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Friday, September 21, 2012

Who am I to be writing about romance novels and feminism?

As an early adolescent in the late 1970s, I was an avid Harlequin Romance reader. Haunting the bookshelves in my local Caldors and Bradlees stores, I set aside a certain amount of my allowance (and later, my babysitting money) to purchasing those slim, colorful volumes, though their garishly-illustrated covers, blatantly shouting “this book is about sex,” or, at least in the books I chose, “this book is about a woman who has to keep saying no to sex, even though she’d rather say yes” made me slink in furtive guilt through the checkout line.

Though I read widely in other genres, no other type of book held such a hold over me as genre romance did. Pleasure and guilt, both to be kept hidden, compelled me to keep adding to my romance novel collection, which took up more and more shelves in my hidden closet bookshelf as my teen years progressed. My 12-year-old self didn’t understand the compulsion, or the guilt these books evoked; I only knew that something about them kept me coming back for more.

Only after taking Women’s Studies classes at college did I begin to understand why I had found such novels so utterly compelling, and so guilt-inducing—and why I should steer far away from them. They were part of the patriarchy, the social system that deemed men and boys the primary authority figures, and left women subordinate to their rules and restrictions. The patriarchy, where “you throw like a girl” was an insult, where the patently unfair sexual double standard held sexually active boys to be the height of cool, sexually active girls the skankiest of whores. The patriarchy, which feminists in the 1980s were eager to identify, protest against, and dismantle.

By persuading their characters, and their female readers alongside them, to believe that heterosexual romance was the most important thing in their lives—in many cases, the only important thing in their lives—romance novels could only stand in the way of women who wished to gain parity with men in the workplace, in the household, in life. If I wished to be a feminist, then, those Harlequins hiding in the back of my closet would have to go.

Flash forward twenty-five years, to an M.A. and Ph.D.-wielding scholar of children’s literature writing an article about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. The planned article would focus on the genre conventions of fantasy, not romance. But I began to wonder how fantasy conventions might differ from (or perhaps overlap) the conventions of romance. Little academic attention had been paid to romance when I was reading it back in the 1980s. But had scholars in recent years begun to analyze the genre? I began to wonder…

A few trips to the library, and an essay by Dawn Heinecken later, and my original question, and my reading habits, took off in an entirely different direction. Heinecken’s article, “Changing Ideologies in Romance Fiction,”* argued that romance as a genre had been transformed since the days when passive Harlequin heroines waited to be rescued and made whole by dominant, often violent, alpha male heroes. Romance novels being written in the late 1990s, Heinecken argued, had begun to incorporate feminist discourses, running “counter to the traditionally ‘masculine’ ideology of competition, hierarchy, and autonomy…. romance novels embrace a sense of social justice and the necessity for a cooperative relationship that is in direct opposition to masculine modes of thought” (150).

Could Heinecken’s claim be true? I certainly had my doubts.

But after I finished writing my article, I had some free time, and was willing to put her claim to the test. Off I hied to the local library, where a copy of Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels awaited. Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell, authors of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, had recommended Scoundrels during an interview broadcast on NPR in 2009.

First Heinecken, then NPR? Could romance novels have changed so radically since I had banished them from my bookshelves back in the 1980s?

One Loretta Chase novel later, and I was once again hooked on romance. I haunted the local library’s romance section, ordered novels via interlibrary loan, and purchased the ones I found particularly compelling. Between that fateful day in April of 2009 and today, the fall of 2012, I read more than five hundred romance novels.

And I’m still reading them.

Heinecken, then, was right—romance novels had changed. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say, some romance novels had changed. You can still find plenty of conventional patriarchal romances, with alpha heroes all too ready to dominate sweet but passive heroines who can only find their worth if they are loved by/stalked by an overwhelmingly virile man. But some novelists experimented with other visions of masculinity, visions more appealing to readers with feminist sensibilities than the traditional alpha male. And still others gestured towards feminist truisms while simultaneously embracing traditional patriarchal tropes.

Few review journals, though, had the space for, or the interest in, vetting individual romance novels’ feminist credentials. Individual bloggers might devote a line or two to such questions. But no blog seemed to focus specifically on the feminist aspects of contemporary romance fiction, books that meet the Romance Writers of America’s definition of a romance as “as a work that contains a central love story, and the resolution of the romance is emotionally satisfying and optimistic.”**

Hence this blog, Romance Novels for Feminists (RNFF), was born…

What paths have led you to becoming a romance reader? And if you consider yourself a feminist, do you find yourself conflicted or guilty about your romance reading?


* Heinecken, Dawn. “Changing Ideologies in Romance Fiction.” Romantic Conventions. Ed. Anne K. Kaler and Rosemary E. Johnson-Kurek. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1999. 149-172.

** Hot Sheet. RWA Board Meeting. July 22-23, 2012.


Next time: The romance novel that made me seriously think about the possibility of feminist romance fiction

28 comments:

  1. My story is eerily similar to yours. I as hooked on Harlequins as an adolescent in the 70s and gave them up after a year or two, because I decided they were filling my head with bad ideas. I rediscovered them in my 40s and have been re-hooked ever since.

    I definitely consider myself a feminist and have very few conflicted feelings about my reading. I like what I like. I can also analyze it or mock it or expose it if need be.

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    1. Hi, Willaful:

      I'm interested to hear more about how you rediscovered romance, and what you like to read now. Do you read Harlequins? The older ones you remember from your adolescence? Or the new ones being published today? I generally read single-title romances, rather than category. Do you think there has been a shift in category romances, too?

      And when do you "need" to mock or expose what you read?

      -- Jackie

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    2. I do indeed read Harlequins and just as in my youth, love Presents the best. However, I find the ones from that time almost unreadable now; my current favorite era is the 80s and early 90s, when there was far more variety in plots and characters and a considerably less conservative attitude towards sex than many of the more recent books. Ironically, if I had just kept reading Harlequins when I was younger, they would have caught up with me in perhaps a decade. ;-)

      I am genuinely fascinated by Harlequin Presents as a cultural phenomenon, and if I were at all academically minded would love to do a formal study of how they have changed over the years.

      As for mocking and exposing... here are two of my most popular goodreads reviews, both of HPs by Penny Jordan:

      http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/394749966

      http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231341774

      The first I would consider a basically affectionate roasting of Jordan -- it's about ways in which her books are silly, but also enjoyable. I couldn't have written it if I hadn't read a great many of her books.

      The second uses humor to point out things I thought were genuinely offensive or too ridiculous to even be entertaining.

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    3. Love your reviews -- they made their critical points, and made me laugh while doing so. I'm looking forward to reading more of them! (I really like the "compare" button on Goodreads -- it says of the books we've both read, our tastes are 85% similar...)

      Which Harlequin Presents books from the 1980s/90s would you recommend as being feminist? Or would you not so far as to recommend them as feminist reading?

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    4. Mmm... it's not really uppermost in my mind when reading them, to be honest.

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    5. Hey, I just happened to come across a 1985 HP with feminist leanings. :-) A World of Difference by Sandra Field -- ends with the hero making some compromises for the sake of the heroine's career. She tells him, "I'm glad you understand I need something of my own." Somewhat ironically, I'm not finding it interesting enough to keep reading. ;-)

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    6. And another: Love's Tangled Web by Mary Lyons. Hero tries to be the only important thing in the heroine's life, realizes by the end that she needs her books and studies. From 1984.

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    7. Hah! Does A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE make the feminist message seem heavyhanded? Or are there other reasons the book isn't grabbing your interest?

      Keep the recommendations coming!

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    8. Nah, it's hardly a feminist tome, just a little less sexist than the usual fare. But I mostly read HPs for heavy drama and these people are so reasonable and have such sensible problems! Where's the fun in that?

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  2. I have often wondered if there was a scholarly bent to your reading so many romance novels or if it was just for the fun of it. Or both! Looking forward to reading more and also will check out some of your higher rated reviews for reading material.

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    1. Hi, Sarah,

      I think I would say both -- pleasure, definitely, and, because I can't help but be analytical no matter what I read, a scholarly interest, too. I'm currently writing some entries for an ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ROMANCE, which is leading me to revisit some older scholarship on romance, as well as to read newer theorists. I think romance scholarship is at a similar place to where children's lit was a few years ago -- ready to move beyond justification of its existence and poised to make more nuanced, detailed analysis of the field and of individual titles.

      Do you think of the chick lit/women's fiction you read as romance?

      -- Jackie

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  3. I have tried multiple times in my life to get into the romance genre as a reader, but always ended up disappointed at best, outright furious at worst. Maybe it was because I saw domestic abuse from early childhood and thus already had such a deep sense of injustice about male dominance. Maybe it's because I'm a natural skeptic and questioner of the status quo. Whatever it was, much as I wanted to be swept away by the genre, every time I'd try to read something that was highly rated, I ended up grumbling and walking away.

    Thus I was completely surprised when my own writing was deemed "romance" by my first publisher. I thought I'd written a fantasy story and balked at the "romance" label entirely. She told me not to run from it, that it sells, so I grudgingly let her call my first novel "fantasy romance". Sadly, her whole operation folded shortly after my release, but when I got that book to another publisher, they too wanted it in that category. Pretty much if there's a love story at all in the book, it's going to get that label slapped on it.

    With my second and third books, I began to realize that apparently I like to write this stuff, just not read it. Why? When I started analyzing that this past summer, I came to the conclusion that what I want is feminist romance. I googled around and only found hints of that mentioned, but no full push for it. So I've been trying to start one, and I'm so glad you've started this blog. I've subscribed, read your introductory entries, and look forward to more. I admit to hoping to be reviewed here someday, but first and foremost I want you to help steer me to some hot'n'steamy books that don't make me growl for the ugly tropes and inequities.

    Looking forward to reading more!

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  4. Glad to hear from you, Kimberley. I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts, both on feminism and romance, and on any of the books I recommend.

    -- Jackie

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  5. I'm so glad you wrote this article. I read exactly one romance novel in the seventies (Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers,) was horrified, and vowed never to read another. Now I write them. I was raised by a strong, feminist mother and a father who treated her as his equal.

    I've never liked traditional alpha males and my critique partner will attest to that. Fortunately, my publisher wants "heroes we can fall in love with" as part of their criteria. An alpha hero is a different animal today. He has a healthy respect for his heroine--or if not, he does by the end of the story.

    Thank goodness the genre has changed. I would be doing something else if it hadn't, and I love what I do.

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  6. Hi, Ashlyn:

    I'm not big on traditional alpha males, either. Why do publishers continue to insist that the only type of "men we can fall in love" with is an alpha male?

    What happened between the horrors of SWEET, SAVAGE LOVE and your taking up romance writing?

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  7. I'd recommend some of the Harlequin historicals and Signet regencies written by Carla Kelly. Even decades ago, she had strong heroines who weren't waiting for anyone to give them a hand up. In the Harlequins, she's had soldiers, sailors, and doctors as heroes, and inn-keepers, nurses, and just plain girls looking to find their place in the world outside of Society as heroines. I didn't love every one, but I'm glad she wrote them -- they certainly inspired me.

    Also through the years, Mary Jo Putney has tackled a lot of social issues in the regencies and contemporaries she's written (although I think she's doing more YA stories now). Maybe you could say there's always been a small undercurrent of strong women?

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  8. Hi, Nicky:

    Thanks for stopping by. Yes, Carla Kelly and Mary Jo Putney are two of my favorite historical authors, too. I've only read Kelly's more recent books -- I'll have to track down her earlier category books, and see if I like them just as well.

    Putney managed to work with many of the romance novel tropes, at least as far as her heroes go, but also write strong female characters. I think she's definitely a transitional writer, looking both back at conventions and forward into new territory.

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    1. One of the things that put me off in my teenage years was when I did see a strong heroine, she all too often abandoned her strength to get the guy. She'd have a great job or a big sword or whatever and then sacrifice that for love. That irritated me big time, and still does.

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  9. Do I feel guilty? Well, yes, I do. Such a big question... I think there are 3 main reasons people feel guilt about reading romance. 1) A reader accepts the patriarchal standard that women should not desire sex. 2) A reader accepts the patriarchal standard that male narratives are more serious, literary, and valuable. 3) A reader is aware of the potential patriarchal role of romance. There's been a lot of talk about how romance readers are clearly ashamed by their book choices--mostly because they cover up their clinch covers and buy oodles of books on e-readers to protect their reading privacy. Radway discusses this and decides that the readers are frustrated by the overt sexuality on the covers, wishing that the covers reflected the intimacy in the books, not the sex (type A) Yet other readers are even ashamed to admit they enjoy Twilight though it is much more conservative. This groups think love stories or fantasies that are mainly concerned with love are not literary: they are generic trash. These folks often read other bestsellers that are written by men or are about the masculine sphere (type B). Then there's me and a bunch of other folks who cringe whenever they read lines like "He had no idea how to choose light fixtures for his new house. He was such a typical guy." I love reading romance. I enjoy the comfort of genre. I revel in the way that each writer plays with convention to create a unique and engaging tale. But I am also worried that these books can and do occasional cultural harm... This worry is even greater now that my own romance is being published in a few weeks. Will people read my love scenes as autobiography? Proof of secret sexual desires? Will they think my writing is trash? Will my novel protect and project harmful gender stereotypes or will it help transform and evolve ideology? These are questions that I can't answer... at least not yet.

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    1. J.W:

      Thanks for your thoughts about why romance reading makes you/us feel guilty. I think you're on target with your three reasons. I also think there is a class, as well as a gender component, at least for those of us with college degrees -- a reader accepts the class-based standard that romance writing = bad, i.e., uneducated, writing. Reading romance may be seen by many as a negative class marker, as well as a negative gender marker.

      I'll definitely be writing about the "cultural harm" issue in future posts. The fear of novels being harmful (especially to women) has a very long history, and I'm interested in teasing out the wheres and the whys, of both conservative and liberal fears.

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  10. Hi, Jackie, I'd really like to follow this blog, but I'm finding the comments hard to read because of the font and white on brick text. When I zoom it to make it more readable, it sort of breaks up. Am I the only one? If so, suggestions? I use Firefox if that makes any difference.

    Cheers.

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  11. Hi, Jo.

    Thanks for stopping by the blog, and sorry you're having difficulty reading the comments. I changed the font to a sans serif and increased the type size -- did it help?

    P.S. Heard you speak at RWA in NYC last year, and really enjoyed hearing about all the common mistakes American historical writers make about England/Brits...

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  12. I started with K. Woodiwiss (talking about bodice rippers....!) in early eighties and then yes I think there was a time when I read harlequins, and then I forgot about romance novels but I have always mixed romance novels with other genres.
    Yes, I do consider myself a feminist, but I rarely find myself conflicted or guilty about my romance reading. The difficult part is convincing other people that not all romances are patriarchal.

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    1. Hi, Anonymous, and welcome to the site. Hope you'll join other conversations here -- most of us already believe that not all romances are patriarchal, so you'll be able to move beyond that question to talk about just what makes a romance feminist.

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    2. I will try to answer your question.
      What does make a romance feminist? It depends on your definition of "feminist". For me it's just that you believe in equality between men and women, that we both have the same rights, in economy and society.
      So I think a feminist romance is one that fights for that egalitarian society, for instance, a historical that shows us the non-egalitarian laws of the time and how the heroine suffers for that. Courtney Milan is one of the authors that, IMO, does that.

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    3. Hi, Joane, and welcome to the blog! I like your idea that a feminist romance highlights the fight for an egalitarian society, including showing the non-egalitarian aspects of society in the past (and in the present). Milan is definitely a feminist romance writer in my book.

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  13. I discovered romance novels in my teens--which happened to be in the late nineties, when the novels were becoming more reflective of a feminist sensibility. I've always considered myself a feminist, but I've never felt guilty or apologetic about my love of romance novels and their happily ever afters. Why should I feel guilty for enjoying something that brings me (and millions of other people) pleasure?

    I appreciate the questions your blog raises because analyzing romance novels through a feminist lens can create the inspiration for the next generation of romance novelists. They'll be setting aside the old tropes and reflecting our society's changing landscape.

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    1. Thanks, Libby, for joining in the conversation. Coming to romance reading in the late nineties, you get a very different sense of the field than someone who started reading romance in the 70's or 80's. And yes, part of my inspiration for the blog was the hope that it might inspire writers to examine the tropes of romance, think about what kinds of values they are perpetuating through them, before they set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

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