tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post45748249364494609..comments2024-03-26T01:10:13.720+00:00Comments on Teach Me Tonight: Martyrs and Helen Hackett's Women and Romance Fiction in the English RenaissanceE. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-33863657101044458592008-10-01T09:59:00.000+01:002008-10-01T09:59:00.000+01:00Thanks for the list, Laura. I read the one at SBT...Thanks for the list, Laura. I read the one at SBTB. Definitely not my cup of tea!talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-34514192011549660072008-10-01T09:37:00.000+01:002008-10-01T09:37:00.000+01:00Sandra, indeed, we should not forget the dragons. ...<I>Sandra, indeed, we should not forget the dragons. They're almost as useful as unicorns in determining that a woman is a maiden, and they have the added benefit of ensuring that she's a maiden in distress.</I><BR/><BR/>Even more importantly, dragons are perfect for proving that a man is a real hero. That's why so many dragons are slain in medieval romances.<BR/><BR/><I>Dragons started getting a better deal earlier, I think. Sandra knows vastly more about that than I do.</I><BR/><BR/>Teehee.<BR/><BR/><I>I'm rather fond of Kenneth Grahame's 1898 The Reluctant Dragon.</I><BR/><BR/>Grahame's reluctant dragon is generally taken to have been the first "tamed" dragon in (fantasy) literature. And of course, I've included an analysis of Grahame's story in my dissertation.<BR/><BR/><I>Sandra, have you read any George MacDonald?</I><BR/><BR/>Tal, I read <I>Lilith</I> ages ago. But it was a German translation and I didn't like it all that much. I'm currently catching up with English fairy and folk tales and MacDonald is on my list of TBR authors.Sandra Schwabhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15496019392789508611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-16009004947011808712008-10-01T09:31:00.000+01:002008-10-01T09:31:00.000+01:00Tal, Claiming the Courtesan seemed to provoke very...Tal, <I>Claiming the Courtesan</I> seemed to provoke very strong reactions one way or another, so what constitutes a "good review" will depend on your opinion of the book, but here are some:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/03/30/claiming-the-courtesan-by-anna-campbell/" REL="nofollow">Janet at Dear Author</A> gave it a B-<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://karenknowsbest.com/2008/09/25/azteclady-does-anna-campbells-claiming-the-courtesan" REL="nofollow">AztecLady at Karen Knows Best</A> gave it 7 out of 10<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://rosario.blogspot.com/2007/04/claiming-courtesan-by-anna-campbell.html" REL="nofollow">Rosario</A> gave it a C+<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/05/09/claiming-the-courtesan-by-anna-campbell-2/" REL="nofollow">Janine at Dear Author</A> gave it a C<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/claiming_the_courtesan_by_anna_campbell/" REL="nofollow">Sarah at SBTB</A> gave it a C-<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=6076" REL="nofollow">Sandy Coleman at AAR</A> gave it a DLaura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-53626550453340582012008-10-01T01:44:00.000+01:002008-10-01T01:44:00.000+01:00Out of place comment: In the earlier discussion o...Out of place comment: In the earlier discussion on marriage vows, I compared the relationship between Alan Shore and Denny Crane on BOSTON LEGAL to a romantic relationship, except that there's no sexual element.<BR/><BR/>Well, last night they actually took vows!talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-42340642820174569662008-10-01T01:42:00.000+01:002008-10-01T01:42:00.000+01:00Laura, you really should read them in sequence. T...Laura, you really should read them in sequence. There is a two-volume omnibus (two books in each volume); I got it from the Mystery Guild and I don't know if it's a club special edition or if it's published in a regular commercial edition.<BR/><BR/>Can someone point me to a good review of CLAIMING THE COURTESAN? I keep running across mentions of it.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-45727540350574507262008-09-30T10:32:00.000+01:002008-09-30T10:32:00.000+01:00Probably more about the books than you really want...<I>Probably more about the books than you really wanted to know, but it shows what can be done.</I><BR/><BR/>No, it was very helpful. I've got <I>Gaudy Night</I> in my TBR pile and although I'm sure I've read a Wimsey novel a long time ago (one in which the pair of them were married, so maybe one of the Walsh ones) I didn't know the details about which books contained the Harriet-Peter love story.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-55004103779140203702008-09-30T07:26:00.000+01:002008-09-30T07:26:00.000+01:00I suspect I'm at the "less can be more" end of the...<I>I suspect I'm at the "less can be more" end of the spectrum with regards to character arcs because although I know some people can have conversion experiences which radically change their personalities, my general experience is that in general people change gradually. That means that a character arc which goes from "L" to "M" in the course of a few weeks or months is likely to be a lot more pleasing (because more convincing) to me than one which has the character arc going from "A" to "M" in the space of a few days. </I><BR/><BR/>I agree that big changes that happen fast are unconvincing. Sometimes I get quite frustrated when I feel the hero and heroine are rushing to get married. I felt that way about Crusie's <I>Anyone But You</I>, actually. Though the book was charming in many ways, I couldn't believe the recently divorced heroine would feel ready to marry again after knowing the hero what seemed like a very short time. Since they didn't want children, it seemed inexplicable to me that they wouldn't move in together first and try living together for a while before marrying.<BR/><BR/>IMO in order to be convincing, big changes can't happen overnight, and I also think that it helps a lot if the character is already at a crossroads when the book begins. An author really has to lay a lot of groundwork to make a big arc convincing, and it takes a lot of skill to pull it off. I don't mean to imply otherwise. <BR/><BR/>When I read <I>Claiming the Courtesan</I>, for example, I was not convinced by the hero's reformation or by the heroine's forgiveness. And I can think of many other such examples of books that didn't work for me.<BR/>But in the rare event that an author is skilled enough to make a big transformation convincing to me, there is almost nothing that makes me happier as a reader.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-10969755425463144522008-09-30T05:44:00.000+01:002008-09-30T05:44:00.000+01:00Ooops! The Wimsey-Vane love affair actually runs ...Ooops! The Wimsey-Vane love affair actually runs through FOUR books! There are a few other books in that span, but they don't involve Harriet.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-33880131093383540482008-09-30T05:40:00.000+01:002008-09-30T05:40:00.000+01:00I'd love to see the links. If you post them on my...I'd love to see the links. If you post them on my blog, I'll copy them. I've seen a bit of stuff online, but I don't think it was fanfic, it was annotations of some of the references.<BR/><BR/>There's some awfully good Laurie R. King fanfic around, too. I even wrote some myself!talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-45796249919340899762008-09-30T05:20:00.000+01:002008-09-30T05:20:00.000+01:00talpianna, that was a great description of the Pet...talpianna, that was a great description of the Peter/Harriet books! That series is the ideal of slow, psychologically layered and gorgeously done romance to which I compare Romance with a capital R, perhaps unfairly. I don't know if you're aware but, in addition to the published sequels, there's some fanfic online that's quite good, very in character and smoothly written. It's sated my need for more written in their storyverse; if you're curious, I'd love to send you the links.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-68507199878971921482008-09-30T04:47:00.000+01:002008-09-30T04:47:00.000+01:00I think that two of the best developing love stori...I think that two of the best developing love stories in fiction are in series, which allows for both the movement from A to M (and beyond) over the arc of the series and for the movement from M to N within one volume.<BR/><BR/>The first is that between Eve Dallas and Roarke in the IN DEATH series by Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb. There are about two dozen volumes and counting so far, and I know you haven't read them, Laura, so I won't discuss them here.<BR/><BR/>The other is that between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, over the course of six books. In STRONG POISON, they meet when Wimsey sees her in court about to be convicted of the murder of her lover, and falls in love with her. He gets her off, of course; but she's so burned out by her experience with the late Philip Boyes that she dismisses his proposal. "I'll live with you, but I won't marry you"--a statement she later characterizes as "throwing myself to you like a bone." Here, she is the helpless victim and he is the rescuing hero, and they both hate it.<BR/><BR/>In HAVE HIS CARCASE (a British wordplay on <I>habeas corpus),</I> Harriet's career has become quite profitable, thanks to her notoriety, and she is taking a walking-tour vacation. She finds a dead body near a seaside resort; but the evidence and her observations make it seem impossible. Wimsey shows up when it gets into the papers; and they "detect in tandem," as equal partners in crime-solving but still quarreling on a personal basis because of Harriet's tetchiness, though she comes to appreciate Wimsey not just as a brilliant detective but as a man who respects her right to be her own woman.<BR/><BR/>Most of GAUDY NIGHT is taken up by Harriet's return to her Oxford college, mainly because she's been asked by the Dean to find the nasty poison pen who's been harassing students and faculty alike. Although she's developed strong feelings for Wimsey, she finds the celibate scholary life of an Oxford don very appealing. Of course Peter shows up, and for once she gets a glimpse of HIS dark side, much of which stems from his horrific experiences in the Great War. Here she is a bit more on her home ground than he is, but "Wimsey of Balliol" can hold his own here as well. He has made a hobby of proposing to her semi-seriously; but one cannot jest about such things at Oxford. At the end he proposes to her in a punt--in Latin--and she accepts in the same language. <BR/><BR/>In BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON, which Sayers subtitled "A Love Story with Detective Interruptions," they find the corpse of the previous owner in the cellar of their newly-purchased honeymoon home, a Tudor farmhouse. There is a tension between their working together to solve the crime, enjoying it thoroughly, and the rift that develops when the clues appear to point to someone that Harriet sympathizes with and wants to protect. At the end, Wimsey is very much distressed (as he always is) at the hanging of the murderer, even though he's guilty as sin and killed for totally venal motives); it is Harriet who rescues him emotionally. <BR/><BR/>I do wish there was more. There are two further short stories, in one of which Harriet doesn't appear because she's just given birth to their first son; but in "Talboys" we see the Wimseys at home with their three sons and a very unwelcome houseguest.<BR/><BR/>There are a couple more novels, set right before and during the war. The first one is completed by Jill Paton Walsh from an unfinished MS by Sayers; Walsh wrote the second one pretty much on her own. Not much relationship development, though in the first one there's some fun stuff about Harriet adjusting to being a member of a noble family. Peter barely pops in in the second book, as he's off on some military intelligence mission and Harriet is at Talboys with the children in order to avoid the Blitz.<BR/><BR/>Probably more about the books than you really wanted to know, but it shows what can be done.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-4915060575570897842008-09-29T23:09:00.000+01:002008-09-29T23:09:00.000+01:00Well, yes, it would be odd if the characters didn'...Well, yes, it would be odd if the characters didn't respond to an external challenge by thinking about it and changing in some way. I can't imagine many people remain entirely unchanged by their experiences. I just think that some romances involve far more conflict between the hero and heroine, whereas other romances are much more about the hero and heroine coming together (and possibly having some minor conflict) as they try to solve an external problem/overcome external obstacles.<BR/><BR/><I>I don't think I am alone in feeling that a character's an emotional journey, in which he or she comes to greater maturity or insight than they had in the beginning, adds richness to a narrative.</I><BR/><BR/>I suspect I'm at the "less can be more" end of the spectrum with regards to character arcs because although I know some people can have conversion experiences which radically change their personalities, my general experience is that in general people change gradually. That means that a character arc which goes from "L" to "M" in the course of a few weeks or months is likely to be a lot more pleasing (because more convincing) to me than one which has the character arc going from "A" to "M" in the space of a few days.<BR/><BR/>That's not to say that I can't intellectually appreciate big conflicts between heroes and heroines, or huge character arcs which take place in very short spaces of time, but they're probably never going to be the ones I respond to most emotionally.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-26637788302459272592008-09-29T22:25:00.000+01:002008-09-29T22:25:00.000+01:00Obviously an author can't write a romance about ch...<I>Obviously an author can't write a romance about characters who are already in a happy romantic relationship with each other, but I don't see why one couldn't have healthy, relatively well-adjusted people who are made temporarily unhappy by what they think is unrequited love, until they achieve their HEA. I suppose one does need some conflict, but I don't see why it can't be external to the couple e.g. they grow closer together as they solve a mystery/fight crime etc. And just being in love and unsure of the other person can create quite a lot of minor misunderstandings and complications.<BR/><BR/>Heyer's The Nonesuch is about two healthy, nice, polite people who fall in love, they take a while to get to know each other and it's mainly minor misunderstandings that keep them apart. Maybe you'd find that boring, but I rather enjoyed it. </I><BR/><BR/>Actually I enjoyed <I>The Nonesuch</I> very much, but I think Heyer is a master. There is some bite and even cynicism to Heyer's sense of humor, which goes a long way toward keeping her books from getting too sappy or sugary for my taste.<BR/><BR/>Still, though, as much as I enjoyed <I>The Nonesuch</I>, I liked <I>Frederica</I> even better, partly because the hero of that book had a deeper character arc and some real growing to do over the course of the story.<BR/><BR/>I don't think I am alone in feeling that a character's an emotional journey, in which he or she comes to greater maturity or insight than they had in the beginning, adds richness to a narrative.<BR/><BR/>For me, books that are based purely on external conflicts (and I don't think <I>The Nonesuch</I> is one -- there is some internal conflict there in the characters' fears and insecurities IIRC) are a lot less engaging, because when a conflict is purely external it (A) doesn't feel very realistic to me, since real people invariably face conflicts and obstacles that are situations in their minds and hearts as well as conflicts and obstacles that are purely exterior, (B) the conflict that is purely exterior often seems contrived, since in real life interfering villains just don't crop up that often, and (C) that type of conflict by itself often seems so easy to resolve that I wonder why I should keep turning the pages.<BR/><BR/>I am hard put to think of a single good book in which the characters didn't have an internal conflict -- that is, didn't feel pulled in at least two different directions at some point in the story. IMO it is a human characteristic, something every single human being experiences, and characters who don't experience it seem flat and one-dimensional to me.<BR/><BR/><I>Austen's Northanger Abbey is about two people who are basically happy and healthy, and the obstacle is an external one. Again, I didn't find it at all boring.</I><BR/><BR/>I haven't read <I>Northanger Abbey</I>, so I'm really not qualified to comment. But just from taking a quick look at the entry on it in Wikipedia, I see both "The conflicts of marriage for love and marriage for property" and "The maturation of the young into skeptical adulthood, the loss of imagination, innocence and good faith" listed as major themes, and that makes me suspect I would find some internal conflict in the novel if I were to read it. A conflict between one's perception of the world and the reality of what the world actually is is also internal to the character, IMO, and implies a flawed worldview that could lead to relationship problems and other problems as well.<BR/><BR/><I>I suspect it comes down to personal tastes. Some people seem to like a lot more conflict that others and/or they prefer romances with much more conflict between the main characters.</I><BR/><BR/>I'm sure there's some truth to that but I also feel strongly that the un-conflicted human being has yet to be born, and therefore there is no such thing as a relationship (whether romantic or otherwise) in which human flaws don't play a role.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-63619025883935323392008-09-28T03:32:00.000+01:002008-09-28T03:32:00.000+01:00The link doesn't work properly. Try this one:http...The link doesn't work properly. Try this one:<BR/><BR/>http://tinyurl.com/4sc5owtalpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-14305615174504620772008-09-28T03:28:00.000+01:002008-09-28T03:28:00.000+01:00Laura, there's also a ballad called "The Seven Joy...Laura, there's also a ballad called "The Seven Joys of Mary": I have a wonderful version from Kentucky sung by Salli Terri. This is the closest to that version I could find online:<BR/><BR/>http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiSEVNJOY2;ttSEVNJOY2.html<BR/><BR/><I>Romance heroines don't tend to get angelic character references, but there's not infrequently a revelation from someone which makes the previously angry hero, who's sure of the heroine's lack of chastity, change his mind.</I><BR/><BR/>That's the sort of thing I was thinking of when I mentioned that modern romances sometimes partake of the element of the marvelous found in medieval romance--unlikely revelations. The hero just happens to overhear something, or someone repents of his/her lies, or a lost letter is discovered. In one romance, the hero is angry at his pregnant wife because he's found a draft of a letter announcing her pregnancy that isn't addressed to HIM. In fact, it isn't addressed to anybody, because she couldn't figure out how to start it; but he immediately leaps to the conclusion that someone else is the father. (Incidentally, she never sent it because it wasn't true, but a trick she decided not to use.)<BR/><BR/>Eventually he remembers that when he married her out of hand, she had wanted eight months to prepare for the wedding properly. He figures even she wasn't naive enough to think that if she was really pregnant, she'd wouldn't be showing at that point.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-47920143805061647772008-09-27T23:29:00.000+01:002008-09-27T23:29:00.000+01:00the Good Woman/Bad Woman dichotomy, we've talked a...<I>the Good Woman/Bad Woman dichotomy, we've talked about it here before, most recently when I brought up the Angel Gabriel greeting Mary with Ave as a reversal of Eva, which you then proceeded to expand upon.</I><BR/><BR/>In the particular context of martyrdom/female suffering, it's probably worth noting that Mary suffered a lot too, and there's a recognised list of the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrows_of_the_Virgin" REL="nofollow">Seven Sorrows of the Virgin</A>. She also had what might, in the context of the romance genre, be thought of as a secret baby, and the pregnancy led to suspicions about her virtue: <BR/><BR/><I>When [...] Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child [...]. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.<BR/>But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him [...] saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife</I> (Matthew 1: 18-20)<BR/><BR/>And so Mary's name was cleared. Romance heroines don't tend to get angelic character references, but there's not infrequently a revelation from someone which makes the previously angry hero, who's sure of the heroine's lack of chastity, change his mind.<BR/><BR/><I>In the fantasies I've been reading lately, the dragons are as likely as not to be the heroes.</I><BR/><BR/>In fiction there's recently been a lot of reclaiming of traditionally evil/dangerous beings. Vampires, werewolves and even demons are now often depicted as sexy creatures who can be heroes (and sometimes heroines). Dragons started getting a better deal earlier, I think. Sandra knows vastly more about that than I do.<BR/><BR/>I'm rather fond of Kenneth Grahame's 1898 <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reluctant_Dragon" REL="nofollow"><I>The Reluctant Dragon</I></A>.<BR/><BR/><I>one in which a dragon and a female knight switched bodies so that the former dragon could marry the princess and the former knight could marry another dragon. (In case that's unclear, both dragons were male.)</I><BR/><BR/>That would be [anyone who doesn't want to be "spoiled" should avert their eyes at this point, and I'll just give the title but not the full name of the author] <I>One Good Knight</I>. I liked that one too.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-71202421929572483612008-09-27T05:03:00.000+01:002008-09-27T05:03:00.000+01:00Sandra, have you read any George MacDonald? He wa...Sandra, have you read any George MacDonald? He was a major influence on C.S. Lewis, and two of his fairy tales, <B>At the Back of the North Wind</B> and <B>The Princess and Curdie,</B> are still quite famous, though the first is not one of my favorites. I would particularly recommend, for similarities to what you're talking about, his <B>Collected Fairy Tales,</B> especially the novella-length "The Golden Key"; and his adult fantasies <B>Phantastes</B> and <B>Lilith.</B><BR/><BR/>I have a fine recording of Mahler's setting of <B><I>Des Knaben Wunderhorn.</I></B> I also recommend the mystery novel <B>House of Green Turf</B> by Ellis Peters, which uses the song cycle both thematically and as a plot device. It's one of my favorite of hers. I wish she hadn't given up writing about the Felse family when she started writing about Brother Cadfael!<BR/><BR/>Laura, as to the Good Woman/Bad Woman dichotomy, we've talked about it here before, most recently when I brought up the Angel Gabriel greeting Mary with <I>Ave</I> as a reversal of <I>Eva,</I> which you then proceeded to expand upon.<BR/><BR/>In the fantasies I've been reading lately, the dragons are as likely as not to be the heroes. In Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Princess Cimorene runs away from her boring life and even more boring suitors to become a dragon's princess (or rather, a dragon's Chief Cook and Librarian). She winds up rescuing the dragon from several plots by evil wizards. She also winds up with the King of the Enchanted Forest, an enlightened young man who appreciates her. I've read several in which the dragon was a shapeshifter and able to become the hero (or even heroine); and one in which a dragon and a female knight switched bodies so that the former dragon could marry the princess and the former knight could marry another dragon. (In case that's unclear, both dragons were male.)<BR/><BR/>Tumperkin's title is fabulous. But wait! There's more:<BR/><BR/>http://facstaff.unca.edu/pbahls/TitleGenerator.html<BR/><BR/>I got these:<BR/>The Highland Outlaw's Willing Queen<BR/>The Pacific Islander CEO's Tasty Captive<BR/>The Arabian Rogue's Bluestockinged Lady<BR/>The Viking Paper Company Sales Representative's Insatiable Feminist<BR/><BR/><BR/>Laura, I've always fancied the blond, gentle, protective type hero over the dark, dangerous, and paranoid type. The kind of guy that everyone turns to when they are in trouble, and who rescues the heroine even when she refuses to admit she's in trouble. Two of my favorites are in Edith Layton Regencies: Marcus Snow in A TRUE LADY (in which the heroine has been raised by pirates) and Warwick Jones in LOVE IN DISGUISE (in which the heroine is the daughter of a wealthy fishmonger who is trying to enter society mainly to please her father).talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-5795144246153952982008-09-26T22:22:00.000+01:002008-09-26T22:22:00.000+01:00the idea that women contain a kind of primitive tr...<I>the idea that women contain a kind of primitive truth and goodness is old and hard to dislodge.</I><BR/><BR/>Jessica, that does seem to be behind the "martyrdom" of a lot of heroines, because often there only seem to be two options: either the heroine is a Good Woman (sexually pure/ suffering unjust punishment/unselfish) or she's a Bad Woman (gold-digger, slut). Unlike men, who can be reformed rakes etc, it often seems as though women can either be on a pedestal of virtue or they're fallen women with no chance of getting back up onto it again. The Bad Woman was often represented in romances by an evil but tempting other woman (and again, I think she's less common nowadays, and the heroines are less often the sexually innocent, pure etc Good Women).<BR/><BR/><I>let's not forget the dragons! ;-) </I><BR/><BR/>Sandra, indeed, we should not forget the dragons. They're almost as useful as unicorns in determining that a woman is a maiden, and they have the added benefit of ensuring that she's a maiden in distress.<BR/><BR/><I>Laura, have you read Penny Jordan's "They're Wed Again" [...] I was so reminded of the paper you gave in Newcastle last year</I><BR/><BR/>I'm very impressed (not sure if I'm more impressed with myself or with you) that my paper made such a long-lasting impression! ;-)<BR/><BR/>Today I went charity-shopping and saw this story for sale, so of course I had to buy it to find out what happens in it. I'd read the <A HREF="http://software.newsstand.com/bookrdr/live/Reader.swf?a=HE%2FixvGOxCRvO0TtyPW772wctvqZrpBfHhX3x6K%2FkLb3e2t7w0pEHnpRL7VZRbui&z=hmb" REL="nofollow">first chapter of it</A> last night and discovered that the heroine spends a lot of time thinking about buying home furnishings. She's also "working for [a] high-powered city firm of financial analysts" and so she keeps saying and thinking that she can afford to buy the furnishings. Towards the end of the chapter the word "headboard" is mentioned almost as often as the word "hummus" was mentioned in the parody Tumperkin organised. Actually, Tumperkin's parody collaboration, titled <I>The Unfeasibly Tall Greek Billionaire’s Blackmailed Martyr-Complex Secretary Mistress Bride</I> [Chapters <A HREF="http://tumperkin.blogspot.com/2008/04/unfeasibly-tall-greek-billionaires.html" REL="nofollow">1</A>, <A HREF="http://thethrillionthpage.blogspot.com/2008/04/serial-continues.html" REL="nofollow">2</A>, <A HREF="http://katerothwell.blogspot.com/2008/04/chapter-three-tutgbbmcsmb.html" REL="nofollow">3</A>, <A HREF="http://lovelysalome.blogspot.com/2008/04/unfeasibly-tall-greek-billionaires.html" REL="nofollow">4</A>, <A HREF="http://www.annaguirre.com/archives/category/tutgbbmcsmb/" REL="nofollow">5</A> and <A HREF="http://lisabea.blogspot.com/2008/04/you-doubted-me.html" REL="nofollow">6</A>] includes a martyr-complex heroine, which brings us right back to the original topic of the post.<BR/><BR/><I>What I keep coming back to in my own head though, is that books need conflict. [...] I think it's also the case that books about perfectly healthy, happy people in a healthy, happy relationship with no conflict whatsoever are boring.</I><BR/><BR/>Obviously an author can't write a romance about characters who are already in a happy romantic relationship with each other, but I don't see why one couldn't have healthy, relatively well-adjusted people who are made temporarily unhappy by what they think is unrequited love, until they achieve their HEA. I suppose one does need some conflict, but I don't see why it can't be external to the couple e.g. they grow closer together as they solve a mystery/fight crime etc. And just being in love and unsure of the other person can create quite a lot of minor misunderstandings and complications.<BR/><BR/>Heyer's <I>The Nonesuch</I> is about two healthy, nice, polite people who fall in love, they take a while to get to know each other and it's mainly minor misunderstandings that keep them apart. Maybe you'd find that boring, but I rather enjoyed it. Austen's <I>Northanger Abbey</I> is about two people who are basically happy and healthy, and the obstacle is an external one. Again, I didn't find it at all boring.<BR/><BR/>I suspect it comes down to personal tastes. Some people seem to like a lot more conflict that others and/or they prefer romances with much more conflict between the main characters.<BR/><BR/><I>Laura, the medieval troubadours and trouvères (what's the Spanish? Trobador?)</I><BR/><BR/>I had to go off and double-check the spelling, because medieval spellings were variable. The modern spelling is <I>trovador</I>.<BR/><BR/><I>Here's a new and rather interesting way for a woman to suffer martyrdom</I><BR/><BR/>Virginia, I don't think I'd classify her death as martyrdom, although she was certainly made to suffer very unfairly before she died. The death itself, though, was a peaceful one and not inflicted on her by anyone other than "the Lord [who] desired to console her in her sorrows and give her repose from her many labors and settle her in the mansions of paradise."Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-9299028845390341262008-09-26T18:02:00.000+01:002008-09-26T18:02:00.000+01:00Here's a new and rather interesting way for a woma...Here's a new and rather interesting way for a woman to suffer martyrdom:<BR/><BR/>http://www.roca.org/OA/162/162f.htmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-28219146220825887612008-09-26T09:24:00.000+01:002008-09-26T09:24:00.000+01:00Sandra, are you thinking of Novalis? I keep hearin...<I>Sandra, are you thinking of Novalis? I keep hearing about him as a forerunner of and influence on George Macdonald, but I've never been able to find out anything about what his books were actually like. From what I have found, he doesn't sound very accessible.</I><BR/><BR/>I've only ever read Novalis's "Die blaue Blume" ("The Blue Flower"), one of the seminal texts of German romanticism, and I quite liked it. On the whole, though, I prefer E.T.A. Hoffmann's and Ludwig Tieck's works. Tieck's "Der blonde Eckbert" (translated as "Eckbert the Fair" or "Blond Eckbert") was the first Romantic fairy tale, and it is clearly influenced by the folk tale -- and no wonder: at the end of the 18th century there was a new interest in folk literature in Germany, which had been sparked by Percy's <I>Reliques of Ancient English Poetry</I> and Macpherson's <I>Ossian</I> books. Herder was the first to collect folk ballads (in <I>Stimmen der Völker in Liedern</I>) and to come up with a theory of folk literature (which he called "Volkspoesie"). His collection of international ballads was followed by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano's anthology of national folk songs and ballads, <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Knaben_Wunderhorn" REL="nofollow"><I>Des Knaben Wunderhorn</I></A>. They happened to be friends with two brothers called Grimm *g*, and as you know, the Grimms eventually published their own collection of folk tales, the <I>Kinder- und Hausmärchen</I>. <BR/><BR/>In the 1820s Edward Taylor translated a selection of the Grimms' tales into English, around the same time as an English translation of Hans Christan Andersen's tales was published. Both collections proved to be immensely successful and sparked a new fashion for fairy tales in Britain, which led to collections of British fairy tales in the second half of the 19th century (think Joseph Jacobs, Andrew Lang, etc.). Together with the gothic revival, another by-product of romanticism in a manner of speaking, this interest in fairy tales eventually resulted in the emergence of modern fantasy fiction towards the end of the century.Sandra Schwabhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15496019392789508611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-63585964945765634402008-09-26T05:39:00.000+01:002008-09-26T05:39:00.000+01:00Laura, the medieval troubadours and trouvères (wha...Laura, the medieval troubadours and trouvères (what's the Spanish? Trobador?) may have been male, but their audiences were female. For one thing, especially before Eleanor of Aquitaine invented civilized behavior, most noblemen were illiterate and damn proud of it: reading and writing were for women and the clergy. For another, can you imagine types like Robert the Devil and Philip the Fair as sitting around listening to the medieval equivalent of chick flicks? No, the wanted <I>chansons de geste;</I> it was the ladies in the solar who wanted the tales of love and chivalry.<BR/><BR/>And I too thought the bird should at least be let out of its cage!<BR/><BR/>Incidentally, Michelle Martin, author of PEMBROKE PARK, wrote a traditional Regency, THE HAMPSHIRE HOYDEN, which also uses the MUCH ADO plot, with the hero and heroine as Benedick and Beatrice. Their dialogue is very funny, and the romance is quite believable. Spenser uses the same plot in an episode of THE FAERIE QUEENE; like everyone else, he swiped it from Ariosto.<BR/><BR/><I>Female heroism in the Iberian romances can thus be seen to consist in sexual willingness combined with fidelity, immobility, secrecy and the ability to suffer.</I><BR/><BR/>Immobility??? "Lie back and think of Aragon"? I'd rather think of Aragorn!<BR/><BR/><B>Sandra Schwab</B> wrote: <I>I hope he didn't forget to mention the (German) Romantic fairy tale, which is the direct forerunner of modern fantasy.</I><BR/><BR/>Sandra, are you thinking of Novalis? I keep hearing about him as a forerunner of and influence on George Macdonald, but I've never been able to find out anything about what his books were actually like. From what I have found, he doesn't sound very accessible.<BR/><BR/>Janine, there are collections of Chaucer's and Shakespeare's sources and analogues that indicate that there is a basic universal folktale corpus that spread around the world. Many of the tales and plays have distant sources in Hindu and Buddhist tales. Francis Child's ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS also has extensive notes on the sources and analogues of the tales that found their way into song.talpiannahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13978075304795724185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-25974368675903807042008-09-26T02:17:00.000+01:002008-09-26T02:17:00.000+01:00It's hard to reply to so many comments, but I agre...It's hard to reply to so many comments, but I agree with everyone who said that those heroes who think the heroine is a slut and that makes it okay to treat her like crap, and then change their minds when they discover her virginity (whether through rape or through consensual sex) seem very untrustworthy. They're far from my romantic ideal.<BR/><BR/><I>Yes, in real life, a lot of the ways that heroines in this type of romance behave would be very dangerous because it would be extremely unwise for any woman to try to redeem a man displaying the levels of aggression, suspicion, jealousy and possessiveness displayed by some romance heroes. In real life these behaviours could be warning signs that domestic violence either was, or would soon be, present in the relationship.</I><BR/><BR/>That's true too, and a lot of romances with such heroes don't have convincing happy endings because it's hard to believe the hero won't treat the heroine badly again. <BR/><BR/>Many of these books don't work for me, and of the ones that do, most only entertain me once but don't stand up to multiple readings precisely because of these issues. <BR/><BR/>The two books I mentioned above, <I>To Have and to Hold</I> and <I>Uncommon Vows</I> work as well as they do for me partly because even when the hero is at his worst, he doesn't excuse his own behavior or see the heroine as deserving it.<BR/><BR/>What I keep coming back to in my own head though, is that books need conflict. In the recent discussion of Linda Howard's <I>Death Angel</I> on Dear Author, Kathleen O'Reilly made the comment that "I like reading books about twisted people because they are not boring." I think that statement is true for me as well, and I think it's also the case that books about perfectly healthy, happy people in a healthy, happy relationship with no conflict whatsoever are boring.<BR/><BR/>One of the questions for a romance writer is how to create conflict in an even-handed enough way (so that both hero and heroine share in the responsiblity for the problems their relationship faces) and how to resolve it believably. I think the fact that the double standard exists in society and in some reader's minds makes that a challenge.<BR/><BR/>Re. the Arabian Nights story, I think it's interesting that it contains some of the same elements as Patient Griselda and the romances we are discussing, even though it comes from a different culture. Do you think that's because these stories traveled around the world, or because their psychological underpinnings are universal?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-67519478470105191862008-09-25T22:55:00.000+01:002008-09-25T22:55:00.000+01:00For instance, post-Tolkien sword-and-sorcery sagas...<I>For instance, post-Tolkien sword-and-sorcery sagas are very successful today, and share with the sixteenth-century romances fantastic and/or archaic settings, a central concern with deeds of combat, supernatural interventions and an extended narrative structure of successive sequels.</I><BR/><BR/>And let's not forget the dragons! ;-) <BR/><BR/><I>Also, in Northrop Frye's theories, high fantasy is a direct descendant of medieval romance and Renaissance heroic epic, via William Morris.</I><BR/><BR/>I hope he didn't forget to mention the (German) Romantic fairy tale, which is the direct forerunner of modern fantasy.<BR/><BR/><I>I am taking a somewhat devil's advocate position here, because when I was doing research on feminism and the Modern/Presents line I read quite a lot of romances which had plots involving female suffering and/or the heroine proving her chastity but which did seem to me to use these elements in clearly feminist contexts.</I><BR/><BR/>Laura, have you read Penny Jordan's "They're Wed Again" (it's part of the M&B 100th Birthday Collection)? The way gender roles and stereotypes are treated and discussed in this novel is quite interesting. For one thing, this is one of the rare second-chance-at-love romances in which <I>both</I> protagonists haven't taken any other lovers during their separation. For another, the heroine is the main breadwinner at the beginning of the relationship, which eventually results in the breakdown of the marriage. Yet if the hero as a young man hated being financially dependant upon his wife, he eventually comes to realize "that his own inflexible old-fashioned male attitude to money had been the maggot which had eaten away at the foundations of their marriage" (55). And, "'[i]f I was proud then it was a false pride. My pride should have been in <I>you</I>, in what you were doing for both of us, in what we were achieving by working together'" (71). -- When I read the book, I was so reminded of the paper you gave in Newcastle last year.Sandra Schwabhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15496019392789508611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-53841076570527655412008-09-25T17:48:00.000+01:002008-09-25T17:48:00.000+01:00What a great discussion! It's funny... I just revi...What a great discussion! <BR/><BR/>It's funny... I just review Karen Marie Moning's Beyond the Highland Mist, and in it, the hero mistrusts the heroine until he sleeps with her and discovers her virtue via her virginity.<BR/><BR/>There's a lot lot lot to be said here. There has been so much feminist work on the female body as a marker for so many things, but especially truth, purity, wholeness. I would just mention Page duBois's "Torture and Truth", which, focuses on the ancient Greek origins of the idea that truth extracted (via torture if possible) is somehow truer or better. She argues "The truth is thus always elsewhere, always outside the realm of ordinary human experience...secreted in the earth, in the gods, in the woman, in the slave". We joke about the "magic hoo ha" but the idea that women contain a kind of primitive truth and goodness is old and hard to dislodge.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-4068494938741290462008-09-25T14:50:00.000+01:002008-09-25T14:50:00.000+01:00My suspension of disbelief just doesn't go that fa...<I>My suspension of disbelief just doesn't go that far. This may be associated with the fact that my oldest son is an associate circuit judge who does domestic relations court.</I><BR/><BR/>Yes, in real life, a lot of the ways that heroines in this type of romance behave would be very dangerous because it would be extremely unwise for any woman to try to redeem a man displaying the levels of aggression, suspicion, jealousy and possessiveness displayed by some romance heroes. In real life these behaviours could be warning signs that domestic violence either was, or would soon be, present in the relationship.<BR/><BR/>I do find it intriguing that romances first seemed to become more sexually explicit mostly in the contexts of plots involving heroines being raped/"forcibly seduced" by heroes. There's no way that, in real life, rape would be anything other than criminal and traumatising. But it does seem as though simultaneously ensuring heroines could be sexually active, while maintaining their virtue, was considered difficult at that time. The extreme rapist heroes are very unusual in the genre now, but the sexual double standard still hasn't disappeared yet, and I wonder if that's in part a reason for the continuing emphasis on female virginity and/or suffering in a significant number of modern romances.<BR/><BR/>There seems to have been a similar process of negotiation going on in the Iberian chivalric romances, and similar concerns about the unadvisability of real women copying the behaviours of these chivalric romance heroines:<BR/><BR/><I>Female heroism in the Iberian romances can thus be seen to consist in sexual willingness combined with fidelity, immobility, secrecy and the ability to suffer. This combination of qualities can be understood as originally generated by the patriarchal concerns of male writers and their imagined male readers. However, what they produce is a compromise between relative female sexual freedom and conventional iconographies of female virtue, which exonerated the sexual woman from blame. This may have been precisely what came to make these fictions appealing for female readers. At the same time the recognition that this was potentially subversive may lie behind the mockery of female readers: the importation of the female </I>mores<I> of Iberian romance into real life held manifest dangers and was therefore ridiculed and diminished as mere gullible over-literality.</I>(Hackett 74-75)Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.com