My New Romance Class

This quarter at DePaul I'm teaching a brand new class on popular romance fiction. It's a "Senior Capstone Seminar," a very grand title for a very odd course meant somehow to connect the broad general education learning that students have done with their work inside a particular major. In practice, this means that I have 25 soon-to-graduate English majors charged with the duty to find some way to connect their studies in history, philosophy, religious studies, the sciences, and so on, with readings in popular romance fiction. For the first half of the course, more or less, we'll be reading a set of novels I've assigned; to finish the quarter, I'll turn the class over to the students, who will workshop and present their research in novels of their choosing. The best work from the class will go up on DePaul's website of "Resources for Teaching Popular Romance Fiction."

In a curiously appropriate twist, my course competes for students this quarter with another Senior Seminar for majors: a course on James Joyce's Ulysses. It's as though my colleague Jim and I had agreed to divide the literary world between us, with one course focused on what is perhaps the most highly-regarded novel of the 20th century (indeed, the book voted "best novel of the century" a few years back) and the other devoted to the most popular genre of the 20th century. By some odd coincidence, the students in my course are all women. I guess the boys have better things to do.

But I digress.

After worrying for weeks about what novels to teach in the class, I decided to keep things tightly focused, not least to make the course as helpful as possible for my own research. The first half of the class, therefore, is a "case study" in the work of a novelist you all know that I love: Jennifer Crusie. We start this week with Bet Me, along with secondary readings from Pamela Regis (on romance fiction), Northrop Frye (on romance more generally), and Bruno Bettelheim (on fairy tales, natch). So far, however, on the class website, the most provocative posts have been from students who have not even tried to use the secondary texts; instead, they've jumped right in to criticize the novel, in a variety of ways.

For some, it's "predictable." As one student put it, "The minute bets are made you can sort of guess at the plot. Girl or guy finds out about said bet, fights ensue, they realize they love each other despite of how it started and they end up together. " Echoing this, another weighed in: "The story was entirely predictable, and if you're reading romance just for the story, then why bother?"

For others, the book seemed littered with extraneous material. "I could have done without the references to shoes, food, and Elvis," one woman wrote. "They all seemed like oddly placed references that did nothing to advance the story, they were just fluff. I figured it would end up connecting someway but I never got the connection or point to those references." (Hmmm... do you think, in that class on Ulysses, students are posting lists of all the "fluffy" references that do nothing to advance the story?)

One student objected to the novel on a variety of grounds, in an anxious post that rambles a bit, but is still worth quoting at length:

Crusie says in "Romancing Reality" that outside of academia, most people read for the story alone, that language doesn't factor in. That may be true, but that also doesn't mean that's right, i.e. acceptable. In a world full of pop culture escapism, I don't think it should be encouraged more than it already is. [...] Not to mention, the story was entirely predictable, and if you're reading romance just for the story, then why bother? Yes, Min is not passive, she is in control of her life and she is true to herself...but all that is obsolete when in the end it's just about winning the prince. She's very angry at life before Cal, and only after she gets him does she become satisfied. It makes me wary that a man is her catalyst for self-realization. Women already grow up with that idea (which can be valid, mind you) but I just don't feel it can be used to write off romance as "reality." A woman's desire for love is realistic, but implying it ultimately happens only with a man is scary. Self-love must come first. In Min's case, she needs Cal. He's the one who makes her realize she dresses like she hates her body, for instance.

The range of issues here, tumbling one after another, is really quite remarkable: internalized anxieties about literary authority (what teacher or professor drilled into her that reading for the story wasn't "acceptable"?), about "escapism," about reading "predictable" plots, and finally about love and female self-realization. I find the annoucement that "self-love must come first" utterly fascinating, and asked a number of follow-up questions on it. What psychological theory does that derive from? (Of course, we are in the USA, a country whose epic poem is "Song of Myself"!)

I'll post more on Wednesday, after our first real seminar discussion--or perhaps a bit today or tomorrow, as I gather my thoughts on the novel. I'll also keep track of the Christian romance subplot that has already begun to emerge. You see, as I introduced the students to the various subgenres of romance fiction, a good half-dozen perked up and looked particularly interested as I described Christian / Inspirational romance. When it came time to tell the class which topics and genres most interested them, however, these students hung back, some of them visibly. It's far less embarassing, evidently, to confess your love for erotic romance than for the Christian sort!

And, indeed, one of the first posts to the class website was a request for more information about inspirational romance. Any suggestions I should pass along, about inspirationals or about ways to address the obvious anxieties that this course seems to be triggering in students, will be greatly appreciated!

Marriage

As Pamela Regis observes,

The happy ending is the one formal feature of the romance novel that virtually everyone can identify. This element is not limited to a narrow range of texts: a marriage - promised or actually dramatized - ends every romance novel. Ironically, it is this universal feature of the romance novel that elicits the fiercest condemnation from its critics. The marriage, they claim, enslaves the heroine, and, by extension, the reader. (Regis 2003: 9)

I think the happy ending in romance no longer automatically implies marriage, but can include what one might term 'marriage equivalents', and this reflects changing social mores, with increased co-habitation among both straight and gay couples, as well as legal equivalents to marriage such as civil partnerships for homosexual couples. It's not as though the genre and its predecessor's portrayals of marriage were ever static: marriage and ideas about marriage have changed over time, and this has been reflected in literature. As Regis says,

looking at the older books, beginning with Richardson's Pamela [...] a reader can see the shift in motives for marriage--from dynastic (marrying out of duty, for reasons of family, property, and so forth) to companionate (marrying for love). Most if not all of contemporary romance novels simply assume that companionate union is the only, best reason for pairing off.

And, although in the past marriage was intended for 'the procreation of children', nowadays this may not be the case since couples may choose to remain childless/child-free. Meanwhile, among those who do not, many

married couples now see children as an obstacle to their marital happiness. According to one recent review of over 90 studies of marital satisfaction, married parents report lower quality relationships than married couples without children.[..] Yet this does not mean that younger Americans are rejecting parenthood altogether. Most Americans are, or will become, parents. (Whitehead and Popenoe, 2006)

Regarding divorce, in the UK,

For many couples, obtaining a divorce has never been easier. The old-fashioned concept of establishing that one party is at fault has been consigned to history and the important fact to establish now is that the relationship has "irretrievably broken down".

and similar developments have taken place around the world, alongside the ending of the stigma previously attached to divorce.

In this context, it seems likely that modern romances may take a variety of different approaches to marriage, depending on the opinions and experiences of the author as well as factors such as the time-period and location in which the novel is set.

For many individuals modern marriage is something to aspire to, and they set very high standards of what they expect both from marriage itself and from their marriage partner:

Young adults today are searching for a deep emotional and spiritual connection with one person for life. At the same time, the bases for marriage as a religious, economic or parental partnership are receding in importance for many men and women in their twenties. [...] An overwhelming majority (94%) of never-married singles agree that "when you marry you want your spouse to be your soul mate, first and foremost." (Whitehead and Popenoe, 2001)

I wonder if this aspiration for, and view of, marriage lies behind the portrayal of soul-mate relationships in paranormal romances such as Christine Feehan's Carpathians and their 'lifemates', Robin D. Owens' HeartMates, and many other romances in which paranormal creatures feel a particular link to only one individual, to whom they become bound for life.

Back in the real world, however, women may still feel that they must behave in particular ways if they are to optimise their chances of finding a spouse. In Crusie's Bet Me, Min's mother is focussed on making Min acceptable to a man (both in order to catch a husband and to keep him after marriage), though her concern is predominantly with Min's physical appearance rather than her behaviour:

“I’m worried for you,” her mother was saying. “[...] I can’t stand it if you’re hurt.”
[...] “I just don’t want you hurt,” Nanette said, and Min thought she heard her voice shake. “I want you married to a good man who will appreciate you for how wonderful you are and not leave you because you’re overweight.” [...]
“Marriage is hard, Min,” Nanette was saying. ‘There are a million reasons for them to cheat and leave, so you have to work at it all the time. You have to look good all the time. Men are very visual. If they see something better -” [...] “No matter how hard you work, there’s always somebody younger, somebody better,” Nanette said, her voice trembling. (2004: 116-117)

She also advises Min not to use her 'loud voice' (2004: 69). Min keeps her loud voice, takes up eating carbs and butter and finds true love with Cal. What Crusie's re-writing of the Cinderella fairytale suggests is that there are far too many women out there trying to force themselves physically, emotionally and intellectually, into a corset (Min's mother has picked one out of her that is several sizes too small). But, as she's not an ugly sister, she doesn't need to squeeze herself into shoes that are too small: her glass slippers fit her perfectly.*

It's not just their bodies and personalities which women have been told to suppress in order to be marriageable, for example:

In Backlash, Susan Faludi revealed the stealth strategy of the right: to prove that the rights women gained for themselves through the feminist movement are causing their lives to fall apart. Among other things, she recalled a famous 1986 Newsweek story that said a single woman in her mid-thirties with delusions of meeting a partner ought to be very frightened. It seems that women were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married after the age of thirty-five. Faludi discovered that the story was no more than "a parable masquerading as a numbers report." In fact, it was an offhand remark made by a reporter, which was then taken seriously by a stringer in New York, who spun it into Spinstergate for Newsweek. (Baumgardner & Richards 2000: 103-104)

As reported at Salon in 2006:

Twenty years later, Newsweek is finally eating crow -- and practically serving wedding cake. "Months [after 'The Marriage Crunch' ran], other demographers came out with new estimates suggesting a 40-year-old woman really had a 23 percent chance of marrying. Today, some researchers put the odds at more than 40 percent," reads the new article, which also sputters an aside that that "terrorist" thing -- the "terrorist" thing that "quickly became entrenched in pop culture" (Oops! Our bad!) -- "wasn't actually true."

A recent item in Forbes Magazine is perhaps a sign of how far we've come (and how far we still have to go). On the 22nd of August 2006 an article was published by editor Michael Noer, in which he proclaimed:

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage. While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children.

The original article was very quickly noticed and critiqued, by many people including the Smart Bitches, and Forbes.com rapidly removed the original article and then put it back alongside another column putting the opposing view because, as they acknowledged, the original had 'provoked a heated response from both outside and inside our building. Elizabeth Corcoran, a member of our Silicon Valley bureau and principal author of the magazine's current cover story on robots, sent in this rebuttal', which was then printed alongside Noer's piece. Corcoran sensibly pointed out that it takes two people to make a marriage work:

The essence of a good marriage, it seems to me, is that both people have to learn to change and keep on adapting. Children bring tons of change. Mothers encounter it first during the nine months of pregnancy, starting with changing body dimensions. But fathers have to learn to adapt, too, by learning to help care for children, to take charge of new aspects of a household, to adapt as the mothers change.

Many modern romance heroines end up married by the end of the novel but not all do and there are relatively few whose main aim in life is to get married (and in the cases where it is, there are usually practical, financial reasons for this, particularly in historicals). In addition, romances are usually about a woman who is loved for who she is, not for who she's pretending to be. That's one of the positive messages about women and marriage that come out of romance.

On the other hand, as the Smart Bitches observed in their response to the Forbes article,

How many of you have noticed how contemporary romances oftentimes demonize the working life, specifically for women? I’ve noticed several stories about women on the verge of burnout who find fulfillment in a life filled with babies and domesticity

This is also something that was noted by Peter Darbyshire in his analysis of Harlequin's inspirational romances:

the unhappiness of the heroine in any given Love Inspired novel generally stems from resisting the wishes of the hero, who invariably demands she abandon her independent lifestyle and quit her job in order to become a full-time wife to him and a full-time mother to their children. The heroines inevitably do relent [...] Even in those few instances when female characters happily continue with what appears to be an independent lifestyle, they do so only with the tacit approval of male characters. (2002: 83)

Darbyshire was writing when this was a very new line, and he may therefore have reached conclusions about it which are not applicable to later novels in the line, but his comments and those of the Smart Bitches demonstrate that while some romances portray more modern attitudes towards marriage, others are much more traditional.

• Baumgardner, Jennifer & Amy Richards, 2000. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
• Crusie, Jennifer, 2004. Bet Me (New York: St Martin's Press).
• Darbyshire, Peter, 2002. ‘The Politics of Love: Harlequin Romances and the Christian Right’, Journal of Popular Culture, 35:4: 75-87.
• Regis, Pamela, 2003. A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
• Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe & David Popenoe, 2006. 'The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America, 2006, Life Without Children', The National Marriage Project, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
• Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe & David Popenoe, 2001. 'The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America, 2001, Who Wants to Marry a Soul Mate?', The National Marriage Project, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

* If you scroll down this page you'll find Crusie's description of the cover of Bet Me, which includes the 'glass slippers'. For more on fairytale elements in Bet Me, see Maria M. Brown's notes on the novel.

Definition of Paranormal Romance

Jane at Dear Author asked me about the definition of paranormal romance, about what that definition might include and what it doesn't. I was surprised at how much I actually ended up writing, and thought that some of my ideas were worth blogging, so here you go.

I think the RWA's definition of romance as a story containing both a central love story, and also an emotionally satisfying AND optimistic ending has to hold true for any romance, no matter the sub-genre. So, as much as Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series may be all about the relationships she has (with SOOOO many men/males), the central focus of each story is not on that one relationship (even if it's a threesome) that can be resolved with a HEA, so the books don't count as romances per se (although I certainly think their success can be attributed to romance readers' interest in the stories because of the focus on relationships, but that's a whole 'nother blog).

So, if we're going to discuss paranormal romance, it is important to remember that the romance is vital to that combination. More on this later.

Paranormal, of course, means "beyond" normal, or anything that cannot be explained by science. I would personally add "in our world," meaning that a totally different world, with magic or whatever, is not paranormal by my definition. For example, then, Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake world is paranormal, because it's an alternate expression of our world with paranormal elements. The Lord of the Rings is not paranormal, even though it has magic, because it's an entirely different world. Matthew Haldeman-Time's serial m/m erotica, In This Land (sorry, had to do the plug because it's too incredible not to) is not paranormal, because it's a different world/planet. Other-world novels, then, are Science Fiction or Fantasy, depending on the novel--and I am by no means an expert on that designation. I tend to avoid SF/F.

So, if it's set in any version of our world, in recognizable cities or towns or countries, or in a community that is recognizably "Earth" but Earth that has "beyond science" elements, it's paranormal. There's different levels /types to the definition of paranormal. There's the choice of paranormal elements: stuff that humans can do (telekinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, magic, etc.) and/or paranormal "monsters" (were-animals, zombies, ghosts, ghouls, fairies/faeries, vampires (oh, the vampires!!), etc.). There's also the choice of level of paranormality: alternative histories, where everyone knows and accepts the paranormal elements (a la Hamilton) vs. stories where paranormal elements are something only a few people possess (a la most of Nora Roberts' and Linda Howard's paranormal stories).

I think, however, that my reason for the distinction between of-this-world stories being paranormal and not-of-this-world stories being SF/F is that a *primary* theme of all paranormal novels is the interaction between the "normal" of our world and the paranormal, between the mundane and the unexplainable. How does the normal woman respond, for example, when she finds out her lover is a vampire/werewolf/witch? How does a normal man respond when he finds out he's not normal when he comes into his previously latent powers or is turned into a paranormal monster? That's the distinction between paranormal and SF/F, for me. If that tension between mundane and paranormal doesn't exist, it's not a paranormal novel, even if it is set in our world. If it were an alternative history of our world where EVERYONE were paranormal, that would still be fantasy because the tension between mundane and paranormal would not exist. Hamilton's Anita Blake stories are paranormal because there are normal people and the tension of most of the novels is Anita dealing with the fact that her powers make her increasingly paranormal, increasingly "one of the monsters" rather than a normal human being. Her Merry Gentry series is not paranormal, for me, but rather fantasy, because although it starts in "our" world, most of the action takes place in a totally other world (like C.S. Lewis's Narnia series), and, more importantly, the tension of the books is not located in the clash between mundane and paranormal.

(Time travel novels, then, would seem to straddle this divide. The primary tension is in the clash between two mundane cultures separated by time, rather than by mundane/paranormal elements. So both the time traveler and the non-time traveler are mundane, but their meeting is brought about by paranormal elements. I don't consider that true paranormal. I think they're a very different genre from paranormal. But that might just be me. Suzanne Brockmann's Time Enough for Love is a brilliant time travel that is more science fiction based than the "magickal" elements of time travel in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, but in both of those, the hero and heroine are both mundane. The culture shock aspect is there, and the decision to live with the world-out-of-synch is there for the characters, but it's somehow fundamentally different for me from paranormal romance.)

My favorite paranormal series at the moment is J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books--and I'm obviously not alone there. While the stories take place mostly in the "world" of the Brotherhood, that world is still hidden from the "normal" world and one of the tensions is the need to keep it hidden from ordinary humans. And all the relationships so far (and the future relationships that we know of) focus on the tension of mundane meets paranormal. In Dark Lover Beth might be vampire, but she doesn't know it until she makes the change. The heroines in Lover Eternal and Vishous's book (although NOT, as has been pointed out to me, Lover Awakened), and the hero in Lover Revealed are all human and the tension between human and vampire represents much of the tension in the novels. (It'll be fascinating to see if Ward ever does a book in which both characters have always known they're vampires.)

Putting these two elements together, then, a paranormal romance is a novel focusing on a close relationship in which the primary mundane vs. paranormal tension is explored between the partners in the relationship. So while a story in which both characters know of, understand, and believe in the paranormal elements of the world would technically be "paranormal," it might not be a paranormal romance because why have a romance with paranormal elements if the mundane/paranormal tension does not effect the relationship? In a paranormal romance, then, by my definition, at least one character must believe they are mundane (whether or not they are) and have to struggle within the relationship with the tension between mundane and paranormal. This definition can be represented in any number of ways, but that's what I come to when I actually try to parse out my personal understanding of the combination phrase "paranormal romance." If you think of most of Nora Roberts' paranormals (I haven't read the Morrigan's Cross series, so I can't speak for those) and Linda Howard's paranormals, each and every relationship has to get over the "I don't believe you are a ______/I don't believe you can do ________" stage. That's what makes them paranormal, in my opinion.

The climax of a paranormal novel can be the mundane partner in the relationship accepting the paranormal aspects in their lives, or it can be the antagonist getting what comes to him/her, usually with the help of the paranormal elements, after the mundane partner has accepted the paranormal, but the tension of the main relationship needs to be heavily invested in the tension between the mundane and the paranormal.

So there you have it. Does anyone else have a more or less inclusive definition of paranormal romance? How do you separate paranormal romances from Science Fiction romances or Fantasy romances? Is paranormal just anything that isn't perfectly normal? What about Time Travel romances?

Sin and Redemption

Yesterday Sarah commented that 'Persuasion is my favorite *Austen* [...] but I still think P+P makes a better ROMANCE'. Of course, I could just have asked her why she thought that, but I didn't. Instead I sat around pondering the comment, and as I was also reading Mary Jo Putney's Thunder and Roses, of which Putney has said ' I love all my stories, but must admit that for pure romance, it's hard to beat Thunder and Roses', some ideas began to appear.

As Eric noted not so long ago, there is a

deep, deep link between all the various genres of romance--the link that makes all romance "inspirational," I suppose, even if it isn't all exactly Christian. That's a topic I'll try to come back to as the year goes by.

I hope Eric does have time to come back to this. It was touched on briefly by Rev Melinda, a poster at the joint blog to which Putney contributes, who said that

romances in general often deal with issues that could be viewed as "spiritual" if not religious—love, death, meaning, trust, betrayal, redemption, self-sacrifice, reconciliation, cruelty, kindness, generosity of spirit—and did I mention LOVE [...]?

So as Putney added, there is therefore 'at least an implicit element of spirituality in most romances' and in some, as in Thunder and Roses, it's quite explicit: 'In my book, Clare’s spiritual dilemma is her secret belief that her faith is not what it should be'.

I'd also love to read Sarah's explanation of why she thinks Pride and Prejudice is a better romance than Persuasion but in the meantime, here are some of my thoughts on romance and religion.

It's impossible not to notice that a lot of romances have titles which refer to theological concepts and beings including: sin (An Invitation to Sin, One Little Sin, Lady of Sin, Lord Sin, etc) ; wickedness (When He Was Wicked, Your Wicked Ways, Wicked Widow, Ways to be Wicked, etc); temptation (Welcome to Temptation, Slightly Tempted, My Fair Temptress etc); devils (Devil's Cub, The Devil's Bargain, Devilish, etc); angels (Angel in a Red Dress, Angel in My Bed, Kiss an Angel, etc). Pride and Prejudice, of course, has one of the seven deadly sins in its title, and the hero of Thunder and Roses is known as 'Old Nick' and is part of a group known as the 'Fallen Angels'. In this context, Persuasion seems a very mild title, and while it does include a misunderstanding between the hero and heroine, a bit of caution and timidity on her side, and a bit of misunderstanding and pique on his, it can't compare with the very much stronger disagreement between Darcy and Elizabeth, and the sin of pride.

It would seem that as well as having at a hero who is strongly associated with sin/wickedness, it helps if a romance also has at least one evil villain or villainness. Pride and Prejudice has the wicked Wickham who lies, cheats and seduces; Persuasion has Mr Elliott, who admittedly has been instrumental in the downfall of Mr and Mrs Smith, and makes Captain Wentworth jealous, but he hardly reaches the level of depravity attained by the hero's first wife in Thunder and Roses.

The actions of villains often create the tormented/tortured hero so beloved of many romance readers. Robin Uncapher has observed that

If you read many historicals you will be hard pressed to find a hero without a terrible hurt in his past. They all seem to have at least one, but I don't think that they are all tortured. To this reader, "tortured" reflects the way the hero deals with the problem. A tortured hero tortures himself. He may be wracked with guilt. He may be bitter or angry. [...] A hero I see as not tortured, is one who is mentally healthy, often in spite of the awful things that have happened to him.

What they all have in common, according to Robin Uncapher, is 'a terrible hurt'. Darcy has Wickham's betrayal to deal with, Putney's 'Old Nick' has a past full of misery and betrayal, but Captain Wentworth's biggest emotional trauma is only a postponed engagement and, as he discovers, his (very minor) pride and misunderstanding are the causes of it:

a question has suggested itself, whether there may not have been one person more my enemy even than that lady [Lady Russell, who persuaded Anne not to marry Wentworth years before]? My own self. Tell me if, when I returned to England, in the year eight, with a few thousand pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? Would you, in short, have renewed the engagement then?"

"Would I?" was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.

"Good God!" he cried, "you would! It is not that I did not think of it, or desire it, as what could alone crown all my other success; but I was proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you. I shut my eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice. (Chapter 23)

and as a man who describes himself as having 'been used to the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards', he gives no indication of either great suffering or a tormented soul.

Another feature shared by both Pride and Prejudice and Thunder and Roses is that the hero is redeemed/'tamed' as a result of his association with the heroine and in many romances the importance of the heroine is saving the hero is demonstrated in a scene in which he has to 'grovel' or beg her forgiveness. Here is Darcy, for example:

I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing -- to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. (Chapter 58)

Anne Marble writes that 'many fans read romances with tortured (or even "alpha heel") heroes because they want to read the "grovel" -- the part where he apologizes to the heroine and redeems himself in her eyes' and she's written more about 'redemption romances' at All About Romance, where she quotes from one of the readers of the board who had defined the core of this sort of romance as being 'about someone who for whatever reason has behaved badly in systematic fashion - has been a bad person, and by the end of the book has been redeemed'. Marble notes that 'heroines don't get to be redeemed as often as heroes. In fact, heroines tended to be the saviors rather than the saved'.

The most famous humbling scene in the New Testament is probably St Paul's, which takes place on the road to Damascus, and the idea that it is precisely those who are the most sinful who should be the focus of attention and redemptive efforts is at the core of the New Testament's message:

[the] scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?
And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Luke 5: 30-32)

In Catholic theology, the Virgin Mary is sometimes described as a 'co-redemptrix'. The term is often misunderstood, and it does not imply that she took over Christ's work or was equal to him, but rather that 'she suffered WITH the Redeemer in his act of saving us' (Vidal, 2001). The romance heroine also often suffers greatly and she may bear some resemblance to the Victorian 'angel in the house'. For the Victorians 'the ideal of femininity was encapsulated in the idea of a "woman's mission", which was that of playing a model mother, wife and daughter. Women were also seen as moral and spiritual guardians' (Nead 2004). Perhaps these female role models contribute to the scarcity of romance heroines in need of redemption?

The hero's redemption is complete when he acknowledges his love for the heroine. As John states, 'love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God' (1 John 5: 7). Of course, John was probably not thinking of love as depicted in romance novels, but as Pope Benedict XVI recently wrote in his first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est,

eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized

With regard to the romance genre, some readers would appear to prefer stories in which the hero is sinful and inflicts suffering on the heroine because the greater his sin, the more powerful her redemptive work is shown to be. However, as the plentiful examples in this At the Back Fence column demonstrate, even among these readers there are limits on how much they will accept with regards to both the hero's behaviour (and, consequently, whether or not they believe he really has been redeemed) and the heroine's virtue (which, in extreme cases might be described as naivety) .

Not all romances are like this, but I wonder if this type is seen as a 'better ROMANCE' because it has come to be seen as the essence of what a romance story should be, both by romance readers and the general public. Is this the sort of storyline that those who mock the genre expect to find within the covers of a romance novel? And is their mockery due to a lack of belief in the hero's redemption? Or is it that these stories simply seem so extreme and incredible to them that they cannot believe in the heroine's exemplary virtue and love for the hero? I do have some sympathy for this point of view since, as noted above, many romance readers themselves would consider some heroes in this type of romance to be bullies, while their heroines may sometimes be designated TSTL (Too Stupid to Live).

But could it be that what really motivates some of these critics' scorn for the genre is their lack of belief in True Love? Scrooge declares that Christmas is 'Humbug' because 'What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough. [...] I live in such a world of fools [...]. What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money [...]?', and I think many people look at romance readers and think us fools for not paying enough attention to the divorce statistics.* Maybe, then, some of the criticism of romance is due to its 'inspirational' nature which irks these non-believers.

Literature often requires some suspension of disbelief, but is enjoyment of the romance genre dependant on a sort of faith?

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* Stephanie Coontz suggests, however, that 'Throughout Europe and North America, divorce rates rose hand in glove with sales of romance novels'. I'm not sure what evidence she has for this, but her argument is that divorce rates rose precisely because of an increase in the belief in love as the basis for marriage because 'once marriage was based on love, people began to wonder if it wasn't better to be single than to marry or stay with someone you didn't love'.

Famous Literary Predecessors of the Modern Romance Novel

My New Year's resolution was to read and blog about some of the predecessors of the modern romance novels published today.* I also qualified this by adding that I'd only blog about some of the less well-known novels. That's because some of these predecessors are among the most famous novels written, and (a) you can read about them in great detail elsewhere and (b) anything I could write here would look a bit feeble in comparison with the volumes of literary criticism on them that already exist. I will, though, mention some of the famous literary predecessors of the modern romance very briefly. I'm sticking to novels which are romance according to the RWA definition, i.e. novels that have 'a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending'. For reasons of space, if a particular author has written more than one romance I'll usually just list one of them.

• 1740, Richardson, Samuel, Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded. This is Richardson's 'most widely read work. At once profoundly influential, yet heavily and publicly vilified, the novel's publication marked the beginning of one of the most astounding moments in literary history and laid the foundation for Richardson's status as one of the founding fathers of the modern novel.' (Batchelor 2002). Regis dedicates a chapter to it (2003: 63-74). You can read a brief description of the novel here, and see illustrations from five eighteenth-century editions here.

• 1778, Burney, Frances, Evelina: Or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World . This was 'a critical success, receiving praise from respected individuals, including the statesman Edmund Burke, and literary critic Dr. Johnson. It was admired for its comic view of wealthy English society, and for its realistic portrayal of working class London dialects' (Wikipedia). It was initially published anonymously, which led 'leading London society to speculate on the identity of the writer, who was universally assumed to be a man', though Burney's identity was later revealed and 'She was taken up by literary and high society and became the first woman to make writing novels respectable' (The Burney Society). Another aspect of Evelina which was of great significance for future women writers was that 'The "comedy of manners" genre in which she worked paved the way for Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and other 19th-century writers' (The Burney Society).
  

• 1813, Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice. Sarah's already claimed Austen as a romance author, and this novel is so well-known and well-loved that it hardly seems to require any further description from me, but if you'd like the Spark Notes, they're here, and, as they say, 'Pride and Prejudice contains one of the most cherished love stories in English literature: the courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth'. Colin Firth's portrayal of Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation is extremely popular. The link to the text of the novel will take you to the Republic of Pemberley site, where you can find a wealth of information about Austen, her novels and her times. You can also see Regis (2003: 75-84), and the chapter's titled 'The Best Romance Novel Ever Written', which makes Pam's feelings on this novel extremely clear! My favourite Austen is Persuasion, but I know I'm in the minority on this.

• 1847, Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre. If you haven't read it, and want a quick synopsis, there's one here, or you can look at the Spark Notes. The Victorian Web has plenty of very short articles on many aspects of the novel, including its political and social context, treatment of gender issues, and imagery/symbolism. See also Regis (2003: 85-91).

  When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it became a bestseller. The reviews were on the whole favorable. There was much speculation about whether the writer was a man or a woman [...]. When it became known that a woman had written such a passionate novel and seemed so knowing sexually, the reviews became more negative. [...] The reviewer for the Rambler expressed a criticism that was made against all the Bronte novels--coarseness. The reference to "grosser and more animal passions" is a roundabout way of saying "sex." (Melani 2005)

• 1847, Brontë, Anne, Agnes Grey. There's a synopsis here, where the observation is made that

  Anne's first novel resembles in its calm naturalism nothing so much as one of the later Austen novels, with the vital difference that her heroine is a working woman. It deserves, far more than Jane Eyre, the description 'governess novel', because Agnes's experience is far more typical, and the predicament of the occupation is analysed much more closely. (Brontë Parsonage Museum and Brontë Society).

  Agnes Grey isn't as famous as Jane Eyre, but personally I prefer both it and Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which 'A number of contemporary critics have recognized [...] as a landmark feminist text' (Downey, 2000) to the other Brontë novels. Whatever the reason, I can manage perfectly well without the brooding Mr Rochester (and particularly without the horrible Heathcliff).

• 1854, Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, North and South. There's a synopsis here. Unlike the Brontës, Gaskell shows us the industrial activity which contributed so greatly to the Victorian economy.

The novel is famous as an "industrial novel" that engages [with] class struggle and suffering in newly industrialized Victorian cities like Manchester (or, as Gaskell calls it, Milton) and as an important female bildungsroman or coming-of-age novel. Margaret's public intervention in the strike ranks among the most exciting moments in Victorian literature. (Literature, Arts and Medicine Database)

• 1861, Trollope, Anthony, Framley Parsonage. There's a synopsis here and it was with this novel that 'Anthony Trollope enjoyed his first popular success. It is the fourth of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire - a set of six novels that share a fictional geography, interlaced characters, and a thematic preoccupation with the church in a Cathedral town' (Regis 2003: 93). Although a 'thematic preoccupation with the church' might sound a little dull, it really isn't. This is a church rife with the equivalent of modern office politics, and for those of you who like series of romances which follow a group of characters, Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire provide an example of rich and complex world-building. His other series, the Palliser novels, again involve politics, though this time the plots 'usually involve English politics in varying degrees, specifically in and around Parliament' (Wikipedia). Trollope was an extremely prolific author, and this may well have been a trait he learned from his mother:

  Fanny Trollope [...] had been writing, industriously, a record of her crazy trip to America. She called it: Domestic Manners of the Americans. It was published, and quickly became a bestseller. [...] It gave Anthony an insight into how a professional writer should write. From his mother's example (she was constantly writing for many years, although she never quite achieved the same degree of success), he learned the habit of sheer hard work. (The Trollope Society)
  

  One might make comparisons with Nora Roberts' work habits, but unfortunately for Trollope, 'After his death Trollope's literary reputation sank low, and he was regarded as something of a journeyman of letters. This arose partly from the revelation in his Autobiography that he treated literature as a trade and wrote by the clock' (The Victorian Web). It rose again, however, as the mass of writing about his work testifies, and he still has plenty of enthusiastic fans in the UK, US and elsewhere.

• 1872, Hardy, Thomas, Under the Greenwood Tree. I know this isn't the most famous of Hardy's works, but it seems only right to include Hardy who is, as the Penguin Reader Factsheet acknowledges, 'one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth century' and 'This charming, timeless story of rural life gave Hardy his first real taste of fame and success'. Or, as one reader candidly describes it,

  it's a book with about the least plot you will ever find in a novel. It's also on the short side. Unusually for Hardy's novels. it has a happy ending - however Far from the Madding Crowd, the next one he wrote, does too - it was only as Hardy's reputation grew that he could afford to upset his public at the end of every book.

  I was amused to note that one of the minor characters, whom some consider a witch, is called Mrs Endorfield.
  

• 1908, Forster, E. M, Room with a View. As Regis observes, 'E. M. Forster may have ended this novel happily, but he was by no means sanguine about happy endings in general' (2003: 99). It's fame is probably due at least in part to the award-winning 1986 Merchant Ivory film. The Spark Notes are here.

Can you think of any others? I thought of including George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, but although it has a love story and a happy ending, I'm not sure whether the love story between Daniel and Mirah is 'central'. I also considered Dickens' Great Expectations, but again, I wasn't sure if Pip and Estella's relationship is really 'central'. And how about D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover? It certainly has a central love relationship and the ending, if not happy, seems relatively optimistic. What do you think?

Even incomplete as it is, what this list suggests to me is that (a) as we've discussed previously, men can write romance/romantic novels and (b) that the so-called 'constraints' of writing within the romance genre (which basically amount to the need to end a love-story happily) in no way preclude the creation of a work of literary merit.

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• Regis, Pamela, 2003. A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).

* I'm taking the term 'today' somewhat loosely, to mean 'anytime in the past few decades'. Having been a medievalist, a decade or two seems like a short space of time to me. I'm sure geologists would consider a decade the equivalent of a mere blinking of an eye.

Happy Endings: How Far Does It Have To Go?

A reader friend recently sent me Barbara Samuel's The Black Angel. In my usual way, I flipped through the beginning and the end. Basic story, as far as I can make out, is that a Georgian beauty is ruined in her teenage years--and really ruined this time: she has sex and everything without any hope of marriage--and much later marries a man her father found for her. She marries for the money, he for the society standing he hopes to gain through her family. Hilarity ensues. Typical story, right?

Well, he's Irish. And his Deep Dark Secret (TM) is that he's Catholic. When her brother tells her this, her response is "That's all? He's Catholic?" First of all, as an eighteenth-century scholar, this bugs me. She would understand what this means and how bad it is. If he's ever discovered (and he goes to mass in London, for heaven's sake), he'll lose all his land, his wealth, her influence, everything. And Catholics were reviled and hunted and despised and discriminated against like blacks were in the South in the 1950s. So that ahistorical reaction bugged me. But that's not why I can't read the book.

I can't read the book because the story is set in 1786. After he tells her that he can't ask her to fight his fight with him, she tells him, "The world is changing. . . . The American colonies are free. There are revolts in the islands. Perhaps it will not happen peacefully, and perhaps not only you, but your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to fight. But freedom will never be won if you give up" (361). When he finally accepts her, he says, "It will never be easy, but with you, I can face whatever comes" (362).

In 1798, however, there's the Irish Rebellion that is crushed by the British with more savagery than the Scottish Rebellion of 1745, with atrocities and massacres on all sides (Irish Protestant, Irish Catholic, and British). That's only fourteen years between the "happy ending" of Samuel's book and the very non-happy ending of the Irish Rebellion, in which the hero, considering his stated politics, will probably participate and probably be killed.

Laura Kinsale uses the Irish Rebellion in her Uncertain Magic. Kinsale actually has British soldiers destroy the hero's estate halfway through the novel. Toward the end, the hero, heroine, and other characters make their way through Ireland during the Rebellion. In fact, the hero saves the heroine's brother from jail when he's taken up as a rebel. But the hero and heroine have a realistic happy ending after the Rebellion's over.

This is not the case in Samuel's novel. The happy ending there won't last for more than fourteen years, and I'm not comfortable investing myself in characters who will manifestly NOT live happily ever after and die together when they're old and grey and surrounded by many grandchildren.

I'm equally unhappy reading books that finish within twenty years before World War One. That's why the Regency period is safe for me--there's not too many hideous, horrible wars in the nineteenth century for the British. However, hop the Pond and I don't like reading books about Native Americans in the nineteenth century. No matter how happily the romance ends, the life of the hero and heroine is not going to be happy. Same with pre-Civil War books set in the American South.

I apparently like my happy endings to extend way beyond the ending of the novel. What about others out there? Are you satisfied with a happy ending that ends with the book, or do you require it to last the natural life of the hero and heroine?

*Samuels, Barbara. The Black Angel. New York: Harper, 1999.

Reaching for the Moon

Debra Dixon's posted a short free romance story online which spoke to me on two levels. Her Wishing for the Moon is about someone who wants to be sure that she's truly loved and known for herself:

The truth was that she wanted someone to find her in a crowd. Someone who could see Erin instead of a twin. Someone who wouldn't hesitate for that split-second, wondering which sister she was. Yeah...well. She'd be better off wishing for the moon.

I think we all wish for someone who can find us in a crowd, whether or not we have a twin. None of us want to be second-best, or to be mistaken for someone else. It's why sibling rivalry can break out, as each child tries to be noticed by their parents, and why lovers can become jealous. We all want to be known and loved for who we really are. In its rather understated way, I think that's what's being promised in Luke 12: 6-7

6: Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?
7: But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Generally I suppose most people wouldn't think that it was a huge compliment to be told that they were more important than a sparrow, but I think the point here is that we're being told that if God can tell even the sparrows apart, then it's an easy matter for God to tell two humans apart, and value each individual. The way it's put, though, reminds me of Farmer Hoggett in Babe: The Sheep-Pig who, at Babe's moment of triumph at the sheepdog trials, when Babe (a pig) has proved that a pig can do a better job than any sheepdog, leans down and says just a few words:

Narrator: And though every single human in the stands or in the commentary boxes was at a complete loss for words, the man who in his life had uttered fewer words than any of them knew exactly what to say.
Farmer Hoggett: That'll do, pig. That'll do.

And I think that's the second message I can find in Debra Dixon's story: that when it comes to the things that are really important to us we should keep wishing for the moon, and not settle for second-best. Or, as Jenny Crusie puts it, we should be rats who keep swimming, knowing that we'll find our island:

What's the worst that can happen? [...] at the end of your life you look back and say, “I had a dream and I fought for it, I believed in myself and my work, and I never, ever gave up.” That's a life well lived, folks, a helluva lot better than, “I had a dream but it wasn't realistic so I quit and watched television.” Do not let reality push you around, do not be sensible and kill your own dreams.

At the beginning of a New Year seems like a good time to think about our dreams, have hope that they can become reality, and reach for the moon.

Happy New Year!

As most of you probably already know, January takes its name 'from Latin Januarius mensis "month of Janus" (the Roman god who presided over doors and beginnings)', and like the two-headed (sometimes even four-headed) god, people often look both backwards and forwards at this time of year, remembering what's happened over the past year and thinking about how they'd like things to improve in the coming one.

Looking back, I notice that among those who have have arrived here via a search engine, quite a lot would seem to be looking for someone to teach them about sex. They could probably do a lot worse than to read some romances because, as I mentioned in August, some romances can be read as sex education. I would, however, like to point out that romances can also contain inaccuracies. As Kalen Hughes has observed,

Contrary to what appears to be popular mythology (at least among the writers of romance and erotica) the hymen is not a “barrier” (except in RARE cases that require surgery; 1 in 2000 per Blaustein's Pathology of the Female Genital Tract) nor is it up inside the vaginal canal as it is commonly represented to be in fiction.

In addition, the exceptional stamina and physical endurance of many romance heroes and heroines are precisely that - exceptional. If anyone's looking for a more factual approach to sex education, then I'd suggest they look at a site like Scarlateen, where there are detailed articles about safer sex, first-time sex, emotional readiness for sex and a lot more.

We also get quite a lot of hits from people wanting to be taught what's romantic. I doubt they're looking for the distinction between romance novels and romantic novels (though if they are, we've got a post on that here). If these people are looking for advice on what their partner might find romantic, Germaine Greer thinks that they might do well to read some romance novels:

The hero of romance knows how to treat women. Flowers, little gifts, love-letters, maybe poems to her eyes and hair, candlelit meals on moonlit terraces and muted strings. Nothing hasty, physical. Some heavy breathing. Searing lips pressed against the thin stuff of her bodice. Endearments muttered into her luxuriant hair. ‘Little things mean a lot.’ Her favourite chocolates, his pet names for her, remembering her birthday, anniversaries, silly games. And then the foolish things that remind him of her, her perfume, her scarf, her frilly underthings and absurd lace hankies, kittens in her lap. Mystery, magic, champagne, ceremony, tenderness, excitement, adoration, reverence – women never have enough of it. (1993: 194)

That was written in 1970, though, and both society and romance novels have changed a lot since then. Although some people may find such objects and proceedings romantic, others may well see them as clichéd and lacking in thought.

Still looking back, but thinking about how the past can inform the present, in a recent post at Romancing the Blog, Kassia discussed some old publishers' guidelines for romance novels that she'll be adding to the Romance Wiki:

Her figure is always perfectly in proportion, usually petite, and slight of build. He is usually dark, though we have seen some great Nordic types, and recently, we have been introduced to a stunning redhead. [The Other Woman is] usually mean, over-sophisticated, well groomed. She NEVER gets our hero. [Other Characters are] stock, easily recognized, cameos. (Silhouette Books, Character guidelines, excerpts)

and in the comments she added that 'as I read them [the guidelines], I could also see how so many current day perceptions of the genre developed. I mean, the guidelines out-and-out state that secondary characters should be stock'.

If this is the perception of the genre that's still held by many non-romance-readers, however, that's troubling, because it means that attitudes towards the genre may have been shaped by works written decades ago. One of the genre's biggest image problems is tied to a lack of knowledge about its history: it is precisely because people don't know about romance's long history and its various sub-genres that they can talk of the genre being written to an unchanging formula.* As Pamela Regis has said:

Most critics writing about "the romance" pay, at most, lip service to the forebears of contemporary works. This practice robs the genre of its most distinguished representatives, marooning it in the present, and reducing it to the few works that a given critic has chosen to analyze. (2003: 53)

Over the coming year I'd like to discuss a few of the less well-known ancestors of the modern romance novel. I may well not get very far with this, and, like so many other New Year's resolutions it may be quickly abandoned, but I have got at least a couple of blog posts lined up on the topic so far.

• Greer, Germaine, 1993. The Female Eunuch (London: Flamingo).
• Regis, Pamela, 2003. A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press).

* Re the romance 'formula', romance author Deborah Hale suggests that perhaps it's (H + h x A) ÷ C + HEA = R and what she has to say is very positive about the genre. Usually, however, the words 'formula' and 'formulaic', when applied to romance, have rather more negative connotations. The online Compact Oxford English Dictionary even mentions the genre in its definition of the word 'formulaic':

• adjective 1 constituting or containing a set form of words. 2 produced in accordance with a slavishly followed rule or style: much romantic fiction is formulaic.

Happy Holidays!

I'll be taking a break from blogging until after the New Year. I'm not sure whether some of the others will pop in or not; I do know that some of them have huge piles of marking to wade through before the end of term.

When I was looking for an online Christmas romance, I found one by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin. Her The Romance of a Christmas Card was published in 1916 and demonstrates the miracles that can be worked by three pious women and two Christmas cards. Wiggin's A Cathedral Courtship is an earlier work, an epistolary short story, and with lines like the following, I'm really not sure how seriously one is supposed to take it:

'I witnessed the somewhat unusual spectacle of my nut-brown mayde hopping on one foot, like a divine stork'

They certainly don't write heroines like this one anymore, who can say in what appears to be all seriousness that

It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, one that barely escapes idiocy, can disentangle a railway guide, when the brightest woman fails. [...] I do affirm that there is hardly any juncture in life where one isn't better off for having a man about.

She describes the hero thus: 'Mr. Copley has accomplished something, young as he is. He has built three picturesque suburban churches suitable for weddings, and a state lunatic asylum.' Our heroine, according to Mr Copley, is

the concentrated essence of feminine witchery. Intuition strong, logic weak, and the two qualities so balanced as to produce an indefinable charm; will-power large, but docility equal, if a man is clever enough to know how to manage her; knowledge of facts absolutely nil, but she is exquisitely intelligent in spite of it. She has a way of evading, escaping, eluding, and then gives you an intoxicating hint of sudden and complete surrender. She is divinely innocent, but roguishness saves her from insipidity.

Hope you're all saved from insipidity during the holidays too, but hopefully not because you've lost all sense of logic, knowledge of facts and the ability to read a train timetable.

Suspend Disbelief All Ye Who Enter Here

Continuing with the theme of belief/lack of belief I'd like to take a look at a couple of free online works by Holly Lisle. The second is a short re-working of a fairytale and the first is a longer novel, Sympathy for the Devil, which, as I observed regarding many paranormal romances, can be read as an inspirational (but non-Christian) romance. Although it draws heavily on Christian theology and is monotheistic, there is no endorsement for any particular world religion.

The reason I'm paraphrasing from Dante's Divine Comedy in the title of this post is that it seems entirely appropriate in the context of Lisle's Sympathy for the Devil. The original phrase, from the third Canto of the Inferno (the first part of the Comedy, which is followed by Purgatorio and then Paradiso) is written above the gate to Hell and is often rendered as 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here'. Hope is one of the three theological virtues, along with Faith and Charity (Love) and the heroine of Sympathy for the Devil has all three in abundance. This being a romance (or, at least, I read it that way, because it has both 'a central love story' and 'an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending') it seems appropriate that one is forcefully reminded of the words of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 13: 13) concerning love: 'And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity'.

Sympathy for the Devil is by turns humorous, emotionally powerful and psychologically insightful, much like C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. Lisle acknowledges her debt to both 'Mark Twain and C.S. Lewis, who introduced me to this territory when I was nine'. Lewis' theology is considerably more orthodox than Lisle's, however, and his work is composed of a series of letter from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter. Through the letters (a sample letter is available here) one learns about the faith journey of Wormwood's 'patient', the human whose soul he is trying to gain. The Screwtape Letters contains a significant romantic thread but unlike Lisle's Sympathy for the Devil it is not a romance.

There are a number of reviews available of Sympathy for the Devil, for example here and here. Holly Lisle has also written about the theologial and personal background to the novel here. I'd recommend, however, that you read them only after reading the novel itself. So, if you're ready to start, here's the first page. I'll be interested to know how people feel about this. Did you think of it as a romance? Did you enjoy the humour? How did you feel about the theology?

The second online work of Lisle's I want to look at is Armor-ella, a reworking of the Cinderella story. As in the previous novel, an important issue is belief in paranormal beings. This time, however, they're ones more often discussed in fairytales than by theologians.

I'm looking forward to reading your opinions on these two.

Jennifer Crusie - Hot Toy

As Eric and I are working on the novels of Jennifer Crusie we've inevitably mentioned her rather a lot on the blog, to the extent that one blogger described Teach Me Tonight like this: 'If you think of witty, insightful romance writer and academic Jennifer Crusie as the site's spiritual patron saint and foremother, you'll have an idea of its feel'. I'll take that as a compliment! And, as it's Christmas and our 'patron saint' has a newly released Christmas short story, it seemed like the right time to post about Hot Toy. There's a long excerpt available here, and reviews here and here. As usual, this isn't a review, and I will be including spoilers (though I try not to reveal too much).

First of all, Jenny is well known for giving advice and support to other writers. She's written essays on writing and publishing, set up a site where writers can support each other and compare their experiences of the writing life (though there are also some areas for readers) and in the New Year she and Bob Mayer will begin an online 'year-long workshop, updated twice weekly, on the craft of writing a novel'. So it maybe shouldn't come as a surprise that Hot Toy teaches us about one method of creating a plot, namely the use of the 'MacGuffin':

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or Maguffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story, but has little other relevance to the story.

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term "MacGuffin" and the technique. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hitchcock explained the term in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: "[W]e have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers." [...]

The element that distinguishes a MacGuffin from other types of plot devices is that it is not important what object the MacGuffin specifically is. Anything that serves as a motivation will do. A true MacGuffin is essentially interchangeable. Its importance will generally be accepted completely by the story's characters, with minimal explanation. From the audience's perspective, the MacGuffin is not the point of the story. (Wikipedia)

The explict reference to a MacGuffin was a source of great amusement to many of those who commented on this review of the novella. However, although this MacGuffin may begin the story like any other MacGuffin, it ends up rather differently.

At the heart of the novella is the theme of belief, particularly a woman's almost lost belief in the possibility of a happy ending for romantic relationships and a child's belief in Santa. Trudy is determined that her nephew, Leroy, is still 'going to believe in Santa, since he can't believe in men or nannies' (2006: 62). For me the fact that the child's belief was so important invited comparisons with other texts about and for children. Because of what happens to it the MacGuffin, despite being a 'homicidal doll that spit toxic waste' (2006: 8), reminds me of Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit, which begins 'On Christmas morning'. Here's the part where one toy talks to another:

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

As the Horse admits, love is about pain, as well as pleasure, but for those who love you unconditionally 'you can't be ugly'. Love and the process of becoming worn, faded and shapeless make the Velveteen Rabbit real*, and the object which begins the story as a MacGuffin (in fact it's a 'Major MacGuffin' both literally (it's a military toy) and in terms of the storyline) ends up becoming more real: 'He looked nicer now, she thought, all ripped up and eviscerated and dirty. More vulnerable' (2006: 108). Another character in The Velveteen Rabbit is a fairy, and the central theme of Hot Toy, namely faith/belief in something which all the evidence suggests is not true, reminds me of the scene 'When Peter Pan asks audiences to affirm their belief in fairies in order to revive Tinker Bell, this can be interpreted as an affirmation of the willing suspension of disbelief thought to be an essential condition of theatrical spectating' (Davis 2005). Incidentally, for those who'd like some proof of the existence of fairies, there's a website all about the urban fairies of Ann Arbor, Michigan who create tiny doors in the most unexpected locations, including Ann Arbor District Library.

Another children's story that came to mind when reading Hot Toy was that of Hansel and Gretel, and not just because of the gingerbread houses which Trudy's sister is constructing.** In a reversal of the fairytale it's Leroy's father (Trudy's brother-in-law) who has run off to Cancún with Leroy's nanny, leaving behind Leroy and Courtney, whereas in the fairytale it's usually a stepmother who convinces the father to abandon his family responsibilities by removing the children from the family home (in some versions she's simply called 'the mother', and the extent of the father's guilt and weakness also varies, depending on which version one reads). Of course, Courtney's not a child, but Trudy's planning to buy her 'the doll my little sister never got' (2006: 19) . A further story of fatherly betrayal is that of The Little Match Girl, to which Trudy alludes after she's emerged from the toyshop,

her feet aching as the cold from the concrete permeated the thin soles of her boots [...].
It started to snow.
If I had some matches, I could strike them all and bask in the glow, Trudy thought. (2006: 39)

Just before she dies of hypothermia the match girl 'struck the whole bundle of matches [...]. And the matches burned with such a glow that it became brighter than daylight'. The little match girl's father is far worse than Trudy's, who is only guilty of absent-minded neglect, and would not, as in the fairytale 'surely beat her' for failing to sell some matches, but clearly his shortcomings as a father have deeply hurt Trudy and negatively affected her relationships with men.

Another strand of the story is about consumerism and its relationship (or lack of one) to the real meaning of Christmas:

Above her, Madonna cooed “Santa Baby,” the ancient store speakers making the carol to sex and greed sound a little tinny. Whatever had happened to “The Little Drummer Boy”? That had been annoying, too, but in a traditional way, like fruitcake. She’d be happy to hear a “rumpa-pa-pum” again, anything that didn’t make Christmas sound like it was about getting stuff.
Especially since she was desperate to get some stuff. (2006: 8)

Later, while 'Gimme, gimme, gimme' (2006: 55) plays in the background we're very briefly, and in a very quirky way, reminded that Christmas is about Jesus' birthday (2006: 54). And then, with a drumroll as the action really begins to get underway, Trudy gets her wish and 'There was a radio somewhere blaring "The Little Drummer Boy." '"Rum-pa-pum-pum," Trudy said, not at all reassured' (2006: 57).

In the context of the rather worrying traces of the radioactive substance polonium-210 discovered at various locations in London, Hamburg and Moscow and the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, plots based on international espionage leave me less than reassured too. Fortunately, none of the characters in Hot Toy end up either dead or radioactive.

So, should we adopt Trudy's New Year's resolution: 'My resolution for 2007 is to start believing in people again' (2006: 64)? Or are we wiser, and safer, if we remain on our guard? Do we have to have faith in something in order to be happy, or does that just set us up for disappointment? And do you believe in Santa, fairies or romantic relationships?

• Crusie, Jennifer, 2006. 'Hot Toy', in Santa Baby (New York: St. Martin's Paperbacks), pp. 1-111.
• Davis, Tracy, 2005. 'Do You Believe in Fairies?: The Hiss of Dramatic License', Theatre Journal, 57.1: 57-81. [My quotation was from the abstract.]

* 'the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. To him he was always beautiful'.
** Gingerbread houses/Lebkuchenhäuschen are not common in the UK, and I've never seen one, but I assume they're part of the Christmas traditions in many German and American families.

And one final note: we had a chicken in the Elizabeth Bevarly novel I've looked at, chooks in Marion Lennox's Christmas novella and here there's a toy cow lobbying for the rest of us to eat more poultry: ' "It says, 'Eat chicken,' when you pull its string."' (2006: 46). I'm sure this has absolutely no significance at all.

Analysing Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels

No, not here. Kate Moore's leading a discussion about this novel over at Dishing with the Divas. Loretta Chase herself has promised to drop in on the conversation.

Kate's already thought of a few questions and ideas to get people started, and they're here and here.