Alpha male syndrome

I just started watching the first season of Queer as Folk. A friend lent it to me, saying it was Hot! especially since I like gay male romances so much.

She wasn't kidding. QaF is about four gay men who are all friends and a hot little twink one of them picks up and deflowers. It's also got a couple of lesbians as primary supporting characters. It's lauded as the first show that has an entirely homosexual main cast, and let me tell you, the "breeders" aren't represented well, when they show up at all. And it's got lots of nudity, lots of sex, lots of m/m kissing. If you like that sort of thing, it's definitely hot.

The Wikipedia entry about the show says something that I find fascinating:

The network's initial marketing of the show was primarily targeted at gay male audiences, yet a sizeable segment of the viewership turned out to be straight women.

Whoa! Big shock here, people! A certain segment of the straight female population loves romances between gay men!

This is something that is NOT a shock to anyone who knows anything about Slash fiction, which originated from a reference to the "/" punctuation between "Kirk/Spock" fan fiction written by and for women that depicted Kirk and Spock in a sexual and romantic relationship. This is also not news to the producer of Brokeback Mountain who told Ang Lee, the director of the movie about a pair of gay cowboys, that their core audience was not gay men, but rather straight women (although five years of experience runs between the makers of QaF and the producer of BbM, so hindsight is indeed 20/20). And male/male erotica (or m/m/f) is certainly the growth industry in the online erotica publishing houses. In an interview with the Smart Bitches, two editors from Ellora's Cave said:

And an up-and-coming genre that we are eagerly acquiring is m/m erotic romance, as well as m/m/f ménage.

So, what's up with that? Why might women be attracted to gay male romance and/or gay male sex?

Because, if, as I argue in my article*, romances are actually about watching the hero figure out and confess his feelings, if they're about watching him move from the "masculine economy of use" to the "feminine economy of exchange," then watching TWO men have to figure it out for and with each other is more than twice as wonderful as watching one man figure it out for and with a woman. As Meghan Daum says:

With Jack and Ennis, however, there's no woman to pick up the emotional slack, and they're forced to experience their feelings without the benefit of female translation or analysis. In other words, they are (at least for each other) as emotionally available as it gets.

That's not actually the point of my post, however. ::sigh:: My point--and I do have one, to rip off Ellen Degeneres shamelessly--is to speculate on why it's the complete jerk alpha male in QaF, Brian Kinney, who is most attractive to everyone, both in the show and in the audience.

If women are attracted to romances to watch the men realize that they can't survive without love, and if they're attracted to Slash (which, in its purest form, focuses on relationship rather than just sex) and m/m romance to watch TWO men have to deal with the vulnerability of falling in love, then why is the irresistible alpha male quite so irresistible?

Because it's much more impressive to make the rake, the asshole, the user, fall in love than to make the nice guy fall in love. If the one man who refuses to admit that love exists (Brian says in the pilot episode, "Love is something that straight people tell themselves they're in so they can get laid. And then they end up hurting each other because it was all based on lies to begin with") can be seen to be emotionally vulnerable, then causing or watching that vulnerability gives a female reader/viewer power over everything that user, that alpha male, represents. A friend of mine recently wrote on her blog:

I want to take a man who doesn't express love and inspire him to express it to *me*.

I think this says it perfectly.

This connects, I believe, to my point about m/m romances. Ennis Del Mar is the much more affecting character in Brokeback Mountain, precisely because he's the most emotionally stunted. Watching him deal with his emotions is so much more heart-breaking because he has no idea how to go about doing it. A romance with a HEA would show Jack and Ennis finally able to express their love. Their story is a tragedy, however, precisely because they were never able to verbalize their emotions to each other.

My husband, one of the good guys, was slightly put out over my tongue-dragging, panting interest in the character of Brian Kinney in QaF. He complained that all his life he was told to be considerate of other's feelings, kind, and unselfish, only to find that women are most attracted to the emotionless jerks who treat them like dirt and discard them without a thought, all for the hope that they'll be the one to affect him and make him change his ways. I told him there was a big difference between the fantasy of conquering the alpha male and the reality of having him in your life. After all, I ended up (very happily!) with the nice guy. I just enjoy watching the alpha male get his come-uppance.


*Frantz, Sarah S. G., 2002. "'Expressing' Herself: The Romance Novel and the Feminine Will to Power," in Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America. Eds. Lydia Cushman Schurman and Deidre Johnson. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press) pp. 17-36.

Once Upon a Time - Romance and Fairy Tales

(First of all I need to apologize for I said I would post this last week. But I got embroiled in another Ikea-adventure, which involved, among other things, a wooden bookshelf door dropping onto my foot and some major rearrangements of my library.)

Like fantasy, romance fiction employs various elements of fairy tales, a genre which has been analysed by Max Lüthi (THE EUROPEAN FOLKTALE, 1947), among others. The familiarity of romance with fairy tales becomes obvious in the structure: at the beginning, the order is disturbed; the heroine often has to leave her home (e.g. in Gaelen Foley's LORD OF FIRE) and has to master several adventures before the order is restored or a new order is established at the end of the book. Similiarly to fairy tales, this new order is usually represented by the marriage of the protagonists and/or by the birth of a child: the adventures are over, the villains punished, and hero and heroine can finally return home:

". . . they raced across the wild, windswept crags and green valleys of
Scotland.
Home. Their land.
And the land of their unborn babe ...
And all their sons and daughters yet to be.
(Shannnon Drake, COME THE
MORNING 420)

Contrarily to what Jeanne Dubino writes in "The Cinderella Complex: Romance Fiction, Patriarchy and Capitalism", "home" in these cases doesn't only stand for a building of a mortar and stone and most certainly does not stand for the suppression of woman and her exploitation as a houseworker in patriarchal society (compare Dubino 105-06). The term "home" in romance stands for the protagonists' love for each other and for a new harmony in their relationship.

Apart from using structural elements of fairy tales, several romance novels also refer to specific fairy tales, most importantly:

A) "Beauty and the Beast": in this case, the hero embodies the beast, which is emphasised by animal or demon similes, metaphors and nicknames. Paranormal romance even goes one step further: here the hero is not just described as a beast, he is a beast: a supernatural being, often a shapeshifter, as in Christine Feehan's Carpathian series. The heroine is often forced to stay in his home (e.g., in Foley's LORD OF FIRE) or he comes into possession of hers, either by conquering it (e.g., in Penelope Williamson's KEEPER OF THE DREAM) or by receiving it as a gift from his king (e.g., in Drake's COME THE MORNING). It falls to the heroine to conquer and tame the beast, "to change [the hero] from an emotionally frigid Neanderthal into a sensitive, caring, nurturing human being", yet with his warrior qualities still intact (Susan Elizabeth Phillips, "The Romance and the Empowerment of Women" 58).

B) "Cinderella": the heroine in romance is often poor and has a lesser social status than the hero. Their love story consequently bears a resemblance to the Cinderella tale, and while only few heroines become actual princesses, they do become countesses/duchesses (in historical romances) or the wives of a multi-millionaires (in contemporary romances, especially category romances).

Despite all these similarities to fairy tales, it is important to realize romance (and fantasy, for that matter) differs from fairy tales in one important point: in contrast to the latter romance is set in reality, albeit a fictional one. Thus, even though romance uses elements of the fairy tale genre, it does not share its most important characteristics as described by Max Lüthi: romances are in set in specific places not just in "a forest", in "a village"; the characters are three-dimensional and, thus, they age, learn from their experiences, bleed and hurt when cut, and experience a host of emotions. In romance characters are individuals with individual names (the only names that appear in fairy tales are either nicknames like Little Red Riding Hood or commonplace names like Jack/Hans, Gretel); they are usually neither completely good nor completely bad.

The vital difference between romance/fantasy fiction and fairy tales becomes especially pronounced when magical gifts like gems and flowers falling out of one's mouth while talking come into play: in the "real" life of fiction such a gift turns out to be immensely impractical: "'I can still say 'morning,' ' Rowena growled, 'but I'm deleting the other word [i.e. good] from my vocabulary. Rose thorns hurt when they scrape across your lips'" (Elisabeth Waters, "The Birthday Gift" 104).

A Celebration of Love

I was at a wedding today, and one of the readings was from 1Corinithians 13.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

It sounded to me like a defence of the romance genre. Obviously that isn't exactly what St Paul had in mind, and the translations of this passage vary, so it could be argued that he's talking about caritas and not eros, and that romances only deal with eros (I'd disagree that that's the only sort of love described in romances, even between the hero and heroine, but that's possibly a topic for another blog entry). I should perhaps also make it clear that I'm not intending to cast slurs on other genres, because there are different types of love; there can be a love of justice, of beauty etc, and different genres fulfill different functions in their readers' lives. But it is the case that romance is the genre that is most associated with love, and which has at its heart the depiction of love stories: 'romance fiction says that love is powerful and important. [...] Result: romance fiction is called "silly fluff." ' (Crusie 1998).

Crusie, of course, is not in agreement with the critics who claim that romance is just 'silly fluff', and neither am I. Romances may not all 'speak in the tongues of angels', and some people would argue that they don't even 'speak in the tongues of men', as they have so few male readers. They may not 'fathom all mysteries and all knowledge' (though some make a good try at exploring a variety of issues), but what they do attempt to do seems to me to very worthwhile: they remind us how essential love is. They state that if I 'have not love, I am nothing'. Now before I upset anyone who's single, I should say that romance isn't just about couples and the love between couples, nor is that the only love depicted or celebrated in romance. Certainly what the hero and heroine feel for each other is central to each romance, but their love, according to Pamela Regis, affects the whole community:

The scene or scenes defining the society establishes the status quo which the heroine and hero must confront in their attempt to court and marry and which, by their union, they symbolically remake. (2003: 31)*

As I mentioned in a previous post, we also see the love that families and friends have for each other, and, as mentioned by J in the comments section of a previous entry, one not infrequently finds children and animals who both give love to, and receive love from, the main adult protagonists.

In Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels, for example, it is only as Lord Dain can bring himself to love and accept his son, that he can at last believe that he too is loveable:

the only woman who'd ever cared for him before had abandoned him ... because he was a monster, impossible to love.
But Jessica said that wasn't true.
Dain left the table and walked to the fire. Dominick looked up at his approach. In his son's dark, warily upturned countenance, Dain saw his own: the black troubled eyes ... the hated beak ... the sullen mouth. No, the child was not handsome by any stretch of the imagination [...]
He did not have a sunny disposition, either. Nor did his filthy vocabulary enhance his appeal. He wasn't a pretty child and he certainly wasn't a charming one.
He was just like his father.
And just like his father, he needed someone - anyone - to accept him. Someone to look upon him and touch him with affection. (1995: 339-340)

At the wedding today, adults and children gathered together to celebrate, uphold and witness the love between two people who wanted to make a commitment to each other. I think this genre is one worth celebrating too.

* For the full reference, see the Romance Wiki bibliography.

Calling for Crusie

Call for Papers:

Nothing But Good Times Ahead: the Novels of Jennifer Crusie

Edited by Eric Murphy Selinger and Laura Vivanco

Contributions are invited for a collection of critical essays on the work of Jennifer Crusie. Nothing But Good Times Ahead: the Novels of Jennifer Crusie will mark a turning point in the critical study of romance fiction, even as it demonstrates the richness of Crusie’s work as both an innovator in, and theorist of, her chosen genre.

Crusie is widely loved and deeply respected in the world of romance fiction. Her series romance and single-title novels have won numerous awards from the Romance Writers of America, and in a genre where most books go out of print quite soon after publication, hers have been repeatedly reissued. Crusie’s essays in defense of the genre articulate a theoretically sophisticated, ardently feminist argument on its behalf, and her novels, too, engage in cultural critique, subtly challenging readers’ expectations about what romance heroines, heroes, plot structures, and love scenes can be, while affirming the deeply-rooted optimism of the romance novel as a form.

We invite critical essays on Crusie’s novels, whether read individually, comparatively, or in connection with the work of other authors.

* Don’t Look Down, 2006 (with Bob Mayer; St. Martin’s Press)
* Bet Me, 2004. (St. Martin's Press)
* Faking It, 2002. (St. Martin's Press)
* Fast Women, 2001. (St. Martin's Press)
* Welcome to Temptation, 2000. (St. Martin's Press)
* Crazy for You, 1999. (St. Martin's Press)
* Tell Me Lies, 1998. (St. Martin's Press)
* Trust Me on This, 1997. (Bantam)
* The Cinderella Deal, 1996. ( Bantam)
* Anyone But You, 1996. (Harlequin)
* Charlie All Night, 1996. (Harlequin)
* What the Lady Wants, 1995. (Harlequin)
* Strange Bedpersons, 1994. (Harlequin)
* Getting Rid of Bradley, 1994. ( Harlequin)
* Sizzle, 1994. (Harlequin)
* Manhunting, 1993. (Harlequin)

All critical, theoretical, and methodological approaches are welcome; indeed, we encourage critics who do not ordinarily work on popular culture or romance fiction to submit abstracts for our consideration.

Here is a suggestive, but not exhaustive list of possible topics:

• Crusie’s engagement with popular culture (film, music, fashion, food, popular psychology)
• Crusie’s engagement with other texts, notably fairy tales and the Bible
• Crusie’s debates—both explicit and implicit—with the literary canon and with previous feminist accounts of romance fiction (for example, Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance)
• Crusie and the genres of romance and comedy, broadly and theoretically defined
• Crusie’s artistry, whether in particular novels or across her career
• Crusie as theorist of romance; or, theoretical approaches to Crusie
• Crusie and developments in romance fiction and feminist thought since the 1990s
• Crusie’s innovations within the conventions of romance fiction, and her explorations of the boundaries of the genre (e.g.., its intersections with non-romantic women’s fiction, with mystery and detective fiction, and most recently with men’s adventure fiction)

Nothing But Good Times Ahead has the potential to reach audiences both inside and outside the academy. Our intended audience includes not only professors of popular culture, women’s studies, American studies, and literature, but also the intelligent, well-educated, and enthusiastically literate community of romance readers.

We will consider abstracts (approximately 500 words), conference papers, and full-length essays. All submissions should be e-mailed to Eric Murphy Selinger (eselinge@depaul.edu) and Laura Vivanco (nothingbut@vivanco.me.uk). The deadline for consideration is September 30, 2006.

For more information, including a fuller description of the book, visit http://www.vivanco.me.uk/modern_romance_scholarship/nothing_but .

We Are Family

Ann Barr Snitow, in her 1979 essay 'Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different' wrote that:

The heroine is alone. Sometimes there is another woman, a competitor who is often more overtly aware of her sexuality than the heroine, but she is a shadow on the horizon. Sometimes there are potentially friendly females living in the next bungalow or working with the patient in the next bed, but they, too, are shadowy, not important to the real story, which consists entirely of an emotionally isolated woman trying to keep her virginity and her head when the only person she ever really talks to is the hero, whose motives and feelings are unclear. (1983: 249)*

Not having read many romances from this period, I'm not sure whether this ever was actually an accurate description of romances (I suspect there will always have been exceptions). Nonetheless, it does remind me of the gothics. Could it be that the heroine's isolation, which was important in creating the plot and atmosphere of the gothics, influenced the portrayal of female friendships in other forms of romance at the time?

Snitow's description certainly isn't true of modern romances. Nowadays, as has recently been pointed out by Sharon Long, there are plenty of romance series where

Everything is hunky dorey in romance land. The women of the group get along famously. Like sisters even. They all HEART one another on sight and know that the guy has done the best job ever in choosing his mate.

Could this be due in any way to the influence of feminism? Is it an expression of belief in female sisterhood? Certainly there would appear to have been some feminist influence on romance. Kay Mussell, for example, has described the more equal relationships between heroes and heroines as 'clear evidence of the influence of feminism on romances'. Female friendships, however, are not simply valued by feminists. Peter Darbyshire**, writing about certain inspirational romances, despite concluding that they 'vilified' (2002: 80) feminism, nonetheless also finds in them strong bonds between women:

Female characters frequently live at home or with members of their extended family in these books, and these characters are almost always all involved in nurturing, supportive relationships with one another. [...] it is often the grandmother or mother figures that instruct the heroines to be subservient in their relationships with men, thus locating the origins of the reaffirmation of traditional patriarchal values in female characters. (2002: 80-81).

Whether or not one agrees with his opinion of inspirationals, it does serve as a reminder that female relationships are valued (perhaps for very different reasons) by people with a wide range of ideologies.

Is it, as suggested by posters responding to Sharon Long's comments that female friendships are an extra part of the 'wish-fulfillment' that romance provides, another aspect of the Happy Ever After ending? Are such friendships among women really so uncommon that they're more fantasy than reality? Sharon Long certainly seems to think so:

Let’s face it. Women do not get along that well in real life. Women are bitchy. They are competitive. They do not tend to LOVE one another on sight. Sure it happens. Every once in a blue moon, but the cold hard facts are that women, especially when you group them into a pack, do not all love one another and get along famously.

Another response to her comments was that the women described in these series are going to be family members through marriage, and this does mean that they'll be predisposed to attempt to establish friendly relationships.

The prevalence of both the the friendless, family-less heroine of the past, and the loving families who welcome new sisters with eagerness and instantaneous affection raise questions about what readers and authors want family and female friendships to be (just as the 'secret baby' stories seem to be exploring how important it is to know one's biological family, in particular one's biological father). Quite how one interprets such depictions will depend on a close reading on the individual texts. Some authors may simply be following a trend, others may be drawing on their own personal experiences of female friendships, yet others may be expressing their ideals (and those of their readers) regarding relationships between women.


*For full reference see RomanceWiki bibliography.
** For full reference see the first page of the Romance Wiki bibliography.

Reading Like an English Professor (1)

A week or so ago, to kick things off, I posted the syllabus for my first course on Popular Romance Fiction. I noted at the time that the course hadn't exactly gone as planned, and the ways that it variously succeeded and failed have a lot to do with the topics we have posted about here ever since.

Just to refresh your memory, that first course was organized by topics and genres. We had a week devoted the two-part question "What is Romance, and Why Do People Say Such Nasty Things About It?"; after that, we spent two weeks on "Alpha Males and Bodice Rippers," two weeks on Regencies, a week on romantic suspense, a week on historical romances, and a week on a contemporary romance. In each unit, I tried to pair an earlier and a later example of the genre, and in the weeks on Alpha Males, we actually worked on three novels: The Sheik, The Flame and the Flower, and Emma Holly's Hunting Midnight, whose hero Ulric, a shapeshifting upyr, is quite literally the alpha male of his wolf pack.

As the course went on, I had to cut a number of books. It took much longer than I'd thought to set out some of the conventions of each genre and then to discuss each romance. On the other hand, we made some wonderful discoveries as we read. For example, as our first romantic suspense novel I had assigned Mary Stewart's Madam, Will You Talk at the last minute, after giving it only a cursory reading. (The one I wanted to teach, Nine Coaches Waiting, turned out to be out of print.) When I walked in to class, the students were utterly baffled by it. Where, they asked, was the romance? After the sexually explicit texts they'd read for the past few weeks, Stewart's novel wasn't just tepid; it seemed positively repressed, and the relationship between our heroine, Charity, and the hero, Richard Byron, felt elusive at best and perfunctory at worst.

Now, I don't know about you, but I actually love reactions like this. They make me think on my feet, and they turn the class into a knowledge-producing, rather than a knowledge-transmitting, enterprise. I sent the class on a romance treasure-hunt, and within the hour, we had put together a delightful list of discoveries, spotting displaced romance in the setting (Troubadour country in the south of France), in the character's names (Charity, from caritas; and Byron from the poet, naturally, although they didn't know this coming in), in Charity's "mother-complex" toward Richard's son David, in Charity's visit to the Temple of Diana (where she meets Richard, rather violently--with this violence also a displacement of sexual interest), in the literary epigraphs to several chapters, in various code words and phrases (Richard, like Charity's late husband Johnny, tends to be, ahem, "dictatorial"), and, most of all, in the scenes of eating and drinking. Here's the turning point, midway through the novel, when Richard has finally caught up with Charity and forces her to have a meal with him, although she still suspects, in the best gothic fashion, that he is a murderer:

"All of it," urged Richard Byron. I obeyed him, and lay back against the deep cushions with my eyes closed, letting my body relax utterly to the creeping warmth of the drink and the smell of the food and wine and flowers. My bones seemed to have melted, and I was queerly content to lie back against the yielding velvet, with the soft lights against my eyelids, and do nothing, think of nothing. I was quiet and utterly passive, and the awful beginnings of hysteria were checked.

Still from that same dimensionless distance, I heard him speaking in French. I supposed he was ordering food. And presently at my elbow I I heard the chink of silver, and opened my eyes to see the big trolley of hors d'oeuvres with its hovering attendant.

Richard Byron said something to him, and without waiting for me to speak, the man served me from the tray. I remember still those exquisite fluted silver dishes, each with its load of dainty colours...there were anchovies and tiny gleaming silver fish in red sauce, and savoury buter in curled strips of fresh lettuce; there were caviare and tomato and olives green and black, and small golden-pink mushrooms and cresses and beans. The waiter heaped my plate, and filled another glass with white wine. I drank half a glassfull without a word, and began to eat. I was conscious of Richard Byron's eyes on me, but he did not speak. (173).

This description of the meal goes on for another page or two--it's as sensual as any love scene, but my students had overlooked it entirely, looking for something more literal.

The next time I taught my romance course, I made the first half of the quarter a chronological survey, from The Sheik (1919) to The Flame and the Flower (1972); only then did we break into contemporary authors and subgenres. This time, when we reached Mary Stewart, we could talk about it in terms of the sexual politics of the mid-1950s--what Charity, and Stewart, could and could not do openly in the text--and we had the chance to think more deeply about the novel's treatment of history, too. (Not to toss out spoilers, but the novel is set in post-war Europe, and there is an important plot thread involving the Holocaust.)

Now, is Madam, Will You Talk? of historical significance? Possibly--it's Stewart's first novel, and she has been credited with creating the modern genre of romantic suspense. Is it a teachable text? Absolutely; in fact, it taught my students not only about the history of romance fiction, but about a number of literary techniques, from allusion to symbolism. (Few were English majors; most needed this education, or at least these reminders of long ago high school coursework.) Would I put it in "the canon" of romance fiction, were there to be one? Well, it's not on my list of "transcendent romances," but I do find it awfully interesting. Is that good enough?

P.S. Here are two of the paper topics I used the first time I taught Madam, Will You Talk? Feel free to borrow and transform them, and let me know how it went!

Paper topics on Madam, Will You Talk?

1. In class, we explored some of the ways that this novel displaces its “romance”—at least as far as this means sexuality, desire, passion, and so on—into various other plot elements, activities, code phrases, epigraphs, settings, and so on. Write an essay that elaborates this idea into a full-blown argument. Demonstrate that, despite one’s initial impression, this is a pervasively “romantic” romance novel, albeit in a far more subtle way than we see in, say, The Flame and the Flower.

2. Romance novels are famous for delivering, by the end, the beloved “HEA”: happily ever after. How, though, can the novelist pull this off when her novel is filled with crime, death, and tragedy? Write an essay on the final chapters of Madam which shows how they pull off this remarkable challenge, allowing us to feel that the chaos and sadness that the novel begins with, in both private and public worlds, have been replaced by coherence and at least a promise of joy. (You may want to keep in mind an idea from romance author and critic Jennifer Crusie, who has said that the happy endings of romance novels best also be understood as endings that give us a sense of “emotional justice.")

Musings on Reviews and Establishing a Canon of Romances

I've just been looking at a couple of reviews of a book I wrote. It was a non-fiction, academic book, and the reviewers are academics. Nonetheless I was reminded of the questions Sarah raised in her blog entry about 'the ultimate romance novel' and the various controversies there have been about romance reviews, with some romance authors questioning the abilities and qualifications of readers who write reviews.

What the reviews of my book demonstrated to me was that even if a book is reviewed by the author's peers, all with a similar level of expertise and similar areas of interest, there will nonetheless be widely divergent views. As I read both the positive and the less positive reviews it became clear that each reviewer was looking for something different. Some mentioned critical frameworks I should have used or texts I should have discussed in more detail and each was obviously relating my book to their own particular, very specific areas of interest. For example, despite the fact that these reviewers are all Hispanomedievalists, some are historians while others are more interested in the literature of the period. Whatever their overall opinions, though, because my book was non-fiction, and included plenty of references to other works, and quotations from the relevant literature, even the reviewers who were least positive about it acknowledged that it would be a useful book.

So how does this relate to romance? Well, my experience suggests that everyone comes to a book (whether fiction or non-fiction) with certain expectations they want it to fulfill, or certain topics they would like it to touch on. Some readers and reviewers have a preference for particular sub-genres of romance, some have particular storylines which they love (or loathe). What one reader may find innovative and interesting, another may consider a disgusting breach of the conventions of romance. What one reader thinks is 'hot' or an interesting challenge to convention (e.g. the non-virginal heroine who doesn't need to be sexually 'awakened' by the hero), another may find morally reprehensible. A book considered exquisitely humorous by one reader may well appear mere slapstick to another, and what one person may consider delicious irony or sarcasm may come across as dry or irritating to another. When we pick up a book, we bring with us our own experiences and expectations, as well as our mood at the time of reading, and the mental comparisons we'll make with other romances (which will be dependent on how many other romances we've read, and which ones they are). Each of us, regardless of qualifications, will have a very individual response to each book. That's not to say that all readers and reviewers wouldn't be able to agree on something; they'd probably all be able to establish the basic outline of the story. Good reviews will provide both an objective description (of things such as the characters names, occupations, and how they meet) and a subjective opinion. The reviewer may even state why a particular work did or did not fit with her personal preferences . The reviewer who does this is acknowledging that not all readers of the review will agree with her opinion. She knows that once one goes beyond the basic facts of the story, interpretations and opinions will differ.

To take the example of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, it's fairly easy to establish the basic outline of the story but overall opinion on the book varied widely:

When it was published in Britain in 1960, the trial of the publishers, Penguin Books, under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 was a major public event and a test of the new obscenity law. The 1959 Act, introduced by Roy Jenkins, had made it possible for publishers to escape conviction if they could show that a work was of literary merit. [...] Various academic critics, including E. M. Forster, Helen Gardner and Raymond Williams, were called as witnesses, and the verdict, delivered on November 2, 1960, was not guilty. [...] The prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms when the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked if it was the kind of book 'you would wish your wife or servants to read'.

This particular difference opinion concerned the sexual content and similar arguments continue in the romance reading and writing community about what constitutes 'obscenity'. While many authors and readers remain opposed to explict sexual content, there are others who consider the open depiction of sexuality and sexual acts to be a freeing, even a feminist act:

My sex scenes--and my romance novels--are about determined women who go after what they need and get it, which is why I think they're a feminist act. Naomi Wolf once said that men called women who liked sex “sluts,” but that was okay because “we need sluts for the revolution.” That's what I'm doing, that's my mission in life, I'm writing sluts for the revolution. I'm very proud. (Jennifer Crusie)

It's not just this sort of issue which causes controversy - 'literary merit' is also difficult to define. Some people automatically assume that a genre novel cannot have literary merit, but even among readers who do not make this assumption there may be differences of opinion because:

It has long been noted that the concept of "literary merit" is practically impossible to define, and it is hard to see how such an ideas can be used with any precision or consistency by policy makers, magistrates or judges. A common response to this criticism is that, while the process of establishing literary merit is difficult, fraught with dangers, and often subjective, it is the only method currently available to separate work that has significant cultural value from work that is ephemeral and essentially worthless. (Wikipedia)

By engaging with romance from an appreciative academic perspective, we are beginning the process of establishing the literary merit of some modern romances, which may ultimately lead to the creation of a romance canon.

History and “Wallpaper” History

In the past few months there has been a significant amount of discussion within the romance reading and writing community about historical romances, and much of the heat in these discussions was generated by the use of the term ‘wallpaper historicals’ .

As a reader, my preference is for historicals which appear to me to be relatively accurate in their depiction of the past. I say ‘relatively accurate’ because I don’t think it is possible for any work to be entirely accurate. There is so much we don’t know about the past, and reproducing the language and speech patterns of historical characters might well render a book extremely difficult for the modern reader to understand. Despite my personal preferences, however, I think it is important to acknowledge that the level of historical accuracy in a romance cannot be used as an indicator of either literary merit or entertainment value.

Determining which historical romances are ‘wallpaper’ and which are more accurate may require a considerable degree of historical knowledge on the part of the reader. Once a relatively accurate historical romance has been identified, however, its use of history sets the characters and the issues raised by the romance in a historical context. This enables the reader to take the long view on questions such as the role of women in society etc, and thus see how much, or how little, has changed in the intervening years since the era in which the book is set. Nonetheless, each historical romance is a product of its own time: while attempting to remain true to the period depicted, it is likely to deal with issues such as sexuality and male/female relationships from a perspective which is shaped by 21st century attitudes. Issues may then be perceived to be universal in nature, but expressed differently at different times and in different cultures. This sort of historical romance also offers a historical commentary on the period in which it is set. In that respect it is the literary equivalent of the more accurate historical reenactment societies, which seek to explore what life was really like in the past. Finally, the more accurate type of historical romance invites the reader to read it both in the context of the literature in the period in which it is set, and in the context of contemporary works, since it engages with both the past and the present.

The historical romance whose author has striven for accuracy and succeeded in bringing history to life is, then, potentially an extremely challenging text. This does not mean, however, that one should therefore dismiss all ‘wallpaper’ historicals as ‘bad’ literature and mere entertainment. We need to fully recognise the possibility that a work may be full of historical inaccuracies and still be a great literary work. The following defence of Shakespeare’s work could be equally appropriate if used to describe ‘wallpaper’ historical romances since it argues that the author

should not be criticised too heavily for misrepresenting historical events. His plays were works of fiction and entertainment, intended for performance in a specific arena and written according to a rigid style and structure.

Shakespeare is a good example of a writer whose depiction of history is far from reliable. One website, created by some ‘third and fourth year English majors at the University of Michigan’ is designed to show how:

Shakespeare, like many playwrights of his time, changed history to fit his artistic purposes. This website highlights those changes and their significance in the major English History Plays.

While it’s possible that some of Shakespeare’s inaccuracies are due to a lack of knowledge, some must be deliberate, and this leads scholars to ask why he would have wished to change the facts. What ‘artistic purposes’ did it serve? Here’s an example:

Like most of the history plays, many years are compressed into a short sequence of events. The rebellions that are portrayed in this play [Henry IV ] actually had years between them and were not as much of a threat to the throne as portrayed. But [...] making the atmosphere seem more tumultuous adds suspense to the major pressing question of whether or not Hal is prepared to become a strong monarch.

Wallpaper historicals may use a particular setting because it gives credibility to particular types of plot (e.g. the arranged marriage, or one which turns on the importance of virginity and family honour, and it may give the hero particular opportunities for showing his strength, chivalrous nature etc.).

Sometimes Shakespeare’s motives in making changes appear to have been as much political as artistic. He must have wished to avoid displeasing Elizabeth I and several of the English history plays deal with the period leading up to the accession of the Tudor dynasty, of which Elizabeth was a member. Wallpaper historicals enable an author to avoid engaging with potentially inflammatory topics in contemporary society. For example, a Regency hero may be depicted as a Whig without incurring the wrath of contemporary Conservative voters, since the policies of the Tory party now bear little resemblance to those of the 1800s. Writing a wallpaper historical can also enable an author to avoid engaging with the less pleasant realities of history, such as slavery and racism, thus ensuring that the society and characters depicted remain appealing to a contemporary reader. Wallpaper history can also be used to promote particular ideas about national identity. A wallpaper historical set in Scotland will probably reveal far more about the author’s ideas about Scottishness, than it will about Scotland’s history. Similarly, wallpaper historical romances featuring a hero who is a sheik or a native American will express ideas about ‘the other’, the exotic.

While a few authors of ‘wallpaper’ historical romances may just lack the ability to do historical research, it seems likely that the majority deliberately use just enough historical details to create a particular atmosphere and setting. According to Northrop Frye

The romance is the nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfillment dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendancy. […] Yet there is a genuinely ‘proletarian’ element in romance too which is never satisfied with its various incarnations and in fact the incarnations themselves indicate that no matter how great a change in society, romance will turn up again, as hungry as ever, looking for new hopes and desires to feed on. The perennially child-like quality of romance is marked by its extraordinarily persistent nostalgia, its search for some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space. (186)

It may be, then, that the historical inaccuracies of the ‘wallpaper’ historical romance are an indication of the particular ‘golden age’ or fantasy that the author and/or her readers prefers. A wallpaper Regency may suggest that both readers and authors have fantasies where they (and/or the hero) are rich, cultured and aristocratic. The wallpaper Western presents a fantasy of finding one’s ideal life partner in a very American setting where a man knows how to do ‘what a man has to do’. The wallpaper Scottish-set romance is often completely timeless, and while it may suggest that the author and/or her readers have, or would like to have, Scottish ancestry, it may simply be that they appreciate thinking about tall, rugged, warriors in kilts. Such fantasies are no less indicative of a lack of literary merit than is the use of a pastoral setting in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, nor do they prevent the author from exploring important themes such as personal autonomy, the nature of love etc. They may also reveal aspects of the type of life they would ideally like to lead and the qualities which the author and her readers feel are important in men and women. The historical setting is being used, then, as a convenient vehicle to convey ideals.

Solidarity Among Novels

Romance readers and authors frequently comment on how little respect there is for their genre, and one way in which authors sometimes subtly counter this is to feature characters who read and discuss romance books. Sometimes the intertextuality is very clear, as when one novel is named and discussed in another. At other times, there is little more than an allusion to the genre of novel the character prefers. Here's one of my favourite examples of a character in a novel defending the merits of another novel (and women's reading preferences in general):

“I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of the river, “without thinking of the south of France. [...] It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”

“Why not?”

“Because they are not clever enough for you — gentlemen read better books.”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days — my hair standing on end the whole time.” [...]

“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.”

“It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do — for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never–ceasing inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon leave you as far behind me as — what shall I say? — I want an appropriate simile. — as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when she went with her aunt into Italy. Consider how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working your sampler at home!” (from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Chapter 14, courtesy of the Republic of Pemberley's extremely useful set of searchable editions of Jane Austen's novels and letters)

In turn, modern romance authors sometimes include references to Jane Austen's works in their own novels and thus subtly lay claim to her as the 'mother of the modern romance novel'. Here's an example of an extended discussion of Sense and Sensibility from Claire Thornton's Gifford's Lady:

'I read your book,' he said abruptly. [...] 'The one you were reading in the lending library. Sense and Sensibility. I forgot to give it back to you the other day.'
'Really?' She looked up at him in suprise. 'Whatever for? I mean, why did you read it? I'm sorry.' She lowered her eyes briefly. 'I j-just wouldn't have thought you'd enjoy such a story.'
'It was ... educational,' Gifford replied. [...]
'Educational?' Abigail reminded him. 'The book, sir?' [...]
'It was,' he said, remembering the mixture of claustrophobia and frustration he'd felt when he read it. 'I'd never considered such a mode of living before,' he continued slowly. 'The boredom I spoke of - we have our petty grievances in the navy - but the trivial pointlessness of the lives that book describes! How can such an existence be tolerable?' He couldn't quite keep the horror out of his voice. [...] 'It was a woman's world', he said at last. 'The men had no substance. Two of them were entirely dependent on the whims of their elderly female relatives [...].' 'Even the men we were meant to view favourably were indecisive, ineffective -'
'You think the author was too harsh towards your sex?' Abigail asked.
'No, no.' Gifford started walking again. He was too restless to stand still. 'I said it was a woman's world. What I meant ... was that we were shown the world through a woman's eyes. If that's what it's like to be a female, I can only thank God I was born a man. [...] You have no choice, no genuine freedom of action. You must wait modestly to see if a man favours you. And if his conduct confuses you, you must appear unconscious and pretend indifference. Unendurable!' (pp.48-50)

Much, much later, Gifford remembers this discussion and finds in it the key to understanding Abigail's behaviour. The implication is that women's novels make sense of women's experiences and if, instead of dismissing them out of hand, a man takes time to read them carefully and respectfully, he may gain a greater understanding of women's lives and aspirations.

Eloisa James' latest romances are full to the brim with intertextual references:

the literature professor in me certainly plays into my romances. The Taming of the Duke [...] has obvious Shakespearean resonances, as do many of my novels. I often weave early modern poetry into my work; the same novel might contain bits of Catullus, Shakespeare and anonymous bawdy ballads from the 16th century. (from here)

and the implication is clear: romance readers (and authors) are not stupid and semi-illiterate, and they can and do appreciate the great classical authors. Her quotations from the love poetry and romantic comedies of the past also serve as a call for respect for modern romances which are, in many ways, their prose equivalents in their treatment of the power and pleasures of love.

Finally, and unfortunately I don't have any specific examples here, so I'm hoping I'll get some comments on this, there are instances where romance authors include references to works by other contemporary romance authors. I'm sure I recently read of a historical romance where one character is reading a book written by a novel-writing character created by another author. This sort of intertextuality is both an in-joke for readers of romance and an indication of solidarity among contemporary romance authors.

UPDATE: I finally tracked down the book I mentioned. On her webpage, Julia Quinn says of her novel, Romancing Mr Bridgerton that she includes, via:

Lady W's columns: Michael Anstruther-Wetherby, brother of Honoria, the heroine of DEVIL'S BRIDE by Stephanie Laurens!

and

In the first chapter, Penelope is reading a book called MATHILDA by S.R. Fielding. This is from DREAMING OF YOU by Lisa Kleypas, one of my all-time favorite romance novels! The heroine is a novelist, and MATHILDA was a huge bestseller.

[In case anyone's wondering why there's a deleted comment in the comments section, it's because I was playing around with blogger. I couldn't get the formatting I wanted when I put the quotes in a comment, and then I realised it would be simpler just to update the original post. But now, of course, it looks a bit odd to have a deleted post. Of course, I realise it also looks pretty odd to footnote my own post in this way. I'll get to grips with blogging soon, I hope.]

The ultimate romance novel

Eric asked me to post my list of my personal "transcendent" romances, to quote Lydia Joyce. I'm not sure a personal list of one person really counts, and one thing that's becoming obvious from the responses on the listserv is that no one's list is even close to being the same. While I believe that I'm posting romances that anyone could agree are "transcendent," am I choosing SEP's It Had to Be You because it's truly a great romance, with great characters and all the requirements of a "true" romance, whatever that might be (although Pam seems to have a better idea than most of us), or did I choose it because I personally really identify with Phoebe Summerville and her body-image issues?

So, instead, I will ask the question: Do you have ONE ultimate romance? One romance that is the absolute perfect, most transcendent romance?

Mine is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

The perfect heroine who learns and improves, the perfect hero who learns and improves, a little bit of tension over whether they'll get together, perfect relationship foils in Elizabeth's sisters' relationships (Jane and Lydia), both internal and external plot movement, and a truly satisfying ending.

But I know a lot of my own personal love for the novel is because of my own personal feelings, both academic and fangirly, for Mr. Darcy.

So, anyone else willing to commit to just ONE book?

Do we have Gods Among Men in the UK?

The metaphor Eric posted, about football, got me thinking about national differences. I'm from the UK, so when I see the word 'football', I think about the non-contact sport Americans call 'soccer'. American readers, however, will no doubt have had a somewhat different game in mind. And this got me thinking about other national differences, and how they might affect romance writing and romance readership.

The UK association for writers of romance is the Romantic Novelists' Association whereas the US has the huge Romance Writers of America. The RNA is relatively small, a fact which no doubt has something to do with the fact that romance is much less popular in the UK than it is in the US, with 'adult readers [...] turning away from romance to crime and thrillers'. Included among the 'romance' novels are the works of Catherine Cookson which may be better described as family sagas (with romantic elements). The RNA, as its name suggests, is for novelists whose works are 'romantic': there is no requirement for them to write the happy endings which are essential in 'romance novels' as defined by the RWA. We also don't see many books in the UK with the 'clinch' covers which are so often reviled by readers of romance in the US.

So national differences affect the packaging, genre definitions and reception of romance. But do they also affect the tone of even those books which are romances according to the RWA's definition? Juliet Flesch, author of From Australia With Love, certainly believes that 'Australian women's romance is culturally distinctive; in her chapter "The Beetroot in the Burger" she argues that there is an "egalitarianism, independence of spirit, a sense of fair play and a sense of humour" (p. 251) which can be attributed to a uniquely Australian sensibility'.

Getting back to the football, American football players look particularly 'masculine', with their padding exaggerating the size of their shoulders. This is a contact sport where the players literally clash and run into each other. Soccer players, on the other hand, wear clothing which reveals their bodies but does nothing to enhance them, and while players such as David Beckham may be considered extremely attractive to the opposite sex, he's also appeared in a sarong:

Did the different clothes, hairstyles, jewellery, make him less "masculine"? (99.9% of British men live in fear of being less masculine.)

No, it merely meant that the fashion pack began to join forces with the football followers - and worship him. [BBC article]

So what about American v British romance heroes? I tend to read mostly Mills & Boon historical romances, but I venture outside that sub-genre from time to time, and I've noticed a few trends, though I'll not be completely surprised if some more knowledgeable person comes along and disagrees with me in the comments trail. And before I begin, I'll make it clear that, as with all generalisations, I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions.

In the US romances, American heroes are popular, and they're often military or otherwise able to 'protect' a heroine physically/with a weapon. This applies in contemporaries as much or more so than in historicals where the English Regency period still dominates.

In the UK, Mills & Boon sell nothing which is the equivalent of Harlequin's American Romance line. And I'm open to correction, but in the contemporary romances I've read from M&B the tall, dark, powerful hero tends to be Greek, Italian or Spanish. I haven't found one Mills & Boon contemporary where the hero was a UK policeman or soldier, though I have come across one paramedic working with the Fire Service. The most common British hero I've come across is the doctor, usually found in the Mills & Boon Medical Romance. Interestingly, that's a line which is edited in the UK, although Harlequin in the US does sell some of them. It's maybe relevant that the guidelines for the series state that:

Heroes and heroines are equally matched and equally respected professionals. [...] These romances usually involve both hero and heroine working together in a medical environment. The focus should be a developing, emotionally driven romantic relationship pushed forward by the hero and heroine's involvement with patients and their medical treatment, and their medical colleagues.

Although this type of hero's special, he doesn't, I think, attain the status of being 'superior in degree to other men and to his environment, [...] whose actions are marvelous but who is himself identified as a human being', of the type discussed by Northrop Frye (see Eric's post below). The heroine is usually just as good a doctor as he is. So maybe UK romances tend more towards the 'realistic' end of the spectrum of romance. I certainly haven't noticed an outbreak of vampire/paranormal heroes here, and those are surely heading off the top of the scale when it comes to being 'superior in degree to other men and to his environment'. If UK romance readers want to read a romance, written by a UK author and published in the UK, with a hero who is 'superior in degree to other men', who is a Hero (with a capital H) or what might be termed a 'God among Men' (though not literally a god), then they seem to have to turn to historicals or foreign heroes, and I notice that the heroes of historical romances written by UK authors are very often affected by the more realistic trend too.

Now it could just be that American men are, indeed, Gods among Men, but I find that a little difficult to believe, just as I'm unprepared to believe that of the men of other nationalities. I've yet to meet any sheiks, but the Greek, Spanish and Italian men I've met are certainly not the arrogant, somewhat chauvinist males presented in the Mills & Boon's I've read . I am prepared to accept, though, that the way masculinity is constructed in US society differs from that in the UK. It's not that long since you had a Wild West, and you can still legally own guns (in the UK gun ownership is now extremely restricted). In terms of literary/popular culture influences, in the US there's the cowboy of the Westerns, and maybe patriotic feeling in the US contributes to the popularity of heroes who are in the military, the police and the fire services. Maybe the greater acceptance of capitalism in the US leads to more respect for entrepreneurs, and so there are more American heroes who are business tycoons.

"We all want to be gods"

Pam's paragraph about Sleeping Beauty (scroll down and you'll see it) contains this apercu:

There's an entire act in which Aurora is courted by four suitors, but she spends this act on pointe, balanced, unsupported. This is an exaggeration, but she really does an amazing number of unpartnered balances on pointe. All this in celebration of her 16th birthday, and her entry into womanhood. She's all we care about. She's the only thing worth watching, despite the considerable spectacle of the production.

This reminds me quite poignantly of a comment by Lizzie Potts, the romance writer / fairy godmother of Sarah Bird's The Boyfriend School, one of the novels I teach:

"The idea that romance is the female equivalent of male porn is silly. You know what romances are? They're the female equivalent of the NLF."

"Pardon me?"

"You know, the football federation. Since we don't have a television set, I haven't experienced this personally, but again and again I hear from my readers that their husbands spend all their free time watching football on television. Now the question is, why?"

"Why do men watch so much football?" I hazarded a guess: "Alien mind control?"

"No. To vicariously experience a potency they've either lost or never known. Sports are the essential drama in Everyman's life. His one moment of personal power comes on the playing field. Or, if it doesn't, he dreams of it. Dreams of being the quarterback and making the tackle that wins the game and, by extension, the fair maidens.

"The fair maidens, meanwhile, also dream their dream of power. They dream of love. Their moment comes during those few brief years when nature brings them into full breeding allure. For the first time, they have the power to turn a boy's fancy.

"God's teeth, modern life is queer, isn't it?" she asked. "He's off watching some football tournament dreaming of being seventeen again and she has her nose buried in a romance, chasing the same illusion. It all comes down to this, Gretchen: we all want to be the center of the universe. We all want to be gods."

--chapter 6, p. 73 in the paperback; p. 76 in the hardcover, I believe.

Hard not to read that and think of Frye on romance, too.