tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post3647136534817337959..comments2024-03-28T07:00:12.226-04:00Comments on Romance Novels for Feminists: The Lack of Diversity in Historical RomanceJackie C. Hornehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-21626527021503062452017-04-20T21:36:48.132-04:002017-04-20T21:36:48.132-04:00You're very welcome, anonymous.You're very welcome, anonymous.Jackie C. Hornehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-37594562370626978982017-04-14T15:19:04.911-04:002017-04-14T15:19:04.911-04:00THIS is such a thought-provolking post. Thank you ...THIS is such a thought-provolking post. Thank you for putting this up. I released a book with an Asian-American main character bout six month ago after writing six other historical romances with Caucasian heroines (well one is Melungion but she appears white on the cover.) My book about the Asian-American woman WAY undersells my other novels. Now maybe, it is some other reason (although I think it is my best blurb, tagline and cover) but I am starting to wonder if it is the race of the heroine. That's how I found your post and there are other people online that are noticing this phenomenon in H.R. as well. My other books are very realistic HR and gritty too and they sell well so I am wondering what the heck is going on! (Ha! maybe it's just a crummby book) Either way thanks for your post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-2920055928761751752017-03-18T17:52:52.193-04:002017-03-18T17:52:52.193-04:00Hi, Kettle 8:
Like Laura V, I'm also going t...Hi, Kettle 8: <br /><br />Like Laura V, I'm also going to quote your line back at you: "the reality of people who were not considered persons under the law is often downright miserable." The word that encourages me in that sentence is "often." <br /><br />Because "often" doesn't mean "always" or "inevitably." "Often" recognizes the possibility of something different. It recognizes that people of the past who did not have the privileges of the aristocrats we so love to read about could still be happy, could still fall in love, could still live meaningful lives, even if they did not have the wealth and rights that their "betters" did.<br /><br />I worry that when we insist that people of the past who did not live a life as physically comfortable as we do today are not worthy of romance readers' time, we can all too easily slip into the assumption that people alive TODAY who do not share our class standards are not worthy, either. And that's a dangerously slippery slope, I think.<br /><br />"Happiness is possible within limited rights." I really like that line, Laura. It doesn't ignore oppression, but it doesn't suggest that oppressed peoples are something less than human.Jackie C. Hornehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-12843803230721767662017-03-18T17:46:51.532-04:002017-03-18T17:46:51.532-04:00Have you read KJ Charles' male/male romances, ...Have you read KJ Charles' male/male romances, Anonymous? I'm thinking of A GENTLEMAN'S POSITION, which features a lord who falls for his valet. And their story really GRAPPLES with issues of class, of the power differentials of class positions, and the respect (and lack of respect) that underlies rich people's beliefs about working class lives.Jackie C. Hornehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-75030882159141396582017-03-18T17:41:38.850-04:002017-03-18T17:41:38.850-04:00Thanks, Anonymous, for stopping by and adding your...Thanks, Anonymous, for stopping by and adding your thoughts. One of the reasons why I wrote this post was because I didn't think the SBTB discussion was really grappling with why some/many readers would be drawn to HR with all-white characters. It's not just that HR has unrealistic elements; we have to look at WHICH unrealistic elements are welcomed, and which are not. Being friends with your maid/valet, yes; being an aristocrat of color, no.<br /><br />How can we move beyond the "purity of cult agreement and exclusion of the wrong" discussions? By looking at issues of class, definitely. And issues of race, beyond just the "is this fair/unfair" arguments.Jackie C. Hornehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04146684628443152376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-37874489866606481922017-03-18T07:26:28.436-04:002017-03-18T07:26:28.436-04:00"the reality of people who were not considere..."the reality of people who were not considered persons under the law is often downright miserable."<br /><br />The point made in <a href="http://romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/walking-historical-gender-tightrope.html" rel="nofollow">this recent post by Jackie</a>, though, is that even aristocratic women weren't fully recognised by the law because, as explained <a href="https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/wes/collections/women_law/" rel="nofollow">more fully elsewhere</a>:<br /><br />marriage and property laws, or "coverture," stipulated that a married woman did not have a separate legal existence from her husband. A married woman or feme covert was a dependent, like an underage child or a slave, and could not own property in her own name or control her own earnings, except under very specific circumstances. When a husband died, his wife could not be the guardian to their under-age children.<br /><br />There's an interesting time-line about women's rights in various parts of the word throughout history (but mostly focused on the UK and US) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/aug/11/women-rights-money-timeline-history" rel="nofollow">here</a>. So to believe in the happy endings in most UK-set historicals, you're having to accept that happiness is possible with limited rights.<br /><br />Roberta Gellis's <i>The Rope Dancer</i>, while acknowledging various comforts which are lacking in the characters' lives, still makes their future as a medieval troupe of travelling players seem credible and positive.<br /><br />Similarly, I think Beverly Jenkins does a very good job of imagining positive futures for her African American protagonists post-Civil War.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-90142561170327238952017-03-17T20:40:26.373-04:002017-03-17T20:40:26.373-04:00My struggle with accurate and diverse HR is that i...My struggle with accurate and diverse HR is that it pains me to read them. I don't want to read what life was really like for women, people of colour, the disadvantaged, etc. in Georgian or Victorian times. It is not simply that I want to escape, but the reality of people who were not considered persons under the law is often downright miserable. <br /><br />I stick to primarily to English aristocrats because in Georgian times it is probably the life that resembles my own modern middle-class life -- as long I am not provided with too many details (i.e., chamber pots, poor personal hygiene, little medicine, etc.).<br /><br />Reading a HR more reflective of my ancestors would be likely a story about teenagers who glanced at each other at church and liked what they saw, married, he went down mines, she was pregnant on wedding night, half their children died by 15, he died by 50 of black lungs if a mine collapse didn't get him first...leaving her and remaining children too young to work near destitute. Diversity was a rare as fruit. No one wants to read that. Not much romance when you are scraping out a living. KettleK8https://www.blogger.com/profile/13162333733801204575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-7784412402832587662017-03-17T14:51:05.922-04:002017-03-17T14:51:05.922-04:00I should have said "American leftist discours...I should have said "American leftist discourse" (which is the one I am primarily familiar with). I don't know much about lefty discussions in other cultures. <br /><br />Final note, I used to be a Courtney Milan fan, but have found her recent works unbearable in the ways I mention here: but I see a couple of people in the SB comments enthusing about how great and right on they are. <br /><br />I think this issue is so complicated, and the treatment it gets in mainstream romance discussion seems so shallow to me, so focused on the purity cult of agreement and exclusion of the wrong. CANNOT HANG. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-630346294397505634.post-16205410372275331642017-03-17T14:45:30.322-04:002017-03-17T14:45:30.322-04:00Boy, I don't know. I quit reading SBTB a while...Boy, I don't know. I quit reading SBTB a while ago because I found their discourse about complex race/gender issues, when seen in romance, to be exceedingly banal, focused on in-group backpatting rather than on really grappling with deep issues. (To the extent that it is useful to do that with a light fantasy genre, which is a thing I am not yet sure about, even though it seems widely taken for granted by others.) I took a quick scan at these comments and I just do not relate to some of the ideas being expressed there, mainly that people owe it to certain authors or certain topics to consume their material. I often see this in discussions that are primarily female, that the rhetorical tools of the patriarchy get turned against other women. Women "owe it" to you to do something, behave a certain way, agree with your assertions, and if they refuse, they aren't nice. It's an inversion of the power dynamics, it isn't a deconstruction of the power dynamic. I don't like it. <br /><br />You mention class here, thank goodness. I feel quite strongly that mostly American leftist discourse has come to stand in dire need of some Marxist class-conscious dialectic. The degree to which people who read and discuss historical romances feel certain that they are on the right side of the diversity debate while simultaneously flatly refusing to grapple in any way with the class issues raised by these books is astounding to me. How often have you read a book where an aristocrat is depicted as being friends with his valet? That's the worst to me, when people sense the discomfort of class distinctions but sweep them away with "my heroine is very good friends with her maid, who is like family, except family who empties her chamberpot and is extremely interested in her mistress' love life and has no needs of her own".<br /><br />I find it very difficult to speak seriously with others on this topic because of the blindness to class - and the blindness to the reality of gender issues in the times depicted (which I think, in the time period, one can think of a sub-type of class issues, really). In the 2010s I have noticed a string of popular HR novels, for instance, that are of the "the heroine has a man's job and smokes cigars and wears pants, because feminism" type, or novels that include LGBT characters who live their sexuality openly without repercussion, and I find this so strange. I frequently see people enthusing about how wonderful these things are, but they seem so banal and so disrespectful to the actual historical struggle to me. This idea that many modern writers have, where they jam contemporary mores into 1812 settings and sort of pretend that people in the past could have lived modern lives if they just got their stuff together-! <br /><br />IDK. I don't read historical romance for illumination. If I want that, I read non-fiction, or serious historical novels. I typically find that HR authors who seek to "fix" some historical error moderns find problematic are insultingly shallow to me. The ex-Confederate who now loves all Black people. The Regency gentleman who is totally cool with his friend being gay. The Victorian woman who has powerful ideas about colonialism. <br /><br />I think these things are an uneasy fit with HR, because "romances" are fundamentally books with guaranteed happy endings. That's our cultural assumption - and I for one have no interest in giving that up. But a number of stories people claim to be clamoring for simply don't have realistic happy endings. So how do you fit them into HR without making them feel insulting and fake? I don't think you can, very often, so people rig fake happy endings that I can't stand to read, because they seem, ironically, so extremely dismissive of the generations of terrible injustice and grief suffered by so many. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com