The Fated Mates podcast posted (on Bluesky) that "Elda Minger was the first romance novelist to put condom use on the
page. When we spoke to her about the choice she made, she told us about
the realities of the world before Roe, when abortion was neither safe
nor legal." They've put a clip of Minger's hard-hitting comments on YouTube and it's less than 4 minutes long. The novel is Elda Minger's Untamed Heart, which as far as I can tell was published by Harlequin in 1983. [If I've got that wrong, or if you know of a romance published earlier which includes condom use, please leave a comment!]
After reading a certain number of these books, it becomes impossible to
avoid aligning the witch fear of non-witches with white fear of
non-whites, particularly given the close associations between whiteness
and small-town and suburban America.
Medrano-González, Claudia (2024). "On the Convergence Between Femme Theory and
Popular Feminine Fiction: Adolescent Girls’ (Re)territorialisation Of
Fem(me)ininity Through Young Adult Erotic Romance." Journal of Femininities (published online ahead of print 2024). https://doi.org/10.1163/29501229-bja10005
and thanks to Cruz-Bibb, I've found references to some older dissertations I hadn't come across before:
Ganapathy, Subha
(2002).
Who Is Afraid of Romance Novels?: Women Readers, Patriarchy and Popular Culture.
PhD thesis,
Mother Teresa Women’s University. [Details here.]
The
last two reach very different conclusions from each other about lesbian
romance. Brown argues that lesbian romances differ significantly from f/m ones, whereas Secrease finds that they're really very similar. Both Brown and Secrease base their conclusions on small samples, and it could
be argued that they're comparing the lesbian novels to at least some
generalisations about heterosexual romances which have now been
superseded (and may have even been a bit out of date by the time the
dissertations were written) but it's interesting nonetheless that they
disagree. I linked to the entries in the Romance Scholarship Database
since I've included quotes there which are possibly not available in the
excepts at ProQuest.
---
Another item I found in Cruz-Bibb's bibliography is:
what I have experiencedas"feministchanges"to the romance genre began appearing in the mid-1980s [...] In my experience, in all but the subgenreofhistorical romance, gender stereotypes were beginning to change. Male characters were no longer portrayed strictlyasbrooding, dark, and macho; heroines were given more independence and depth. There were also thematic changes: for example, writers were beginning to pay attention to contemporary social issues, suchassingle parenting, substance abuse, and child abuse. (14)
On the topic of changes which took place in the 1980s, Steve Ammidown tweets that:
The
first mainstream contemporary romance to include condoms that I know of
is Elda Minger’s Untamed Heart. The first contemporary to discuss
abortion that I’ve seen was Sandra Brown’s A Treasure Worth Seeking. The
acquiring editor for both? Vivian Stephens. https://t.co/7pjFZyukPU
Minger's novel was published in 1983. Steve's
careful wording here reminds me that it's hard to keep track of
"firsts" in the genre: since there are so many romances, and many of the
earlier novels are somewhat difficult to access, their plots may not be
known to current scholars. There has been some work done on earlier
romances of course, and clearly some of them had plots we might find
surprising. For example, jay Dixon's The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1990s, describes
a romance by Elizabeth Carfrae, from 1929, in which the married heroine
conceives a child with the hero, to whom she is not married and "Her
husband thinks the baby is his and raises her accordingly until his
death, when the hero and heroine meet up again and marry" (139). One
early romance involving abortion is described by Joseph McAleer in his Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon:
In November 1939 a Mills & Boon novel, How Strong is Your Love?
by Barbara Hedworth, made the Irish Government's list of prohibited
books, on the grounds that it 'advocate[d] the unnatural prevention of
conception', a provision of the 1929 Censorship of Publications Act.
[....] Mills & Boon published this novel [...] over a year earlier,
in August 1938. Splashy advertising for this title billed it as 'an
absorbing romance' and 'a love story that will delight everybody'.
Apparently not: [...] the heroine's father, a village doctor, is an
abortionist. He decides to help Rose, unmarried but pregnant, by
performing 'an illegal operation'. The abortion (never called such by
name) is a success, but a blood clot kills Rose. To spare his family the
shame and scandal, Dr Vickers shoots himself. (168)
I
suspect that Steve was thinking more of novels in which abortion is
"called such by name" and despite the censors' concerns, clearly this
novel does not present abortion very favourably given that Rose dies,
but it's interesting that the topic was at least present here: later on
Mills & Boon's policy was to avoid the topic completely so as not to
have their publications censored.
Still on the topic of changes in the genre, in a recent article, Ana Quiring argues that "a new subgenre of queer Regency-era romance"
align[s] the lovers with the most marginalized in society. In consequence,
these novels imagine queer love and sex as always political. Rather
than repeating the Cinderella dream of marrying up, they invent a new
one, no less fantastic: romantic love as a conduit to solidarity.
And by "new subgenre" Quiring doesn't mean that it's only just appearing in 2022: one of the romances described in the article dates from 2014.
Still on the topic of queer/LGBTQ+ romance, I'm a bit less sure about the historical perspective of a recent article in the Guardian, which
refers to "the rise of LGBTQ+ romance fiction" and notes that readers
of one of the works discussed "praised the novel for being refreshingly
joyful and funny –
including a happy ending, which is not that common for a book with an
LGBTQ+ plot." Obviously, given the dissertations by Brown and Secrease mentioned above,
LGBTQ+ romance (which, by definition, includes a happy ending) isn't actually something new but perhaps what's
happening is that it's relatively recently broken through into the
awareness of mainstream media?
Also apparently breaking through is Black romance. Naomi Elias states that Bolu Babalola's "romance books—by design, not default—have become outliers in the
publishing industry, since they center Black women as romantic leads" and the sub-heading of the article adds that Babalola's work "normalizes seeing Black women being loved loudly." Given that mainstream romance publishing has tended to publish too few Black authors, the word "outlier" seems fair enough but I think whoever wrote the sub-heading (and it may well not have been Elias) is overlooking the work of many other Black romance authors who've been publishing for decades.
July 1994 saw two landmark debuts in romance- the publication of Night Song by @authorMsBev, and the launch of Kensington’s Arabesque line with titles by Frances Ray and Sandra Kitt. 1/ pic.twitter.com/T8junhhdwj
Jayashree Kamble, Professor of English Literature at La Guardia Community College
Shana McDavis-Conway, Co-Director for the Center for Story-Based Strategy and Staff Reviewer for Smart Bitches, Trashy Book
I'll end, though, with something that's been present in the genre for a very long time: historically inaccurate clothing on covers. Bernadette Banner has redrawn some historical romance covers (and the
cover of one work of historical fiction) to make the costumes more
accurately reflect clothing in the periods and places in which they're
set. The novels are: Kelly Bowen's Duke of My Heart;
Beverly Jenkins's Something Like Love; Olivia Waite's The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics; Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union; Gillian Bagwell's Venus in Winter;
Gayle Callen's Love with a Scottish Outlaw.
She
doesn't really explore the reasons why inaccurate outfits might be more
appealing to readers, and I'm not sure how much that's been discussed
by romance readers and scholars. Presumably the shirts that open in the
wrong way are more appealing due to the amount of bare chest they reveal
and I can see how some modern hairstyles might seem sexier than
accurate ones but is some of this due to which stock art was available? I
get the impression, though, that these were published by large
publishing companies who commission photo shoots specially for their
covers, so some of these choices don't make a lot of sense to me. Are
publishers making assumptions which aren't warranted about what will
appeal to readers? Or is the key thing just to give a general
"historical" feel so that the reader can easily identify which romance
subgenre the book's in?
It hasn't taken long for the RWA crisis to be turned into a case-study:
Lawrence, Kelsey, 2020. "No Happy Ending: Leadership Falls Apart at the Romance Writers of America." SAGE Business Cases. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529741117 and here's the abstract:
This short case asks students to examine the controversy stemming from
allegations of racism within the Romance Writers of America (RWA), one
of the largest U.S. writers’ and trade organizations. Students will
assess the organization’s response to the allegations, its subsequent
change of leadership, and what this indicates about the overall culture
within the RWA.
The crisis is also mentioned, albeit briefly, in the article by McAlister et al (see details below): "the implosion of the Romance Writers of America in late 2019 over issues of institutionalised racism demonstrated that the romance industry is still suffering from 'publishing’s diversity deficit'."
I'll take the opportunity, since I've brought up the topic of the RWA, to mention that the new Board of Directors issued an apology to members (archived here) and also to Courtney Milan:
The Board Members wrote:
Dear Courtney,
For our first and most important order of business, we,
the members of the Board of Directors of Romance Writers of America,
are writing to apologize to you. We acknowledge the improper, unfair,
and wrongful handling by RWA of the ethics complaints filed against you.
We offer our sincerest apology to you for what transpired. We object
vehemently to the way the proceedings were conducted, and we are very
sorry for the resulting impact on you.
As a result, in a unanimous vote as a new Board, we
have expunged both the complaints and the ensuing proceedings from the
record. This should never have happened, and the fact that it happened
to you--someone who has worked so hard to champion diversity, inclusion,
and equity for our members from marginalized communities--is a
travesty.
While we regrettably cannot undo how your case was
managed, we will be conducting a thorough review of the current RWA Code
of Ethics and surrounding procedures, as well as the RWA Policy manual,
to ensure that they best reflect RWA's current priorities and
principles, and so that RWA can help avoid situations like this in the
future.
We thank you for your years of dedicated service to RWA, and we will work hard to be worthy of that dedication.
And in other publications:
Adamenko, Olga and Olga Klymenko, 2020. "Communicative Behavior via Gender Identity (Based on the English language 'love stories')." Psycholinguistics 27.2. 44-70.
https://doi.org/10.31470/2309-1797-2020-27-2-44-70 The abstract is in English but the paper itself is not.
Kamitsuka, Margaret D., 2020. “Prolife Christian Romance Novels: A Sign that the Abortion-as-Murder Center Is Not Holding?” Christianity & Literature 69.1: 36-52. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/752347
McAlister, Jodi, Claire Parnell and Andrea Anne Trinidad, 2020. "#RomanceClass: Genre World, Intimate Public, Found Family." Publishing Research Quarterly. Online First. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-020-09733-1
Paradis, Kenneth, 2020. “Types and Tropes: History and Moral Agency in Evangelical Inspirational Fiction.” Christianity & Literature 69.1: 73-90. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/752349
The Guardianhas reported quotes made at the Melbourne Writers' Festival, in a panel session about Romance as Resistance, by Melanie Milburne, who writes for Harlequin Mills & Boon:
“Women have lots of options if they fall pregnant after a one-night
stand, and marrying a perfect stranger is not one of them, in my
opinion,” Milburne said.
Her discomfort is part of a tension being felt in some areas of the
romance community in the wake of #MeToo, and in the context of debates
around consent and reproductive rights.
“It takes a village to rape a woman and romance writers are part of that village,” Milburne said.
It’s a tension inherent in a genre – filled with women many of whom
consider themselves feminist – that is regularly painted as both
challenging and upholding patriarchal ideas.
Naturally, this reporting raised concern in the romance community.
Secret Babies, Pregnancy and Abortion
As far as the pregnancy quote is concerned, it's probably worth noting that Milburne's latest novel, Cinderella's Scandalous Secret, involves a pregnant heroine and when the hero "learns about her pregnancy, he's intent on sweeping her away to Sicily ... and marrying her!"
one of the bravest acts I’ve ever seen. Earlier this year I attended the
Australian Romance Reader Awards, where Melanie Milburne was the guest
speaker. At the table beforehand, she told me that she wasn’t sure how
her speech would be received, that she was nervous because what she had
to say was controversial. And then she got up and said that after a
stellar career and nearly 80 titles to her name, not only were there
some books that she wished she could go back and rewrite, but that there
were some of which she was actively ashamed.
Cuthbert exhorted the gathered authors to (among other things)
Write options. Secret babies are a treasured part of our genre, but
unwanted pregnancies have serious financial, emotional, and professional
repercussions for women without a support system around them. Use this
plot point, by all means, but be deliberate in your choices and don’t
romanticise it. You don’t know who’s reading.
This is part of the context to Milburne's comments at the Writers' Festival. Moreover, as reported in The Guardian, in May, other authors have been discussing this type of storyline and stating that in such circumstances abortion should be seriously considered as an option and sometimes one which is taken:
The unexpected pregnancy that forces a couple into a marriage of
convenience – only for them to soon fall in love – is a common trope in
romantic fiction. But in the days after Alabama’s state senate passed a near-total ban on abortion,
writers are asking themselves why none of these heroines ever considers
termination. According to the Guttmacher Institute, an organisation
promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights, it’s a common
experience for women in the US, with nearly one in four having had an abortion by the age of 45.
“We need to start putting abortion in our books,” the novelist Liz Lincoln tweeted on Wednesday.
“As an alternative to marrying virtual strangers after a surprise
pregnancy. As a part of character backstory. As a thing lots of people
experience.”
Rape, MeToo, and Romance's Responsibilities
Dr Jodi McAlister, who was chair of the panel, has clarified that "Melanie was explaining that romance has occasionally been complicit in the past with some narratives which are harmful to women, & she doesn't want to perpetuate that in the future. Out of context, it sounds way more dramatic than that!"
Kate Cuthbert, who was "the curator and co-programmer of a day-long discussion on the romance genre at a major Australian literary festival this past weekend" confirmed that Milburne had been "quoted accurately"
but argued that the quotes needed to be understood in their context:
the quote that is causing the most concern came as part of an incredibly broad & wide-ranging discussion on the genre, and its place in a #metoo world. [...] First, she said it as part of a discussion on the history of romance and how romance has changed as a genre from its past iterations to present day. Second, she was speaking to her own past, her own backlist and things she would like to have done differently if she had her time over. Melanie has over 80 books to her name, so she had some perspective to this. Finally, she was speaking to her own beliefs as a writer to the responsibility of romance genre writers, in the context of her own feminism and experience.
This kind of conversation is something Cuthbert supported in her speech last year:
I keep coming back to this idea of potential and obligation. Because I
think this is why romance has been so important to so many women for so
long: it shows the potential within all of us, and it honours its
obligations.
Now, obligations are slippery. And in a genre as big as ours, they’re
hard to pin down. The romance readership contains multitudes, and it’s
impossible to be everything to everyone. And, as one cogent argument
goes, we’re not the only genre. Why is romance being held accountable in
a way that other genres are not? Why must we answer to this ingrained
malice in a way that no one else is expected to?
Because it’s obligation. If we want to call ourselves a feminist
genre, if we want to hold ourselves up as an example of women being
centred, of representing the female gaze, of creating women heroes who
not only survive but thrive, then we have to lead. We can’t deflect and
we can’t dissemble. We need to look to the future and create the books
that women need to read now. We’ve been shown our potential. To rise to
it is our obligation.
---
Edited to add responses made to this post/after it was written:
Nicola Davidson: "I've seen the context, and agree that robust discussions on consent and culture are important and worthwhile. Doesn't change my opinion that the phrase used was an extremely poor choice of words, and as a rape and sexual assault survivor, I hope to never see it again."
Beverly Jenkins: "But consent is at the center now and has been for years. We’re basically leading the charge on that. I had a heroine who had an abortion."
Tasha L. Harrison: "I get that it was part of a larger conversation. However, this kind of language about romance from a romance author creates this mentality that romance has a greater influence on women than the constant and consistent narrative from ALL genres and ALL media pre-me too."
Bree: "I still think she said something dumb, I guess. She just didn't throw us under the bus to a reporter."
Zoe Archer: "It's an ongoing dialogue and process to which so many are contributing. The positioning of an author as the lone voice of change troubles me and doesn't negate the shock value of that last quote about villages."
Jodi McAlister: "I want to emphasise that while it wasn't the best wording ever, in context, it made much more sense. It was part of a claim that, essentially, rape culture exists, and that in the past, romance (including the works of the author in question - it was a self-interrogative claim) has sometimes upheld or played into narratives which uphold this culture. It was also an expression of desire from this author that her future works don't perpetuate narratives which are harmful to women, and we moved into a discussion of some of the radical potentials of the romance genre. Taken in isolation, the quote in question seems quite shocking, but in context, it was part of a very thoughtful and nuanced discussion of the romance genre (something which was a great privilege to be part of, given the track record of mainstream lit festivals in this regard)."
An exchange between Elizabeth Bright and Elizabeth Kingston EB: It takes a village to rape a woman. It takes a village to tell her she deserved it. It takes a village to raise boys who say no means yes. It takes a village to look the other way. And when romance writers call a raping love interest a hero, well…we are part of that village. I have a lot to say on the raping years of romance novels, and where we came from and where I hope we're going.
I also think it takes guts to look back on your own body of work and express regrets about things you got wrong. I wasn't there. I don't know what she said, or what she meant. I'm just taking the words at face value, and I don't think the words are entirely wrong. Feel free to disagree. If someone could explain why they're mad about it, that would help because I just don't get it.
EK: Speaking as someone who has had to say hard truths about what this genre promotes (innocently or not), I can say I think she was just careless about her word choice. She made it accusatory, and crudely so, which is wildly hurtful to many people who are already hurt.
EB: I think that’s probably true. But we’ve all had things to say about old school rom and even some very recent ones. The response from Romancelandia caught me by surprise. Her choice of words might be awful, but I’ve heard similar things from many of the people shrieking about it.
EK: I don't think I've ever heard someone oversimplify it so drastically, though. It's very different than saying "we are complicit" or "we have contributed." It's a pretty complex subject and there are pitfalls to being pithy, I guess.
EB: Absolutely. Her wording wasn’t good at all, not even for the sake of symmetry of language. I think what bothers me is that it seemed like people weren’t angry about the phrasing; they were angry at the implication that we are complicit. But maybe I misunderstood their anger, too.
EK: No, I think you're right that the anger is about that too - that's where the lack of nuance is a big problem. Women who wrote those things were often doing so in an attempt to find a way to process their own oppression and abuse, not to excuse or justify or perpetuate it. So to take that tangled and painful history and turn it into something that reads like "you're basically a rapist too" is anger-making
EB: Now that makes sense. Thanks for taking the time!
EK: Thanks for raising the question. This is just my take on it, who knows if I'm right. And fwiw, I think there's definitely an element of "don't air our dirty laundry so carelessly to outsiders" involved
Dr Sandra Schwab: I don't know about you, but I've read a large amount of category romance from the late 1990s and 2000s, and yes, from today's POV, many of these books contain massively problematic stuff. The hero blackmailing the heroine to have sex with him or to marry him was such a common motif. The hero kidnapping the heroine because of some stuff she did or did not do, whisking her away to a remote island, keeping her there against her will and threatening her a bit until she has sex with him? Yeah, that happened pretty often. Punishing kisses? Yep. The hero thinking of the heroine as a slut because she had sex with him? Yep. (Of course, he later realizes his mistake, blah, blah.) In many of these books abortion was vilified as was the morning-after pill. And a woman wanting to have a career? The horror! She must be an evil bitch. Moreover, a lot of these novels were massively homophobic: The hero's cold fiancée turns out to be a lesbian (which makes the hero blackmail the wedding planner into marrying him...); the heroine's manipulative fiancé who makes her feel all unwomanly turns out to be gay. Perhaps the language Melanie Milburne used to make her point was extreme, but she is not exactly wrong: These tropes were repeated over and over again by many authors, and readers gobbled these books up.
Kate Cuthbert: As an addendum to my earlier thread, please see below from Calla Wahlquist, the writer of the article and a romance advocate in her own right. Calla was a moderator at the event as well as an attendee.
Calla Wahlquist: Apologies - I wrote this brief and it was intended to be a brief, a quick what we learned note from a few panels. I included that quote because it snagged in my brain and because I found Melanie so impressive. I agree that context is important and will update that bit.
The Guardian article has been updated to include a note saying "This piece was updated on 13 September to contextualise a conversation about consent in the Romance as Resistance panel" . The relevant part now reads:
In earlier days of the genre, she said, consent was not always
handled well because of societal restrictions on women agreeing to and
enjoying pre-marital sex. That made coercion, a kind of not-quite-rape, a
bodice ripper trope. Romance now is clear about consent, but there is a
legacy.
“It takes a village to rape a woman and romance writers are part of that village,” Milburne said.
It’s a tension inherent in a genre – filled with women many of whom
consider themselves feminist – that is regularly painted as both
challenging and upholding patriarchal ideas.
For comparative purposes, the earlier version of the article can still be viewed here, via the Internet Archive.
