I think I might be a spinster. Is there a checklist or something I can look at to make sure? Let's see: over-educated, check. Glasses, check. Governess, oh no but teacher and librarian sort of equals that, terrible fashion sense, nope. Phew, this close to being a spinster.
But if I am a spinster and my life was a romance novel, then any day now Mr. Wonderful Pants should be coming along to sweep me off my feet. Which would be good because my love of beautiful shoes has completely ruined my feet. The bone below my big toe actually aches. However, I think that my shoes are the major fashion item preventing me from being a spinster.
In any case, I prefer romances featuring spinsters and bluestockings the most. It has to do with Disney's Sleeping Beauty.
When I was between three and five I was obsessed with several things: Mr. Darcy, The Nutcracker, The Magic Flute and being a Sleeping Beauty princess. My love of Mr. Darcy was born of having viewed the old Masterpiece Theater version of Pride and Prejudice. I thought Mr. Darcy was a dreamboat. According to my mother, I used to pretend to kiss Mr. Darcy. I also wanted to be a ballet dancing, opera singer. Unfortunately, I was unable to carry either a tune or a rhythm. Such is life. I was also the oldest child of a family of girls.
By the time I was five I was very aware of the fact that eldest sisters rarely, if ever, get a happy ending. In order to get a happy ending one must the youngest or the only child. I was neither. I was convinced that somehow this dream of being a ballet dancing, opera singing princess in a story would some day come to pass. After all, if sudden transformations into great beauties have taught us anything then they have taught us that sudden transformations into great beauties are possible.
Imagine my bitter disappointment when none of this actually occurred. Ah well, what can you do. The other aspect of myself that characterized my childhood was deep sensitivity to anything that stank remotely of injustice or unfairness. That being said, it always seemed to me to be extremely unjust that ugly step-sisters and eldest children got the shit end of the deal in fairy tales. I mean, why should birth order rule you out of having a happy ending?
Which brings me back to spinsters, bluestockings and other aging virgins. Here then is coterie of ugly step-sisters and eldest daughters, albeit not in those terms, who are finally getting their happy endings. This coterie also includes any girls with glasses.
Favorites of this genre include, but are not limited to:
Mary Challoner in The Devil's Cub
Annelise Kempton in The Devil's Waltz
Beth Armitage in An Unwilling Bride
Penelope Featherington in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton
And most especially, Sophie Hatter in Howl's Moving Castle which is not a romance but amazing, amazing, amazing.
What I think I like most about these stories is that these heroines are not the object of initial desire, but somehow by being their own self, they become beloved. While standards of beauty have changed, the one that has remained the same is that if a woman is to be successful in love then she must never be herself. This is the central thesis of the infamous The Rules but it is not a new thesis.
Yet, these stories reject the notion that in order to be loved or sexually desired that a woman must hid her intelligence, push her beauty like a drug or crumble in the face of danger. In short, to exhibit masculine qualities rather than feminine virtues. It's rather heartening, but is it true? This I do not know.
Epilogues or Babies + Schmoop = Puke
Personally, I like children and someday I hope to have one or two. However, children are not romantic. They are very opposite of romantic. As my father is wont to say, children are the enemy of gracious dining. I think this could be extended to most activities.
And yet, children populate the epilogues and indeed, the logues of romance novels. Why is this? The heteronormative imperative to procreate? Mmmmmm, maybe but I think not so much. I think it may be a genre standard which is to say that the romance genre is in a certain respect the opposite of tragedy in two ways:
1. It postulates a worldview in which the ultimate reality is happiness not grief and
2. It reifies the domestic. Epic and tragedy deal with Great Matters, matters of state, matters of God, and while romance does this, too, it does it on a more mundane level.
Thus the proliferation of babies is a symbolic measure of both of these standards. First, babies represent the continuity of generations as birth is the opposite of death. Second, babies represent the joy of the domestic. I say joy and not pleasure or happiness because children bring all of these things but when they are throwing a tantrum in the shoe department of the Nordstroms one rarely feels pleasure. Joy connotes a certain spike of pain along with the happiness, at least in my mind.
Despite this symbolic measure of babies, they aren't romantic. Babies cry and shit and throw tantrums. They do not care if you are tired or hungry or horny. They rarely if ever negotiate. Oh sure, the baby is funny and adorable and says awesome things that you only wish you could still say, but that doesn't take away the fact that the baby got some sort of sticky goop all over the couch . . . which you sat in. Not romantic.
So when novels end with the hero and heroine smooching over the sleeping head of a toddler all I can think to myself is, yeah right! One party would be off trying to do the following: laundry, the dishes, take a shower, sleep or watch something other than Caillou or Handy Manny.
"Quick Henry!" the heroine ought to say in low panicked tones. "While Charles is asleep, I'm going to take a shower."
"I'll move him to the crib."
"No, don't do that. You'll wake him up. Just let him sleep right there."
"I need to vacuum up these cheerios. If I leave him here, he'll wake up at the sound."
"So don't vacuum."
"But I can't vacuum when he's awake, because he yanks the cord."
"Ssshhhhhh, you're gonna wake him up."
"Can't I do anything in this house?"
Well, at least that's the way it goes in my family. My point is that children don't necessarily strengthen a relationship or offer convenient moments for making out. I would like to see less babies and births in epilogues. I like the concept of an epilogue but maybe authors could just jog it down the road a few years to the vow renewal or a toast a child's wedding. That would be better than babies.
And yet, children populate the epilogues and indeed, the logues of romance novels. Why is this? The heteronormative imperative to procreate? Mmmmmm, maybe but I think not so much. I think it may be a genre standard which is to say that the romance genre is in a certain respect the opposite of tragedy in two ways:
1. It postulates a worldview in which the ultimate reality is happiness not grief and
2. It reifies the domestic. Epic and tragedy deal with Great Matters, matters of state, matters of God, and while romance does this, too, it does it on a more mundane level.
Thus the proliferation of babies is a symbolic measure of both of these standards. First, babies represent the continuity of generations as birth is the opposite of death. Second, babies represent the joy of the domestic. I say joy and not pleasure or happiness because children bring all of these things but when they are throwing a tantrum in the shoe department of the Nordstroms one rarely feels pleasure. Joy connotes a certain spike of pain along with the happiness, at least in my mind.
Despite this symbolic measure of babies, they aren't romantic. Babies cry and shit and throw tantrums. They do not care if you are tired or hungry or horny. They rarely if ever negotiate. Oh sure, the baby is funny and adorable and says awesome things that you only wish you could still say, but that doesn't take away the fact that the baby got some sort of sticky goop all over the couch . . . which you sat in. Not romantic.
So when novels end with the hero and heroine smooching over the sleeping head of a toddler all I can think to myself is, yeah right! One party would be off trying to do the following: laundry, the dishes, take a shower, sleep or watch something other than Caillou or Handy Manny.
"Quick Henry!" the heroine ought to say in low panicked tones. "While Charles is asleep, I'm going to take a shower."
"I'll move him to the crib."
"No, don't do that. You'll wake him up. Just let him sleep right there."
"I need to vacuum up these cheerios. If I leave him here, he'll wake up at the sound."
"So don't vacuum."
"But I can't vacuum when he's awake, because he yanks the cord."
"Ssshhhhhh, you're gonna wake him up."
"Can't I do anything in this house?"
Well, at least that's the way it goes in my family. My point is that children don't necessarily strengthen a relationship or offer convenient moments for making out. I would like to see less babies and births in epilogues. I like the concept of an epilogue but maybe authors could just jog it down the road a few years to the vow renewal or a toast a child's wedding. That would be better than babies.
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