Reworking Classics: Powerful? Pure?

Laura Vivanco

Liz Mc2 writes that

Several years ago I taught a first-year Major Themes in Literature course I called “Transformations.” All the readings had transformations of various kinds in them, and I paired “classic” texts with later “transformations” by other writers. [...] A modern re-imagining can shine new light on a classic and vice versa, and the pairings help students find a way in to reading analytically. [...]

Taking on a beloved classic is an enterprise fraught with peril, and though Kate Hewitt says in an interview with CataRomance that she “leapt at the chance” to rewrite Emma for a Harlequin Presents series paying homage to romantic classics, she is also frank about the difficulties. The Matchmaker Bride didn’t work for me as well as The Man Who Could Never Love for two reasons: a) Austen’s tart, ironic narrative style isn’t a good match for Hewitt’s sweet sincerity (that sounds belittling, but I like that about Hewitt); b) Emma–and Austen’s Augustan restraint generally–isn’t a good fit for Harlequin Presents, a line characterized by angsty, over the top emotion. Moreover, although it ends with a slew of marriages, Emma is far less shaped by the plot conventions of romance than Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion. It’s a comedy of manners about the heroine’s education. Matchmaker Bride felt caught between the conflicting demands of its source and its Harlequin category.

Tomorrow I'll be posting an interview with Kate Walker about her contribution to the mini-series Hewitt was contributing to. As Kate Walker has explained elsewhere, it's a

four book mini-series, The Powerful and the Pure. These books are by four different Modern authors, myself, Sharon Kendrick, Kate Hewitt, Cathy Williams, and the series description was on the ‘concept page’ in the books:

The Powerful and The Pure

When Beauty Tames the Brooding Beast

From Mr Darcy to Heathcliff, the best romantic heroes have always been tall, dark, and dangerously irresistible.

Characters Who Reflect Our Values?

Laura Vivanco

Kate Hewitt left an interesting comment in response to my last post:

the bottom line seems, to me, to be that we want the characters in our fiction to reflect our own values and when they don't we find it frustrating or disappointing [...] every author is going to bring his or her own value system to his/her books, whether intentional or not. It's up to the reader to decide if he/she can accept the morals/values of the book he/she is reading and then enjoy it as fiction.

Her comment raises so many questions about the values of romance readers, romance authors and of the genre itself, that I decided it was time to create a new space in which to discuss them.

The Romance Genre

According to Pamela Regis, every romance includes some degree of judgement about the society which forms the background to the lovers' struggle:

Near the beginning of the novel, the society that the heroine and hero will confront in their courtship is defined for the reader. This society is in some way flawed; it may be incomplete, superannuated, or corrupt. It always oppresses the hero and heroine. (31)

Although the societies depicted in romances vary, one thing which does not is the high value placed on romantic love. According to the Romance Writers of America, it is essential for a romance to have

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

What, though, does "emotional justice" mean? Some romance protagonists are "rewarded with [...] unconditional love" even though they have behaved towards other people in ways that they themselves later acknowledge to have been unjust.

Romance Authors

Kate, in her initial comment, states that "every author is going to bring his or her own value system to his/her books, whether intentional or not" and Jo Beverley has written that "An honest writer must include her own philosophies in her work" (33). Readers should, however, be careful before making assumptions about authors' values. After all, characters may express opinions which are not shared by the author. In addition, Leslie Wainger's advice to romance authors raises the possibility that some romance authors are writing with their readers' (real or imagined) values in mind:

basic expectations that every romance reader shares and that you, as an author, implicitly promise to fulfill are simple and leave you a lot of room for creativity:
A sympathetic heroine: The heroine is the key to every romance. The reader’s sense of identification with the heroine draws the reader into the book and keeps her reading. Your heroine needs to be sympathetic – strong without being hard, vulnerable without being weak, intelligent, ethical, interesting, capable (but not perfect), beautiful (but not unreal) – in short, a surrogate for your reader as she wants to see herself. [...]
A strong, irresistible hero: Both your heroine and your reader need to fall in love with the hero. He has to be strong without being overbearing (or borderline abusive), yet vulnerable enough to need the heroine; as intelligent, ethical, and capable as she is; fascinating; and, of course, good-looking (and good in bed, even if the reader never sees his skills). (19, emphasis added)

Wainger's advice does seem somewhat problematic. Readers' relationship with heroines may be rather more varied than Wainger seems to be suggesting here and she doesn't define what "ethical" behaviour actually is. I wonder if she realised that there isn't a single standard of "ethical" behaviour and decided it would be far too difficult to try to define a single standard which would be acceptable to all readers.

Romance Readers

Bridget Fowler has observed that

most readers do not confuse the genre with realism. Moreover, the development of the romance suggests its readers are not passive. Its paradises change, along with women's new material experiences and their greater exposure to the arenas of modernity. Such readers are still active and critical thinkers who repudiate writers too removed from their own image of society. [...] I have shown that in Scotland certain writers are repudiated. For example, the link between Barbara Cartland's world-view and that of Thatcherism is both transparent to popular readers and the cause of Cartland's low reputation. The world of the dominant class she depicts is either seen as too alien to their experience or as the source of the poverty and social problems that harass them. (174)

Readers, then, distinguish between fiction and reality. We know that the societies depicted in romances are not real and it seems to me that many romance readers tolerate a great deal which does not "reflect our own values." One reason for this may be the distance between fiction and reality. Another may be that romances tend to be written in a way which "draws the reader into the book" and encourages the reader to sympathise with the characters. Readers may also feel that the emotional benefits they derive from elements such as a high level of conflict, sexual tension and an "Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending" are sufficient to outweigh the discomfort felt when characters don't "reflect our own values." Or we may in fact read partly in order to encounter new perspectives, and different values.

Robin, responding to Kate, says that while she

cannot speak for other readers, [...] I definitely am not looking for characters to reflect my own values. In fact, I often love most those characters whose values are very different from my own. Discussing SEP's Ain't She Sweet with people this past week always brings this up for me, because Sugar Beth is a character I could not relate to *personally* but loved and rooted for and wanted to see her happy. In fact, SEP is one of those authors whose books alternately delight and horrify me, but whose skills as a storyteller and writer can take me places I might not otherwise want to go. And what a delightful experience it is to be taken to those new places, even when they're not places I'd ever want to go in real life.

Clearly, though, some readers do have "hot buttons" which will stop them reading a book, and some of those "hot button" issues may relate to "values."

So, do you want the characters in romance novels to reflect your values? How often do they reflect your values? How much deviation from your values are you willing to tolerate? And what aspects of a novel are likely to increase your tolerance for characters who don't share your values?

-------

• Beverley, Jo. "An Honorable Profession: The Romance Writer and Her Characters." North American Romance Writers. Ed. Kay Mussell and Johanna Tuñón. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow P., 1999. 32-36.
  
• Fowler, Bridget. The Alienated Reader: Women and Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century. Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
• Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P., 2003.
• Wainger, Leslie. Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004.

Beyond the Fairytale

Laura Vivanco

A recent review of Bettie Sharpe's free ebook, Ember, reminded me that I haven't put up any links to online romances for a while.

Ember is available from Bettie Sharpe's website, and can either be downloaded as an ebook or read online. It's a reworking of the Cinderella story which offers the reader a startling, alternative version of how the story of Cendrillon (the title it was given by Perrault) came into existence.

Sharpe's tale may, however, be truer to the original versions of the story for, as Terri Windling observes:

The old tales, as Gertrude Mueller Nelson has succinctly expressed it (in her Jungian study, Here All Dwell Free) are about "anguish and darkness." They plunge heroines and heroes into the dark wood, into danger and despair and enchantment and deception, and only then offer them the tools to save themselves — tools that must be used wisely and well. (Used foolishly, or ruthlessly, they turn back on the wielder.) The power in fairy tales lies in such self–determined acts of transformation. Happy endings, where they exist, are hard won, and at a price.

Windling mentions the older Italian version, Cenerentola, in which we have a Cinderella who murders one step-mother only to find her replaced with an even worse one. And let's not forget the Grimm's version, Aschenputtel, in which one of the step-sisters cuts off her own toe, and the other part of her heel, in their desire to fit their feet into Cinderella's tiny shoe. Their deception is revealed when the prince looks more closely and sees first that "the blood was streaming from" the foot of the first step-sister and then that "the blood was running out of her [the second step-sister's] shoe, and how it had stained her white stocking." This tale ends on the moralistic note that "for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived" but no such punishment is inflicted on the murderous Cenerentola. In comparison with her, Bettie Sharpe's Ember begins to seem considerably more virtuous than she thinks she is. Ember's no shy virgin, though, so anyone who would prefer not to read something containing strong language should stay away from this story.

Oh, and for those who don't know, "nieves," which is mentioned in the last chapter, is Castilian for "snows," though the allusion is probably clear enough from the context that non-Spanish-speakers can work out the implications. Sorry to be cryptic, but I'm trying to avoid giving away any spoilers.

On the subject of re-imagining and retelling fairytales, Eloisa James wrote an article called "My Fairy Godmother, Myself" in which she argues that

Cinderella was never about the prince. It was about the wonders of a magical transformation. [...] That turns out to be the key to rewritten Cinderellas: the heroine learns to honor and appreciate her pre-transformation self, forcing the prince to do so as well.

I'm not really sure if that would be true of Ember, but maybe we can discuss that in the comments.

And going beyond the "happily ever after" are Kate Hewitt's online short stories "A Breath of Fresh Air" and "The Locket," which have heroines whose long-term relationships are in trouble. In her "Dreams to Share" the heroine learns to look beyond the more obvious trappings of true love. In her essay Eloisa James says that

We're trained to believe that princes fall in love as soon as a woman shows up in the right dress. But what if he doesn't? What if one night of dancing isn't enough? The way, frankly, one night at a club isn't enough in real life?

Real life love-stories may not always look as romantic as the ones in which the hero spots the heroine wearing a beautiful dress and immediately falls in love with her, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're lacking in true love.


The illustration is Giuseppe Arcimboldo's The Librarian (c. 1566), from Wikipedia. Arcimboldo's probably best known for his portraits made out of vegetables. I can see echoes of his technique in Carl Warner's amazing still-life food photography and some of Jacquie Lawson's animated e-cards (particularly this one for the 4th of July and this one, for Thanksgiving). And there is a link back to Ember, in which there's some mention of possible unconventional uses for vegetables, and in which people's appearances can be deceptive.