Pages

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

What's at the Core of the Genre?


A comment Dick made recently brought up the question of what's at the core of the genre. I think it it's a really important topic, so I'm giving it its own post. Dick wrote that
One of the things the HEA of the romance formula has always implied in my thinking, as evidenced by the penchant authors have for epilogues and continuing mentions of h/h's in subsequent books is that the union (marriage or whatever) of the two brings continuance far into the future through their progeny; it's almost as if the "ever after" of the HEA has to be demonstrated in order to be complete.
Dick's view, that reproduction is a central element of the genre, is shared by Stephanie Laurens, who has argued that "Romance today carries the essential message that love, marriage - and by implication children and family - are valuable and desirable goals" and she even tries to correlate birth and marriage rates with rates of romance reading:
If you want women to have children, you need to ensure they view finding love and marriage as worthy goals. The US also has a marriage rate more than 50% greater than any of those other countries.

Not one so-called expert thought of romance novels - the one thing - the one and only thing - that directly and effectively reaffirms love, marriage and family as being desirable goals. Just as we forgot about the environment, we've forgotten what Entertainment, particularly Genre Fiction, and most especially romance really is.
Dick and Laurens' view suggests to me that some romances can and do reaffirm the status quo (or perhaps a real or imagined status quo ante, given some people's distaste for contemporary sexual mores) by literally reproducing an existing social order. I'm not saying that that's exactly what Dick and Laurens were arguing, only that it makes me think it's a possible way of viewing the genre. Romance, after all, has often been criticised for being a conservative genre. When heroes (and it usually is heroes) are redeemed by heroines and settle down to become happy husbands and fathers, this can be seen as a reimposition of the values of an existing social order which were temporarily under threat from the rake/outsider's refusal or inability to conform to social norms.

Other analyses of the genre come up with rather different ideas about its core message. Pamela Regis, as I mentioned in my reply to Dick, has stated that
the romance novel itself is a subset of [...] comedy [...]. The writers of Greek New Comedy [...] established the pattern of comedy, which the romance novel would modify [...]. The context of comedy, its setting, is society. Comedy's "movement ... is usually ... from one kind of society to another" ([Frye] Anatomy 163). This, then, is the usual sequence that the reader encounters - an old society (which is often corrupt, decadent, weak, or superannuated), a hero, his intended, paternal opposition to his intended becoming his wife, a removal of that opposition, the hero's triumphal betrothal, and a wedding symbolizing a new, vital society. (28-29)
The romance genre, by giving more importance to the heroine, does change this pattern, but Regis argues that its central myth remains the same. If the central core, or myth, of the genre is about establishing a new society, then, as AgTigress argues, although
the birth and upbringing of children can be used as a very convenient shorthand symbol of the continuing and new social order that is the culmination of a happy and lasting romance/love-affair, and is thus a useful way of indicating that the romance is crowned with success
it need not be the only way in which to indicate it.

Whether romances establish a new social order, or reproduce the existing one, there will tend to be, either explicitly or implicitly, a set of values which underpin those orders. Jennifer Crusie's
feeling on this, which I have expressed loudly and often, is that the romance novel is based on the idea of an innate emotional justice in the universe, that the way the world works is that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. The mystery genre is based on the same assumption, only there it’s a moral justice, a sense of fair play in human legal interaction: because the good guys risk and struggle, the murderers get punished and good triumphs in a safe world. So in romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice, unconditional love in an emotionally safe world.
What makes the "good people" good and the "bad people" bad? In some novels it may be stated explicitly, at others there may be implicit assumptions made about a set of values which the author and the implied reader share, which will allow them to identify the "good people."1

Here's an example of the values being stated very explicitly indeed. In Mary Burchell's To Journey Together Elinor Shearn is faced with a choice between two men, Kenneth and Rudi. Rudi has come into a substantial inheritance from an unrelated elderly lady who, after a disagreement, had cut a relative, Anton, out of her will
"And left him nothing?" Elinor was a good deal shocked.
"Left him nothing," Rudi agreed.
"But - Rudi - it wasn't about anything vital, was it? I mean, if she had lived, she would probably have forgiven him and changed round again, wouldn't she? She seemed genuinely fond of him."
'Oh, yes, I expect so," Rudi agreed. "That's just the luck of the thing. Like staking on the wrong card."
"It's nothing of the sort!" Elinor sat up and spoke with energy. "I thought you - you liked Anton."
"Why, of course we do."
"Then why aren't you going to put things right?"
"In what way, Elinor?"
"By re-dividing the money, of course. [...]" (174)
Rudi then proposes marriage to Elinor, and
His attraction was indescribably strong upon her. She knew she had only to turn her head and his lips would be on hers. Already she savoured the moment with a delicious thrill of anticipation. But, even while the feel of his nearness excited and fascinated her, his words blew a strange, chill breath upon her eager enthusiasm. (176)
She then rejects his proposal:
"I just don't love you - or else I shouldn't be so regretfully aware of the weaknesses in you."
He drew away from her sharply.
"You do love me! Only you've set some sort of ridiculously idealized standard of behaviour which you think I should live up to. You mustn't expect people to be heroes, Liebling. Take them as they are and love them with their faults as well as their virtues."
"I do," Elinor said, almost gently. "But I couldn't really love and marry a man I didn't respect."
Most men would have been angry at that point, but Rudi took the implied criticism quietly.
"You don't respect me, then? Because I can keep you in reasonable comfort without working for you?"
"No." She smiled a little. "I'm not so unreasonable as that. There are certain things which test us - and our friends, Rudi - and however much we like them and excuse them and try not to judge them, we assess our friends by the way they react to those tests." [...]
"The will was explict enough," Rudi exclaimed impatiently.
She did turn her head then and look at him, but her expression did not encourage him to kiss her.
"We are not talking the same language, Rudi," she said, in that curiously gentle tone. "You have been a good and charming friend to me [...]. But I am not the wife for you, my dear, and you are not the husband for me. We think and feel too differently ever to be one. That's all there is to it." (176-77)2
I also have the impression that some romances really aren't that concerned about society at all. Instead, their focus is on that "delicious thrill of anticipation" (and the subsequent delicious enjoyment) which result from an "attraction [which] was indescribably strong." Deborah Lutz has suggested that there are actually two different kinds of romance which, although they are placed within the same genre, in fact have what we might call two different "myths":
In her study of early romance genres (from 1674 to 1740), Ros Ballaster creates two categories of use here: didactic love fiction and amatory fiction. [...] Ballaster’s category of didactic love fiction—romance that has a didactic project, is future-directed, and attempts to represent a moral way of living, a “just” kind of love (depending on what constitutes the “morals” of the particular time period in question). On the opposite extreme, the dangerous lover type falls under the rubric of amatory fiction. Amatory fiction cannot be, generally speaking, recuperated morally, nor does it play out in a socially sanctioned realm. (2)
The "moral way of living" that is central to fiction about either the establishing of a new society or reproducing an existing one, is of minor or no concern in "amatory fiction." What matters here is that the lovers feel intense passion for each other. Of course, there can be overlaps since didactic fiction can include sexual tension and, nowadays, explicitly sexual elements, but I still think one can detect a difference between didactic love fiction in which "good people are rewarded and bad people are punished" and amatory fiction, which celebrates sexual passion.

Another suggestion for what's at the core of the genre was made by Phil Mathews, in his recent paper to the PCA conference. He suggests that the genre celebrates not physical passion, but love, and he quoted
screenwriting theorist Phil Parker’s requirements for a love story in film, noting that Parker does not require an HEA. According to Parker, even a love story which ends with the characters apart is a romance, so long as as long as the transformative value of love is upheld. (Jessica)
If the "transformative value of love" is at the core of the genre, all that really matters is the change which love causes in the characters, not the precise consequences (positive or negative) which that love has for either the characters or society. Phil Parker's requirement therefore has to be combined with a requirement for an "optimistic ending" in order for a novel to meet the RWA's criteria for being a "romance".

It seems to me that all of those descriptions of what's at the core of romance have some validity. The romance genre is, after all, a very big one, which means it probably can accommodate quite a lot of differences. Looked at structurally, in terms of core elements, it can be stated that "Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending" (RWA) but if one's looking at the cores of the novels, at their underlying ideologies, perhaps one can separate them out into at least four categories:
  • Didactic love fiction which reproduces an existing society and its moral order. The transformative power of love is often shown.
  • Didactic love fiction which establishes a new society with new, or at least significantly different, moral values. Again, the transformative power of love is often shown.
  • Amatory fiction with an optimistic outcome for the lovers.
  • Fiction in which the focus is on the transformative power of love, and any changes to, or continuation of, society, or an optimistic outcome, are incidental.
Does anyone else have other ideas about what's at the core of the genre, or, perhaps, at the core of some of the novels in the genre?

---


1 A reader who shares an implied set of values with the author may not even notice their presence, but they can be extremely obvious to a reader who does not share them. For example, a pacifist reader may find it jarring to read about protagonists who are deemed heroic because they are willing to fight for their countries, or a socialist reader may find a billionaire tycoon's success troubling rather than merely accepting it as a marker of the hero's suitability as a mate for the heroine.

2 Elinor's reference to being "one" seems to me to recall the words of Genesis 2:24, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" and various other versions of this statement which exist elsewhere in the Bible, e.g. Matthew 19:3-5:
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Perhaps because of that, the passage reminded me of something St Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6:14: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" This is often taken to refer to marriage. It also reminded me of an article written by Jill, of Feministe, about dating:
Even getting to the point of “this is a person worth dating in the first place” is… not easy. Any relationship requires compromise and flexibility, sure; but how and where to compromise on the feminism thing is particularly difficult because we aren’t talking about a political issue here, we’re talking about a way of seeing the world. I also watch a lot of women date men who are, to be kind, Not Great, but they want to date someone and Not Great Guy is there I guess.

-----
The photos all came from Flickr. The first, on the stripy background, is a "Peanut Butter Bon Bon" photographed by Rox SM. The second is of "vegan chocolate with a strawberry filling" and was photographed by VeganWarrior. The third, with cherry centres, were photographed by Joana Hard. The fourth, "inside," is of a chocolate with a coconut filling and was photographed by Christaface. The photographs were made available under a variety of creative commons licenses.

32 comments:

  1. Interesting analysis, but your premise assumes that all romance fiction is heterosexual, and that just ain't so.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This essay makes a number of good points regarding heterosexual romance, which is surely the bulk of the genre. However, it ignores the male/male and female/female romances which exist in fiction and which cannot result in children--at least not biologically--or (in historicals) end in marriage without a considerable rewrite of actual events, legal and religious attitudes, and social acceptance.

    Such romances, by definition, challenge the established moral order without being able to "establish a new society with new, or at least significantly different, moral values"; the heroes and heroines will have to continue to live with people--often large groups of people--who do not accept them and will continue not to after the book concludes, even though the story implies that such people should do so. It is difficult to present a wholly optimistic outcome for the lovers in male/male or female/female romance; even if they end up together and are resolved to remain together, the laws of their country and their faith will continue to be a moral burden in the latter case and a potential danger in the former. Nor do such romances fit the fourth category of love that transforms without paying much attention to society; in same-sex romances, society, together with its laws, its morals and its attitudes, is almost another character.

    Some would say that same-sex romance falls into the category of amatory fiction. But that is not the case. It is often marketed in this way, and is often perceived by writers of het romance as being all about sex and sexual attraction. This annoys writers of same-sex romance no end; erotica and romance are two different things, after all, and a romance should not be classed as being all about various forms of intercourse simply because of the sexes of the people involved. The point, for them, is that men can fall in love with other men and that women can fall in love with other women, and that this love is no less real, powerful, long-lasting or worthy of commitment than the love of a woman for a man.

    I would say, then, that same-sex romance does not fit any of the categories you mention. It does not reinforce established and often conservative beliefs on what love is; it seeks to stretch the boundaries. Outside of certain genres, such as science fiction, fantasy or alternate history, it cannot remake the society that the characters live in. The love is transforming to the couple, but society does not change and continues to matter. And the fact that this is about love rather than being merely about sex is the point.

    ReplyDelete
  3. your premise assumes that all romance fiction is heterosexual

    Dick and Stephanie Laurens did indeed seem to me to be basing their statements on that premise, since they both mention marriage between the protagonists leading to the creation of biological offspring, but theirs isn't the only perspective I included in the post.

    If a romance is establishing a new type of society, that could very well include heroes and heroines who are not heterosexual. If a romance is primarily amatory fiction, it need not include heterosexual protagonists. And if a Romance is focused on the transformative power of love, it needn't have heterosexual protagonists either.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Such romances, by definition, challenge the established moral order without being able to "establish a new society with new, or at least significantly different, moral values"

    Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, since both you and Lee seem to think I was ignoring any romance which wasn't heterosexual. When Regis refers to the creation of a new society, she doesn't state that the new society is perfect in all respects, or that no aspects of the old society remain. Rather, the new relationship creates a tiny new society in microcosm, which suggests a new direction for society at large. In that sense, therefore, I think romances which show gay, lesbian and other non-heterosexual couples finding a way to live and love together, could be read as presenting a new vision of how society could be.

    Nor do such romances fit the fourth category of love that transforms without paying much attention to society; in same-sex romances, society, together with its laws, its morals and its attitudes, is almost another character.

    Again, I don't seem to have expressed myself very clearly. I wasn't suggesting that novels in the fourth category completely ignore society, just that their focus is very much on the transformative power of love and the psychological/emotional changes that it brings about in individuals.

    "Some would say that same-sex romance falls into the category of amatory fiction. But that is not the case."

    While I certainly wouldn't argue that all same-sex romance is "all about sex and sexual attraction" and therefore falls into this category, I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that at least some same-sex romance falls into this category.

    I wrote the post because the more I tried to think about "the genre" as a whole, the more it seemed to me that, if one looks behind the structural definitions of the genre, the core ideas are too various to be easily classified in only one way. I'm very open to the idea that my list is too short, or too badly worded to be useful so I'd welcome suggestions about how to add to it, or amend it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Another thought to add to the same-sex romance discussion - how common is it for children to be part of m/m or f/f romance, just as in real life? For example, I recently read a male/male romance (THE HIRED MAN by Jan Irving, a historical) in which one of the men had a child. I haven't read widely enough in the genre to know if it's common for protagonists to already have children, or to plan to have children at some future time, whether through adoption or some other means. It seems like that would be an interesting thing to look at.

    Also, I wonder if legal marriage opportunities for same-sex couples will begin to affect HEA endings of contemporary stories.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Victoria, I haven't read enough same-sex romances to give you a good answer, but I'll be spoiler-y and give a couple of examples I know of.



    In Michelle Martin's Pembroke Park one of the heroines has a child at the start of the story, but at the end there's also some discussion about more children.

    Jules Jones' Lord and Master series includes a mention of civil partnerships after one of the protagonists mentions to a friend that he and his boyfriend have got engaged:

    Bob whistled in surprise. "As in marriage? Oh, civil partnership, or whatever the bloody euphemism is. Steven, that's a big step to take. Are the pair of you that sure it's going to work?"

    "Well, it's going to be a long engagement, given that it's going to be at least a year before the registry office can start doing civil partnership ceremonies even if the bill passes in the Lords." Probably even longer than that.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your question in the title of this blog entry - "What's at the Core of the Genre?" - reminded me of Brian Attebery's suggestion to look at genres as "fuzzy sets":

    "Genres may be approached as 'fuzzy sets,' meaning that they are defined not by boundaries but by a center. [...] fuzzy set theory proposes that a category such as 'bird' consists of central, prototypical examples like 'robin,' surrounded at greater or lesser distance by more problematic instances such as 'ostrich,' 'chicken,' 'penguin,' and even 'bat' [...]"
    (from "Fantasy as Mode, Genre, Formula." Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader. Ed. David Sandner. Westport: Praeger, 2004. 304-5)

    Some experimentation on Attebery's part has revealed that in regard to the genre of fantasy, one of the most central, prototypical texts is - no surprise there - The Lord of the Rings.

    It probably wouldn't be too much of an assumption to say that for most readers, writers and critics of the romance genre Austen's Pride & Prejudice stands in the bullseye of our particular fuzzy set. A hybrid like Gail Carriger's Soulless, by contrast, would be farther removed from the centre since the romance plot is only one of many (and probably not the most important one) in the novel. Heyer's Bath Tangle - a robin; Dorothy Dunnett's Checkmate - a penguin (or perhaps even a bat).

    If P&P is one of the prototypical examples of romance fiction, then novels with a central love story, but without a happy ending could still be regared as belonging to the set, yet would be closer to the edges.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I really can't wrap my mind around the distinction between amatory and didactic romance. How can didactic romance occur without being encased in the amatory?

    Are love affairs romances? I don't doubt that members of the same gender can love one another in much the same way that those of different genders do, but I can't convince myself that same sex love stories are also romances, but rather love affairs. One reason for this is that such unions cannot result in amalgamation, cannot achieve the "ever after" of the HEA as heterosexual romances do. I've stated before that I think ultimately romance constantly reiterates the joining of the duality which seems to permeate everything--yes/no, night/day, eternity/brevity, male/female--much as the yin/yang symbol purports to do--the mythic appeal of making duality cease to be. One can add all the trappings of romance to m/m, f/f stories, but where or how can that amalgamation occur?

    dick

    ReplyDelete
  9. And just to add to what you've said about the ending in romance fiction: In an interview I conducted with Gaelen Foley for my dissertation, she makes a similar point as AgTigress:

    "[Romance novels] show the woman re-educating the man, forgiving him, and starting a new 'world' (frequently symbolized by the birth of a baby at the end) founded on harmony and mutual respect."

    ReplyDelete
  10. "It probably wouldn't be too much of an assumption to say that for most readers, writers and critics of the romance genre Austen's Pride & Prejudice stands in the bullseye of our particular fuzzy set."

    I did think about there being one core or "bullseye" and other things being further from the centre, but the more I thought about the genre, the more it seemed to me as though the genre's like a box of the kind of chocolates I used as illustrations. The chocolates in this box all look pretty similar from the outside, since they all have a relatively rounded chocolate outer layer, and they all have a filling inside. That's the equivalent of a central love story covered with a happy ending.

    But, those central love stories can have very different flavours. Some are more like P&P, and tend towards exploring the personalities of the central characters and how those personalities are affected by love. Of course P&P has a social context in which the lovers exist, but they can't really change that context much (Wickham can be bribed but he isn't morally reformed and Mrs Bennet doesn't get less silly) and that context is not shown to be ideal. So I'd classify this as a romance "in which the focus is on the transformative power of love."

    Other romances are more like The Sheik, which seems to me to be about sexual passion/sexual fantasy with a marriage tacked on to the end to make things a tiny bit more "respectable" in the context in which it was written and published. I'd classify that as an "amatory" romance.

    Others are more like Pamela, which is extremely didactic and shows Mr B. being brought into a moral way of life. Society is perhaps somewhat improved by Pamela's change in station, but since she is putting in motion a morality derived from her own parents and Mr B.'s mother, I think it's didactic and affirms the status quo ante.

    Gaskell's North and South, and Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall seem to be much more about changing society, and that change is reflected in, and part of, the central relationship.

    Then you get to other kinds of chocolates and sweets which are more the equivalent of the penguins and bats, in that they're still sweet, or they still have chocolate, or they have a filling, but they don't have the same shape as the 4 types of chocolates in the box.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "I really can't wrap my mind around the distinction between amatory and didactic romance. How can didactic romance occur without being encased in the amatory?"

    As I understand it, when Lutz makes the distinction she's pointing out that some texts can be primarily about passion/desire so they're not about the formation of a relationship which includes friendship, duty etc as well as sexual desire. "Amatory" romances would also not be didactic in relation to social issues: they wouldn't really have much to say to the reader either about how society is, or how how it should be. In the context of the romance genre, an "amatory" romance could probably also be described as "erotica about a central couple who get a happy ending." Here's how AgTigress described erotica:

    Erotica should [...] follow the usual rules of novels in having a proper story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and believable, well-drawn characters who grow and change during the course of the story. The reader may still find the action sexually stimulating, but will also enjoy a specific narrative, not simply a sequence of generic sexual acts. ‘Erotica’ should also indicate novels in which the principal theme is the sexual relationship of the leading characters; they are about the sexual relationship(s) above all else.

    Of course, there are erotic romances which use sex and sexual relationships to explore social issues, so in that case, in my scheme, I'd classify them not as "amatory" but as didactic. Similarly, if the sex was used primarily to help explore the effect of love on the characters' psychologies/personalities, then I'd classify them as being primarily about the transformative effect of love.

    I admit that classification will always be difficult when it comes to labelling particular books. What I'm trying to do here is separate out what seem to me to be quite distinct flavours (even though some bonbons might end up mixing their flavours a little).

    ReplyDelete
  12. "I can't convince myself that same sex love stories are also romances, but rather love affairs. One reason for this is that such unions cannot result in amalgamation, cannot achieve the "ever after" of the HEA as heterosexual romances do. I've stated before that I think ultimately romance constantly reiterates the joining of the duality which seems to permeate everything--yes/no, night/day, eternity/brevity, male/female"

    It seems to me that this kind of duality is largely socially constructed and metaphoric/symbolic rather than a reflection of the reality of daily living in a relationship. In fact, it would often be pretty awkward to be truly "amalgamated" to someone else.

    And binary opposites, however tidy, tend to miss out on nuances. The "yes/no" binary, for example, leaves out "perhaps," "maybe," "I'm not sure," and "I'll think about it" and the "night/day" binary ignores dawn, dusk, and the way that daytime can actually get very dark when it's about to rain or be stormy, and the way the night can be quite bright if there's a full moon and no cloud cover.

    ReplyDelete
  13. "Romance constantly reiterates the joining of the duality which seems to permeate everything"

    And gender is the sole basis of difference between man and woman?

    I've heard some stupid objections to same-sex marriage, but this takes the cake.If you'd bothered to spend any time reading about or listening to real gay people talking about their lives, you'd realise that same-sex couples differ from and complement each other in exactly the same way as differently-sexed couples do.

    But please, do go on mansplaining to everyone why same-sex relationships are inferior to the other kind. It makes it obvious what calibre of intellect we're dealing with.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "If you'd bothered to spend any time reading about or listening to real gay people talking about their lives"

    But I'm not sure Dick is thinking in terms of "real life." I don't want to make assumptions about his thinking, but I have a feeling that Dick mentioned somewhere that he considers romance to be being fairly unrealistic. So if he's looking at the genre from that perspective, in terms of particular sets of symbolisms, his comments perhaps make a bit more sense, even though they may still not be very pleasing to those of us who find those particular binaries (or, indeed any binary oppositions), problematic.

    That said, if authors were supposed to be striving for symbolic binaries, then one would expect m/f inter-racial romances to be more popular.

    Although, now that I think about it, the black/white binary is rather overlaid on the male/female binary, in a lot of romances. Stephanie Burley, for example, has commented that

    the standard description of the "tall, dark, and handsome" hero, in distinction to the seemingly paler heroine, merits scrutiny. While "tall" usually connotes the hero's physical power, and handsomeness indicates romance's investment in the cult of the body beautiful, darkness symbolizes the hero's danger, mystery, sensuality, and otherness. (328)

    So, to conclude, (a) romance does contain some problematic symbolism and (b) I'd prefer it if we could all stay relatively polite.

    ----
    Burley, Stephanie. "Shadows & Silhouettes: The Racial Politics of Category Romance." Paradoxa 5.13-14 (2000): 324-343.

    ReplyDelete
  15. @L. Vivanco:

    When I spoke of amalgamation, I was thinking of offspring, rather than the protagonists, but even with them I think the language in the greater majority of romances suggests that kind of union. And to me, "perhaps," "maybe," etc, are efforts to bring yes/no into a kind of amalgamation.

    I'm also of the opinion that classifications which become too broad cease to be meaningful. It seems to me that the genre "romance," in an effort to be as inclusive as possible, has reached that state. Isn't that essentially the problem raised by asking what lies at the core?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Sorry. I forgot to sign the post again. The previous post is mine.

    dick

    ReplyDelete
  17. "When I spoke of amalgamation, I was thinking of offspring, rather than the protagonists"

    Oh. Well, thanks for the clarification. I've never thought of my child in those terms, or heard anyone else refer to their child like that, so it didn't occur to me that that could be what you were meaning.

    Obviously children are the result of the amalgamation of two gametes, one from each biological parent, but since each child is unique, I find it difficult to think of the child him or herself as an amalgamation of the parents.

    I'm also of the opinion that classifications which become too broad cease to be meaningful.

    In the UK the term "romantic fiction" is even broader, since it includes chick lit, tragic love stories etc. It still seems to be meaningful as far as the Romantic Novelists' Association is concerned.

    "Romance," as defined by the RWA, certainly helps readers to distinguish between various different kinds of popular fiction (mystery, horror, romance, chick lit, women's fiction, etc) so that readers have some idea of what the story is about (romantic relationships) and how they're likely to end (happily).

    ReplyDelete
  18. One reason for this is that such unions cannot result in amalgamation, cannot achieve the "ever after" of the HEA as heterosexual romances do.

    Not all heterosexual romances end with the birth of a baby or the heroine being pregnant. Indeed, at the end of Lucy Gordon's "The Italian Wife's by Sunset" the heroine is not only unable to have any children of her own, but it's also made quite clear that she will die in the not-too-distant future.

    A child is just one possible symbol for the happy union of the two protagonists. In other romances a house takes on this role, e.g. in P&P Netherfield eventually comes to stand for the world the hero & heroine have created together.

    I'm also of the opinion that classifications which become too broad cease to be meaningful.

    Narrow classifications are just as useless. The big problem with classifications is that authors, for the most, don't care about them. Instead, the keep pushing at the boundaries.

    ReplyDelete
  19. That said, I do not think that the inclusion of homosexual love stories constitutes a broading of the romance genre as long as they have a central love plot and a happy ending.

    ReplyDelete
  20. @S. Schwab:

    I think, though, that if it were possible to read and categorize romance fiction as written by most authors, the traditional idea of family--marriage with children as a result of the union--would be at least suggested in 95% or more of them. If romance fiction, has a "core," it surely resides in that constantly reiterated outline.

    That I don't think that homosexual love stories should be included in the class romance does not, in itself, make the class a narrow one, any more than excluding a bicycle from the class automobile makes that class narrow.

    And I really don't think that authors have as much lee-way as you suggest when writing a romance. The HEA alone imposes a restriction which influences everything in a book from characters to events.

    dick

    ReplyDelete
  21. the traditional idea of family--marriage with children as a result of the union--would be at least suggested in 95% or more of them. If romance fiction, has a "core," it surely resides in that constantly reiterated outline.

    The core of romance fiction is the celebration of love, not marriage. It is about finding a partner, who, to quote Austen, "in disposition and talents, would most suit [you]." If romance were solely about marriage, Elizabeth would have accepted Mr. Darcy's first proposal. Heck, she would have accepted Mr. Collins for in that case she would have eventually become the mistress of the family's estate.

    In marriage-of-convenience stories, the protagonists are either already married when the story opens or they marry shortly after. Nevertheless, their story continues because it is only when they have declared their love for each other and have overcome all barriers that hinder their love, that the prize is won and the quest is over.

    And I really don't think that authors have as much lee-way as you suggest when writing a romance. The HEA alone imposes a restriction which influences everything in a book from characters to events.

    Reader expectations in regard to the setting of the story and the race of the protagonists might impose restrictions on romance authors, but the happy ending most certainly does not. When you set out to write a romance novel (targeted at the US market), you don't set out to kill off your main protagonists or to teach your reader how sad, unjust, tragic and cruel the world is. You set out to celebrate life and love, to entertain your reader, and to make her end your book with a happy smile (and more importantly, you make yourself end your book with a happy smile, too). Authors write happy endings because that's the kind of story they like to tell.

    And yet, despite the happy ending, you can still do an awful lot of horrible things to your characters in the course of the novel if you are so inclined, and you can still touch upon serious subjects such as addiction, rape, miscarriage, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  22. @S Schwab:

    Yes, but it's love within or leading to marriage.

    Your comment that Elizabeth would have married Mr. Collins if romance were about marriage begs the question, I think, especially when referring to a novel in which examining marriage, what brings it about and what makes it important both for those involved and for society, is front and center. It's no accident, I think, that Austen examines the marriage from mistake (Mr and Mrs Bennett), the marriage of convenience (Charlotte and Mr. Collins), the marriage from necessity (Wickham and Lydia), and of course, the marriage for "affection and esteem" of Elizabeth and Darcy.

    From the opening line to the conclusion, P&P is about marriage.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Dick, I think you might like Amy M. King's Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. In it she writes the following:

    The conflation of human and vegetable reproduction in Linnaeus's botanical theory, and the fact that reproduction became the key to botanical taxonomy, implied for Linnaean botany the paramount importance of a feminized figure (a flower, a bloom); those cognate fields that shared a taxonomical impulse with Linnaean botany had a similar tendency to place the female at the center of their work. Not the least of these fields that privileged a rhetorical construction of the female was the novel. The representation of the heroine in Austen's novels depends on a taxonomic logic of generalization and individuation; even more crucially, like the corolla or bloom in Linnaeus's sexual system of classification, it is the girl's bloom around which the classical novel's courtship plot revolves. (9)

    and

    In the Linnaean botany flowers embody potential reproduction because their ephemeral appearance is the very sign of plant sexual reproduction about to happen. The novel finds in this scientific fact an apt analogue for its narration of courtship, for like the flower the “girl” in the novel is a nascent and ephemeral state: the novel of courtship takes as its subject this state, a period of time between the maturation of the girl and her marriage. Linnaean botany likewise is organized around the story of the courtships and marriages of plants, a taxonomical intertwining of natural and social worlds that conflates the workings of the plant's sexual parts with the term marriage. (12)

    But the modern romance genre isn't just about girls in bloom (who are waiting to be pollinated). Vampire romances, at least in some cases, are about beings who are dead and cannot reproduce. Of course, the world-building done by some authors does mean that some modern vampires are able to reproduce, but that certainly isn't the case for all of them. There are romances about couples who either can't, or don't want, to reproduce.

    So again, I end up returning to my initial impression, which is that there isn't one single explanation for what's at the "core" of the genre.

    ReplyDelete
  24. @L. Vivanco:
    I'm always intrigued by the paths individuals use to make a point. King's is especially intriguing...perhaps because it appears to agree with the position I espouse. I'll look "Bloom..." up. Thanks.

    And, as a matter of fact, I agree with your last point, up to a point, believing even while writing that that's one of the major problems faced by those who wish to study romance. But I also believe that the "core" I suggest fits the greatest number of romances; that those that it doesn't fit are like the sports--to use King's analogy--in the plant world, legitimized by their being anomalies; that we might readily apply the "exception proves the rule" dictum to those that it doesn't; that, for the most part, those kinds of romances prove nearly inconsequential in contrast to the majority in the long run of romance fiction.

    I think, too, that one cannot really understand derivatives of a class without a firmly delineated model of the class itself. Is it possible, for example, to see G.M. Hopkins' curtals as sonnets without knowledge of the class from which they derive? Or Meredith's less successful extended sonnets in "Modern Love"?
    And can we truly class either of these examples as sonnets, even though knowledge of the sonnet form allows us to understand their relationship?

    Without clear classifications, thought mires itself in a chaos of specifics. It seems to me more fruitful to discuss m/m, f/f stories as derivatives of the class rather than members of the class, for to include them as members obscures, just as to include Hopkins' or Meredith's "sports" obscures what the class "sonnet" is. The curtals and the extendeds have elements of the sonnet, but they are not sonnets by any stretch.

    ReplyDelete
  25. "I'll look "Bloom..." up. Thanks."

    There's a sizeable excerpt available via Google Books. My initial impression is that King makes a few generalisations about the uses of flower language in the literary texts of previous eras which may or may not be justified (I found her statements about prior uses of flower language a bit contradictory, but I suppose it might be a problem with comprehension on my part, rather than a lack of clarity on hers). In any case that's not her main focus: that's on the Linnean system of classification and the uses of the word "bloom" in 18th and 19th century marriage plots.

    "I also believe that the "core" I suggest fits the greatest number of romances"

    It wouldn't surprise me at all if that's true, given that it's only relatively recently that heterosexual couples of child-bearing age have had reliable methods of ensuring that intercourse didn't lead to reproduction, and homosexuality was either taboo or illegal. But that doesn't mean that there haven't always been romances which fit into the other, smaller, classifications, and which may now appear in larger numbers.

    I just double-checked Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, which I think might be more clearly in the comedic/social reform strand of the romance tradition, and it doesn't seem to have any description of the heroine being in "bloom," though there are mentions of flowers.

    I also did a search on E. M. Hull's The Sheik and I couldn't find any instances of "bloom" in that either. My impression of that novel is that it's in the "amatory" romance tradition.

    This could just be coincidence, but I thought it was interesting.

    Anyway, if I can conclude by leaving behind the flowers and returning to the chocolates, it seems to me that you're arguing that "romance" should only apply to peanut butter bon bons. I don't know enough about all the romances produced to be sure of this, but I'm willing to concede that most of the bon bons produced in the history of the genre have probably been peanut butter bon bons, but I think that there have always been selection boxes which also contained bon bons with other flavours. Nowadays, it seems to me, some of those flavours may be catching up on, or have overtaken, the peanut butter bon bons in popularity.

    Now, if you want to only use the word "romance" to describe peanut butter bon bons, that's up to you, but I have a feeling that other people who use the word do use it to describe a selection box of bon bons. That may be irritating for people who only like to eat peanut butter bon bons, and it may make it more difficult for those people to avoid the bon bons they don't like, but the bon bon manufacturers seem to have decided that they're going to produce selection boxes.

    There's always going to be disagreement about the definition, I think, with some people wanting it to be more narrow and others wanting it to be broader. Some people, for example, seem to feel that "romance" defined as a love story + HEA is too restrictive. Others think that category romances are so different from single titles that the genre "should be split into two – Single Title Romance and Category Romance – and treat them as separate genres."

    ReplyDelete
  26. Your comment that Elizabeth would have married Mr. Collins if romance were about marriage begs the question, I think, especially when referring to a novel in which examining marriage, what brings it about and what makes it important both for those involved and for society, is front and center.

    It's true that P&P explores the reasons that lead people to marry. IMO, it is, however, significant that Austen stresses the importance of love and respect for her central couple.

    I would also like to point that P&P can serve as an example of a romance in which the "new world" the hero and heroine build together is not embodied by a child or children, but by the house, by Pemberley itself.

    I just double-checked Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, which I think might be more clearly in the comedic/social reform strand of the romance tradition, and it doesn't seem to have any description of the heroine being in "bloom," though there are mentions of flowers.

    The famous Helstone roses! :)

    ReplyDelete
  27. @S. Schwab:

    Would you mind explaining your point about Pemberley more completely? How does Pemberly embody the "new world" and what do you mean by "new world"? In my reading, P&P is about re-establishing rather than creating something new.

    ReplyDelete
  28. @L. Vivanco:

    Well, obviously, we each start with a different definition, but yes, you're correct, I think that romance should be limited to "peanut-butter bon bons," because, like Occam's razor, it simplifies things.

    I was unaware that some wish to separate categories from single-titles. I don't see the difference myself. I've recently read a number of "categories" by Kylie Brant and have been favorably impressed by all of them, any one of which could stand as a single-title, I think. Categories have certainly proved to be a remarkably effective training field.

    ReplyDelete
  29. I was quite surprised at this question, as the answer is obviously, to me, closest to Phil's definition. What is a romance novel without love? If it is only about reproduction or celebration of the social order without love, I'd call it a family drama or general fiction. Similarly if it involved social order upheaval or not, if it doesn't include love, I don't consider it a romance.
    I wouldn't be surprised about people disagreeing over the necessity of an HEA, because I don't believe they need them - at least not the 'ever after' part. I accept (and even like) that the RWA uses that definition for romance novels, but I wouldn't say a story where a protagonist is known to die later isn't a romance.

    ReplyDelete
  30. I was quite surprised at this question, as the answer is obviously, to me, closest to Phil's definition. What is a romance novel without love? If it is only about reproduction or celebration of the social order without love, I'd call it a family drama or general fiction. Similarly if it involved social order upheaval or not, if it doesn't include love, I don't consider it a romance.

    I think there's fairly broad agreement that there has to be a central love relationship if the novel is to be in the modern romance genre, but clearly love isn't the only thing in the genre, and who falls in love, how they do so, and the outcomes of them falling in love, can vary.

    For example, one might want to ask whether the love relationships included in romances suggest that particular types of relationships are better than others and/or that certain types of people are more deserving of love than others. The longer version of the RWA definition includes this: "the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love." So does this mean that people who don't struggle and take risks are less deserving of love?

    Romance readers often mention "relating" or not relating to certain characters. So what kind of characters do we find in romances? Is there a preponderance of a particular kind of people? Bridget Fowler, for example, suggests that readers of romance valued it at least partly because of

    its reassertion of their assumptions of how things ‘ought to be’. The hero represented a positive, exemplary figure, a modern counterpart of the idealised nobleman of feudal epics. Reading the romance had a redemptive effect not dissimilar to the ritual of daily prayers. These women were not looking for art but for the fiction embodying community values, or a version of them. (138)

    In other words, the romances she refers to here are about love, but it's love placed in a didactic context which, to use my words, "reproduces an existing society and its moral order."

    Leaving aside the political/social context in which the protagonists exist, there's also the possibility that once can find different kinds of love in the central relationships in the genre. A while ago I blogged about Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love and he offers many different possibilities of types of love which could be counted as romantic:

    Companionate: Intimacy and Commitment. Some "sweet" romances, particularly in some historical periods, haven't had a lot of sexual tension or passion in them.

    Fatuous Love: Passion and Commitment. I wouldn't be surprised to find examples of this kind of love in at least some examples of "amatory" romances.

    Romantic Love: Passion and Intimacy
    (e.g. lovers who don't commit to marriage, but are clearly attracted to each other and also feel connected to each other but don't commit to the relationship in the long-term.

    Consummate Love: Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment

    My impression, then, is that the kinds of love depicted in the genre, and the contexts in which they appear, can and do differ, and to me some of these differences seem significant and widespread enough to justify discussing the possibility that there are different "cores" to the genre.

    ----
    Fowler, Bridget. The Alienated Reader: Women and Popular Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century. Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.

    ReplyDelete
  31. I see your point, and I do agree that I can see both didactic and amatory romances in the genre. As an example, there is a Regency author, Joan Wolf, who (in her Signet Regency days) wrote several romances that were quite intense and powerful, but left me uncomfortable because though the ending relationship was based on love, it was almost an obsessive love, and seemed like it could be unhealthy. I would classify that as an amatory romance. And I'm much more comfortable with romances that show love in accordance with a social order that I agree with. However, that social order isn't actually one that I think exists broadly right now (as I believe the kyriarchy is still pervasive), so I don't enjoy romances that are didactic in promoting the 'existing' social order, but those that create a new one (even if it is just in a microcosm). And I think that's repeating what you are saying, but I'm pretty sure I don't agree with dick's opinion (who I rarely agree with over the genre definition, I remember this from the AAR boards!).

    ReplyDelete
  32. I think that's repeating what you are saying

    No, I'd call it "bringing additional corroboratory evidence to the table" ;-)

    It's very reassuring to know that I'm not alone in seeing these differences between romances and feeling that they make a difference to the reading experience.

    I'm pretty sure I don't agree with dick's opinion (who I rarely agree with over the genre definition, I remember this from the AAR boards!).

    Yes, I've disagreed with Dick repeatedly over at AAR too, as well as disagreeing with him here. But I'm glad to have a clearer idea of what he means when he uses the term "romance," because I think that makes it easier for me to understand his arguments better, even if I still don't agree with them.

    ReplyDelete