Heroes

I have just finished editing the paper I gave at the 2008 PCA. It went from an 8 page speech into a 15 page writing sample for graduate school applications.  It was through this process that I came across Lilian R. Furst's The Romantic Hero, or is he an Anti-Hero? ¹ an article that was published before I was born (frightening!) and has led me into contemplation on what makes a romance novel hero or to put it another way, what makes the romance hero different from the Byronic hero, the anti-hero, or the epic hero?

Furst says of the traditional hero that his

"essentially outward-looking orientation, his role as leader of men, his readiness to sacrifice himself to the cause he has espoused: all these traditionally heroic features are in diametric oppositon to the Ichschmerz that is the core of the Romantic hero" (57).

The Romantic hero she refers to is the one I have always thought of as the Byronic hero but I suppose that is a more specific version of the same.  Regardless, it is not the heroes of romance novels she speaks of but the heroes represented in the literature of the Romantic time period.  Later Furst differentiates the Romantic hero with his modern counterpart, the anti-hero, saying:

"What is lacking in the Romantic hero, however, is the modern anti-hero's ironic self-detachment. It is not only that the Romantic hero takes himself too seriously and too solemnly.  His very idealism raises absolute standards and lofty expectations which preclude the spiritual flexibility, the willingness to shift position and even to compromise inherent in an ironical attitude" (66).

This leads me to ask the question: If the traditional hero is defined by his relationship to the external--that is the tribe, the group, the gods and his duty to them; and the Romantic hero is defined by his relationship to the internal--that is his idealism, his freedom, his soul and the actualization of his ego; and if the anti-hero is defined by his irony, his pettiness, his ordinariness and the glorification of the mundane world; then what defines the romance hero? A very confusing term and since it is so easily conflated with romantic let me coin a term for convenience's sake and call the hero of the romance novel the erotic hero since he owes a debt to Eros.

It seems to me that what these heroic literary models have in common is that their definition of self, of character is created in the tension between the "I" of ego and "the world" of the group.  That the hero, regardless of his type, is in conflict with both himself and the outside world. Whether he battles the Trojans or the his own inner demons, the hero's glory, his fame, his heroism is dependent upon his individual actions and in-actions--what he does and how he does it. The continuation or rebirth of the group relies upon the personal actions of the hero and the glory of the hero offers immortality both to his own name and to that of his tribe; but it is a glory always earned in the defeat of, or the flight from Otherness. Ernest Becker talks much about the hero in his book Escape from Evil ² as a process by which the heroic action makes immortal the symbolic systems of the tribe so that while individuals do not live on their meaning does. In this way, heroes, whether they  be the monster-slayering heroics of the epics or the humanistic and ego-centric exploits of the Romantics,  share the commonality that their heroism is based upon a singular individual who is the primary focus of the story and who, through a journey either external and internal, meets the Other and defeats it; it is the heroic character alone which the reader follows on the transcendent journey.  The encounter with the monstrous Other is either resolved through their defeat in battle, as in the epics, or in the tranformation of Other into an mirror that reflects back the hero's own soul as in the existential wanderings and tragic deaths of the Romantics who are not unlike an angst-ridden Narcissus.  Other can be many things--opposite creeds, religions, races or nationalities--but the ultimate Other is always the female, is always woman and she is made either monstrous or a mere Echo of the male ego.

The erotic hero, unlike his cousins, is not defined by his defeat or transformation of the Other but his exchange with the Other.  So that while all heroes encounter Otherness, the romance hero is the only one who is defined by his realtionship to that Otherness in a meeting which is neither fight nor flight.  Rather he falls (as in falls in love, falls from grace), a word that I hope connotes the slipping of certainty, an action that shifts the all encompassing  "I" from subject to object.

But what does it mean to fall? What does falling do to the hero? How does falling help to satisfy the inequity that seems to inevitably arise between "Self" and "Other"?

In my next post, I hope to examine the nature of falling.

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¹ Furst, Lilian R. "The Romantic Hero, Or is He an Anti--Hero?" Studies in the Literary
Imagination 9.1 (1976): 53

² Becker, Ernest. Escape from Evil. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1975.

Beautiful Heroines Make Me Want to Stab Things: A Rant

Despite the fact that I consider myself to be a very advanced reader--that is I read not only for pleasure and escape but also for knowledge and criticism, or whatever it is that distinguishes the two--I admit to a certain low brow reading habit in that I project myself into the hero.  When I can't do this I get angry. These days I often have a hard time reading about beautiful heroines.  I fully concede to the fact that this is because I do not consider myself a beautiful woman and thus it becomes difficult to relate or transpose myself into said heroine. Rather, I consider myself to be soundly average with the added drawback of being smart and not the least bit submissive--and if you don't think that's a drawback then you've never grown up in Utah. I swear to you all, sometimes it is like living in the worst parts of a Jane Austen novel. The point is that sometimes beautiful, endlessly desirable heroines with all their sexual knowledge or blazingly rampant naivete (see the heroines of Barbara Cartland and Laura London) make me very cross-eyed and stabby-stabby.

I realize, too, that I am a hypocrite in that I love, love the endlessly desirable, beautiful heroes. I know, that's a double standard if there ever was one, however, being a female I feel rather entitled to my hypocrisy for the simple reason that men have made physical and visual desire their sole provenance and have entirely left out the second sex.  Like when a hot woman and an average man are walking down the street or sitting at a restaurant together no one wonders why she is with him. They just assume that it is because he has money or personality or something. Whereas a beautiful man and an average woman would be goggled at with everyone wondering what he was doing with her?

The thing that really sticks in my craw is that it isn't even true.  The implication about beauty, I mean. You know, that it brings you happiness or joy. Ultimately it makes no difference. Oh sure, random people are more likely to treat you better and give you free scoops of ice cream at the gelato place but it doesn't seem to make any kind of difference in whether or not your husband will cheat on you, file for divorce or turn out to be gay. And of course then you get old and die and where is beauty then? Yet somehow everyone's still under the misguided impression that it is beauty that tames the rake. It isn't. I don't consider Diane Keaton any less attractive than Annette Benning yet Warren Beatty stayed with Annette not Diane. What's up with that? Probably something more to do with temperment and time of life than looks.

Not that looks don't matter because clearly they do but anyone who has checked out the personal ads on Craigslist will quickly learn two things: desire and beauty have nothing to do with one another and people are sick fucks. (seriously, message me and I will link you to something shocking, perverse and graphic that will make you snort milk out your nose).

-sighs- I'm not even sure if this is a trend of the novelists themselves. I think my abhorrence of the beautiful heroine is entirely due to the back cover. They are written thusly:

Verena McAdams may have only been a common haberdasher and former nun but her fiery blonde hair and courtesan's body made other promises. Overwhelmed by bussiness debt, she was forced to do the one thing that no gently bred lady should ever contemplate: file for bankruptcy.

Simeon, Lord Ravenscock seemed the typical ton rakehell but he had a dark secret: he practiced law on the side.  When Verena McAdams walked into his solicitor's office with her virgin's eyes and knowing hips, he knew that pro bono or not, this case would pay him in something other than legal fees.

By the time I get through the first little summary where it tells me how hot Verena or Serena or Belinda is, I've discarded the book and moved on to the next one on the shelf. It's like in the movie She's All That where we are supposed to believe that nobody noticed how freaking adorable and edible Rahcel Leigh Cook is . . . okay well maybe I'll let that one go because it is supposed to be high school and everyone knows teenagers are basically retarded sociopaths, but still, you get my point.

I'm not really interested in beautiful heroines unless you can somehow make me forget that they are beautiful. That is, I don't want to read about people who have one shiny characteristic and nothing else. You know how it is where in some books they keep mentioning how damn witty someone is but is never manifest that particular claim in the dialogue or how smart and ditto. Authors! Show don't tell. Jesus, that's creative writing 101. A character should have depth and their one gigantic attribute, whether it be beauty or penis, should not be mentioned every other page. The most loveable things about people aren't their looks. Besides, familiarity breeds obliviousness. At a certain point, you stop seeing how hot someone is and just start seeing Ted.