Bearing Free Heyer Stories I've Travelled Afar

Laura Vivanco

Following the recent JPRS call for papers on Georgette Heyer, I was reading Jennifer Kloester's new biography of Heyer (some reviews can be found here, here and here and there's a preview here).

Kloester's mention of a short story " 'On Such a Night', which [Heyer's] agent sold to an Australian magazine (so far the story remains undiscovered, with no indication of what it was about or the period in which it was set)" (148) sent me off to see what I could find. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my journey didn't lead me where I hoped it would, though I did discover that on Wednesday 24 November 1937 the story was broadcast on Australian radio (Station 2GB between 11.45 and 12 noon).

I did, however, find two short stories by Heyer, "Lady, Your Pardon" and "Incident on the Bath Road," which were entirely new to me. So, in the spirit of Epiphany, I thought I'd bring you some gold from an archival treasure Trove. Below are links to those two stories and a few others you may or may not have already read. I've also discovered serialised versions of a number of Heyer novels, so I've included links to those too, though only to the first page of each installment, or this post would have got unmanageably long.

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Short Stories

"A Proposal to Cicely" (1922)- via Jane Austen's World. [According to Fahnestock-Thomas, it was first published in The Happy Magazine, 4 September 1922 (5) and it is reprinted in her Georgette Heyer: A Critical Retrospective.]

"Runaway Match" (1936) - (1), (2), (3) and (4) - The Australian Woman's Weekly, 12 June 1937. [According to Fahnestock-Thomas, who reprinted it in her book, this was first published in Woman's Journal in April 1936 (20).]

"Lady, Your Pardon" - (1), (2), (3) and (4) - The Australian Women's Weekly, 3 April 1937. [This story was originally titled "Pharaoh's Daughter" (Kloester 163) and since Heyer thought "it has the makings of a novel" (Kloester 221) the opening scenes became the basis of her full-length Faro's Daughter (1941). The two stories do, however, develop quite differently.]

"Incident on the Bath Road" -  (1), (2), (3) and (4) - The Australian Women's Weekly, 29 May 1937.

"Love is a Hazard" - (1), (2), (3) and (4)- The Australian Women's Weekly, 10 July 1937. [This is a version of "Hazard," one of the short stories later published in Pistols for Two (1960).]

"Pursuit" (1939) - via the Internet Archive. [According to Fahnstock-Thomas this was first published in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross. She reprints it in her book.]

"The Duel" - (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) -  The Australian Women's Weekly, 28 October 1953. [This short story was later published in Pistols for Two.]

Historical Romances (mostly Regency)

The Black Moth (1921) [This is the full novel, I think, because it's out of copyright.]

Simon the Coldheart (1925)- in 5 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly.
20 Dec 1978; 27 Dec. 1978; 3 Jan. 1979; 10 Jan. 1979; 17 Jan. 1979.

Gay Adventure [Regency Buck] (1935)- The Australian Women's Weekly.
6 July 1935; 13 July 1935; 20 July 1935; 27 July 1935; 3 Aug. 1935; 10 Aug. 1935; 17 Aug. 1935; 24 Aug. 1935; 31 Aug. 1935; 7 Sept. 1935; 14 Sept. 1935; 21 Sept. 1935; 28 Sept. 1935; 5 Oct. 1935; 12 Oct. 1935; 19 Oct. 1935; 26 Oct. 1935; 2 Nov. 1935.

Kloester writes that Heyer was

incensed by the discovery that Dorothy Sutherland [editor of Woman's Journal] had re-named Regency Buck, Gay Adventure, with a caption that read: 'Gay Adventure - in the Dare-Devil Days when Men were Men and Women Seductively Coy!' above an illustration that made her strong-minded  heroine look exactly like the sort of insipid female she despised. Georgette found this sort of take on her work maddening, for she worked hard to lift her plots, characters and dialogue out of the rut of stereotypical and formulaic fiction. [...] She wrote to her agent to express her outrage: '[...] I am so furious I can't bring myself to reply. She chose that filthy title, Gay Adventure (it makes me sick to write it) without one word to me!' Nothing incensed Georgette more than interference in her work and Dorothy Sutherland's meddling was something she would not easily forgive. (147)

The Talisman Ring (1936) - The Australian Women's Weekly
5 Dec. 1936; 12 Dec. 1936; 19 Dec. 1926; 26 Dec. 1936; 2 Jan. 1937; 9 Jan. 1937; 16 Jan. 1937; 23 Jan 1937; 30 Jan. 1937; 6 Feb. 1937; 13 Feb. 1937.

An Infamous Army (1937) - Australian Women's Weekly
22 Jan. 1938; 29 Jan. 1938; 5 Feb. 1938; 12 Feb. 1938; 19 Feb. 1938; 26 Feb. 1938; 5 March 1938; 12 March 1938; 19 March 1938; 26 March 1938; 2 April 1938; 9 April 1938.

Friday's Child (1944) - Australian Women's Weekly
29 Jan. 1949; 5 Feb. 1949; 12 Feb. 1949; 19 Feb. 1949; 26 Feb. 1949; 5 March 1949; 12 March 1949; 19 March 1949; 26 March 1949; 2 April 1949; 9 April 1949; 16 April 1949.

The Reluctant Widow (1946)- Sydney Morning Herald , starting 31 Aug. 1946
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, Conclusion.

Arabella (1949) - in 10 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly
2 Jan 1952; 9 Jan. 1952; 16 Jan. 1952; 23 Jan 1952; 30 Jan. 1952; 6 Feb. 1952; 13 Feb. 1952; 20 Feb. 1952; 27 Feb. 1952; 5 March 1952.

The Grand Sophy (1950) - in 8 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly
28 Jan. 1953; 4 Feb. 1953; 11 Feb. 1953; 18 Feb. 1953; 25 Feb. 1953; 4 March 1953; 11 March 1953; 18 March 1953.

Bath Tangle (1955) - in 6 parts in Australian Women's Weekly
30 March 1955; 6 April 1955; 13 April 1955; 20 April 1955; 27 April 1955; 4 May 1955.

Sprig Muslin (1956) - in 7 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly
4 April 1956; 11 April 1956; 18 April 1956; 25 April 1956; 2 May 1956; 9 May 1956; 16 May 1956.

April Lady (1957) - in 5 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly
3 April 1957; 10 April 1957; 17 April 1957; 24 April 1957; 1 May 1957.

Sylvester (1957)- in 7 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly
11 June 1958; 18 June 1958; 25 June 1958; 2 July 1958; 9 July 1958; 16 July 1958; 23 July 1958.

Venetia (1958) - in 5 parts in the Australian Women's Weekly
22 April 1959; 29 April 1959; 6 May 1959; 13 May 1959; 20 May 1959.

The Unknown Ajax (1959) - Australian Women's Weekly
1 June 1960; 8 June 1960; 15 June 1960; 22 June 1960; 29 June 1960.

Historical Fiction

Royal Escape (1938) - Australian's Women's Weekly
18 Nov. 1939; 25 Nov. 1939; 2 Dec. 1939; 9 Dec. 1939; 16 Dec. 1939; 23 Dec. 1939; 30 Dec. 1939; 6 Jan. 1940; 13 Jan. 1940; 20 Jan. 1940.

Detective Novels

The Unfinished Clue (1934) - "Complete Booklength Novel" in the Australian Women's Weekly, 10 August 1935.

Death in the Stocks (1935) - "Long Complete Book-Length Novel" in the Australian Women's Weekly, 8 June 1935.

Behold, Here's Poison! (1936) - Australian Women's Weekly
23 Nov. 1940; 30 Nov. 1940; 7 Dec. 1940 ;14 Dec. 1940; 21 Dec. 1940; 28 Dec. 1940; 4 Jan. 1941; 11 Jan. 1941; 18 Jan. 1941; [it would appear there is no issue for 25 Jan. 1941] ; 1 Feb. 1941.

No Wind of Blame (1939) - Australian Women's Weekly
19 April 1947; 26 Apr. 1947; 3 May 1947; 10 May 1947; 17 May 1947; 24 May 1947; 31 May 1947; 7 June 1947; 14 June 1947; 21 June 1947; 28 June 1947; 5 July 1947.

Detection Unlimited (1953) - in six parts in Australian Women's Weekly
3 Feb. 1954; 10 Feb. 1954; 17 Feb. 1954; 24 Feb. 1954; 3 March 1954; 10 March 1954.

If any of those links are faulty, please let me know. I was very careful, but there were so many links to insert I may have slipped up somewhere.

This Australian Women's Weekly review of The Spanish Bride, from 29 June 1940, may also be of interest. It includes a photo of Georgette Heyer which I hadn't seen before and the reviewer draws parallels between the historical context of the novel and that of 1940:

AT such a time as this, with the newspapers carrying, every day, news of further advances on the part of troops driven forward by the will of a ruthless, determined, strongly armed aggressor, there is a message of comfort in this story of a desperate war, against another Continental dictator, over a hundred years ago.

Kloester also notes the relevance of world politics to Heyer's output:

The idea that war was impending pervaded British life throughout the late 1930s and each of Georgette's historical novels written between 1936 and 1939 was about war. After An Infamous Army was published she decided to write the story of Charles II's escape from Cromwell's England following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. (185)

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• Fahnestock-Thomas, Mary. Georgette Heyer: A Critical Retrospective. Saraland, AL: Prinnyworld, 2001.
• Kloester, Jennifer. Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller. London: Heinemann, 2011.

The image of the Three Wise Men carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh, came from Wikimedia Commons.

Modernism and the Women's Popular Romance in Britain, 1885-1925

Laura Vivanco

Dr. Martin Hipsky's Modernism and the Women's Popular Romance in Britain, 1885-1925, recently published by Ohio University Press, has been described as "a must-read rethink of modernism itself." I asked Marty if he'd like to visit Teach Me Tonight to tell us a bit more about his new book, and he agreed. I should note that although he describes it as a "study of the history of the modern romance novel," his focus on such an early period in the history of "the modern romance novel" does mean that some of the popular romances he studies (including Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan and Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks) would not be classified as romances according to the RWA definition, although many others would.

Martin Hipsky

Ohio Wesleyan University

mahipsky@owu.edu

As a scholar of British and Irish literary modernism, I first became interested in the romance novel of the fin de siècle and early twentieth century when I was writing about the London avant-garde and Wyndham Lewis's journal Blast (1914-15). Lewis's fiery cultural manifestos (co-signed by Ezra Pound) featured the name of celebrity romance-writer Marie Corelli, whom they took to be a totem of Edwardian popular culture, and a sort of demotic figure for cultural tendencies that they, as a self-proclaimed vanguard, were rebelling against. I discovered that (as readers of this blog may know) Corelli had been publishing best-selling mystical romances since the mid-1880s, and in 1895, with her blockbuster romance The Sorrows of Satan, had sold the most copies of any novel in the history of Britain to that point.

So I read some of Corelli's romances, and she became the inspiration of a research project: to investigate the most successful romance novels written by women in the same years that witnessed the emergence of what we now call high modernist culture, and to consider the relationship -- as perceived then, but more importantly as legible now, with the benefit of historical hindsight -- between this ultra-popular mode and the experimental narratives of such canonical figures as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Rebecca West, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence.

My study offers interpretations of eleven top-selling books, all women-authored romances, in the years around the turn of the British twentieth century. This set of romances includes works by Mary Ward ("Mrs. Humphry Ward"), Marie Corelli, Emma Orczy, Elinor Glyn, Florence Barclay, Victoria Cross, Ethel Dell, and E. M. Hull. For a list of the eleven romances I have chosen as my primary interpretive focus (a limited selection, as most of these eight writers published a number of romances), you can look at the Works Cited list below.

Although I note the occasional condescension that the modernist writers, predictably enough, expressed toward these women romance-writers, that is not the cultural dynamic of interest here. Rather, I argue that certain "high" modernist works, for all their intellectual challenges, nonetheless evinced a powerful force of affect in parallel with the affective appeal popular romances by women. While the parallel was not conscious on either side of the romance/modernism divide, what was conscious on the part of the two sets of writers, in different ways, was the project of creative reaction against the literary realism that was so esteemed by the (mostly male) cultural arbiters of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. This parallel, I argue, has powerful implications about the unfulfilling experience of living amid an often alienating and isolating modernity.

Modernism and the Women’s Popular Romance in Britain, then, is not primarily a celebration of either select high modernist works, or select romance novels of the late-Victorian-to-modernist period. It is instead an attempt to explain the unprecedented (and often forgotten) appeal of that era’s secular, women-authored romance. As I say in the preface to the study, between 1885 and 1925 these romances loomed as a series of pinnacles along the highest plateau of popular British (in most cases, also North American, and indeed global anglophone) reading. For this socio-historical reason and many others (including the pleasures of discovery that these romances can still bring to their readers), I believe that this group of romances constitutes a very important part of recent anglophone literary-cultural history. I hope that the book makes some contribution to our understanding of the vast phenomenon of the woman-authored romance reading of our not-too-distant past.

Works Cited

Barclay, Florence. The Rosary. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1909.

Corelli, Marie. Innocent: Her Fancy and His Fact. New York: A. L. Burton Company, 1914.

_____. The Sorrows of Satan [1895]. Ed. by Peter Keating. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

_____. The Treasure of Heaven.. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1906.

Cross, Victoria [Vivian Cory]. Anna Lombard. New York: Kensington Press, 1901.

Dell, Ethel. The Way of an Eagle [1912]. London: Virago, 1996.

Glyn, Elinor. Three Weeks. London: Duckworth, 1907.

Hull, E. M. The Sheik [1919]. Philadelphia: Pine Street Press, 2001.

Orczy, Baroness [Emmuska]. The Scarlet Pimpernel [1905] “Popular Edition.” London: Greening and Co., 1909.

Ward, Mary Augusta. Lady Rose’s Daughter. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1903.

_____. Robert Elsmere [1888]. Edited by Clyde de L. Ryals. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967.

Magazine and Story Paper Romances

Laura Vivanco

There is, it seems to me, a hierarchy in romances: single-titles are often considered superior to category romances and the various magazine formats (including the romance comics to which Sequential Crush is dedicated) are often entirely forgotten. I was provided with a salutary corrective recently when I bought a copy of a 1960s guide to writing romantic fiction which states that

A good serial will always make a good novel and a good romantic novel will often make a serial. The most obvious difference is in length.
Magazines obtain their serials by two methods. Either they are specially written for the market, or, more commonly, they are adapted by the editorial staff from a full-length novel. Most publishers make a point of submitting manuscripts with a feminine appeal to magazines, in order to sell the serial rights well before book publication. Financially, selling to a magazine is by far the better proposition. Serial rights can bring in two or three times as much - sometimes even more than a publisher's advance. (Britton and Collin 108). ¹

They probably weren't overstating the importance of the magazine market in that period; Joseph McAleer, who has studied the publishing history of Mills & Boon, writes that

While Mills & Boon had had a close relationship with the magazines since the 1920s, it was in the 1950s that contact intensified, and the magazines themselves become a kind of extension of the editorial department. By 1948, pre-publication serializations of Mills & Boon novels were fixtures in the top three women's magazines, which together were selling over three million copies per week: Woman, Woman's Own, and Woman's Weekly [...]. This association with the weekly magazines served more than an editorial purpose. Mills & Boon reaped extra publicity when a serial 'sold' well, encouraging readers to seek out the complete novel in the libraries, or other titles by the author. Moreover, selling serial rights - for as much as £1,000 - helped Mills & Boon's cash flow. The firm usually retained between 15 and 25 per cent of the serial fee. (97)

Magazines came in various types and Bridget Fowler has studied in detail

a representative sample of weekly family or women's magazines, selecting those of the most economical design, with the lowest prices [...]. Where possible, the period analysed was July 1929 to July 1930 [...]. Not only was this a time of industrial restructuring and financial collapse, but it was also the last era before the birth of the modern, glossy, mass-circulation women's magazine in 1932. Stories had a much more central place in the older type of magazine and were often the sole diet of fiction for their readers. The affectionate niche they acquired in the lives of their reading-public was attested by many of my respondents with working-class roots, who recalled their mothers snatching brief interludes from heavy domestic labour to enjoy the little luxury of Silver Star or the People's Friend. (51)²

Billie Melman has focused in particular on "The Lancashire romance and the love story set in the Empire" (144) in British story papers of the 1920s. The "mill-girl story had emerged in the 1890s. Its heyday overlapped the decade between the end of the First World War and the Wall Street Crash; its decline and fall coincided with the Great Depression" (121). Indeed, "The Great Depression, which finally ruined the Lancashire cotton industry, also gave the Lancashire romance its coup-de-grâce" (133). This sub-genre does

include some stories of romantic rivalry between a mill-hand and a toff, fighting for the heart and hand of a mill girl. Usually it is the honest, industrious Lancastrian who wins. On the whole, the concept of marriage as a bond that benefits economically or socially one or both of the parties is alien to the spirit of the Lancashire romance. Matrimony is not an economic partnership, or a sanctioned sexual relationship, but a lifelong friendship between two adolescents, an extension of the 'matiness' of the mill. (128)

In sharp contrast to the mill-girl stories, yet existing alongside them, was a type of story whose "brand-mark was nationalism. Its symbol was the Empire. Its main characteristic was the blurring of social differences and the effacement of class consciousness" (134). Melman suggests that "The flowering of a genre that celebrated an imaginary society in which females were scarce and males plentiful may be seen as a response to the anxieties caused by the imbalance between the sexes" (136-37) in the aftermath of the First World War. There

are two patterns of romance. In the first, the emigrant story proper, an Englishwoman, newly arrived from the 'Old Country', finds a mate, a home and purposeful life in the unpopulated wilderness of a British dominion or colony. In the second pattern, the heroine, born of British parents in the 'New Country', is pursued and won by an Englishman. In both these patterns the main emphasis is upon the national and racial identity of the protagonists. The characters must be white and Anglo-Saxon. Their affiliation to race replaces other allegiances - to class, to the community, to occupation and even to gender. (137)

The story papers in which these stories appeared

were printed, on the newsprint pulp paper from which they derived their somewhat derogatory epithet, in a two- or four-column layout. The typical story paper was a weekly [...]. Its potential readers were unmarried manual workers, shop assistants, domestic servants and office workers. Married women in their early and mid twenties formed a distinct group for which a host of periodicals more domestic in outlook than the publications for adolescents catered.

The main component of the pulp weekly was fiction. The relation between the role of magazine fiction and the social status of the magazine-reading public has been noticed. The space given to fiction was in inverse proportion to the class of readers. The 'higher' this class, the smaller the story component. (113)

In addition, "The serial story was peculiar to working-class periodicals. [...] Middle-class publications, on the other hand, had a distinct preference for shorter fiction" (114).

William Gleason takes the study of magazine romances back even further in time, and across the Atlantic, in issue 2.1 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies. He states that:

The mass marketing of modern romance fiction in North America began not with the emergence of Harlequin Books in the 1950s but during the dime novel and story paper boom of the 1860s and 1870s. Seeking to capitalize on the longstanding appeal of love stories, which had been appearing alongside other popular genres in the weekly family story papers since the mid-nineteenth century, many of the most influential “cheap” U.S. publishing houses—including Beadle and Adams, Street and Smith, George P. Munro, and Norman Munro—began to experiment with more distinctly marked romance series aimed primarily or exclusively at women readers. Several of these series were quite successful, others wildly so. Beadle and Adams’s Waverley Library, for example, which offered both classic fiction and popular romance novels, produced a total of 353 issues between 1879 and 1886 (Johannsen 304, 314). Street and Smith’s Bertha Clay Library, launched in 1900, ran (along with its successor, the New Bertha M. Clay Library) for more than thirty years (Carr 81). And from the mid-1880s through the 1930s popular publishers fought over exclusive rights to publish and republish the works of prolific American romance novelist Laura Jean Libbey, both as stand-alone volumes in various “library” series and as serialized novels in weekly story papers (Masteller 205). These late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century publishing successes laid the groundwork for the mass marketing of popular romance with which we are familiar today.

As for me, I've been dipping into the digitized, online editions of Australian Women's Weekly from 1933 to 1982. Joan Elman's A New Car and a Lady (18 Feb. 1939) features a heroine who drives cars for a living (she works for a car show-room); the first thing she says is "Oh, but this had been a day of days! Three demonstrations since ten o'clock. Careers for women? Ugh!" (5). The anti-heroine from this story is not totally dissimilar, at least initially, to the heroine of This Frail Flower (21 August 1943) who, before the war, was "lovely and loveable, spoiled, useless" (5). She, however, finds a new purpose in life, and her old love, in a factory doing war-work. In Paul Horgan's National Honeymoon (16 Sept. 1950) the heroine manipulates her new groom into appearing with her on a national radio programme which gives prizes to newly-weds in return for them sharing their love story with the nation. Roberta May reveals that she used to work "as a secretary [...] I wanted to keep on, but Gus wouldn't let me" because, as he says, "I can support both of us" (10). Roberta gave up her job rather than lose Gus, but much as the job would have enabled her to "help with payments on the house" (20), their appearance on the show will allow her to have a room in that house refurbished. After the show, however, Roberta is "sorry with all her heart for what they had given away that day [...] their very own love story" (22). Gus tells her that they can get back "the important part of it" by returning all the prizes; "I'll buy what we need, and if we can't afford it yet we'll wait till we can" (22). Yet again, the implication seems to be (a) a man should "support" the couple on his own, without his wife's assistance, and (b) when a wife puts herself into the public arena (as opposed to staying safely at home) she runs the risk of damaging her marriage. The contrast between these last two stories seems to reflect the changing attitudes towards women's work:

At the end of the war, the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor asked women workers about their future work plans [...] most women wanted to keep their present jobs. Immediately after the war, the percentage of women who worked fell as factories converted to peacetime production and refused to rehire women. In the next few years, the service sector expanded and the number of women in the workforce—especially older married women—increased significantly, despite the dominant ideology of woman as homemaker and mother. The types of jobs available to these women, however, were once again limited to those traditionally deemed “women’s work.”(History Matters)

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1The authors of this guide, Anne Britton and Marion Collin, had "both been fiction editors of women's magazines" (dustjacket) so they clearly write from experience when they warn authors of full-length novels that:

If your manuscript is bought as a serial do not be surprised by what happens to it. You may have written about sixty-five thousand words. The fiction staff will have no qualms about cutting it to thirty thousand words if it suits them better that way. You have sold the story and unless you want to kill your market you will be wise not to complain about its new length or its new title, or even to hint that they have cut out your most brilliant passages! The staff who cut are experienced, and it is their job to know what makes a successful serial. (117-18)

I can't help but feel that there are some parallels here with the process of translation and cutting documented by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, which led her to ask "Is this not a new book? And where is the writer in all of this?" ("They Seek").

2 The romance stories themselves are described by Fowler as featuring "plots in which women are shown to be as capable of achieving production targets and intellectual attainments as men. However, in every case the working woman is reintegrated into the domestic world after marriage" (60).

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• Britton, Anne and Marion Collin. The New Writers' Guide: Romantic Fiction. London: T. V. Boardman, 1960.
• Fowler, Bridget. The Alienated Reader: Women and Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
• Gleason, William. “Belles, Beaux, and Paratexts: American Story Papers and the Project of Romance.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 2.1 (2011).
• McAleer, Joseph. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999
• Melman, Billie. Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs. London: Macmillan, 1988.
  
• Wirtén, Eva Hemmung. " 'They Seek It Here, They Seek It There, They Seek It Everywhere': Looking for the "Global" Book" Canadian Journal of Communication 23.2 (1998).

The covers above, from The Australian Women's Weekly, are for 25 Feb. 1939,19 June 1943 and 14 Oct. 1950. Thumbnails of all the covers can be viewed via a "visual timeline."

Contextualising Sex

Laura Vivanco

Eloisa James has recently stated that

sex -- its practices, its customs and conventions, and prevailing attitudes toward it -- is a function of the historical, cultural and social conditions of a given time and place.

Similarly A. Dana Ménard and Christine Cabrera, in their article which I discussed last week, note that:

It has been well established that the attitudes and behaviours of consumers are affected by exposure to sexual content in the media (e.g. lifestyle magazines, television, movies) (Bielay and Herold 1995; Kim and Ward 2004; Ward 2002, 2003). However, in many cases, the specific messages about sexuality and sexual behaviours that are being promoted have not been studied. There has been a distinct lack of research on romance novels (Clawson 2005; Phillips 2006) and, in particular, on portrayals of sex and sexuality in these books, despite the widespread readership of these novels and their experimentally demonstrated power to influence readers’ attitudes and beliefs (e.g. feelings about condom use) (Diekman et al. 2000).

I discussed Diekman et al's study here at TMT last year, and quoted the abstract of their paper:

According to the sexual script portrayed in romance novels, true love is demonstrated by being “swept away” in passion. To the extent that this traditional romance script influences romance readers' own sexual scripts, readers may express greater reluctance to engage in precautionary sexual health behaviors, such as using condoms. We explored the relationship between women's reading of romance novels and their attitudes toward condom use, reports of past condom use, and intention to use condoms in the future. A systematic content analysis of modern romance novels documented the extremely low incidence of portrayals of condom use in initial sexual encounters. Study 1 demonstrated that high levels of romance reading were associated with negative attitudes toward condoms and reduced intent to use condoms in the future; Study 2 showed experimentally that including safe sex elements in romance stories increased positive attitudes toward condoms and marginally increased intent to use condoms in the future.

Condom use doesn't seem to be a particularly controversial and recurring topic of discussion in the romance community, but rape/"forced seduction" is. Just recently there have been a couple of posts about it at Dear Author. Today at Dear Author Janet is attempting to answer the question "Is there Such a Thing as Feminist Sex?" It's an interesting article and I'd encourage you to read it in its entirety but I'd like to pick out just one of the questions Janet raises:

If we had no inequality between men and women, we would not see sexual submission or dominance as symbolic of that inequity. But because we do have so much inequity, it’s easy to see sexual behavior and sexual desire through that same lens. However, isn’t it possible that these two things are completely separate? That we can enjoy equity in the boardroom and power plays in the bedroom?

Accepting that this is the case might require people to negotiate with each other and discuss their sexual preferences, and perhaps some people are reluctant to negotiate "in the bedroom." After all, Diekman et al found that in "the sexual script portrayed in romance novels, true love is demonstrated by being “swept away” in passion"; it seems likely that for some people negotiation would seem as lacking in passion and spontaneity as condom-use.

However, much as Diekman et al found that it is possible for romances to incorporate condom-use (and, indeed, Ménard and Cabrera found that in the romances they sampled, "books from 2000 to 2009 included contraception usage in 57.9% of scenes"), there are certainly ways to incorporate explicit consent into a range of sexual fantasies in romance novels. In the following scene from Jules Jones and Alex Woolgrave's The Syndicate, for example, the protagonists discuss whether or not to have sex and they then begin to set the scene for their rape fantasy:

"Now," murmured Vaughan a moment later, pulling a straw out of his mouth, "I've dragged you into this haystack completely against your will, Allard, and I'm going to have my wicked way with you whether you like it or not." [...]

"You're not going to make a sound as I ravish you," said Vaughan, "because there are loads of people a few feet away from this haystack, and you don't want them to know what's happening to your maidenly virtue."

Allard did his best to remember when he'd had maidenly virtue (about twenty years ago) and decided that being quietly ravished had distinct possibilities.

It seems to me that some of those who find rape/"forced seduction" troubling in the romance genre may do so not because we believe "rape fantasies" or BDSM sex are inherently wrong or anti-feminist, but because they have so often appeared in scenes which, unlike that in Jones and Woolgrave's novel, have little or no consensual context.

Jessica at RRR recently linked to a post by Thomas MacAulay Millar in which he paraphrases Violet Blue:

She said the rise of rough sex and sort of BDSM-by-any-other-name in gonzo porn wasn’t a good thing: that it brought with it the physical and psychological aspects of BDSM (I’m paraphrasing here) and popularized them with a mainstream audience, but didn’t normalize all the ethical tools of negotiation and communication that should always go with that stuff.

Similarly, when a romance hero rapes or "forcibly seduces" his heroine, this is generally not separated out from their other interactions and marked as a "power play in the bedroom." Although Janet has suggested in another of her posts that it is possible to read rape/"forced seduction" scenes as sexual fantasy, a sort of unmarked BDSM scene in which all the negotiation and consent issues are negotiated in the reader's head, it seems clear that not all romance readers read the scenes this way. These readers therefore find themselves in a situation similar to the one MacAulay Millar and Blue discuss: situations in which they are watching/reading sexual activity which is not explicitly placed in the context of negotiation and consent. Blue writes that when she watches porn and finds "sex acts, or acts in sex, that are typically practiced consensually in BDSM" "in every DVD, without context, as part of a senseless formula" she finds this "creepy." The creepiness arises not from the acts themselves but from the lack of a consensual context which would clearly mark the scenes as safely negotiated acts of sexual play/fantasy.

This lack of context may be particularly important if it shapes viewers/readers' "sexual scripts." In romance novels protagonists who engage in unsafe sex rarely if ever contract diseases. Nonetheless, this fictional behaviour is not unproblematic if, as Diekman et al found, it encourages "negative attitudes toward condoms and reduced intent to use condoms in the future." Is it possible that heroes who override a heroine's lack of consent may also shape readers' behaviours? Could they be reinforcing a sexual script which discourages negotiation and "enthusiastic consent"?

That sexual script certainly exists, and Jaclyn Friedman has a few things to say about it:

many folks raised female have been taught that we ought not to have sexual desires, and certainly if we have them we shouldn’t talk about them, lest anyone think we’re slutty or something (and we all know what happens to sluts.) And lots of male-type folks are taught that they’re supposed to know what their partner wants without even having to ask, or else they’re not “real men.” So there’s stuff to overcome here, for sure. But I’m here to testify: it’s super-worth overcoming it. Because when you become able to talk about sex while you’re having it, not only do ensure that nobody’s raping anybody, but you have way, way better sex. You know more about what you’re partner wants in the moment, and your partner knows more about what you want, and, well, everybody gets more of what they want.

It seems, then, that as Lena Chen has stated,

Feminist sex doesn't have to be vanilla or very PC. But what differentiates it from your run-of-the-mill sexual encounter is that it recognizes the importance of satisfying everyone's needs. [...] And of course, feminist sex also means that we keep in mind how fluid sexual identity and experience can be. There isn't only one way to have sex, nor is there a "best" way.

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• Blue, Violet. "Putting Rough Porn in Context." Violet Blue: Open Source Sex August 21, 2005.
• Chen, Lena. "The Feminist Guide to Hot, Happy, Healthy Sex." Sex. Really. October 15, 2010.
  
• Diekman, Amanda B., Mary McDonald and Wendi L. Gardner. “Love Means Never Having to be Careful: The Relationship Between Reading Romance Novels and Safe Sex Behavior.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 24.2 (2000): 179-88. [Abstract]
• Friedman, Jaclyn. "The (Nonexistent) Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Consequences of Enthusiastic Consent." Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape January 3, 2011.
• James, Eloisa. "Bringing past sex to life is complicated." CNN April 25, 2011.
• Janet. "Is there Such a Thing as Feminist Sex?" Dear Author April 25, 2011.
• Jones, Jules and Alex Woolgrave. The Syndicate: Volume 1.
  
• MacAulay Millar, Thomas. "Sarah Prickett’s Ambiguous Aside." Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape March 9, 2011.
• Ménard, A. Dana and Christine Cabrera. "‘Whatever the Approach, Tab B Still Fits into Slot A’: Twenty Years of Sex Scripts in Romance Novels." Sexuality & Culture, Online First™, 3 April 2011.

Novelty or New Packaging?

Laura Vivanco

Over at Dear Author Sunita's got a post up in which she contests the idea that Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower gave "birth to the romance genre." The post is, in a way, a follow-up to a post by Jessica at Read React Review but Sunita takes the novel as a case study in how changes in the publishing industry affect which novels reach the book-buying public, and the formats in which we read them. Sunita mentions (but does not quote) Janice Radway's analysis of the changes in the publishing industry at the time of The Flame and the Flower's publication, so I thought I'd include part of it here:

A paperback original, The Flame and the Flower was given all the publicity, advertising, and promotion usually reserved for proven bestsellers. Such originals had been issued continuously in small quantities throughout the early years of mass-market history, but concentration on them was not widespread for the simple reason that it cost more to pay out an advance to an author and to advertise an unknown book than to buy reprint rights to an already moderately successful hardback. Avon, however, under the direction of Peter Meyer, had begun to experiment with originals and different advertising campaigns in the mid-1960s. When Coffey agreed to publish The Flame and the Flower without previous hardcover exposure, she was simply following a practice that had become fairly common within her firm. The house's extraordinary success with Woodiwiss's novel soon caused industry-wide reconsideration of the possibilities of paperback originals as potential bestsellers. (34)

Sunita concludes that as far as the content of The Flame and the Flower was concerned, it "didn’t really break new ground, but it put together a winning combination of proven ingredients" and that reminded me of a description in Meljean Brook's In Sheep's Clothing of the difference it makes to have been changed from a human into a werewolf:

"I heal faster now [...] it was harder to fight myself when I wanted something. [...] And I didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone.”

“But now?”

“I learned to control it better. And the more I let it—the wolf—out, the more control I have when I’m human.”

Becoming a werewolf isn't depicted as being an inherently bad thing. Indeed, the truly shocking character in this short story isn't the werewolf; it's a human serial murderer who rapes his victims before strangling them.

The transformation from human to werewolf, however, seems to enhance the powers and impulses the individual already possessed. I think one might perhaps be able to say the same about the paranormal romance genre itself. It builds on existing tendencies and plots which existed in the romance genre but makes them more intense: a vampire hero can be much, much older and richer and stronger than a human heroine, demons can be even more tortured and angst-filled than rakes, happily-ever-afters can be exactly that if the protagonists are immortal. And, of course, the frequent animal metaphors, which express the hero's physical power, his undomesticated nature, and his sexuality, can be given physical form in the werewolf.

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• Brook, Meljean. In Sheep's Clothing. [Available free online from Brook's website.]
  
• Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 1984. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991.

Open Source Academic Publishing

Laura Vivanco.

There are plenty of open source academic journals (including JPRS, of course), and I've seen free repositories for dissertations etc, but I hadn't previously seen an open source academic publisher like ETC press. This may just be an indication of my ignorance, of course. Here's part of what ETC has to say about itself:

ETC Press is a publishing imprint with a twist. We publish books, but we’re also interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple media. We are an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

This year they've published a book written by the bloggers at the popular culture blog The Cultural Gutter. The book can be read in a variety of formats, most of which are free, and contains

10 articles each from science fiction/fantasy editor James Schellenberg, comics editor and publisher Carol Borden, romance editor Chris Szego, screen editor Ian Driscoll and founding editor and former games editor Jim Munroe.

Chris Szego's short articles on romance cover a variety of topics including Georgette Heyer, fairy tales, Mary Stewart, Nora Roberts, and the Smart Bitches' Beyond Heaving Bosoms.


The graphic is the Open Access logo, designed by the Public Library of Science, and downloaded from Wikipedia.

Molly Make-Believe: "Unreal but Not Untrue"?

Laura Vivanco

Over the holidays I'm going to be taking a break from blogging so I thought I'd leave you with a suitably wintry story and some reflections on fiction.

Jennifer Crusie wrote in one of her essays that

Folklorist Max Luthi says that fairy tales are “unreal but not untrue” because they deal with the greatest themes in literature and life, and much of genre fiction, grounded in myth, legend, and tale, retells those primal stories for adults.

In Crusie's The Cinderella Deal (1996) the hero, Lincoln Blaise, "need[s] a professional liar" (17) to help him, and he turns to Daisy Flattery, a storyteller whose card reads

Daisy Flattery
Apartment 1B

Stories Told, Ideas Illuminated

Unreal but Not Untrue (1)

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott's Molly Make-Believe (1910) is a love story which is also about fiction and truth.¹ Carl Stanton is bedridden due to a serious attack of rheumatism and his fiancée, Cordelia, has gone on holiday for six weeks. She writes to promise him that she'll send him a letter roughly once a week and suggests that he "investigate" a "ridiculous circular" because it "seems to be rather your kind" (6). The circular advertises the services of

THE SERIAL-LETTER COMPANY.

Comfort and entertainment Furnished for Invalids, Travelers, and all Lonely People.

Real Letters

from

Imaginary Persons.

Reliable as your Daily Paper. Fanciful as your Favorite
Story Magazine. Personal as a Message from your Best Friend. Offering all the Satisfaction of receiving Letters with no Possible Obligation or even Opportunity of Answering Them. (11)

I don't want to spoil the story for those who haven't read it, so I won't say much more about it, but here's one last quote, in which Stanton describes the letters he's received from the Company:

"[...] they're not lies!" snapped Stanton. "Surely you don't call anything a lie unless not only the fact is false, but the fancy, also, is maliciously distorted! (99)

Again, I'm going to be cautious about how I phrase this, so as to avoid spoilers, but since Stanton doesn't know the real identity of Molly Make-Believe he starts to speculate about what she might be like. Let's just say some of aspects of this speculation are "interesting" to a modern sensibility. But given that the novel has metafictional elements, and given the discussions of "slash" fiction we've had here, it makes me wonder what revisionist versions might be possible, in which Molly's identity turned out to be different.

You can read Molly Make-Believe in full online here, from the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive has copies available in many different formats, scanned directly from an original. I've chosen that edition because it has all the pages (and they're all in the right order) but unfortunately it doesn't have illustrations. They're available in this version and someone has them up at Flickr. The Internet Archive also has an audio version. The Project Gutenberg editions don't include any pictures or the original page layout, but they too are available free in many different text formats and also many different audio formats as well as being available to be read online.

One advantage of reading an original version is that you get to see some of the advertising that would have been seen by the original readers of the book. At the end of this novel we can find an advertisement for romances by Margaret Pedler (some details about her can be found at Wikipedia) and Ethel M. Dell (and some details about her can also be found at Wikipedia). She was born in 1881 and died in 1939. Her

success rests with The Way of an Eagle (1912), which was refused by eight publishers before re-typing and final acceptance by T. Fisher Unwin. By 1915 the book accounted for half Unwin’s turnover! By the end of the First World War, Dell was earning a huge income from her books – one of the wealthiest authors in Britain. Her easy style and clear eroticism made her an illicit favourite with middle-class adolescents and working-class servants and gained her the title of ‘the housemaid’s choice’ for her success in writing what Rebecca West called ‘tosh’. […]

During the 1930s Dell was still one of the most popular women’s authors to be asked for at the ‘tuppenny’ libraries (alongside Elinor Glyn and Marie Corelli). Although ‘spiritual’ and conservative, Dell’s stories also contained the violent passions so enjoyed by women (especially young girls) before World War Two. Her influence on women’s romance is still evident and can be seen clearly in the ‘sexier’ women’s writers of a later age, but also in works like E. M. Hull’s The Sheik (1919). She was also an early influence on Barbara Cartland and Catherine Cookson; she is one of the great progenitors of Mills and Boon. (Bloom 134-35).

---

• Bloom, Clive. Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
• Crusie, Jennifer. "Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women." Originally published in Inside Borders March 1998: 19.
• Crusie, Jennifer. The Cinderella Deal. New York: Bantam, 1996.
• Hallowell Abbot, Eleanor. Molly Make-Believe. 1910. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1920.

---

1 Molly Make-Believe was number 9 in the 1910 best-selling fiction rankings from Bowker's Annual/Publisher's Weekly.

The image is of Carl Stanton, in his sickbed, chuckling after he's read the advertisement from The Serial-Letter Company.

Fan Fiction and Romance

Earlier this year, K. A. Laity wrote a guest post for Teach Me Tonight about Joanna Russ and slash fiction and since I recently came across Katherine Morrissey's 2008 MA dissertation, "Fanning the Flames of Romance: An Exploration of Fan Fiction and the Romance Novel," I thought I'd return to the topic. Morrissey found that

The majority of popular stories, the pieces of fan fiction which participants identified as their favorites, were nearly all focused on romantic stories. More significantly, most of these stories featured slash pairings. This differed from the broader reading practices reported by fans. When asked about their overall preferences, participants said that they read similar amounts of the major story types (specifically het, slash, and gen) and a smaller group of readers read femslash or lesbian focused stories. [...] While fans may be open to reading across categories, favorite stories, the ones readers return to and remember, were nearly all focused on male homosexual romance. This contrasts significantly with the focus on heterosexual pairings and female protagonists found in romance novels. (62)

This is something of a generalisation, given the long history of lesbian romance novels and the recent flourishing of m/m romance. Nonetheless, it seems safe to say that heterosexual pairings do continue to dominate the romance genre. Morrissey also found that despite the fact that "Romantic themes nearly always had a presence" in fan fiction, "most fans did not read romance novels. If they did, fan fiction stories were read more. For this population, fan fiction's approach to romance has significantly greater appeal" (78). Morrissey therefore compares and contrasts fan fiction with romance novels in order to answer the question "When fan fiction is examined side-by-side with romance novels, what are the textual similarities and differences that emerge in these romantic stories?" (2).

While it may be entirely correct to state that "Fan fiction and romance novels constitute two bodies of romantic literature being produced for and by women within dramatically different environments" (ii), direct comparisons between the two are somewhat problematic inasmuch as romance novels are not representative of all "romantic literature being produced for and by women" in the commercial fiction environment. If one were to seek out an area of commercial fiction which is comparable to romantic fan fiction, one should perhaps include all the commercial genres "produced for and by women," including "family sagas" of the kind written by Catherine Cookson, women's fiction, chick lit, the "bonkbuster," and "‘erotic fiction for women by women’ as exemplified by Virgin Publishing’s Black Lace imprint" (Sonnet)¹ or Harlequin's Spice imprint:

engrossing stories about women's lives, experiences and relationships, woven through with several explicit sex scenes that have context within the plot. We expect writers to be graphic—using the kind of frank language typical of the genre—as well as daring, exploring any and all sexual situations, even ones considered "taboo." [...] Spice Books are not traditional romances, nor do they require a happily-ever-after ending.

Despite the fact that Morrissey mentions Harlequin's Spice imprint, she nonetheless draws a distinction between romances and fan fiction based on

the fan's traditional comfort with the sexual content of their romance narratives. While romance novels have historically been careful to place sexual encounters within marriage (or the promise of an inevitable marriage), fan fiction textors [i.e. the creators of fan fiction] and readers happily produce stories in which sex may be enjoyed in a variety of circumstances and often write about sexual encounters without a larger courtship narrative accompanying them. (18)

By contrast, she suggests that romances,

By encoding sexuality and desire within marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality, [...] adhere to dominant social norms and constrain the diversity of sexualities and practices represented. Readers seeking more explicit and open sexual texts may go directly to the erotica genre of literature instead. However, as erotic texts for women establish themselves and loosen social stigmas, romance publishers also adapt, as is indicated by their increased focus on erotic romance. (51)

However, not all romances encode "sexuality and desire within marriage, motherhood, and heterosexuality" and some people may choose to read erotica not "instead" of romance, but in addition to it.

Morrissey seems to hold certain basic assumptions which I think require a little bit more nuance. For example, Morrissey concludes that

Romance novels provide readers with fantasy experiences and an escape to happier or more exciting realities. The goal of these fantasy experiences is immersion. [...] While placing stories in historic settings or fantasy worlds far removed from a reader's daily life is an important method for initiating immersion into romantic fantasies, two additional storytelling techniques, focusing on food and costuming, cement this process and connect the reader's body to the heroine's. (48-49)

This seems to assume that female readers closely identify with the heroine and/or she becomes in a sense a "placeholder" into which they can insert themselves in order to share her experiences. This may be true for many readers but as I've mentioned before, it isn't true for me and I suspect I can't be the only one who adopts a more "fly on the wall" perspective. Indeed, Morrissey herself later writes that "The heroine may traditionally be offered as an identification point in romance novels but readers can choose to identify with the hero, both characters, or do something entirely different" (98-99).

The existence of romances about friends who become lovers and marriages in trouble seems to call into question Morrissey's assertion that

In romance novels, protagonists begin as strangers to each other. They may have been acquainted in the past, or in passing, but there is always sense of two individuals seeing and approaching each other for the first time. Contrasting this, in Stealing Harry, the two leads are life-long friends. (90)

It may well be true, as Morrissey states, that the most popular fan fictions

are significantly longer than most romance novels. They are also ongoing, updated over the course of years, another noticeable difference from romance novels, which typically focus on a romantic couple once and then move on. These contrasts with romance novels suggest that fan fiction readers may be looking for alternatives to romantic conventions, as well as more variety in the types of romance they consume. (64)

This does, however, seem to ignore the many romance series that exist, in which protagonists from previous novels in a series reappear as secondary characters in another, or secondary characters from one book are transformed into the protagonists of later ones. In addition, there are also series in which a single romance arc extends over various novels: J. D. Robb's In Death books, for example, are very popular with many romance readers, as are Dorothy L. Sayers's Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane novels, and Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.

Morrisey goes on to state that

Romance novels end with established, monogamous relationships. Partners marry, build homes together and create families, moving onto another stage in their lives. At the end of most romance novels, a relationship is permanent. (81)

whereas fan fictions

balance happiness and progress with a sense of realism. The message is that relationships are hard, they require work, but the characters are probably still up to the task. These less utopian endings present relationships a little bit closer to those in the real world. (84-85)

However, given that many people in the "real world" do form permanent romantic relationships, "marry, build homes together and create families," is the fact that romance protagonists also do these things really an indication of a lack of realism?

Morrissey also contrasts romances with fan fictions on the basis of statements made by

Commercial romance authors and defenders Ann Maxwell and Jayne Ann Krentz [who] discuss several traditional romance novel story types in their article, "The Wellsprings of Romance," and critique what they identify as two emerging modern hero archetypes or myths, the "househusband" and the "Alan Alda clone." One is a homemaker, the other a supportive partner and listener. Maxwell and Krentz acknowledge that these characters may have some attraction to readers, but issue a caution, "[...] these myths lack an ingredient that is vital to popular fiction: conflict." (85)

Morrissey therefore concludes that

The presence and popularity of fan fiction stories incorporating [...] more balanced, less aggressive and dominant characters challenge Maxwell and Krentz's assertion that these protagonists do not provide the right dynamics to entertain their readers. It is not that they stories lack conflict, as they suggest, the textors have just found different character journey's to build stories and relationships around. In many of the slash stories dramatic tension is connected to sexuality and societal expectations, in others the story setting and plot provide the characters with their challenge. [...]
The popularity of these different stories is an important reminder that the heroic alpha-male character does not hold romantic appeal to all readers. Instead, readers are interested [in] various depictions of masculinity. Stories can be written about partnership, family building, and a couple's growing understanding and connection through communication as well as conflict and power struggles. This does not mean that fan fiction stories cannot also play with power and control. Neither does it mean that conflict will not exist between two protagonists. It simply means that romance is not being limited to one particular relationship type. Again, within fan fiction stories, the romance formula is being broadened and diversified. (88-89)

I would suggest alpha male heroes don't appeal to all romance readers either, and that the reason Maxwell and Krentz were so trenchant in their statements was due to the fact that, at the time they were writing, there had been an increase in the genre of "hero archetypes" other than the alpha male which these authors preferred. Their statements, then, can perhaps be read as evidence that the romance genre itself is "diversified." I would go further, and claim that it has never been "limited to one particular relationship type": the beta hero

is not a recent invention. Edward Ferrars in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) is

too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open affectionate heart […]. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life. (Vivanco and Kramer)

It should be acknowledged that Morrissey is aware both of some of the limitations of her source material, and of the dangers of generalising about genres which include vast numbers of texts:

The difficulty in writing about entire categories of literature is that there are always so many more topics to be discussed. For every generalizing statement, there are further contradictions to be accounted for or explained. Thousands of romance novels are published each year and a seemingly infinite amount of fan fiction stories are available online and off. Only a small sample of romance novels and fan fiction could be examined for this project. (105)

I suspect that Morrissey's conclusions are far stronger when they focus solely or primarily on fan fiction: they are based not only on a reading of a selection of primary and secondary sources but also on her survey of fan fiction readers which "received nearly 1000 responses in the first twenty-four hours alone and this pace remained steady throughout the two-week process. At close, the survey had 7,748 participants" (58). As mentioned, she discovered that "The majority of popular stories, the pieces of fan fiction which participants identified as their favorites, were nearly all focused on romantic stories. More significantly, most of these stories featured slash pairings" (62). She also discovered that "Most of [the] survey population was younger that that of romance novel readers. The majority of survey participants were eighteen, but the dominant age group ranged between eighteen and twenty-eight years of age" (65). It is probable that there are younger readers and writers of fan fiction who were excluded from the survey, since it stated that "You may NOT participate in this survey if you are under 18 years of age. By completing this survey you acknowledge that you are OVER 18 years of age" (109). She also found that there was a "near complete absence of men within the survey population" (66) and that while "The majority of the survey population was [...] heterosexual (68%), [...] over a quarter of the group identified as bisexual or homosexual (23% bisexual, 4% homosexual)" (66).

With regards to the content of the fan fictions, Morrissey claims that "without the publishing industry as a dominant gatekeeper, textors are able to engage in greater experimentation with story structure" (76). She gives as an example "the most popular [of the fan fictions mentioned in her survey,] Speranza's Written by the Victors (Stargate Atlantis) uses an innovative story structure. This story is presented in two formats. Half of it is told through excerpts from fictitious articles, book reviews, and academic debates, the other half is traditional fiction" (80). She also mentions that

As a form of literature now produced primarily online, fan fiction textors are taking greater advantage of the opportunities digital creation provides. There is a long history or fan art and video creation within fan communities. Now, these objects can be combined with stories to enhance the reading experience. Images and artifacts are created in photoshop to develop stories further. Textors do not need to limit themselves to describing a character's apartment, they may now link to pictures of it, and to the coffee shop down the street. Stories constructed in smaller sections can be linked together into a larger story in whatever order the reader wishes to place them in. (104)

Morrissey herself suggests that "recent changes in the romance publishing industry suggest that the opportunities found online may be influencing traditional publishers as well" (104) and this does indeed seem to be the case. Publishers have begun experimenting with incorporating a variety of features into books originally written for publication in paper:

E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can’t agree on what to call them.
In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an “enriched” book. Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein.

All of them go beyond the simple black-and-white e-book that digitally mirrors its ink-and-paper predecessor. The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers. (Bosman)

Harlequin, too, has been experimenting with enriching ebooks:

Have you ever read something in a novel and wished you could see a picture, find a definition, or learn more about it without having to look it up? Now you can with Harlequin’s Enriched eBooks. This special electronic book is enhanced with web links to information about the setting, ceremonies, and other unique elements in Hotly Bedded, Conveniently Wedded, along with an author note, recipe, and photos from author Kate Hardy!

Morrissey also suggests that unlike romances, in which the protagonists' appearances are often described at length,

within the works of fan fiction [...] descriptive moments were primarily limited to character makeovers. [...] The absence of these scenes within fan fiction stories may be explained by fan cultures' general familiarity with the appearance of the original characters. [...] No matter what the origin, however, the importance of awe inspiring, dramatic physical beauty is diminished within many of these stories. This leads to depictions of attraction in which physical appearance has a presence, but its role is not as strong, or as consistent, as it is in romance novels. (92-93)

This seems an interesting hypothesis, and I would have been fascinated to read more about it. If any of you are fans who also read romances, I'd love to know your opinion of this point. Many fandoms are wholly or partially based on TV shows and movies, and many actors are more attractive than average so I wonder if fans may already have formed their own assessment of the actors'/characters' physical attractions. On the other hand, jennygadget has commented that slash fictions are more likely to

describe men's bodies in a more submissive and wanton way, rather than as pervasively dominating. [...] The way men's bodies are objectified in romance seems to more mirror how they are idealized in comic books.

Morrissey also speculates that fan fictions with heterosexual pairings reveal an

ongoing confusion over women's power and agency within relationships and suggest similar confusion for women in the real world.
One way of circumventing these issues is to eliminate the male/female dynamic and replace the woman with another male. Suddenly moments of aggression, parenting, empathy, action etc. do not carry with them the attachments and ramifications they have within the male/female dynamic. (87)

This is a hypothesis which might also be relevant to the study of m/m romances.

Finally, since this has been a post about slash fiction, romance and an MA thesis, I thought I would take the opportunity to mention another, but much more recent MA thesis: Meredith S. Faust's ""Love of the purest kind": Heteronormative Rigidity in the Homoerotic Fiction of Ann Herendeen" (2010), which is available online from here. To date Herendeen has had two novels published. She has stated that the first, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2008), "was inspired both by my reading of historical romance and by [...] “slash fiction.”" However, as far as slash is concerned, Herendeen finds that

there's one aspect of them that doesn’t appeal to me: it’s all “look but don’t touch.” Here are women writing about men having sex with each other, for the delectation of women readers, but all the main characters are men and the women never get any of that action.

In her first novel, therefore, she

slashed a genre, not a specific story or set of characters. And then, I slashed the slash. I introduced the hero as gay from the beginning, and showed him in love with a man and attracted to men—that's the first slash. But then I slashed again, writing a heroine back into this all-male paradise.

Her second novel also includes both heroes and heroines, but this time she isn't slashing "a genre": her Pride / Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers (2010) is quite explicitly based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
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• Berens, Jessica. "She's gotta have it." The Observer, Sunday 10 September 2000.
• Bosman, Julie. "E-Books Fly Beyond Mere Text." The New York Times, 29 July 2010.
• Faust Meredith S. ""Love of the purest kind": Heteronormative Rigidity in the Homoerotic Fiction of Ann Herendeen." MA Thesis, Department of English, DePaul University, 2010. [Pdf downloadable from here.]
• Morrissey, Katherine. "Fanning the Flames of Romance: An Exploration of Fan Fiction and the Romance Novel." MA Thesis, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University, 2008. [Pdf downloadable from here.]
  
• Sonnet, Esther. "‘Erotic Fiction by Women for Women’: The Pleasures of Post-Feminist Heterosexuality." Sexualities 2.2 (1999): 167-187. [Abstract]
• Vivanco, Laura and Kyra Kramer. "There Are Six Bodies in This Relationship: An Anthropological Approach to the Romance Genre." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1 (2010).
  

1 Interestingly, slash fiction is known to have influenced at least one of the books published by Black Lace. In 1999 Black Lace's editor, Kerri "Sharp edited Wicked Words, a collection of erotic short stories that became the first British book to introduce slash lit to mainstream publishing" (Berens). It includes work by

Kitty Fisher. Her short story 'Shadowlight' was modified for Black Lace, but reflects the traits of slash in that it is a sci-fi narrative about an affair between two men.