with urine, that is. *g*)
Mercedes Lackey's retelling of Cinderella, PHOENIX AND ASHES (in her Elemental Masters series), is pretty grim, as it's set against the background of the First World War, in which the hero was badly wounded both physically and magically. And there's a fair amount of bloodshed.
ReplyDeleteThe identification of beauty with virtue is basically neo-Platonic and creates interesting problems for those who misread THE FAERIE QUEENE. I think writers should do more with the Loathly Lady archetype, as in "The Wife of Bath's Tale" (see also Child 31, "The Marriage of Sir Gawain", and Child Ballads 34, "Kemp Owyne", and 36, "The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea").
I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I'm trying to write a fantasy about the further adventures of Cinderella's stepsisters, especially the one whose godmother was a witch.
It opens with the doves swooping down on the wedding procession and her swatting them into the outfield with her reticule.
Hello Kate, and thanks for posting the stories on your website so that we can all read them for free.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if sometimes it's easier to deal with truths when they're in an escapist form, because that way one has a bit of distance on them. Not that all 'escapist' books deal with deep emotional or social realities, but they can do, and in a way which maybe reaches people emotionally in a way which non-escapist, more realistic/factual accounts can't.
Your short stories are set in much, much more realistic settings than Bettie's, so they're a lot less "fairytale" but I put them in the same post because they both go beyond/behind the surface of romance/fairytale conventions (in your case beyond the Happy Ever After, to the ongoing work of keeping a marriage going, or of the less romantic expressions of love). I noticed that you write for the Harlequin Presents/Mills & Boon Modern line, which is one that's described as "escapist" in the eHarlequin guidelines and yet, as you say (that's a link to Kate's essay about why the genre isn't "fluff") one can tackle some important themes and difficult issues in "escapist" stories: "I love being able to write about men and women who are healed, forgiven, and empowered through their love for each other."
Sandra, you weren't being school-teacherish in a bad way, but you were being professional. And I was being lazy and taking short-cuts across the pretty flower meadow. So thank you for picking me up on that.
The identification of beauty with virtue is basically neo-Platonic
Plato has a lot to answer for! A while ago I decided to blame him for the secret babies and the fecundity of romance heroines. Not that it's all his fault, of course. But before I step off the path completely and walk towards those enticing flowers, I'll stop blaming Plato and take myself off to get some sleep. It's rather late in my time-zone.
Laura, in this case I think that Plotinus is more to blame than Plato.
ReplyDelete"the gritty truths, as you said, of not just falling in love but maintaining the relationship"
ReplyDeleteHi Kate,
I enjoyed your stories. Thank you for making them free online.
I often wonder why there aren't more novels that explore maintaining the relationship. As a reader, I enjoy stories where partners rediscover each other. Romance novels tend to shy away from acknowledging the possibility of trouble beyond the HEA to the point that they often villainize previous spouses or lovers (especially in the case of a hero who was married to a "bad woman"--a fine example of the double standard Laura mentioned above) to justify a "failed" marriage. I'm fascinated with the 1930s "comedies of remarriage" because they acknowledge the existence and possibility of divorce, but still manage to be escapist and romantic. And, or course, the h/h rediscover each other.
Laura,
Wow, yeah, all of that, and some stuff I didn't think of. And you said it better than I could.
"when one tries to decide what Ember's pre-transformation self actually is"
I had it in mind that Ember's pre-witchy self was precisely the sort of passive, self-sacrificing heroine she seems to assume her listener expects. Her pre-witch self is described by her associations of sex with debasement when she first sees the Prince, and her sexual fantasy about dying from the act and later being mourned for her goodness and virtue.
Her disdain for the Cinder Girl is her disdain for her pre-transformation self though she understands the political necessity of appearing to be nice, in much the same way that powerful women here in the real world--women who are politicians or corporate leaders--are pressured to seem "nice," Men in equivalent positions are never subject to such expectations, just as the Prince was never expected to be nice in order to be admired or loved.
in this case I think that Plotinus is more to blame than Plato.
ReplyDeleteOh, you can't just leave it at that! Please tell us more.
I do find it interesting that medieval courtly love generally doesn't have that same baby-as-proof-of-happy-ending-and-true-love motif, although there are some examples of stories where the woman does get pregnant and have a secret baby. In Juan RodrÃguez del Padrón's Siervo libre de amor, for example, Ardanlier and Liessa run away and hide in a secret place where they hope their parents (who opposed their relationship) won't find them. Liessa becomes pregnant, but unfortunately this is not a modern romance, so she and the foetus are stabbed to death by her lover's father.
Cartland and Heyer tend to stop the novel before much/any baby-producing activity can occur (there are exceptions, but in general that's the case). But modern romances do seem to have a lot of children in them. So there definitely isn't a continuous line from the ancient philosophers to the modern romance on this issue (and I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek when I mentioned Plato's ideas/possible influence on romance, though I do think that one can't completely discount him as an influence).
I wonder if the sheer volume of modern romances involving secret babies, and ultra-fertile heroines for whom having many children is part of the HEA, has to do with modern ideas about femininity and motherhood. Given that motherhood is much more of a choice nowadays, maybe that makes some people more concerned about whether motherhood is in decline/not valued enough, and maybe the element of choice means that it's a concern in different ways from in the past?
Just recently I read a 1983 Mills & Boon romance, A Grand Illusion by Maura McGiveny, and it brought together the issue of female virtue, sexuality, beauty and motherhood in ways which were really explicit. The heroine, Jenna, is the good sister, and people call her "the paragon." She's hardworking, somewhat plain and a virgin. Her very beautiful and sexually active sister, Meg, became pregnant and Jenna persuaded her not to have an abortion. But the immoral, sexually active, beautiful Meg shows no sign of maternal love and abandons the baby to the care of our heroine, Jenna, who is forced to pretend that she's the baby's mother. The hero, thinking that the baby is Jenna's, and fathered by his own brother, thinks he must marry Jenna (illegitimacy and single motherhood are considered shameful in this novel). The wicked Meg tries to break up Jenna's marriage by telling lies about Jenna and flaunting her own beauty, but to no avail. Jenna has a makeover (thanks to her not-fairy mother-in-law) and so is revealed to be just as beautiful as her sister and she's going to look after her sister's baby, the hero's younger siblings and all the babies it's implied she'll have with the hero.
Sorry for the long synopsis, but I thought it was interesting because of how obvious it was in dealing with the themes, and how the author managed to pack all of them into one short novel. Ember is pretty much the antithesis of A Grand Illusion.
in much the same way that powerful women here in the real world--women who are politicians or corporate leaders--are pressured to seem "nice,"
Yes, that's a rather topical issue given the US political situation at the moment. And it's not just that there's pressure for women to be "nice," there's also pressure for them to be beautiful (which is also something that the Ember's "Cinder Girl" disguise helps her with, since it makes her appear both beautiful and nice).
Salon's Rebecca Traister reported in December on Rush Linbaugh's (and other's) comments on Hillary Clinton. He
was wondering, "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?" Yes, it's true. If we elect a woman to highest office, we will be forced to watch her get older on a daily basis. Like a science experiment where you grow mold on a piece of bread and watch it get greener and uglier every day?
Traister also noted that
We're used to hearing old men chuckle long and deep while fielding questions from Tim Russert. A woman's voice sounds different; different in a way we think of not as old-man comfy and authoritative but as old-woman witchy and croney.
The reference there to witches really leapt out at me, given the subject-matter of Ember.
Interesting about babies and romance. Here's what The Weekend Guardian's Love by Number's columnist
ReplyDeletehad to say about babies and marriage:
a meta-analytic study of relationships after children (in the Journal of Marriage and Family) that added up results from 90 studies (with 31,331 people) found that couples with children were generally less happy than non-parents. And women with children under the age of one were the least happy of all, with only 38% having higher than average levels of satisfaction with their relationships, compared with 62% who hadn't yet had children. Men didn't show reduced levels of bliss until the second year of the baby's life, although by the age of two both men and women were feeling better about their relationships...The study also showed that the more children a couple had, the less happy they were likely to be."
Right next to this, in the tongue in cheek feature 'what women don't understand about men'' I read:
I don't fully understand why men are more prone to be unfaithful when their partners get pregnant. Why they are when their partners are well into pregnancy is easy to answer: pregnant women aren't attractive. No one's allowed to say that nowadays, so perhaps I'm looking at a custodial sentence, then deportation here, so let me add that this is merely a fact - one formed by hundreds of thousands of years of simple and obvious evolutionary imperatives: a man who is attracted to visibly pregnant women is sexually aberrant. So...
I don't necessary agree with this last one (although as an observer, pregnancy has never seemed particularly sexy), but I'm amused by the stark divergence between this and the depiction of pregnancy, marriage and parenthood in romance novels. Some middle ground would be nice.
I think pregnant women can be attractive and sexy to their husbands, for both emotional and biological reasons (knowing his mate is carrying his child...) even if they are not objectively 'sexy' to the average man on the street.
ReplyDeleteLaura, you made a good point in your comment that it might be easier to grapple with hard truths in escapist format because there is a certain distance. I agree; in my personal experience, a story that is too close to home in terms of experience, emotions, or otherwise, is too uncomfortable to enjoy.
Kate
A common symbol of True Love in romances is the hero's attraction to his mental image of the heroine "large with his child." The word "lush" is often used. And the hero is ALWAYS attracted to the heroine if her pregnancy is actually depicted. So I'd say that romances are explicitly working against the findings of the study the Meriam quotes.
ReplyDeleteLaura, I meant that Neoplatonism influenced the Renaissance, at least, more than pure Platonism. Plotinus came up with the first trickle-down theory of Being:
ReplyDelete[from the Wikipedia article:]
Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity or distinction; likewise it is beyond all categories of being and non-being. The concept of "being" is derived by us from the objects of human experience, and is an attribute of such objects, but the infinite, transcendent One is beyond all such objects, and therefore is beyond the concepts that we derive from them. The One "cannot be any existing thing", and cannot be merely the sum of all such things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents". Thus, no attributes can be assigned to the One. We can only identify it with the Good and the principle of Beauty. ......................................
The One, being beyond all attributes including being and non-being, is the source of the world -- but not through any act of creation, willful or otherwise, since activity cannot be ascribed to the unchangeable, immutable One. Plotinus argues instead that the multiple cannot exist without the simple. The "less perfect" must, of necessity, "emanate", or issue forth, from the "perfect" or "more perfect". Thus, all of "creation" emanates from the One in succeeding stages of lesser and lesser perfection. These stages are not temporally isolated, but occur throughout time as a constant process. .........................
The first emanation is nous (thought or the divine mind, logos or order, reason), identified metaphorically with the demiurge in Plato's Timaeus. It is the first will towards Good. From nous proceeds the world soul, which Plotinus subdivides into upper and lower, identifying the lower aspect of Soul with nature. From the world soul proceeds individual human souls, and finally, matter, at the lowest level of being and thus the least perfected level of the cosmos. Despite this relatively pedestrian assessment of the material world, Plotinus asserted the ultimately divine nature of material creation since it ultimately derives from the One, through the mediums of nous and the world soul. It is by the Good or through beauty that we recognize the One, in material things and then in the Forms.
As for the baby thing, I think you already mentioned (and I know I mentioned in an earlier discussion) Frye's point about the "new society" crystallizing around the H/H, and that this is often symbolized by children. In JAK's books, especially those written as Amanda Quick, there is often an epilogue set a year or more after the wedding, when the presence of children shows the alpha male as doting father. The scenes in which the hero contemplates the heroine's pregnancy (in JAK in her various incarnations, and in Nora Roberts) usually involve him feeling a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that she's growing round with HIS baby, not A baby; and the hero is very often shown as taking charge of the pregnancy, making sure the heroine takes her vitamins, gets enough rest, and wraps up warmly when she goes out into the cold. This can all be considered proper "alpha male taking care of the cubs of the pack" behavior (especially since in a wolf pack, usually only the alpha pair procreate). The most striking example of the new-society theme is in SHIELD'S LADY, in which the hero comes of a clan/class that only begets sons. The heroine (who is from the recently discovered other continent, where a different colony ship crashed) marries a Shield and has a daughter.
The hero of AMARYLLIS (one of the early Lost Colony futuristics written as Jayne Castle) is a loner with no family; and the heroine is illegitimate--this in a world where family and marriage are core values in the social system established by the Founders. Fortunately, Amaryllis comes from a close and loving extended family on her mother's side. There is a scene near the end, after the heroine has persuaded the family to accept them even though they weren't properly matched by a consultant, where he is standing on the porch in the evening, watching all the kids in the family racing around, chasing fireflies. He thinks that in future years he'll at last be a part of this, his kids playing with their cousins, his finding jobs for grown cousins in his company, and having all the other responsibilities that come with being part of a family.
Of course, as someone mentioned, the protagonists of Crusie's BET ME are determined not to have kids (and considering their parents, it's entirely understandable); but the other couples in the group of do, and it's all one big extended family.
For a couple who has a horror of the very idea, see Roarke and Eve in J.D. Robb's IN DEATH series, especially BORN IN DEATH, where they have to be part of their friend Mavis's delivery (and simultaneous wedding).
On the pregnancy theme--has anyone seen the movie JUNO??--a modern romance if I ever saw one (lol). Anyway, Juno is pregnant, and, yes, this does seem to contribute to the "love" that grows between her and her boyfriend. And it also helps her grow up too! Often though men seem attracted to pregnant women because they think they have some kind of magical fertility working in their bodies--not in JUNO though--it is "love" across the genders--the "real thing"in that tale.
ReplyDeleteI just saw Juno and loved it! So funny and different.
ReplyDeleteJust recently I read a 1983 Mills & Boon romance, A Grand Illusion by Maura McGiveny, and it brought together the issue of female virtue, sexuality, beauty and motherhood in ways which were really explicit. The heroine, Jenna, is the good sister, and people call her "the paragon." She's hardworking, somewhat plain and a virgin. Her very beautiful and sexually active sister, Meg, became pregnant and Jenna persuaded her not to have an abortion. But the immoral, sexually active, beautiful Meg shows no sign of maternal love and abandons the baby to the care of our heroine, Jenna,
ReplyDeleteWow. I just had a serious flashback of "Georgy Girl"!
I don't know how to create a link here, but here's the full thing to the Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgie_Girl
I'm amused by the stark divergence between this and the depiction of pregnancy, marriage and parenthood in romance novels. Some middle ground would be nice.
ReplyDeleteYes. My impression is that
(a) romance focuses on a particular set of couples (i.e. the ones who aren't going to split up in the long-term, and who don't just stick together for practical reasons). That tends to mean that they're already likely to be happier for that reason.
(b) the characters are often a bit idealised/intensified, as are their relationships. Not always, but often. And that tends to mean that they're often made a bit more "romantic" than real people/real relationships. The less "romantic" bits tend to get cut out of the narrative.
(c) As Talpianna says, there's a symbolic element to child-production.
(d) Romance heroines do often seem to end up having a lot of the things that people aspire to, e.g. perfect marriage, comfortable/affluent standard of living, interesting job/hobby, supportive community and lots of children. I sometimes get the feeling that the characters are having children not just because those particular characters want them/they don't have contraception/they need an heir, but because motherhood is seen as a part of that package of things which are thought of as good things which a woman should aspire to have.
I just had a serious flashback of "Georgy Girl"!
You had me worried there for a moment, I thought we might start Plagiarism Scandal Mark II. Thankfully I am able to confirm that despite a few similarities between "Georgy Girl" and the book I mentioned, their plots and the characters involved are really quite different. Phew!
You had me worried there for a moment, I thought we might start Plagiarism Scandal Mark II. Thankfully I am able to confirm that despite a few similarities between "Georgy Girl" and the book I mentioned, their plots and the characters involved are really quite different. Phew!
ReplyDelete*laughs*
Sorry for the startle, Laura! No, no accusations or insinuations of any kind intended -- or likely, to my mind. I'm just as prone to recognize themes as I am plot elements in stories. It was just that bit about the mother's rejection of the child that triggered that memory. Maternal abandonment happens all too often in reality.
My thoughts regarding the epiloques with rampant munchkins -- I'd always felt the inclusion of pregnancies and live offspring in the stories was symbolic of the hero's virility, as proof of his manhood and his right to mate.
*Black-footed ferret trots in, sniffs at R., shakes its head as one who would say, "No plagiarism here. Nothing to do with me, guv," and trots out.*
ReplyDelete[Laura waves to the ferrets and, cute though they are, is glad they're not planning to sick around.]
ReplyDeleteYou're right, R, that can be a factor too. OK, let's add
d) Sometimes one gets the impression that children are included because "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Particularly when the heroine's been infertile but, with no explanation given (e.g. was her previous husband infertile), the hero's magic sperm gets her pregnant, the resultant offspring begin to look like they're included in the story as proof of the hero's virility.
Laura: It's true that ferrets sicking up don't enhance the ambience (or even the ambiance) of any blog...
ReplyDeleteAnd I quote:
ReplyDeleteAgTigress: 'Oh, Ms. Edwards!' [heave]
Yes, that was an unfortunate typo. But I think by now the ferrets will have moved on to wreak havoc elsewhere in the romance-related world. As I said at the Smart Bitches' I don't think the ferrets would approve of the fact that Fabio "likes to tear up the nearby trails on his motocross bikes, despite the persistent efforts of local park rangers to arrest him."
ReplyDeleteDo you think they are clever enough to set traps or tripwires for him? Of course, I don't think he actually lives in BFF country, so we'd have to hand this assignment over to the weasels and the stoats.
ReplyDeletetrue romantic love does not lasts forever it is different from that of true love ....
ReplyDeletenice read
How are you defining "true romantic love" piercing the veil?
ReplyDeleteWhere the romance genre's concerned, I tend to think of it in terms of Sternberg's triangular theory of love but I'd have to shift his terms around a bit. He defines "consummate love" as including intimacy, passion and commitment. That's the kind of love I think of as "romantic" in the sense of being the kind of love that's usually the ideal presented in the modern romance genre.
Sternberg himself defines "romantic love" as a combination of passion and intimacy, but lacking in commitment. So, as you suggest, it's not likely to last forever.
I think the term "romantic" can be rather confusing, as can "romance," because there are so many different possible meanings for both words.
C.S. Lewis is hardly noted as an advocate of feminism (he once boasted in a letter about voting not to admit women's colleges to full status at Oxford); but he has something interesting to say about the varieties of love in both The Allegory of Love and The Four Loves, particularly about how passion can evolve into something more real and enduring. There's also a good essay in God in the Dock about the so-called "Right to Happiness."
ReplyDeleteWV--ukfav--he certainly was
the heroine's been infertile but, with no explanation given (e.g. was her previous husband infertile), the hero's magic sperm gets her pregnant, the resultant offspring begin to look like they're included in the story as proof of the hero's virility.
ReplyDeleteA number of erotic romances fetishize semen; some paranormal erotic romances explicitly (in both senses of the word) imbue it with magical healing powers. I think it's another interesting example of the paranormal setting being used to heighten the gender/cultural themes that cause so many arguments in "realistic" contemporary romance. We've talked about the paranormal romance's tendency to create a more explicitly alpha male, but I'm not sure I've seen discussion of the "sperm fixes all" idea.
In Lora Leigh's Tanner's Scheme, the sperm-doctor idea is completely articulated. The heroine has been through a forced abortion and sterilization, but the hero expects his sperm to reverse her sterilization over the course of a few months. He also has prior evidence that Breed mating/sperm can effect such miracles. (I wrote a brief review on LibraryThing, actually, in which I complained about this as one of many "shortcuts" in the story.)
If I'm recalling the storyline correctly, I believe Sarah McCarty's The Others: Conception has a similar take on sperm-doctoring. The heroine has been forced into extensive surgeries, endangering her life. Once the hero rescues her, his kind's mating ritual involves highly unusual quantities of sperm--enough of the stuff that her belly inflates visibly. It's not only the sperm that heals her, but it's an essential part. (Note: the squeamish may not enjoy a number of aspects of the book.)
I've not read a lot of paranormal romance, or a lot of erotic romance, so that's fascinating to know, RfP. It's interesting when you can spot a theme being used so explicitly like that (not sexually explicitly, but textually explicit) in a novel or novels, because it can help you trace it back to novels where it's only present in disguised/vestigial form.
ReplyDeleteNote: the squeamish may not enjoy a number of aspects of the book.)
LOL! Yes, I'd sort of worked that out from your description!
Yes, well, that's not all. There were still more aspects that I found squeam-inducing, though they weren't germane here. I thought I'd better be very clear with my warning, given you normally read category romance!
ReplyDeleteThanks RfP. I think that the heroine being forced into surgery in the way you describe would probably be sufficient to make me feel squeamish, even without any additional factors, but thanks again for the warnings. I'll avoid this one (unless for some reason I find I absolutely have to read romances about sperm, in which case I'd just have to read it with my professional, academic hat on, and hope it kept me safe from the squeamishness).
ReplyDeleteSo your professional, academic hat is actually a condom? That must be one hell of an interesting-looking academic procession at your university's ceremonies!
ReplyDeleteSo your professional, academic hat is actually a condom?
ReplyDeleteNo, it looks more like a very large umbrella. It's waterproof and fireproof and I had it made specially. It also has a propeller on top, so that I can make a quick getaway. I still haven't worked out how to make my academic gown repel all dirt and never wear out but I'm working on it (in my spare time, of course).
As for condom-like hats, what do you make of the shape of the Phyrigian cap?
Do you actually get to wear an umbrella hat in an academic procession? Or do you just have a mortarboard the size of Rhode Island? I've only ever seen those umbrella hats marketed for golfers. But wait! You're Scottish! Of course you're a golfer!
ReplyDelete(My college world history text referred to the Scots as "soured by a diet of oatmeal, whiskey, and Calvinism." I actually like one of those.)
Have you considered having the spokes of the umbrella modified to spray or inject cobra venom in case you are paired in procession with someone who disagrees with your theories? Then you can fire up the propellor and flee before he drops.
Or perhaps you should just go with this: http://tinyurl.com/269wbf
As for the Phrygian cap, do you think its phallitude has anything to do with its becoming a symbol of Liberty?
Do you actually get to wear an umbrella hat in an academic procession? Or do you just have a mortarboard the size of Rhode Island?
ReplyDeleteI've never been in an academic procession and I don't have a mortarboard.
You're Scottish! Of course you're a golfer!
(My college world history text referred to the Scots as "soured by a diet of oatmeal, whiskey, and Calvinism."
No, I've never tried golfing, I know next to nothing about Calvinism and I've never appreciated whisky (whiskey with an "e" is the Irish spelling). I like oats, though.
I like oatmeal with lots of brown sugar, a lump of butter, and milk. I've heard that Scots put salt on it and eat it standing up, out of respect.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's not proper oatmeal unless it stands up.
ReplyDeleteLaura, I just had an interesting conversation in a clothing store about The Man in the White Suit. Fiction becomes reality--nanotechnology "self-maintaining clothes" are really taking off.
Well, clothes that maintain themselves would be cool; but clothes that take themselves off could be awkward, unless they have a really excellent sense of timing...
ReplyDeleteThose self-maintaining clothes are interesting. I wonder how long all the special coatings last? I imagine that some of these things might work in the short to medium term but then stop after a while (like anoraks, which eventually stop being waterproof, or waxed jackets, which need to be re-waxed). And could the nano-particles rearrange themselves or do they stay where they're put?
ReplyDeleteThere's always Scotchgard--if you aren't too busy huffing it. Invented by a woman, too:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/269ozg
I do like my puerile jokes. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteLaura, I have a 4-year-old non-wrinkling shirt that's getting a bit tatty, but still has nary a wrinkle.
could the nano-particles rearrange themselves or do they stay where they're put?
Ah, that's the best feature. I've noticed my skin taking on a lovely non-wrinkling smoothness, particularly round the neck where the collar touches the skin....
If you've figured out how to set your biological clock on Rewind, rfp, PLEASE FORWARD INFO SOONEST!!!
ReplyDeleteWV: olhev - Olhev what she's heving...
Are you certain you want to look like a linen shirt, however freshly pressed?
ReplyDeleteBTW, Laura, thanks for the link. I'm in the middle of reading Ember--great timing, as I'm also listening to Rossini's La Cenerentola.
Well, rfp, lots of people think I'm kind of shifty-looking...
ReplyDeleteIf you like ecards from Jacquie Lawson, you may want to check out the artistic ecards from Ojolie, www.ojolie.com.
ReplyDelete