While researching my PCA/ACA paper I came across a most interesting book entitled Endless Rapture by Helen Hazen. Now for those of you who don't know, romance scholarship has now been listed in waves (Thank you, Eric Selinger for confirming this at dinnerlast week) and this book falls into the first wave which also includes Radway and Modelski. Most of these, as everyone knows, tend to be more pejorative than not. Hazen, however, seems to be taking the opposite tack. The following is going to be my attempt to summarize her argument.
What is at issue is how rape is constructed in 1970's bodice rippers. These rapes vary but they are events that mainly transpire between the hero and the heroine. Hazen is attempting to answer the question "If rape is bad then why does it show up in romances?" Hazen believes that the two general responses to this matter of rape are misguided and wrong. The first response to the contradictory nature and problematic portrayl of rape in romance solves the matter by positing that the rape fantasy indicates women really do want to be dominated and raped. The other response is that of first wave feminism (although in the book she only refers to it as feminism) which simply denies the fantasy. Hazen theorizes that feminism and romance are coming at the same problem albeit from different ends and wants to identify the connection between the "pleasure" women get from reading about rape in romance and the anger that suffuses the women's movement when it comes to rape and sexual exploitation.
Showing posts with label literary theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary theory. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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
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:
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.
______________________________________________________________________________________
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.
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.
______________________________________________________________________________________
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.
Friday, February 8, 2008
On the Nature of Virginity in Heroines
The majority of heroines in historical and regency romance novels are without doubt, virginal. This overwhelming slew of virtuous women is bothersome to many modern readers who feel that a woman's worthiness should not be determined by chastity. They are right. Virtue is not synonymous with an intact hymen. However, I do believe this consternation is missing the point about what virginity means in the tradition of Romance; meaning not just novels of the paperback persuasion but in the full sense of that term when applied to literature and narrative structure.
Let's begin with some general observations about the historical nature of virginity. It has been argued elsewhere that virginity in women is a valued characteristic of a patriarchal society because it perserves the hierarchial order of inheritance from father to son. Therefore virginity in women is prized because it maintains tribal and economic purity. I don't dispute this. However, a simultaneous truth to this argument is another; namely that motherhood is both dangerous and cumbersome. Pregnancy, both historically and presently, can lead to death. Childbirth killed many, many women. It was and is a risk. If one happens to survive the process, a woman then has a child, a child that needs to be feed and bathed, loved and hugged, cared for and protected. A woman invariably becomes tied to her child. Having children, as my father is wont to say, is like giving hostages to fate. What he means by this statement is that having children puts your life at the mercy of their destinies. Your destiny is suddenly tied up in their well-being on a level and in such a way that does not exist with any other person. As rewarding as the endeavor can be, there is a certain loss of freedom in having children. There is at the very least a certain loss in the ability to be entirely selfish and spontaneous.
Sex, being the predeterming factor to motherhood, is therefore troublesome to women. Add into that the fear of veneral disease (pox), the variety of social and religious pressures to refrain and sexual desire becomes a treacherous place for women (I would argue it is a treacherous place for men as well but that's a different blog.)
Romance is a love story but it is also, fundamentally, a narrative embedded in the idea of journey; of going from the safety of home to the adventure of the world. The virginity of the heroine is therefore a metaphor for several things besides good character. Northrop Frye in The Secular Scripture briefly discusses the concept of Virginity in his chapter on heroines. Without having the book in front of me, I paraphrase that he says virginity is to a woman what honor is to a man: the identifying feature of her freedom and her status as an independent person and not a slave. So like the goddess Artemis, a virginal heroine is neither mother nor wife and therefore has the liberty to go where she pleases when she pleases and act as she pleases. Retaining her virgnity is then an act that maintains her independence from the world of men.
Advances of in medical science since the Enlightenment, particularly since the advent of the pill, have changed our views about the nature of female sexuality. There have been, previous to this century, many more consequences for unprotected sex for women than for men (there still are.)
Besides this, it concerns me that having sex or not having sex is the determining factor of whether a heroine is considered strong. As if somehow by choosing not to have sex (or conversely choosing to have sex) makes you a victim of your circumstances, of the ideologies of the patriarchy or the religious right, when it may in fact have very little do with either and be a choice made more by inclination, temperment and sexual desire.
The point is that virginity in heroines is not necessarily some outmoded model of behavior romance novelists are foisting on their reading public in order to proselytize a conservative party line for the benefit of a universal and fundamentalist morality. That said, I think it would be more beneficial to ask the question of what this particular state of being does in the narrative structure of a particular story and for the character development of a particular heroine rather than simply repudiate her virginity as some sort of moral judgment of loose women everywhere.
Let's begin with some general observations about the historical nature of virginity. It has been argued elsewhere that virginity in women is a valued characteristic of a patriarchal society because it perserves the hierarchial order of inheritance from father to son. Therefore virginity in women is prized because it maintains tribal and economic purity. I don't dispute this. However, a simultaneous truth to this argument is another; namely that motherhood is both dangerous and cumbersome. Pregnancy, both historically and presently, can lead to death. Childbirth killed many, many women. It was and is a risk. If one happens to survive the process, a woman then has a child, a child that needs to be feed and bathed, loved and hugged, cared for and protected. A woman invariably becomes tied to her child. Having children, as my father is wont to say, is like giving hostages to fate. What he means by this statement is that having children puts your life at the mercy of their destinies. Your destiny is suddenly tied up in their well-being on a level and in such a way that does not exist with any other person. As rewarding as the endeavor can be, there is a certain loss of freedom in having children. There is at the very least a certain loss in the ability to be entirely selfish and spontaneous.
Sex, being the predeterming factor to motherhood, is therefore troublesome to women. Add into that the fear of veneral disease (pox), the variety of social and religious pressures to refrain and sexual desire becomes a treacherous place for women (I would argue it is a treacherous place for men as well but that's a different blog.)
Romance is a love story but it is also, fundamentally, a narrative embedded in the idea of journey; of going from the safety of home to the adventure of the world. The virginity of the heroine is therefore a metaphor for several things besides good character. Northrop Frye in The Secular Scripture briefly discusses the concept of Virginity in his chapter on heroines. Without having the book in front of me, I paraphrase that he says virginity is to a woman what honor is to a man: the identifying feature of her freedom and her status as an independent person and not a slave. So like the goddess Artemis, a virginal heroine is neither mother nor wife and therefore has the liberty to go where she pleases when she pleases and act as she pleases. Retaining her virgnity is then an act that maintains her independence from the world of men.
Advances of in medical science since the Enlightenment, particularly since the advent of the pill, have changed our views about the nature of female sexuality. There have been, previous to this century, many more consequences for unprotected sex for women than for men (there still are.)
Besides this, it concerns me that having sex or not having sex is the determining factor of whether a heroine is considered strong. As if somehow by choosing not to have sex (or conversely choosing to have sex) makes you a victim of your circumstances, of the ideologies of the patriarchy or the religious right, when it may in fact have very little do with either and be a choice made more by inclination, temperment and sexual desire.
The point is that virginity in heroines is not necessarily some outmoded model of behavior romance novelists are foisting on their reading public in order to proselytize a conservative party line for the benefit of a universal and fundamentalist morality. That said, I think it would be more beneficial to ask the question of what this particular state of being does in the narrative structure of a particular story and for the character development of a particular heroine rather than simply repudiate her virginity as some sort of moral judgment of loose women everywhere.
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