It is rare for me to have a visceral reaction to books these days even though I read as many as I ever did. And I read often. No, I read a lot. I probably read 4 books a week. When I was young I would fall into the book to such an extent that I would have physical reactions to the words: increased heartbeat, anxiety over the fate of the characters, tears, etc. experiencing in my own body what the characters were experiencing on the page. This is probably one of the reasons I have become and always will be a reader. It isn't simply the escape of reading, it is the ability to live another's life. Wherever you go there you are except sometimes with the right book.
I picked up Carolyn Jewel's Scandal based on a review I read over at AAR. They only gave it a B+ but I would give it an A. Not only did it create that rare visceral reaction in me but it had the equally rare quality of making me brood over it afterwards. In part this was because the characters were so well drawn that they had become flesh and blood people. It is much more common for me to experience characters as creations on a stage rather than as real people. Most of the time there is a veil between me and the stage, that invisible fourth wall that they speak of in drama classes, is something I always sense.
I don't always want to fall into the story so completely as I did with Scandal. It can be emotionally difficult. I admit to being one of those people that tend to absorb other people's emotions and vibrations, taking them into myself as if they were my emotions. It can be draining.
I have been trying to think why the Earl of Banallt and Sophie Evans' story had such an effect on me but I have a great amount of difficulty trying to pinpoint exactly why this story, of the stories I've read in the past while, was different. I have come to the conclusion that it was the prose itself. There is something in the way that Jewel writes that is very dissimilar to most other romances. With many romances, I think that there is a tendency to follow if not a formula, a pattern of language and story arc as a sort of form. I liken it to reading sonnet after sonnet and then suddenly finding yourself thrown into the immediacy of a pop song as you drive home. There's something in the three chords, verse, chorus, verse equation that hits you in the guts. Not that a sonnet cannot do the same thing but I believe it is the defamiliarization of the emotion, the lack of sameness to the way the moment is presented that makes that shift from one form to another so powerful.
Without the book in front of me I am unable to give any kind of close reading of Jewel's book in order to illustrate my point (I'm at work and the book is at home); however let me briefly discuss what I found specifically so compelling. Jewel takes a cliche idea (the plain, country mouse and the rake) and twists it. The book opens in the middle of things. Our hero and heroine have already met. They were friends of sort having met through her wastrel of a husband. Sophie is still wounded from that marriage, from the falling out she had with Banallt just prior to her husband's death. She's on the defensive. Banallt, on the other hand, has come to realization that he loves Sophie deeply and wants to marry her. The reader gets all this in the first chapter. What I mean by twisting the old story, is that usually we find that it is the hero who is guarding his heart because of a failed first marriage, that it is the hero that has to come to the slow realization of his true feeling towards the heroine whereas here, we have the opposite.
Banallt as a character is very interesting. It is stated repeatedly throughout the text that he is beautiful, yet what comes across more than his outward appearance is his character. Jewel gives us a very clear idea of the man he is and the man he was and how one could become the other and why. There are no dramatic villains here. Neither Banallt's deceased wife nor Sophie's dead husband act as the dark gloating ghosts of something like Rebecca. In fact, Banallt's wife has had less of an effect on his character than other incidents in his past. Tommy Evans, Sophie's late husband, is more of a villain but of the shallow, fortune hunting type. More importantly than his character is Sophie's feelings toward him which can be summed up as complex. She loved him, she hated him, she was disappointed by him, she learned not to trust him and yet she still wanted his love and admiration. This emotional ambiguity is not something I see a lot in romance. Or rather, to put it more accurately, many authors tell us how the characters feel towards each other but I, as a reader, do not see how they feel about each other. It never breaks through that fourth wall to become a living, breathing aspect of the person.
I've been attempting to write a story for a long time. This is not something new to me that I've just now decided to try my hand at. Rather, I have always been a writer (I wrote a play when I was 10, for example). But I have this disturbing feeling that my characters are flat, that they don't have that emotional zing to their personalities that makes them live on after the story is finished. It is a kind of magic and I'm just not sure how one acquires the knack for it or if it just happens to an author, unexpectedly and out of the blue much the same way it happens to a reader.
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.
Monday, December 1, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Back with a very few musings on Primogeniture
So I was delayed longer than I thought I might be when I first moved. Not that I have done a single productive thing with the last 4 months.
Yes, all right that isn't entirely true but it is mostly true.
In any case, during this hiatus I read the new Julia Quinn book The Lost Duke of Wyndham which was a very good book overall. I did have one quibble though and it was this: It seemed to me that Jack oughtn't to have become the Duke. In the first place, he couldn't read which might work very well for say a duke circa 1034---by all accounts Charlemagne didn't read---but seems a very stong liability for a duke in the 18th century. Second of all, it didn't seem necessary to me for the happy ending and more importantly, it was rather disturbing to see such an adherence in a modern novel to the idea of primogeniture which has caused, among its many crimes, the Hapsburgs, Louis XVI (he wasn't a bad king exactly but he would have been a better watchmaker) and the Ottoman Empire. But most of all, Jack shouldn't have become the duke because he didn't want to be the duke and, unlike other reluctant dukes, he was not bound by primogeniture since as far as the world knew he didn't exist.
The course of romance narrative can, I think, be described as a spiral. Even when it begins in the middle of the story, that is after a Fall from Grace, there is implicit in the beginning the idea that the heroine/hero once lived in a better world, much like in fairy tales where the heroine moves from the tranquility of a protected home through trials and tribulations and finally into a happy ending that is greater than the idyll she began with. The happy ending of the romantic narrative re-establishes order but it is not the same order that previously existed; rather it is a better order, I would even say a redemptive order. Where this is true for The Lost Duke of Wyndham to a certain extent, the curious thing about the story is that it doesn't spiral up to establish a new order but circles to establish the old order that never was, namely that of a primogeniture. The problem with primogeniture is that it posits the superiority of certain people despite inherent character deficiences or efficiencies and gives to them the right to rule solely predicated upon the principle of whether one is the eldest son of the eldest son.
It might seem funny to pick at the idea of primogeniture in a genre populated with Earls and Marquesses, but unlike say The Devi'l's Cub or My Lady Notorious, the central theme of the plot of The Lost Duke of Wyndham is who is truly the duke? Is it the man who was born to the position or is it the man who was raised to and lives the position? Who is the true king? Who should rule? Should it be based on blood, legitimacy, or innate ability?
More curious, one of the central motifs of romance novels as far as female characters are concerned is that whether or not they are born a lady matters less than that they have the character of a lady. That is to say that more often than not the worth of a heroine and her winning of a better life and position is dependent upon the merit of her character not the quality of her birth. Therefore, I wonder why this same idea doesn't seem to hold true for heroes. Why is the primacy of Jack's birth more important than his actual ability to run a dukedom? And why is the primacy of birth only a mark of competency if one has been born within the confines of marriage? I mean, an elder bastard never rules but they are technically the elder. The whole idea of primogeniture is arbitrary and absurd, and though though this arbitrariness and absurdity is central to the plot in The Lost Duke of Wyndham it is never fully addressed. Quinn skims over the idea instead, using it as an engine to move the plot along without ever popping the hood. It is never more than a passing issue. The more important conflict, as far as the characters in the book are concerned, is whether Jack Audley is a bastard. But even here the curious lack of discussing of who really ought to be duke is troubling since Jack's main personal conflict is that while realizing that he is actually the duke by legitimate birth, he has no real desire to be duke. In fact, he would rather be thought a bastard than be His Grace. The two men vying for (or perhaps escaping from) this position never fully discuss with one another the very question at the heart of the book: who is the duke? and what makes a duke, birth or ability? When they finally are alone together over the marriage lines of Jack's parents, they still don't really discuss it. Jack says he doesn't want to be duke and Thomas replies honorably, but somewhat stupidly in my opinion, that it doesn't matter because the laws of primogeniture make him the true duke. Jack then tries to burn the record of his parents marriage lines but Thomas prevents him and when the rest of the cast shows up that seems to be that. If the questions of whether or not the dukedom would benefit more from Jack or Thomas, of who is better fit to be duke are ever asked then their answers are left hurriedly by the side of the road on the way to the epilogue in which Jack and Grace are ensconced in connubial and aristocratic bliss.
I suppose what seems particularly odd to me is that romance is so often criticized for its depiction of gender relations and rarely, if ever, called out on the strange love it has for the ancien regime.
Yes, all right that isn't entirely true but it is mostly true.
In any case, during this hiatus I read the new Julia Quinn book The Lost Duke of Wyndham which was a very good book overall. I did have one quibble though and it was this: It seemed to me that Jack oughtn't to have become the Duke. In the first place, he couldn't read which might work very well for say a duke circa 1034---by all accounts Charlemagne didn't read---but seems a very stong liability for a duke in the 18th century. Second of all, it didn't seem necessary to me for the happy ending and more importantly, it was rather disturbing to see such an adherence in a modern novel to the idea of primogeniture which has caused, among its many crimes, the Hapsburgs, Louis XVI (he wasn't a bad king exactly but he would have been a better watchmaker) and the Ottoman Empire. But most of all, Jack shouldn't have become the duke because he didn't want to be the duke and, unlike other reluctant dukes, he was not bound by primogeniture since as far as the world knew he didn't exist.
The course of romance narrative can, I think, be described as a spiral. Even when it begins in the middle of the story, that is after a Fall from Grace, there is implicit in the beginning the idea that the heroine/hero once lived in a better world, much like in fairy tales where the heroine moves from the tranquility of a protected home through trials and tribulations and finally into a happy ending that is greater than the idyll she began with. The happy ending of the romantic narrative re-establishes order but it is not the same order that previously existed; rather it is a better order, I would even say a redemptive order. Where this is true for The Lost Duke of Wyndham to a certain extent, the curious thing about the story is that it doesn't spiral up to establish a new order but circles to establish the old order that never was, namely that of a primogeniture. The problem with primogeniture is that it posits the superiority of certain people despite inherent character deficiences or efficiencies and gives to them the right to rule solely predicated upon the principle of whether one is the eldest son of the eldest son.
It might seem funny to pick at the idea of primogeniture in a genre populated with Earls and Marquesses, but unlike say The Devi'l's Cub or My Lady Notorious, the central theme of the plot of The Lost Duke of Wyndham is who is truly the duke? Is it the man who was born to the position or is it the man who was raised to and lives the position? Who is the true king? Who should rule? Should it be based on blood, legitimacy, or innate ability?
More curious, one of the central motifs of romance novels as far as female characters are concerned is that whether or not they are born a lady matters less than that they have the character of a lady. That is to say that more often than not the worth of a heroine and her winning of a better life and position is dependent upon the merit of her character not the quality of her birth. Therefore, I wonder why this same idea doesn't seem to hold true for heroes. Why is the primacy of Jack's birth more important than his actual ability to run a dukedom? And why is the primacy of birth only a mark of competency if one has been born within the confines of marriage? I mean, an elder bastard never rules but they are technically the elder. The whole idea of primogeniture is arbitrary and absurd, and though though this arbitrariness and absurdity is central to the plot in The Lost Duke of Wyndham it is never fully addressed. Quinn skims over the idea instead, using it as an engine to move the plot along without ever popping the hood. It is never more than a passing issue. The more important conflict, as far as the characters in the book are concerned, is whether Jack Audley is a bastard. But even here the curious lack of discussing of who really ought to be duke is troubling since Jack's main personal conflict is that while realizing that he is actually the duke by legitimate birth, he has no real desire to be duke. In fact, he would rather be thought a bastard than be His Grace. The two men vying for (or perhaps escaping from) this position never fully discuss with one another the very question at the heart of the book: who is the duke? and what makes a duke, birth or ability? When they finally are alone together over the marriage lines of Jack's parents, they still don't really discuss it. Jack says he doesn't want to be duke and Thomas replies honorably, but somewhat stupidly in my opinion, that it doesn't matter because the laws of primogeniture make him the true duke. Jack then tries to burn the record of his parents marriage lines but Thomas prevents him and when the rest of the cast shows up that seems to be that. If the questions of whether or not the dukedom would benefit more from Jack or Thomas, of who is better fit to be duke are ever asked then their answers are left hurriedly by the side of the road on the way to the epilogue in which Jack and Grace are ensconced in connubial and aristocratic bliss.
I suppose what seems particularly odd to me is that romance is so often criticized for its depiction of gender relations and rarely, if ever, called out on the strange love it has for the ancien regime.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Feminine Wiles: Short Skirts, Emotional Manipulation and Hair Tossing
I read this article the other day.
One of the many, many unexamined assumptions this article has is that relationships with men are an either/or proposition. That is either a man will be charming, handsome, and infinitely sexually appealing but temporary or he'll be steady, responsible, and not terribly sexually exciting but marriage material. The implication is that if one wants to marry, one has to settle. How depressing. No wonder I don't hang out with normal people. Their views of life are so morbid.
The first problem with this either/or mentality is that it is demeaning to all parties involved. It suggests that a husband is something that is caught, like a large sea bass on a fishing expedition, and then hung on the wall of one's living room.
"My Cheryl, what a fine looking husband you have. He's quite the catch."
"He certainly is, Marge. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had snagging him. He fought me tooth and claw. In end I was forced to bash him over the head with a rock."
"I lured mine in slowly. The trick is to get him used to your scent first while leaving out food. At first he wouldn't even let me touch him, but by Spring, he would curl up on the couch with me, lapping up the cream."
"You're a magician, Fern. Mark was so feral!"
"He still is. Rowr."
Yes, snagged, bagged and dragged to the altar. Because of course no real man wants to be married to a woman. That's preposterous! Surely, the only men who are willing to tie themselves to one female are either so pathetic marriage is the only way they will get laid on a regular basis or because they have been utterly bamboozled by one's feminine wiles.
Now, I grew up Mormon . . . sort of. But that's not the point, the point is that there was an infamous tome that was circulated among Mormon women in the 1960's, the 1970's and even into the 1980's called Fascinating Womanhood. It circulated elsewhere but that is the context I know it from. This book was a guide for already married women on how to "fascinate" their husbands into a better marriage. The best part of this book (which is both disturbing and hilarious) is that many of the examples of fascinating women are taken from works of great literature. Characters from both Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo appear as prominent examples. The authoress (because aren't they always?) Helen Andelin also wrote a book for young, single women called Fascinating Girl which was all about how to go about this very snagging. I believe her husband, Aubry, wrote a book called . . . wait for it, people . . . A Man of Velvet and Steel. Yes, yes he did. I know.
The point . . . and I do have one . . . is that we aren't that far away from the conception that in order to be happy in marriage a woman must: 1. Settle for someone she may not be in love with or even sexually attracted to 2. trick him into proposing and 3. fake her way through the marriage via a series of deceptions, falsehoods and emotional manipulations.
Love in this paradigm, doesn't exist. They, being those authors and proponents of these sorts of texts eg. The Rules and the vast majority of articles in Cosmopolitan, don't really believe in love. In many ways, love is like Christian faith: it requires of us the belief in grace. That is that inspite of our fallibility we are saved; that we are loveable and loved. People don't really believe this. They look at themselves in the mirror and think "Eww"; they are universally aware of how they fall short of the ideal. The only way people think that they can be loved, can garner approval is by painting themselves as the ideal even though it is false. They must trick, fool and exploit others into loving them. The ironic part is that if you are loved for you facade your remain as unloved as if you had been rejected for your true self.
Love is not a Pygamlion project in which the beloved is a real fixer-upper. Love is not love if you love the other for what they can be or what you want them to be but never for what they are. If we force the other to reflect back at us the best of our own ego, that is not love; it is narcissism.
Though it seems to me that if 1out of 25 Americans is a sociopath then narcissism is rampant. That's also pretty depressing.
One of the many, many unexamined assumptions this article has is that relationships with men are an either/or proposition. That is either a man will be charming, handsome, and infinitely sexually appealing but temporary or he'll be steady, responsible, and not terribly sexually exciting but marriage material. The implication is that if one wants to marry, one has to settle. How depressing. No wonder I don't hang out with normal people. Their views of life are so morbid.
The first problem with this either/or mentality is that it is demeaning to all parties involved. It suggests that a husband is something that is caught, like a large sea bass on a fishing expedition, and then hung on the wall of one's living room.
"My Cheryl, what a fine looking husband you have. He's quite the catch."
"He certainly is, Marge. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had snagging him. He fought me tooth and claw. In end I was forced to bash him over the head with a rock."
"I lured mine in slowly. The trick is to get him used to your scent first while leaving out food. At first he wouldn't even let me touch him, but by Spring, he would curl up on the couch with me, lapping up the cream."
"You're a magician, Fern. Mark was so feral!"
"He still is. Rowr."
Yes, snagged, bagged and dragged to the altar. Because of course no real man wants to be married to a woman. That's preposterous! Surely, the only men who are willing to tie themselves to one female are either so pathetic marriage is the only way they will get laid on a regular basis or because they have been utterly bamboozled by one's feminine wiles.
Now, I grew up Mormon . . . sort of. But that's not the point, the point is that there was an infamous tome that was circulated among Mormon women in the 1960's, the 1970's and even into the 1980's called Fascinating Womanhood. It circulated elsewhere but that is the context I know it from. This book was a guide for already married women on how to "fascinate" their husbands into a better marriage. The best part of this book (which is both disturbing and hilarious) is that many of the examples of fascinating women are taken from works of great literature. Characters from both Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo appear as prominent examples. The authoress (because aren't they always?) Helen Andelin also wrote a book for young, single women called Fascinating Girl which was all about how to go about this very snagging. I believe her husband, Aubry, wrote a book called . . . wait for it, people . . . A Man of Velvet and Steel. Yes, yes he did. I know.
The point . . . and I do have one . . . is that we aren't that far away from the conception that in order to be happy in marriage a woman must: 1. Settle for someone she may not be in love with or even sexually attracted to 2. trick him into proposing and 3. fake her way through the marriage via a series of deceptions, falsehoods and emotional manipulations.
Love in this paradigm, doesn't exist. They, being those authors and proponents of these sorts of texts eg. The Rules and the vast majority of articles in Cosmopolitan, don't really believe in love. In many ways, love is like Christian faith: it requires of us the belief in grace. That is that inspite of our fallibility we are saved; that we are loveable and loved. People don't really believe this. They look at themselves in the mirror and think "Eww"; they are universally aware of how they fall short of the ideal. The only way people think that they can be loved, can garner approval is by painting themselves as the ideal even though it is false. They must trick, fool and exploit others into loving them. The ironic part is that if you are loved for you facade your remain as unloved as if you had been rejected for your true self.
Love is not a Pygamlion project in which the beloved is a real fixer-upper. Love is not love if you love the other for what they can be or what you want them to be but never for what they are. If we force the other to reflect back at us the best of our own ego, that is not love; it is narcissism.
Though it seems to me that if 1out of 25 Americans is a sociopath then narcissism is rampant. That's also pretty depressing.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Questions about Virginity
I am in the midst of reading Hanne Blank's excellent new book Virgin: The Untouched History. I would recommend that you get yourselves to the bookstore or library immediately and at least read the very interesting and incisive introduction. For excerpts and other fabulousness go here.
It occurs to me that the problem with virginity is that you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't.
In fact, Virginity is a non-value. Whether it is valued in our culture today depends on who you are standing next to at the time. Are they conservative or liberal? Promiscuous or prudish? Do they view the empowerment of women as denying men what they want (that being sex, obviously) or as taking what women want (also sex)?
Therefore, Virginity isn't really about sex. It is about power; who has it and who does not. Does retaing my virginity free me or enslave me? Does losing my virginity make me powerless or powerful? If you wait, does that make you a fool? If you are picky, does that make you a feminist or a patriarch? Does a woman's power come from withholding sex or giving it away? Is it possible for a woman to ever take sex or does being penetrated preclude the female from ever being truly dominant despite other factors?
Can a woman's identity ever be made free from her sexual choices? Or is it eternally predicated on some conception of chastity?
Take Anne Coulter, for instance. Here is a woman who has made a name for herself as a bastion and pundit for a political party not known for the progressive policies on women's rights. And yet, Coulter herself is not only a powerful figure but a virginal one as well. In a culture where most famous women are aligned in some manner with a man, I can honestly say that I know nothing about Anne Coulter's personal life. I have know idea if she is married or not, in a relationship or not, has children or not. I think not, but I don't know. When I see her spoken of her or talked about, the private nature or her sex life is either a non-issue or mocked as sign of her frigidity and backwards thinking.
Yet, I am fascinated by the fact that Coulter's power is unattached to any specific male but rather is part of aligning herself with a vary male-centric poltical ideology. It is the very same sort of Virginal empowerment that intrigued me when I read about Elizabeth I. Of course, neither Coulter nor the Virgin Queen are actually virginal but it is a virginity of presence; of being powerful without any man in sight; of having a public position that ought to belong to a man; of being both single and singular.
America is a culture of extremes. We veer from one end of the spectrum to the other without finding a balance in the middle. I wonder if there is a place between Virgin and Whore and what it is like to be there.
It occurs to me that the problem with virginity is that you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't.
In fact, Virginity is a non-value. Whether it is valued in our culture today depends on who you are standing next to at the time. Are they conservative or liberal? Promiscuous or prudish? Do they view the empowerment of women as denying men what they want (that being sex, obviously) or as taking what women want (also sex)?
Therefore, Virginity isn't really about sex. It is about power; who has it and who does not. Does retaing my virginity free me or enslave me? Does losing my virginity make me powerless or powerful? If you wait, does that make you a fool? If you are picky, does that make you a feminist or a patriarch? Does a woman's power come from withholding sex or giving it away? Is it possible for a woman to ever take sex or does being penetrated preclude the female from ever being truly dominant despite other factors?
Can a woman's identity ever be made free from her sexual choices? Or is it eternally predicated on some conception of chastity?
Take Anne Coulter, for instance. Here is a woman who has made a name for herself as a bastion and pundit for a political party not known for the progressive policies on women's rights. And yet, Coulter herself is not only a powerful figure but a virginal one as well. In a culture where most famous women are aligned in some manner with a man, I can honestly say that I know nothing about Anne Coulter's personal life. I have know idea if she is married or not, in a relationship or not, has children or not. I think not, but I don't know. When I see her spoken of her or talked about, the private nature or her sex life is either a non-issue or mocked as sign of her frigidity and backwards thinking.
Yet, I am fascinated by the fact that Coulter's power is unattached to any specific male but rather is part of aligning herself with a vary male-centric poltical ideology. It is the very same sort of Virginal empowerment that intrigued me when I read about Elizabeth I. Of course, neither Coulter nor the Virgin Queen are actually virginal but it is a virginity of presence; of being powerful without any man in sight; of having a public position that ought to belong to a man; of being both single and singular.
America is a culture of extremes. We veer from one end of the spectrum to the other without finding a balance in the middle. I wonder if there is a place between Virgin and Whore and what it is like to be there.
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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