Genetics and Romance: THE BOLLYWOOD BRIDE and PURSUED BY THE ROGUE

In the 1932 film adaptation of the 1922 British play A Bill of Divorcement, Katharine Hepburn (in her film debut) plays a woman on the verge of marriage. That is, until her father, who has been incarcerated in a mental institution for the past twenty years, shows up on her doorstep. Hepburn's character, Sydney Fairfield, had been told by her family that her father's mental illness was the result of shell shock he suffered during his military service in World War I. But her father's escape from the asylum brings the truth to light: Mr. Fairfield suffers from an inherited mental illness, an illness to which previous generations of Fairfields have also succumbed. And which Sydney—and Sydney's future children—may also someday face.

Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore as daughter
and father

In good 1930s melodrama form, the selfless Sydney gives up her fiancé and offers to live with and care for her mentally ill father. There is no romantic ending here—unless one considers refusing to give birth to potentially "abnormal" children, and self-sacrificing one's own romantic future to care for a parent, a satisfying happily ever after (as, apparently, did the reviewer for the New York Times, which deemed the "closing scene" "splendid"). Even though there is no way to know for certain that she will inherit her father's illness, Sydney refuses to gamble, refuses take a chance on love.

Today, with the advent of genetic testing for many inherited health issues, it's possible (at least for those with insurance that will cover it) to be tested and find out far more precisely just what the odds are that one will suffer from, or be a genetic carrier of, certain diseases. How has such technology, and the scientific advances that have accompanied it, affected the world of romance?

Sonali Dev's A Bollywood Bride and Kelly Hunter's Pursued by the Rogue both are built upon fear-of-inheriting-a-parent's-illness plotlines. For the heroine of Hunter's contemporary romance novella, Dawn Turner, genetic testing would reveal a definite "yes or no." With a father who suffers from Huntington disease, Dawn has either inherited the faulty HTT gene that causes the progressive brain disorder or hasn't. Dawn has spent her professional life researching technology related to gene mapping, but has not wanted to find out her own HTT status. Dawn has told herself that when she turns thirty, she'll get tested; since the onset of Huntington disease in adults typically does not occur until one's thirties or forties, knowing that she's a positive before then will only place a too-heavy emotional burden on her already difficult life.

For Dev's heroine, Ria Parkar, the situation is more complicated. Her mother's mental illness is never named beyond the general label "psychosis" ("a break from reality, often involving seeing hearing and believing things that aren't real," NAMI), but most mental illnesses that manifest psychotic behavior are not caused by a mutation in one single gene. As a study published last year in Nature revealed, scientists have "identified 128 gene variants associated with schizophrenia, in 108 distinct locations in the human genome." Genetic counselors and doctors can guesstimate Ria's inheritance risk ("Genetically the doctors had pinned Ria's chances at thirty-five percent" [Loc 872]), but Ria, unlike Dawn, cannot be tested and know for certain. And since Ria is a major Bollywood film star, she's kept the secret of her mother's illness—and her own potential genetic carrier status—deeply hidden.

To know or not to know; or to know but to not be certain—these are the "numbers games" that both Ria and Dawn are forced to play as they confront not only their own futures, but the futures of the men they love. Both heroines, intriguingly, have more in common than just a parent with an inheritable illness. Both have suffered early traumas, some as a result of their parent's illness, others unrelated, traumas that influence how they view relationships. Both fear that they are starting to show symptoms of inheriting their parent's illness. Both fell early and deeply for young men during their adolescences, young men who, for various reasons, they were forced to leave behind. And now, both are forced to confront those first loves again, as they struggle to come to terms with their relationships with their parents, their potential future health problems, and the scars and pain that their past and present traumas have dealt them.

The one major difference between the two books is in their choice of point of view. Both use third person, but Rogue uses a dual POV, while Bride focalizes the story entirely through Ria's eyes. Both choices work beautifully to highlight each book's larger themes. The dual viewpoint in Rogue shows how not knowing her HTT status has served not to free Dawn from pain, but to isolate her from emotional connection, the kind of connection that we see and value in the viewpoint of Dawn's first love and current friends-with-benefits guy Finn, the youngest boy in a large, close-knit Irish family. And using third person single POV allows Dev to create an at times almost detached, even dream-like narrative, one which if it were in the first person we might fear was the result of pending psychosis or mental illness in Ria. Instead, third person creates just enough of a sense of distance to make us unsure, wondering whether we are reading about a woman still haunted by past trauma, or one on the verge of mental breakdown in the present.

Since these are both romance novels, you'll probably have guessed that neither ends with the melancholy but noble self-sacrifice required of Katharine Hepburn's Sydney. In fact, both insist that self-sacrifice is in many ways the coward's way out, a way of running away from confronting and accepting the fears that genetic illnesses force us to confront, whether we are romantically partnered or no.


Can you think of other romances in which the possibility of negative genetic inheritance plays a role in a romantic relationship?



Photo credits:
Hepburn and Barrymore: Film Ka Ilm
Huntington inheritance chart: Genetics and IVF Institute
Psychosis perception: The Mental Elf

Sonali Dev

The Bollywood Bride

Kensington, 2015

Kelly Hunter

Pursued by the Rogue

Tule Publishing 2015

Reflections on RWA Nationals

Quite a few romance writers and bloggers have already weighed in with their own insightful posts about last week's Romance Writers of America's annual national conference, with posts that range from the enthusiastic—Jenn Northington's "The 11 Best Things I Heard at the RWA"; All About Romance's day-by-day posts, the first one here—to the analytical—Suleikha Snyder's "RWA 2015: A Tale of Two Conferences"; Jessica Tripler's "Socioeconomic Class at RWA" to name just a few. Lots of food for thought, and for future action on many fronts.

I was wearing three different hats during this conference—a local Chapter Leader (as Treasurer of the NECRWA); a romance reviewer and blogger (RNFF); and a writer of a soon-to-be-self-published historical romance. This made for a rather disjointed conference at times, rushing from a workshop entitled "Not So Fast: Finding Success while writing in the Slow Lane" to a Chapter Leadership Networking Event, then on to "50 Shades of Love: Writing the Multicultural Romance"; from a retreat for not-yet-published writers to a General RWA Membership meeting to a workshop filled with advice about writing queer romance in a "post-gay" environment. Now that I've had a few days to reflect on the hectic experience of conferencing in the midst of the bizarreness of Times Square (did you know that its legal in NYC for women to go topless? and that people will pay to get their pictures taken with one who has painted her chest like an American flag??), these are the moments/events/ideas that are sticking with me:

• Learning about servants, music, fabric, interior decorating, and dancing with my fellow Regency romance writers at the Beau Monde mini-conference. I was really looking forward to getting dressed up in my newly made Regency ball gown and dance those Regency dances at the Beau Monde's evening soiree, and, despite my embarrassment at the fact that the majority of my fellow attendees were not in period garb when I waltzed into the Marriott Astor Ballroom that evening, I did manage to screw up my courage and trip the light fantastic for a few sets. Thanks so much to Susan De Guardiola (of Capering and Kickery) and her dance student ringers for stepping out with me and with my fellow Beau Monders.


• The continuing split in knowledge/understanding between those who have been traditionally published and those who self-publish. There are a lot of writers who are doing both, but for those who "grew up" publishing via one method and not the other, there can often be a big disconnect about what can and will lead to success in the other. Perhaps not surprisingly, the above-mentioned workshop on being successful while writing in the "slow lane" included panelists who had all been traditionally published (with only one who was a hybrid author), while the panelists on "The Midlist Guide to Making Six Figures in Indie Publishing" all spoke about working 50 (or 80, or 100)-hour workweeks to keep their readers interested and their businesses going. I didn't attend any workshops on hybrid publishing, though; perhaps the disconnects were less obvious among those who have followed both paths.


• But the national organization continues to adapt (if slowly) to the burgeoning shift in the romance market toward self-publishing. Self-published authors were once barred completely from the "PAN" (Published Authors Network) listserv and group; more recently, self-publishers were allowed in, but had to earn $5,000 on a single book title, in comparison to the $1,000 a traditionally published author had to earn, to qualify. But now, even that disparity has been erased; now, any author who has earned at least $1000 on a published book, whether published by a traditional house, a small publisher, or by him or herself, can join this elite subgroup within the national organization.

• Many bloggers have written about the high profile diversity in romance played at the conference. There was not just one, but four different panels on the whys and hows (and how-nots) to increase the diversity of romance characters, and the number of authors of color, in the field. Four authors of color (Alyssa Cole, Lena Hart, K. M. Jackson, and Falguni Kothari) put together a slick brochure, one that looked like a supplement to a Romance Times magazine, to distribute to attendees, which included "Do's, Don'ts, and Why nots!" as well as a good dollop of humor ("Celebrating the MOST used stock couple in any one genre!"), to jumpstart people's thinking about this important issue. What most bloggers have not mentioned is that the RWA Board announced at the General Member meeting that it had just approved the creation of an ad hoc committee on Diversity in the organization. No mandate or goals for said committee were mentioned, however. It will be fascinating to watch both activists on the individual and small group level, as well as this ad hoc committee on the national level, to see if their goals and end results converge or diverge over the next few years.


• The panelists in the workshop on "Writing Queer Romance" focused on our "post-gay cultural moment," arguing that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, and the more widespread acceptance of LGBTQ identities in wide swaths of American culture, romances featuring queer characters no longer have to be just about issues of coming out, or about problems of acceptance. How about a story about a lesbian couple, with one partner who wants to have a baby, but the other doesn't? Or have major philosophical or moral differences about adopting vs. giving birth? Even if the conflict is about being queer, it can be less about major homophobia, and more about the micro-aggressions LGBTQ people experience in their day-to-day lives.

After sitting in on this panel, and the one panel on diversity I was able to attend, it felt to me as if LGBTQ romance is farther along, acceptance-wise amongst readers and writers of romance, than is racially and ethnically diverse romance. Queer Romance panelists Sarah Frantz Lyons and Radclyffe both spoke about moving beyond the need to justify queer romance's mere existence, something that romance about and by people of color is having to work hard to do.


• The Chapter Leadership Networking Event on Saturday afternoon consisted primarily of a bunch of topic tables, the subjects of which reflected the current problems and issues facing local chapters today. "How to attract and keep members"; "How to get published authors involved"; "Chapter Finances"; "How to recruit chapter board members"; "Dealing with Difficult Personalities." Thanks to my fellow chapter officers for sharing complaints, and solutions, to the many difficulties chapters are currently facing, particularly in the wake of the recent changes in RWA bylaws.


• The most difficult panel I attended was also in many ways the most encouraging: "Writing Through Depression." Five well-known romance authors sat in the front of a hotel conference room and shared their experiences of what is often a shame-ridden, hidden illness. The panelists asked for no tweeting of particulars during the session, which means no blogging after the fact, either. But I did want to give a big "thank you" to both the panelists and to RWA for challenging the stigmatization around this important issue. Those of us who grapple with mental health issues really appreciate knowing that we are not alone.


Other RWA attendees, what did you take away from this year's conference? And for those who didn't attend, what are you curious to know about what did (and didn't) happen?

Truth and Lies about the Past and the Present: Alex Beecroft's BLUE-EYED STRANGER

Since I've written about other romances by Alex Beecroft books in previous RNFF posts, I was originally going to make this review part of a "Short Takes" column, discussing Blue-Eyed Stranger in brief, and in the context of several other similarly-themed books. But when I started writing, I realized I couldn't do Beecroft's intelligent, provocative romance justice without devoting a full post to it...


How important is it not to lie about the past? At the start of Blue-Eyed Stranger, schoolteacher Martin Deng would say it is vital. Martin, whose father emigrated from Sudan to Britain, has made it his cause to teach history in a way that does not reinforce lies of omission about people of colour. As Martin reflects about traditional pedagogical practice, "The teaching of history in UK schools could so easily be an all-white thing. Not a deliberate glorification of the Anglo-Saxon race, nothing as egregious as that, but simply the underlying assumption that all the important things in world history had been done by white people, whether those people were British or Roman" (2). In contrast, Martin makes sure to teach his kids that "there have been people of colour in Britain since Roman times, and that people of colour had had a long and glorious history in the world.... Children who'd picked up the modern myth that all black people had once been slaves, and who therefore had rejected history as something they didn't want to know about, suddenly began to see themselves as kings and prophets and world leaders" (2).

Martin's getting pushback from the head of his school, though, for his teaching practices ("You're giving the children a false impression of the past. A parade of freaks and exceptions do not constitute history" [8]). Martin is incensed; as he well knows, the flip side to the joy of discovering yourself in the formerly all-white past is "Fury. Because finding out that you'd been here all along also meant finding out that you'd been lied to all this time. Deliberately lied to so you would carry on feeling small and foreign, so you would feel you had less of a right to be here than your neighbours" (8). Lying about the past reinforces the prejudices that keep the oppressed feeling that oppression is their due.

Black Vikings in the Madrid Skylitzes (12th century AD)

Martin finds a measure of relief from school politics in his hobby—organizing and participating in a historical reenactment society he recently founded, a group focused on medieval Viking life. Yet even here, proudly declaring that there were black Vikings in the past, Martin can't be completely himself; out and proud about his race, he keeps his sexuality hidden: "But God it was hard enough being one minority. He really wasn't sure he could face being two" (24).

If Martin is frustrated by being too conspicuous, Billy Wright has the opposite problem. Because of both his reticent personality and his ongoing battles with crippling depression, Billy often feels that "if I don't remind people I'm here all the time, they forget I exist" (21). The only time Billy really feels seen is when he's wearing a mask, the costume and painted face of a morris dancer.

A error over performance scheduling at a festival both groups are attending sets Martin's Vikings in conflict with Billy's Stomping Griffins, a conflict only exacerbated by the morris dancers' makeup: "Look, I've got to ask you this," Martin says to Billy as they are waiting in line to purchase lunch for the two groups in an attempt to mend fences via food. "You do know how offensive the blackface is, don't you? Are you meaning to be racist or are you just doing it by accident?" (45). As Billy tries to explain, though, history is multi-faceted, with one group's symbol of oppression signifying something completely different to another:

Well, the blacking comes from Victorian times, when morris dancing had been made illegal. Um, the Victorians thought of it [morris dancing] as aggressive begging and decided to stamp it out.... the dancers could be accused of demanding money with menaces. It meant that the householders could set the police on them and have them arrested.... So the dancers got into the habit of going dancing in disguise. All year round, they'd had strips of cloth sewn inside their jackets for extra warmth, but now they turned their coats inside out, so they couldn't be recognised by their clothes. And they rubbed soot all over their faces, so no one could recognise those either.... So you see, it's a disguise thing. It's not a racist thing at all" (46-7).

And it gets even more complicated, Billy notes, since because most contemporary people are not aware of the hidden history behind morris dancing, they simply assume it is racist: "So on the one hand, I don't want to ruin your day, and I don't want to make some guy in the crowd who is a racist feel good about himself. But on the other hand, this is what they did" (47). How important is it not to lie about the past?

Martin offers a solution to this particular problem, one grounded in his own practice: "Maybe it's something you can explain when you go on... You'll have a microphone and a crowd. A good opportunity to education them, yeah?" (49). Given all they have in common, including their sexual attraction to each other, it's hardly surprising that Martin and Billy end up dating.

But there is one difference between them that proves less tractable: Billy is openly out about his sexuality with his fellow dancers, while Martin is not among his fellow Vikings: "I've got a new society to hold together and I stand out enough for the colour of my skin without having any more minority ticky boxes against me. I'm just... waiting for a better time to tell the rest of the garrison. When things aren't quite so precarious" (54).

Billy initially accepts Martin's terms, veering between hope—"Martin could practice being out while he was at Billy's, and once he'd realized for himself how much better it was, it might just spread, automatically, into other areas of his life" (128)—and despair—"You're going to give in forever, you know. You always do. You have no fucking backbone at all. He's never going to change, you're never going to change. You're going to carry on being dishonest for the rest of your life" (135). Billy ultimately must decide if loving Martin is worth lying about not just the past, but about the present, too.

Imagining the past, Martin muses, is comparable to putting oneself in another's shoes, seeing with a "stranger's eyes":

"Encountering the minds of people from history was like encountering aliens. Funny and bizarre, unsettling and uncomfortable, sometimes even repellent. But you always returned form it with a refreshed perspective, so that just for a little while, before habit kicked back in, you could see your own world with a stranger's eyes, and all the thing that were normally invisible showed up like cancer cells tagged with radiant dye" (98).

And seeing with a stranger's eyes lies at the heart not only of studying history, Beecroft insists, but at the heart of love.


Photo/illustration credits:
Black Vikings: Africa Resource
Morris dancers in blackface: BBC News

Alex Beecroft

Blue-Eyed Stranger

Riptide, 2015