Are You a Feminist or a Flower?: White Hibiscus by Rosemary Pollock

Laura Vivanco

Since we've been looking at Heather Schell's suggestion that evolutionary psychology may have been used by romance authors in the 1990s to defend the genre against feminist critics, I thought it would be interesting to look at another conjunction of feminism, romance and ideas about evolution, but this time in an older romance. Two significant differences here are that

• the focus of the discussions about biology/evolution is the heroine, rather than the alpha hero, and
• ultimately the heroine is considered to better than both feminists and other women because she seems to lack many of the traits they possess.

Ann Rosalind Jones's essay "Mills & Boon Meets Feminism" was published in 1986 and it explores feminism and whether or not it is compatible with romance. This seems to have been an issue which preoccupied many romance authors at the time, as Jones discovered when she began her research:

reading them recently, I have confronted the most recent trends in the genre. I was astonished to find that every novel I read (sixteen, all published in 1983-4) either refers explicitly to feminism or deals implicitly with issues feminism has raised: women's work, their economic and psychic independence from men, their sexuality - or what might better be called the shifts in 'manners' around heterosexual attraction and pursuit. (197)

She also found that a significant proportion of "writers and editors are now willing to experiment in liberal-feminist directions" (211) and that,

Without any direct reference to feminism, the standard romance plot may nevertheless reconstruct relations between the sexes. By page 140 of the required 180, nurturant men and competent women occupy test situations that supersede conventional gender roles.
But overt references to feminism are much more problematic in Mills & Boon. The term itself, like the demands and debates associated with it, produces striking ambivalence in these novels, even when they register changes that are feminist in effect. (201)

and "At one extreme, Mills & Boon uses feminism in mocking or antithetical ways, to initiate a counter-movement" (202). White Hibiscus, by Rosemary Pollock, was published in 1979 and is located at this extreme end of the spectrum:

'Good evening. You're very punctual.' Turning away from her, he opened the door of the car, and while she climbed inside he held it.
'I didn't want to keep you waiting,' she said demurely.
Still frowning, he got in beside her. 'That's rather unusual.'
'Unusual? Why?'
Allowing himself a brief smile, he looked straight at her. 'I don't know many girls who believe in punctuality.'
There was a tiny pause, then she said crisply: 'I don't think women should expect pointless privileges. Keeping people waiting is just bad manners.'
Paul turned his key in the ignition, and the car swung round. 'I take it,' he observed drily, 'you're not a supporter of the Women's Liberation movement?'
'No, I'm not. I don't see why one should deny one's femininity. But being inconsiderate isn't particularly feminine.'
He nodded. That's an interesting point. (114-15)

It's an interesting passage, certainly. Given that there's no refutation of the claim that most women don't "believe in punctuality," the implications seem to be that

• most women, whether feminist (feminism is referred to in the novel as "Women's Liberation") or not, are "inconsiderate" and
• feminist women are demanding "pointless privileges" and denying their "femininity."
  

Feminism is mentioned again later in the novel when Emma is at a press conference and a journalist asks her whether she "was normally in the habit of wearing a bra - afterwards going on to ask how she felt about Women's Lib" (142). A reader is presumably supposed to know that the journalist is referring to feminist bra-burning (although this never actually happened). The overall effect of these questions and of Emma's earlier comments is to imply that feminism is ridiculous and focussed on trivialities.

Referring to other kinds of scenes in Mills & Boon romances, Jones noted that

the imagery that recurs in love scenes [...] belongs to a discourse that links sex to nature: built into the body, eternally the same. [...] But the appeal to primordial drive often has a forced quality, as if the formula is in need of emphatic reassertion. (210)

There are no explicit sex scenes in White Hibiscus, but the "appeal to primordial drive[s]" and the implication that biology is immutable are nevertheless present in the text. Paul, the hero, is Maltese, and on her arrival in Valetta, Emma (who is English) feels that there is "something primitive about the place" (14). Perhaps because of this Paul believes that he understands primitive biological drives. He initially assumes that Emma has "dubious morals" (43) and he later explains his

attitude to women. I believe that a girl like you is entirely vulnerable - morally helpless. Consciously or unconsciously, she believes that she has been put into the world to capture a man, and everything she does is motivated by that belief. She is determined to acquire a mate, and if allowed full control of her own life she will go to any lengths to achieve her ambition. A man has only to say that he loves her, and she will go away with him - because her instinct tells her that this is her destiny. Her instinct, however, is like a badly programmed computer - it doesn't understand that the man she is planning to sleep with has no intention of bringing up her children. (49)

It's almost as though Paul is an early proponent of evolutionary psychology. However, Paul's "attitude to women" presumably allows for the existence of a few women who are somewhat different because it seems that he eventually comes to agree with his sister that Emma is "such a nice girl" (42). He certainly decides that

'You are unusual. For an English girl.'
Her eyes widened. 'English girls don't drink such a lot.'
Paul laughed. 'No, perhaps they don't. But often they are very sophisticated. Very - liberated.'
'And you don't approve of liberated women.'
'Naturally not. They are all fundamentally miserable.'
'Do you really think so? [...] It's something I haven't thought about all that much. But - well, I suppose I'm "liberated". I do more or less as I like. Nobody organises my life. And I say what I think.'
He studied her. There was something in his eyes she didn't quite understand. 'That's different,' he remarked softly. 'That's just - being yourself.' (124)

I wonder if that "something in his eyes" implies that what he's really saying here, in a way which Emma fails to understand, is that he believes most English girls are promiscuous, and that this makes them "fundamentally miserable." Given that Pollock uses the term "Women's Liberation" to refer to feminism, the repeated use of the word "liberated" here perhaps also suggests that Paul's comments identify the miserable, promiscuous "English girls" as feminists.

In reversing his initial opinion that Emma is an "English model with dubious morals" (43) he admits that "when I first met you I formed a certain impression. I was wrong. [...] You are vulnerable" (87). This kind of vulnerability is presumably different from the vulnerability he mentioned earlier and defined as meaning "morally helpless" (49). In requiring Paul's protection from sexual harassment by other men, Emma demonstrates that she is not "morally helpless," just physically helpless, and this is emphasised by the fact that she also needs him to rescue her from a series of physical threats: sunstroke, drowning, and being trapped part way down a cliff.

Yet even "nice girls," with morals, are apparently ruled by some unchanging instincts, for Paul informs her that although some things have changed since "the days of Carthage" (156), "a man is always a man - that doesn't change. [...] Women, too. Even you, a child of modern England - do you believe that you are so very different from the women of the Phoenician age?" (156).

Carried away by love, however, Paul also seems to think that his beautiful, non-feminist English damsel in distress is unique (if not in the whole of history from the Phoenician age onwards, at least in his own experience): "I have never known a girl like you. You are a perfect flower that opens at the touch of the sun - a white hibiscus blossom" (172-73). The implication seems to be that unlike the "morally helpless" women who "will go away with" any man who offers love, Emma will only "open" at Paul's touch.

Emma, then, appears to be a rare women, who despite being "feminine" is not like other woman and so is not wholly at the mercy of all the biological urges which move them. This is reinforced by the fact that Steve (the first man to sexually proposition Emma) claims that "you're not such an iceberg. You can't kid me you are - not with that hair" (23)? Presumably biology is destiny and "masses of chestnut hair" (14) are to be taken as a reliable indication that a woman has strong sexual appetites. The novel does not refute this reading of Emma's hair but retrospectively one can deduce that although passionate, she shrinks from Steve's advances, because a women like a "white hibiscus blossom" will only open "at the touch of the sun" and Emma the iceberg only melts in response to the sexual advances made by Paul.

• Jones, Ann Rosalind. "Mills & Boon meets feminism." The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction. Ed. Jean Radford. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 195-218.
• Pollock, Rosemary. White Hibiscus. 1979. Toronto: Harlequin, 1980.

Love is "Woman's Whole Existence"?

Laura Vivanco

I recently came across some blog posts about polyamory at Feministe. In one of these Eleanor Sauvage stated that "The problem with many of our contemporary relationships is that we’re meant to be everything to another person: to fulfill all and every need" and in another linked post, Frau Sally Benz elaborated on this:

at the heart of nonmonogamy is we believe it’s impractical to assume that one person can be everything for another person. I personally think a lot of relationships have problems when you expect your partner to completely fulfill you mentally, emotionally, sexually, physically, and spiritually. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I think a lot of the time, people view love as their search for The One – the person who is 100% compatible with you, your perfect match.

Judging by what Julia writes in Byron's Don Juan, the idea that a romantic relationship should fill one's life to the exclusion of all else is hardly new, at least not for women:

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,

'Tis woman's whole existence; man may range

The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;

Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange

Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,

And few there are whom these cannot estrange;

Men have all these resources, we but one,

To love again, and be again undone. (Canto I, verse CXCIV)

I'd like to look very briefly at what the romance genre has to say about monogamy and the idea that a romantic relationship could or should form a "woman's whole existence."

According to the RWA's definition of romance one of the two basic elements which make up every romance is "A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work." This element, as defined by the RWA, can, I think, be broken down into various parts

• "two individuals" - Admittedly there are some more recent romances which include more than two individuals in the central relationship, but those are relatively rare in the genre as a whole.
• "falling in love" - It may sound like stating the obvious, but these novels deal with a particular kind of love, the kind one "falls" into. The central couple are not two people who fall into friendship with each other, nor is the "central love story" in a romance going to be about the love of a parent for a newborn baby. Romances deal with relationships that have a sexual component, even if the sexual attraction between the individuals is never expressed explicitly in physical terms during the course of the novel.
• "struggling to" - The struggle may be the result of external factors which keep the central couple apart, but perhaps one may also get the impression from this wording that all relationships require some adjustment of the part of the individuals involved. The path of true love tends not to run smooth for both external and internal reasons.
• "make the relationship work" - This is very closely related to the previous point, but the wording does, it seems to me, hint that relationships require something to make them "work."

So how many people can there be in the central relationship in a romance? What is it that distinguishes their love from other kinds of love? Does the love between the individuals in the central relationship exclude other kinds of love and relationships? Why do they need to struggle? Do relationships require work? And, finally, does the romance genre present monogamous relationships as completely fulfilling the protagonists, "mentally, emotionally, sexually, physically, and spiritually"?

Those are far too many questions for me to attempt to answer in just one blog post, so I'll just take a quick look at the last one. It has been argued that some secular romances presented readers with a heroine who

is set in a social limbo: her family is dead or invisible, her friends are few or none, her occupational milieu is only vaguely filled in. As a result, her meeting with the hero occurs in a private realm which excludes all concerns but their mutual attraction; the rest of the world drops away except as a backdrop. (Jones 198)

In a romance of this type, it probably would be fair to say that the hero meets almost all of the heroine's mental, emotional, sexual, physical and spiritual needs. He may care for her, feed her, understand her sexual needs better than she does herself and provide a focus for her intellectual life (since she spends much of her time trying to understand him). It should be noted, however, that Jones was writing only about a small number of Mills & Boon romances from the early 1980s, and that she herself found some which seemed to open up the heroine's world to give her horizons which stretched beyond the hero.

As far as sexual needs are concerned, however, it's probably uncontroversial to state that in most romances, past and present, the central couple would be expected to find fulfillment for all of their sexual needs within their monogamous relationship. The situation is rather different when one looks at other needs.

As far as spirituality is concerned, Barrett states that "in Christian romance novels [...] God enter[s] this union, making it, for Christian women, ideal. This triad—God, man, and woman—forms the Christian marriage." Inspirational romances, then, present marriage as a relationship involving three individuals, two of whom are in a sexual relationship, and the third of whom supports the other two mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Sexual monogamy does not preclude the creation of a "triad" to fulfill other needs.

Many modern romance heroines and heroes have family and friends who provide emotional and mental support, and although many romance heroines still seem to have a rather magical ability to heal the hero's emotional trauma, in some novels, including Janice Kay Johnson's Snowbound, someone else may help to meet these needs.

Heroines, as well as heroes, often have careers and hobbies which provide intellectual stimulation that the central relationship cannot provide. AAR's Jean Wan recently commented that

Art is possessive and artists are obsessive and for many of them, love and art are mutually exclusive. When I encounter artists, musicians, actors, and such in romance novels, I often wonder how likely it is that characters of such creative brilliance can find equilibrium between their soul mate and their artistic soul. Many books never address this issue because the characters are given talented proficiency rather than brilliance, which is fair enough; few people are brilliant in real life.

As she observes, in addition to depicting characters who derive emotional or intellectual pleasure and stimulation from pursuits outside the central relationship, there are some romances which deal with characters for whom their art can perhaps be thought of as a third party in any relationship they form, and those romances, although rare, suggest that this can be made to work.

I'd also argue that there's an extra-textual dimension to the romance genre which reaffirms that the reader has individual needs which can be met outside a monogamous relationship with a spouse or partner. Barrett observes that

Since Christian novels are resolved in the always-loving nature of God, the reader, too, finally experiences God’s love when she puts her book down, as woman after woman testified during our discussions of reading.

The testimony of readers who spoke to Janice Radway confirms that secular readers, too, find that reading can fulfil needs that are not met elsewhere: "romance reading was important to the Smithton women [...] because the simple event of picking up a book enabled them to deal with the particular pressures and tensions encountered in their daily round of activities" (86). Of course, different readers will read for different reasons, but reading clearly does offer something to readers which other activities, and other relationships, do not provide. Interestingly, Dot revealed to Radway that some husbands considered books a threat to their monogamous relationship with their wives: "I think men do feel threatened. They want their wife to be in the room with them. And I think my body is in the room but the rest of me is not (when I am reading)" (87).

Romance reading, then, both intra-texually and extra-textually, can undermine the idea that the ideal monogamous relationship should meet both partners' "mental[..] emotional[...], sexual[...], physical[...], and spiritual[...]" needs. Instead it seems to me that most romances, while insisting that monogamous relationships can meet all of an individual's sexual needs, affirm that it is healthy and desirable for individuals to also have other relationships and interests.

• Barrett, Rebecca Kaye. "Higher Love: What Women Gain from Christian Romance Novels." Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 4 (2003).
• Jones, Ann Rosalind. "Mills & Boon Meets Feminism." The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Culture. Ed. Jean Radford. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 195-218.
• Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 1984. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina P., 1991.

Romance History - Guidelines

I've posted about publishers' guidelines for romance before but, as we all know, the romance genre has changed over time, and one can see that if one compares modern guidelines with those of the 1980s. Kassia Krozser posted the story of how she got hold of these old guidelines, as well as a bit of a bit of background about the upheavals that were going on in romance publishing at the time. Now she's posted the guidelines themselves, over at the Romance Wiki.

You can see the following guidelines:

• Dell's Candlelight Ecstasy Romance Guidelines Circa 1980 - They advise authors to 'Avoid the use of formula plot devices such as a marriage of convenience between the protagonists, or amnesia'. Clearly some things haven't changed that much in over 20 years, as novels with these plots are still written (and although such plots may be described as 'formula', authors still manage to give such old plots new twists).

• Gallen Books Guidelines Circa 1980 - the heroine must be 'beautiful [...] Instinctively, she knows how to dress well, can carry off almost any fashion. She may choose to wear very casual clothes, but descriptions of pretty clothes are important'. The Silhouette Romance guidelines (see below) also state that 'Her outfits are described in detail'. We've discussed fashion in romance novels already and Radway's criticisms of the many descriptions of the heroine's clothing date from this period (Reading the Romance was first published in 1984). Like the 'formula plot devices' mentioned in the Dell guidelines, I think descriptions of the heroine's clothing can seem tired and clichéd if badly written, but take on new depths of meaning when handled by a skilled author.

• Second Chance At Love Guidelines Circa 1980 - this is a letter to authors warning them not to use 'devices which we feel have been sadly overworked'. These include some professions for the hero and heroine which are relatively rare today, while others remain much more common. I've not seen many heroes or heroines who are travel agents, for example, but there are still plenty of heroes who are architects and heroines who are journalists, writers and artists.

• Silhouette Desire Guidelines Circa 1982 - I was amused by the warning that 'The plot should not consist of a series of chance encounters, coincidences or filler scenes in which nothing substantial happens.' I can't imagine that many romance authors would set out to write a novel with 'filler scenes' or a plot based solely on 'a series of chance encounters' and coincidences. If someone did, it would be unlikely to impress readers who, as Anne Marble observes, 'often refuse to swallow coincidences. If the plot hinges on a huge coincidence at a crucial moment, don't be surprised if readers get upset. Even little coincidences can rile nerves if they happen too often'.

• Silhouette Romance Guidelines Circa 1980 - In the Galen guidelines authors were told that 'The heroine's parents may be living, but, if so, are not capable of giving her the full support she needs'. In the Silhouette Romance guidelines the heroine 'is usually without parents or a "protective" relationship. [...] A brother is permissible, but she is often in the position of caring for him, rather than vice versa--he may be weak, crippled, or uncertain as to his morals or future'. This is a feature of romances which was noted by Ann Douglas: 'As the story opens, the heroine has usually lost a parent, a home, or both, making her especially vulnerable' (1980: 26). Ann Rosalind Jones, writing in 1986, suggests that this may be beginning to change: 'let me offer a summary of a typical romance plot, as it's been stabilized in the genre and is still used by older writers. The heroine, a virgin in her early twenties, is set in a social limbo: her family is dead or invisible' (1986: 198). I wonder if the absence of family in these romances was in any way linked to the popularity of 'the modern "gothic" romance, a genre that enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s' (Radway 1981: 141). We can, of course, still find plenty of romance heroines who are orphaned or have parents who are absent for other reasons, but they are not nearly so frequent as they were in the past.

• Silhouette Super Desire Guidelines

• Silhouette Special Edition Guidelines Circa 1980 - A matter of craft/style which has changed considerably since the 1980s is point of view. Nowadays readers often know what the hero is thinking, but that was not so often the case in the past, unless he revealed his thoughts in conversations with other characters. As noted in the comments at the top of this entry at the Romance Wiki, the Silhouette Special Edition guidelines were somewhat unusual in what they have to say about point of view: 'A Special Edition is always written in the third person, but it is the heroine's point-of-view which shapes the novel' but 'The narrative may sometimes include the hero's point-of-view in order to more fully develop his character and the plot'. In the Silhouette Romance guidelines authors were informed that, 'Though the point of view of a SILHOUETTE BOOK is usually omniscient--i.e. the author can get in anyone's head, she chooses to remain almost completely in the heroine's'. One consequence of the use of heroine-only point-of-view was that it tended to make the hero's motivation somewhat mysterious. According to Ann Barr Snitow

  Since all action in the novels is described from the female point of view, the reader identifies with the heroine's efforts to decode the erratic gestures of "dark, tall and gravely handsome" men, all mysterious strangers or powerful bosses. [...] He is the unknowable other [...] She, on the other hand, is the subject, the one whose thoughts the reader knows, whose constant reevaluation of male moods and actions make up the story line. (1983: 247-248)

  As Anne Gracie observes,

  In the past, the dominant romance convention was that romance used only the heroine's POV. This was because it was believed that most readers identified only with the heroine.
  
  When authors began to include the male POV -- entering the hero's mind -- readers loved it (to publishers' amazement!) and the dual POV became pretty standard.

---

• Douglas, Ann, 1980. 'Soft-Porn Culture: Punishing the Liberated Woman', in The New Republic, August 30, volume 183, pp. 25-29.
• Jones, Ann Rosalind, 1986. 'Mills & Boon meets feminism', in The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction, ed. Jean Radford (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 195-218.
• Radway, Janice, 1981. 'The Utopian Impulse in Popular Literature: Gothic Romances and "Feminist" Protest', American Quarterly, 33.2: 140-162.
• Snitow, Ann Barr, 1983. 'Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different', in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell & Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press), pp. 245-263. First published in Radical History Review, 20 (Spring/Summer 1979): 141-61.