Germaine Greer states of the romance hero that "The traits invented for him have been invented by women cherishing the chains of their bondage" (180). The word "bondage" here was almost certainly intended to mean "the state of being a slave" (OED) but it could perhaps equally well be read as implying a connection between the romance genre and the "sexual practice that involves the tying up or restraining of one partner" (OED). If the latter meaning was implied, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time that BDSM themes had been detected in the genre.
Ethel M. Dell was a successful romance author whose first novel was published in 1912. In 1922
A Bookman feature on the [...] novels of Ethel M. Dell argued that 'the less intelligent and less sensitive girl dreams of an ardent lover and gets a humdrum fellow who makes love without spirit and without inventiveness. To such a girl the Dell hero is a whiff of romance. She responds to him with a sort of masochistic delight.' (Melman 45-46)Published in 1919, E. M. Hull's The Sheik is one of the most famous of the early 20th-century romance novels;
The Literary Review described the book as 'a poisonously salacious piece' and added that Diana Mayo, the heroine, was 'a sister under the skin of [the Marquis De Sade's] Justine.' (Melman 90)Billie Melman adds that
One of the bawdiest burlesques [of The Sheik] [...] the anonymous Young Men out of Love (1928), [...] relates, at great length, the abduction and rape of Ali Bim-Seid-Amarcujian by a sex-starved débutante, a comic reversal of the roles of abductor and abducted. [...] The parody is crude and its implication overt: feminine relish in masochism is universal. And, the more emancipated and modern a woman is, the greater her desire to be humiliated and violated. This assumption is quite explicit in the noisy publicity campaign for Valentino's films: 'Shriek or the Sheik will strike you' cried street placards in New York and all over America. (93)Elizabeth Gargano's analysis of the novel implies that in it sadism is linked to masculinity:
For Hull, as primitive cruelties and brutalities have been "refined" out of the character of the civilized European, erotic power too has diminished. Repeatedly, The Sheik tests the hypothesis that cruelty, passion, and potency are inextricably linked in the psyche. Thus the novel's sadomasochism is not simply an over-the-top extravagance, a flamboyant excess growing out of an erotic escapist daydream. Instead, the sadomasochistic fantasies of rape and attempted suicide that frame the narrative are at the core of the project. (184)If masculinity has been defined as tending towards the sadistic while femininity has been associated with the masochistic, this may explain the persistence of this type of power dynamic in romantic fiction. Certainly Alison Assiter seems to imply that the romance heroines of the 1980s have a masochistic streak. In "Romance Fiction: Porn for Women?" she suggests that porn
is the representation of the eroticisation of relations of power between the sexes [...]. Thus, what is wrong with porn is that it reinforces men's desire to treat women as 'objects' or at least as a means of satisfying of their desire. (103)She asserts that
porn for women could not, as some feminists have suggested it might, involve a reversal of the customary male/female roles. Though there are cases where this happens, fantasising 'crushing' a man under her would be, for most women, too risqué, too immoral, too far removed from her experience. (106)In her opinion romances are porn for women "because they paint a picture of the woman wanting nothing so much as to be desired; they present an image of the woman as passive, responding" (106). And since "porn reinforces the subordination of women, in reading these works women are contributing to the reproduction of their oppression" (101).
What I think Assiter is doing is using "porn" as a shorthand term to refer to any sexual/sensual work of fiction which "reinforces the subordination of women." Sarah, AgTigress and I have all written posts explaining why we don't think it makes sense to classify romance as "porn" so I don't see much point in repeating those arguments. What's really at stake here is not whether romance is "porn" but whether
(a) fiction affects readers' attitudes and behaviours once they close the pages of their books
(b) romance heroines are presented as "passive, responding."
(c) there is no place in the genre for fantasies of a woman "fantasising 'crushing' a man under her."
As far as (a) is concerned, there does seem to be some evidence to support the idea that readers may be influenced or affected by their reading. If this is the case then it's possible that reading could have both negative and positive effects. As for (b), I think it would be fairly easy to find examples of romance heroines who are not at all passive sexually but, nonetheless, it has to be acknowledged that in m/f romances a lot of heroines but almost no heroes have been in receipt of "punishing" kisses and it has tended to be heroines who are sexually awakened by their heroes rather than vice versa. A sample of the dynamic is provided by Assiter:
'She willingly let his lips dominate hers for as long as he choose [sic]' (Strange Bedfellow, p. 164). [...] In case anyone thinks that this might be a phenomenon brought in by the relaxation of sexual taboos in the late sixties and early seventies, here is Barbara Cartland, writing in 1961: 'He crushed her to him and his lips found hers. He kissed her brutally with a violence which seemed to force the very life from between her lips' (The Runaway Star). (105)It's (c) which most interests me, however, because it runs counter to the testimony of romance authors such as Daphne Clair:
Romantic heroes are arrogant autocrats and macho males, not because women are masochists but for the same reason that 007's enemies possess all that unlikely technology. Victory over a weak and ineffectual adversary is not worth much. But when a woman has a big, tough, powerful male on his knees and begging her to marry him, that's a trophy worth having! (Clair 71)That kind of masculine submission may seem rather more metaphorical than the punishing kisses or even rapes inflicted on romance heroines but heroes aren't always physically dominant. In the film The Son of the Sheik (1926), "based on Hull's book Sons of the Sheik but conflating the two "sons" in one - Valentino, who also played his own father in the film [...] adds elements of masochism to the already heady erotic brew" (Garber 310):
In the famous torture scene Valentino, naked to his waist and strung up by the arms to a board, is beaten by two sadistic Germans. Apparently the audience's hysteria knew no bounds. (Melman 103)
If would seem that in Hull's work, at least, physical dominance of the heroine by the hero has its counterpoint in a scene in which the hero is dominated and tortured. Admittedly the son of the sheik isn't tortured by his beloved, but that may partly be a consequence of the fact that overt female dominance/sadism would "involve a reversal of the customary male/female roles." One can, however, find popular romances in which the heroine shoots her hero (Heyer's Devil's Cub and Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels) or has him tied up (Heyer's Faro's Daughter springs to mind).In some romances one can perhaps discern hurt/comfort elements, with the hero as the protagonist who has been hurt. Hurt/comfort has been defined as
a fan fiction genre that involves the physical pain or emotional distress of one character, who is cared for by another character. The injury, sickness or other kind of hurt allows an exploration of the characters and their relationship. [...] Depending on the fandom and/or the author, H/C stories may also encompass BDSM elements to varying degrees. (Fanlore)So what do you think? Are there elements of female dominance in the genre which have escaped the notice of critics such as Assiter and Greer?
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- Assiter, Alison. "Romance Fiction: Porn for Women?" Perspectives on Pornography: Sexuality in Film and Literature. Ed. Gary Day and Clive Bloom. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1988. 101-109.
- Clair, Daphne. "Sweet Subversions." Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. Ed. Jayne Ann Krentz. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992. 61-71.
- Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. 1992. New York: Routledge, 1997.
- Gargano, Elizabeth. "'English Sheiks' and Arab Stereotypes: E. M. Hull, T. E. Lawrence, and the Imperial Masquerade." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 48.2 (2006): 171-86.
- Greer, Germaine. The Female Eunuch. 1970. London: Paladin, 1971.
- Melman, Billie. Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1988.
Anyone who believes fiction has no power to affect the reader's life after "The End" has obviously never heard of Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, or Atlas Shrugged. For starters.
ReplyDeleteAs far as female "dominance," there's a marvelous scene toward the end of Susannah Leigh's "Winter Fire" (Signet, 1978) that I think qualifies beautifully.
But I think there is also an element of, for lack of a better term, vicarious crushing beneath the bootheel, which is when the hero is captured/tortured/shot/whatever by the villain as a result of actions he has taken out of love/lust for the heroine that he would not have taken had it not been for his love of or lust for her.
Just a thought.
I think there is also an element of, for lack of a better term, vicarious crushing beneath the bootheel, which is when the hero is captured/tortured/shot/whatever by the villain as a result of actions he has taken out of love/lust for the heroine that he would not have taken had it not been for his love of or lust for her.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly the scenario in The Son of the Sheik. I do think that it can be read as "vicarious crushing" because although the heroine isn't directly responsible, the viewers seemed to get pleasure from the torture of the hero. At least, I'm assuming that's what's meant by "the audience's hysteria knew no bounds." Here's how Miriam Hansen describes it:
the powerful image of him crucified, humiliated, and whipped earlier on in the film [...], erroneously ascribed to Yasmin's authorship and not even witnessed by her, is primarily designed for the benefit of the spectator. No doubt there remains an asymmetry in the sadomasochistic role reversal on the diegetic level: a female character can assume an active part only at the price of being marked as a vamp; sadistic pleasure is specularized, reserved for the woman in front of the screen. (21)
But, the sadistic pleasure is there "for the woman in front of the screen" and so I wondered a similar process might be at work in some romance novels. If "fantasising 'crushing' a man under her would be, for most women, too risqué, too immoral," that doesn't rule out the possibility that women readers, like the female viewers of The Son of the Sheik could well be getting "vicarious crushing" fantasies when third parties, rather than the heroine herself, are responsible for the crushing.
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Hansen, Miriam. "Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship." Cinema Journal 25.4 (1986): 6-32.
Off the top of my head at 5:00 a.m. so I'm not sure I'm entirely responsible for what I'm writing, and I could be totally wrong anyway. And, I can only speak for myself because I've not done a survey of other readers or writers, and I've never read The Sheik or seen the films, but it seems logical to me that
ReplyDelete1. If, as Krentz asserts, the romance novel as we know it is a morality tale, then any torture/etc. the hero experiences must be deserved, either because he has done something to harm the heroine or because he has to prove himself worthy. I would tend to think, therefore, that the "sadistic pleasure" is more likely satisfaction that the bastard is getting his due.
2. Writers tend to project their personal views and experiences into their work (think Beecher Stowe, Sinclair, Rand again) and if most of the writers are women and have no first-hand experience of "crushing" but probably do have first-hand experience of "being crushed" even if only metaphorically (or vicariously), then it stands to reason their writing would reflect that.
I know when I used to talk to school kids about the value and pleasure of writing, one of the things I mentioned was that one could safely get back at or even with people one couldn't touch in real life. Certainly I did it in my writing. I tend to have too much kindness and sympathy even for the villain and would be reluctant to finish him/her off, but by imagining he/she was someone I had a grudge against, the crushing was possible -- and fun!
3. Most reading-for-entertainment involves some kind of vicarious pleasure, whether it's travel to somewhere exotic and interesting, engaging in dangerous activities without risk, glamorous clothes, opulent homes, etc., etc., etc., to say nothing of the wild and wonderful sex. But I'm not sure it's "sadistic," which to me implies there is sexual pleasure in inflicting undeserved pain on someone who has no recourse. Like rape, it seems more an exercise of power than anything else. I could be wrong in that definition, but I don't think I'm wrong in the assessment of what the individual reader gets out of it, which is not so much sadistic pleasure as satisfaction that some kind of moral justice is being done.
3a. Reading is a very different activity from movie-going, and it could be that there was a certain mob mentality at work in the theatres. I wasn't there, so I don't know.
Anyway, that's my 5 a.m. theory.
Just wanted to add, regarding the "sadistic" element -- which I think is sort of the focus of this discussion:
ReplyDeleteTO ME, and again I could be totally wrong on this, the sadistic element involves much more the pleasure derived from the act itself than from who or what the victim is, other than the victim being victimized. And I'm not sure I'm expressing that very well. In other words, the victim loses all individuality and becomes merely The Victim, with the sadist deriving pleasure much more from the victimizing and the intensity/brutality of the victimizing than from any particular relationship with the victim. There may be SOME selectivity in the choice of victim, but that victim is more representative of something or someone else than being an individual in and of him/herself.
On the other hand, the enjoyment that comes from the kind of "vicarious crushing" being discussed here seems to derive specifically from the identity of the victim. Gratuitous violence/torture/suffering would not elicit the same response at all; there might even be revulsion and disgust. But when the suffering is validated by the end result, it is cheered.
Not sure that makes any more sense, but it's now 7 a.m. and my head is a bit clearer.
If, as Krentz asserts, the romance novel as we know it is a morality tale, then any torture/etc. the hero experiences must be deserved, either because he has done something to harm the heroine or because he has to prove himself worthy.
ReplyDeleteThere's a big difference between those two things, though, and also sometimes the bad things happen because they set the plot in motion, or they form part of the protagonists' backstory.
I don't remember what Krentz had to say about this, but I do remember that 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.
I'm not sure it's "sadistic," which to me implies there is sexual pleasure in inflicting undeserved pain on someone who has no recourse.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of sadism and masochism in the context of what I've read about BDSM. I wish Sarah Frantz weren't so busy at the moment, because this is a subject she's an authority in and about which I know extremely little, but to quote from the description of the description of Safe, Sane, Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism:
Psychological and medical perspectives on sadomasochism (SM) have historically been concerned with understanding it as a form of psychopathology. In the past (but still often today) studies of SM have been concerned with extreme and most often non-consensual acts. More recently, however, there has been growing interest in exploring the meaning of sadomasochism in non-pathological ways.
I could be wrong in that definition, but I don't think I'm wrong in the assessment of what the individual reader gets out of it, which is not so much sadistic pleasure as satisfaction that some kind of moral justice is being done.
ReplyDeleteBut as far as I can tell, in The Son of the Sheik there is no moral justice in the torture inflicted on the hero, and similarly there often wasn't any justice when 1970s romance heroines got raped. The presence of those rapes is often explained in terms of it being a sexual fantasy for the reader; I've never seen anyone try to explain them as "some kind of moral justice."
So if some readers can get sexual pleasure from reading about submissive heroines who are dominated by their heroes, isn't it logical that there might also be some readers who get sexual pleasure from reading about heroes being dominated?
My apologies, Laura, for not getting back to you sooner. My life gets hectic at times.
ReplyDeleteI won't argue the Krentz quasi-quote or the definition of "morality tale" because what I meant, and obviously didn't articulate well, was that I think the romance novel as it's been constructed since, say, 1960 (and that's an arbitrary date sort of) is at least a kind of fertility myth, a parable, a paradigm of how the human species is to be continued. In order for the hero to deserve the heroine, he must prove his worth. And yes, I personally think that the emphasis/focus on the heroine as character, as protagonist, as author, and as reader, places the heroine as innately worthy, even if she's TSTL, and it's the hero who must prove himself. This is in contrast to a patriarchal model in which the heroine cannot, because of her femaleness, "prove" herself; she most simply be chosen and thereby annointed as worthy on the approval/say-so of the male.
Okay, getting that out of the way --
As far as (gratuitous) torture of the hero being equivalent in some way to the "gratuitous" rape of the heroine, I don't see it that way at all. Again, I could be wrong. The rape of the heroine, even if it's by the hero, seems to me to further establish her as innocent and therefore innately worthy. She is the victim, she is the innocent, she is not responsible for the wrong done to her. It's not a matter of justice, but rather of reinforcing the INjustice of her status as woman. Again, I know I'm not making myself particularly clear, but I'm trying.
*IF* the hero has committed an injustice against the heroine -- such as raping her, or abandoning her, or seducing her or whatever -- and he is then tortured or shot or somehow punished by a third party, then he is being redeemed through that torture to become worthy of the heroine. He learns his lesson, is "crushed" beneath the bootheel of a surrogate (even if unknowing or unintentional) of the heroine. I don't think that is sado-masochistic in and of itself.
Are there readers who get sexual pleasure from such scenes? Oh, I'm sure there are. Baseball bats are most often used to play baseball but sometimes they're used to commit murder, too. And there are probably readers who get excited reading about little girls petting their dogs.
A scene of the heroine being raped, however, is overtly sexual, and it is described in sexual terms, often in quasi-romantic terms, especially if the rapist is (ultimately) the hero and the heroine is won over by his sexual prowess so that she "enjoys" the rape. I don't think a scene in which the hero is tortured is generally described in sexual terms, or romantic terms, and I don't think the hero ends up experiencing sexual pleasure from it.
But I haven't read The Sheik or seen the movies so I can't comment on the specifics. I can only offer my opinion on the concept in the context of the romance novel as I've known it for the past 50 or so years.
I don't think a scene in which the hero is tortured is generally described in sexual terms, or romantic terms
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm suggesting that if there were any sadistic tendencies on the part of romance readers and authors, it wouldn't generally tend to be expressed in very explicit ways. Given the existing gender stereotypes it's a lot easier to cater to women with submissive and/or masochistic desires than to women with dominant and/or sadistic ones.
The hurt/comfort dynamic, though, is perhaps more obvious, because it's seen as entirely acceptable for a woman to enjoy caring for people. It can, however, sometimes develop what seem to me to be BDSM subtexts. Here's an example of the kind of thing I had in mind. The hero has been beaten up and the heroine is tending to his bruises:
Rachel was sure that she must be a thoroughly wanton woman, for as she looked at his naked chest, her mind kept turning to lustful thoughts. He was hurt, yet all she could think of was how it felt to touch his skin, how much she wanted to stroke her hands across his chest, to bend down and kiss the smooth flesh.
She glanced up at his face. His eyes were closed, lashes fanning his cheeks, giving him a vulnerable look that somehow stirred her desires even more. (Camp 351, emphasis added)
Maybe not sadism, as there isn't any indication here that the bruises themselves are something she finds a turn-on, but his vulnerability/submission is something which arouses her.
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Camp, Candace. Secrets of the Heart. Richmond, Surrey: Mills & Boon, 2005.