Barbara Ferrer (aka Caridad Ferrer) emailed me a link to her recent rant about the Rules of Romance after Selah March ranted on her blog regarding appropriate rules of behavior for a hero in a romance.
Describing what she calls the “magic hoo-hah” rule (which Candy and I LOVE. Who wouldn’t wish for a magic va-woo-hah?) which dictates (har) that the hero cannot have sex with anyone else during the course of the story, even if he hasn’t met the heroine yet. Seems a writing friend of Selah’s received scathing feedback regarding her allegedly humpy-eager hero and his inappropriate schlong-wanderings because he dared boink another woman in the course of his love story.
Is that a huge no-no? I don’t think so for my own reading tastes but in terms of writing, I’m not sure. We’ve written much about the redeemable hero and how far he can sink before we can’t accept his deserving of a happily-ever-after, most particularly in the mondo discussion of rape in romance.
But off the top of my head, I can think of several books wherein the hero boinks another woman even after meeting the heroine, but they are, as Selah points out, rather old-school. The one that pops to the forefront of my crapful memory is Catherine Coulter’s Midsummer Magic not only does Lord Hero have a mistress (who is a bluestocking, natch) but in the end I believe the mistress and the heroine MEET each other and join forces to do something rather dastardly humorous to the hero while saving his humpy behind. Granted this hero had other issues that damaged his credibility with me, but having a mistress wasn’t one of them.
Is this a newer standard among the unspoken rules of romance, that the hero can’t shake his tailfeather with anyone but the heroine? I know there’s some question as to whether the heroine can have a happy sexual past without regrets, even in a contemporary novel, but the hero? I’m not advocating for Lord Slut of Humpinghershire to make a rapeful comeback (please, no), but have you encountered this cautionary scolding?
I accuse no one of stifling. I was participating in the discussion. Making a point about how romance authors can be a little too worried about “rules.”
Although I did have someone tell me yesterday that the rules were the rules, and I break them at my peril, because romance is romance, dammit. And if I break the rules, then it’s not romance. Or something.
And I suspect sales have a lot more to do with voice and market than particular plot points regarding the hero’s sex life.
Robin- Oh my god, I should remember that. I just read it four months ago.
In Fast Women, the story felt organic and I totally didn’t have a problem with it. That might be because Crusie is the awesome, and can pull it off. I think the problem is that the best and most established writers don’t always try to fight formula, and the new writers are willing to take a chance, and they make all sorts of newbie mistakes, and then eveyone thinks, I hate this plot point, when really they just hate the author’s newness. And I run on and on and on.
Jane- I hear you on kinky villian sex. A book I read recently had the two male villians in a sexual relationship, which of course meant they were EVILLLLL. Then there was another gay couple to be, but suprise! One was a woman in disguise. I was disappointed there couldn’t be healthy gay men to counteract these EVILLLLLL gays. Then, to prove how EVILLLLL the eviler villian was, he was also bisexual, and wanted to watch his boyfriend rape the boyfriend’s sister. Incest? In a romance novel? Jesus Christ on a bicycle.
OOOO a poly romance…I’m going to find it, yes I am.
Obviously, those things which we like to read reflect our own values and hopes and dreams about our relationships. As my own relationships have grown and changed, I find myself less tolerant of some of the more predictable ways that “falling in lurve” effects the sexual apetites and habits of the characters.
And, dear gods, never tell anyone I sleep with that doggy-style is “evil.” Lawsy! I’d pitch a fit.
I rather dislike infidelity- including infidelity of one of the protagonists, with the other protagonist, because a previous relationship hasn’t been broken off yet. Disloyalty’s probably one of the least justifiable bits of wrongdoing in my mind, and it makes me like the character less. But I’m not going to toss an otherwise good book against the wall because of it, either.
The hero and heroine are both allowed to have had previous sexual relationships these days; I don’t see that it makes any difference to their relationship whether it takes place in the timeline of the book. So long as it doesn’t pull a Romeo & Juliet and go straight from “Oh, I’m so in love with Other Woman, I will die without her” to “Oh, I’m so in love with Heroine, I’ll die without her.” That’s what makes me think that two people will be bored with each other in two weeks. (Have I mentioned I think any romantic qualities in Romeo & Juliet are entirely overrated?)
I rather dislike infidelity- including infidelity of one of the protagonists, with the other protagonist, because a previous relationship hasn’t been broken off yet. Disloyalty’s probably one of the least justifiable bits of wrongdoing in my mind, and it makes me like the character less. But I’m not going to toss an otherwise good book against the wall because of it, either.
The hero and heroine are both allowed to have had previous sexual relationships these days; I don’t see that it makes any difference to their relationship whether it takes place in the timeline of the book. So long as it doesn’t pull a Romeo & Juliet and go straight from “Oh, I’m so in love with Other Woman, I will die without her” to “Oh, I’m so in love with Heroine, I’ll die without her.” That’s what makes me think that two people will be bored with each other in two weeks. (Have I mentioned I think any romantic qualities in Romeo & Juliet are entirely overrated?)
I have no idea how that double-posted. Must have clicked the “submit” button one too many times, and I didn’t even know it could do that. Sorry.
Judith Ivory broke this rule in Black Silk. To me this is the strongest and most interesting of her books. When my favourite authors break an “unwritten rule which shall not be broken”, I always wonder whether it was done deliberately. Certainly, Crusie must have known that she was breaking an unwritten rule. I also wonder about the conversations between author and editor (unless the publisher is Avon in which case I don’t want to know).
Jane- it’s not a full blown hands, breasts, throbbing members sex scene. I open the door as he’s having an orgasm, it was a hard won one for him. He had his palm read by the heroine, it turned him on kinda, and he used that imagery to push himself over the edge.
The mistress is not the villian. And you silly girl, all Villians like anal sex. Duh!
I show the sex scene because it’s a character sketch, it’s who he is, how he interacts, what makes him tick. Because he grows that much during the relationship.
People will like it or they won’t. If I take the scene out, he won’t be who he is. All the rest I’ll leave up to my editor.
And please-I have a forced seduction coming out too-I seem to be stomping all over those rules.
Heh. tax13. Did mine already, whew.
Lin, I bet they didn’t plan on it. I could be wrong, but I was in my own little corner of the sandbox playing nice and it got brought to my attention. And I’m an e-pub. So they tend to push the envelope. But, I didn’t plan it, that’s for sure.
Eva:
Didn’t plan it? I agree with you – OK, I hope, hope, hope that authors write without consideration of the unwritten rules.
But once the scene was written, I speculate (totally without any evidence except the state of their careers) that Ivory was a babe in the woods and Crusie looked at the scene and included it anyway.
In any case, I despair when an author pushes against some unwritten boundary and the knee-jerk reaction is negative before the book is even in print. I hope that your conversations with your editor are positive.
I’m trying to remember whether Jervaulx, from Kinsale’s Flowers From The Storm, had met Maddie before the book opens on him right after he’s been in bed with his mistress. And yes, Derek, in Dreaming of You, does do the deed with a prostitute that looks like Sarah.
I think the problem is that the best and most established writers don’t always try to fight formula, and the new writers are willing to take a chance, and they make all sorts of newbie mistakes, and then eveyone thinks, I hate this plot point, when really they just hate the author’s newness. And I run on and on and on.
Good point, Jen. I also wonder whether an established author has built up a certain trust with her readership that newer authors may not have. So when a new author pushes the boundaries, perhaps some readers aren’t as willing to *let her* bend those illusory rules as easily. Certainly, I think when a plot point hits a personal hot button, it probably doesn’t matter how well the author handles it, but I do notice a certain merging or confusion of subjective and objective responses to books with certain button-pushing, envelope-pushing elements.
I don’t mind sex, on either party’s part, pre-relationship. I’m talking pre-emotional or physical intimacy, not after they’ve just met or something. Once they seem to be headed somewhere though, it gets kind of uncomfortable for me. I read one recently, can’t remember the name just now, but the hero sets out to seduce the heroine. He’s taking the slow approach, we’re talking weeks here, but initiates physical contact pretty early on. He makes it clear to her that there is no real relationship between them and that it’s strictly physical thing. He’s so turned on by her from the go, but determined to take it slow, that he’s having sex several times a week with some other woman to “take the edge off”. Sure, he’s fantasizing about the heroine the entire time, but that doesn’t really make me feel good about it, you know? I believe that he may have even been sexing up the other woman after having had sex with the heroine, but it’s not really clear.
What really bothers me is when the hero and the heroine have a conflict, split for a time, and the hero is out there doing anything that moves in his quest to either get over the heroine or keep the old equipment from getting rusty while the heroine either can’t even think about sex with another man or tries to move on, but ends up calling the new guy by the hero’s name.
Honestly, if the writer can convince me their relationship is stronger for it and that it wasn’t a mistake to stick together, I’ll give it a shot.
There are books that do it, and others that leave me wondering who would stay with the hero. I just need to be convinced that once I turn the last page, it is HEA, and they’re not going to deal with that bullshit again.
I happen to be reading Brenda Joyce’s Francesca Cahill series and in one of them not only does the hero—or IS he the hero?!—have sex with another woman, Francesca SPYS on them and totally gets off on it. Way to break the rules, Brenda!
I am one of those who doesn’t much care for depictions of sex outside of the main romantic relationship, but I actually do appreciate the fact that her heroines have very strong libidos which are not magically attuned to only one man.
Well, if it’s a rule then it’s often broken. How many books have I read that opened with the hero having sex with his mistress/random lover?
For me there’s nothing worse than a book that starts like this, even if the hero hasn’t met the heroine yet. I *know* the guy is not a virgin but I don’t want to see him having wild sex with a random woman (often a married woman too). Huge Turn Off.
For some reason the opening of a Suzanne Ennoch historical is still fresh in my mind. The hero is getting a blow job from his mistress at a ball. They’re kind of hidden behind a curtain IIRC. He surveys the room and the dancers and makes mundane comments while the woman is on her knees with his cock in her mouth. I knew from the start that this wasn’t a hero I wanted to read about.
Same for Liz Carlyle’s One Little Sin, where, in the prologue, we see our glorious hero having sex with a woman in the barn only to be caught by the irrate husband and having to run away.
As for the hero having sex with another woman after meeting the heroine…That’s a dealbreaker for me. The kind of deal-breaker that will make me close the book right then and there. Fidelity is high up there on my priority list when it comes to relationships. I know that in real life cheating and mental lusting happen rather often but I do not read romance to have a repeat of Real Life.
I forgot…
About Derek sleeping with the prostitue that looked like Sara in Dreaming of You…That actually worked for me. I mean the guy was desperate and tought he’d never see her again.
It’s different when the guy goes off to have an overdose of sex like in Lucia Grahame’s The Painted Lady. IIRC, he went off on a sex spree barely a few weeks after his marriage to the heroine. Granted the heroine had issues with sex. But her behavior and comment didn’t justify the hero’s actions, especially so soon after the wedding. It’s one thing to go relieve his hum… ache, it’s quite another to humiliate your wife with public orgies and the like.
That’s just me of course.
To each their own.
I got slammed for this in KARA’S CAPTAIN. In that book, the Captain of the title appears as a ghost…and while Kara fantasizes about him, she never sees any future with him. In the meantime, she has a friend-with-benefits that just might become her husband.
I got slammed because she doesn’t choose her friend for her lifetime partner. I got slammed because she doesn’t choose the ghost from the moment she laid eyes on him (even though she spends much of the book not really believing in his existance). I got slammed, mostly, because it reflects real life too much in that sometimes heroines have to make choices.
So I guess, from the reviews I got with this book, Yes…readers want fidelity…even if it’s fidelity to something the heroine doesn’t think is real. (grin)
For me, it’s all about the quality of the writing. Can you tell a good story that’s going to have the reader wanting to turn pages, staying with you until the end, and not flinging the book against the wall? If so, you haven’t broken any rules.
This comment kind of belongs with the original rape post, but I read both posts amazed by the possibility of applying this idea to Richardson’s Clarissa (one of the works I’m writing my Master’s thesis on).
Can anyone out there tell me if there’s any scholarly work done on this topic?
e: Do you mean scholarly work done on rape in romance or on rape and Clarissa? I’m sure there’s a fuckton of the latter and not nearly enough of the former.
I was a little freaked out by a scene in “Lady of the West” by Linda Howard. The heroine actually comes into the barn and sees the hero having sex with the tinkers “daughter.” He knows she is there and she actually watches for a while. She was married to someone else at the time, but it was pretty freaky for me. I’m not a real fan of that book and I haven’t really read any of her other stuff.
I do have a problem with a heroine who has never had ANY kind of sexual feelings, but as soon as she meets the hero she turns into a quivering pile of wet panties. *that sure is funny!* It just doesn’t seem real to me!
Nevertheless, its not a deal breaker for me if there is a previous relationship touched on. In some cases it can be important for character development. BUT, after physical contact is established I’m not really comfortable with outside humpty. This is just my own preference tho’ and I’d hate for everything to always be the same. That would just be boring!
Behold, I shall birth a thought that hath not been ruminated upon sufficiently!
I wonder if the expectation that the hero refrain from the what-what with anyone BUT the heroine is an alternate enforcement of the “expectation of virginity” that plagues many a heroine. Candy and I have emailed back and forth about the seeming requirement that the heroine be a virgin, or if not, at the very least she’s sexually unsatisfied until the Magic Dong of the Hero meets her Magic Va-Woo-Hah. Alternately, she might have had sex but oh, the regret, it weighs so heavy on her poor, poor conscience.
To flip that bizarre fascination and expectation of virginity onto the hero would therefore require that the moment he meets his Twue Wuve, his libido dries up like coffee grounds left in the filter all day. He isn’t interested in the what-what with anyone else but her, and is thus castrated and/or revirginified by his desire (irony much?) for monogamy. Even if he’s just met her casually, he wants no other vag but hers. It’s a mixture of his manly claiming of her, and her claiming of him through that same manhood.
Now, what that expectation says about the reader is a Large and Confusing issue. But there’s no denying that the relative sexual experience of the heroine in all genres is a troublesome topic, because there are some vocal readers who want and demand that the heroine be a virgin, or as virginal as possible. To spread that same expectation of sexual purity onto the hero would require this unwritten rule that he’s got to put Mr. Happy away until his outer child can play with her inner child.
We should break “the rules,” because once we stop the genre becomes stagnant. If there’s no commitment, the H/H can boink anyone they want IMO so long as it’s sufficiently motivated.
That being said, there is a line in the sand where if crossed the HEA becomes unbelievable. When the hero rapes the heroine or emotionally browbeats her, then that’s abusive behavior. If the heroine were your girlfriend, you would advise her to leave him. I don’t want my escapist fantasy to be about cruel men being rewarded for treating women poorly.
I’m willing to chalk the conventions of bodice rippers up to the time in which they were written, but in newer novels I think the hero who physically or emotionally abuses the heroine is taking the easy way out to building conflict.
Someone mentioned Kinsale, and I’ve loved her books. Her characters are truly effed up, damaged people, but the H&H don’t do things to each other that would destroy that person. Rather, that conflict is turned inward, making them even more damaged, so that the HEA is an even bigger payoff when they learn to forgive themselves. MaryJo Putney does this too with what she’s called her “M&M Heroes,” guys who had good experiences early on so they know what happiness is and mourn the loss of it. This means they browbeat themselves instead of the heroine. I think this is harder to write than characters projecting their problems onto other people, but makes for a better story.
In line with where Sarah was just going, I thought of Gabaldon’s Jamie, who was a virgin and Claire was the sexually experienced one of the couple—and in fact technically committed adultery.
The reason the adultery worked is that Claire believed she would never be able to return to her time, so her husband was in some way “dead.”
In one of the later novels when Claire and Jamie were separated by time (and space) they both have sex with others—Claire with her husband and Jamie with a virgin (he then gets her pregnant).
When reunited Claire chases Jamie with a farming implement upon learning about the child. So, I’m not really sure what the message is there except that the Magic of the Hoo-ha/Dong can’t transcend time-travel.
I also remember nearly tossing Outlander after the spanking scene. The whole “husband-as-disciplinarian” thing really bugs me.
Anyone-
If you were at a cocktail party-alone and you met a man, had a conversation, and you both walked away-1. not even imagining that you would see eachother again 2. not even liking the person-
If he went and slept with his long time girlfriend that night-you’d call it infedelity?
If there are men reading this? They are laughing their collective asses off.
The real life argument? Come on. Romances are fantasies. I.e., you are much more likely to be divorced than have an HEA with a Navy SEAL. All those law enforcement romances? Ditto.
Alpha males? Cretins in real life.
Farting? belching? morning after breath? No condoms? The list could go on.
The Real Life Argument doesn’t really hold water with me.
The real life argument does hold water, if you’re writing comtemporary romances/women’s fiction that doesn’t have paranormal elements. If it’s too unrealistic, you lose your reader that way—for my taste, you have to have a dash of reality to make your characters human and relatable.
If for an author, that dash of reality takes the form of his sleeping with a longtime mistress before realizing that he’s met someone who intrigues him more and it fits with the charaterization and the story as the author has set it up—then I’m good with that.
If there are men reading this? They are laughing their collective asses off.
Eva, I told my trainer the whole thing this morning and yep—laughed his ass off.
I think it depends largely on why one reads romance. If you are in a less-than-desirable relationship, or not in one at all, and read romance to fulfill fantasies of your ideal mate, and your idea of the ideal mates includes monogamy/loyalty/faithfulness, then no, you’re not going to want to see the lead male boink outside of his established relationship.
However, if you have more lenient ideas and ascribe to open relationships, polyamory, group sex, and/or if you read erotica/romance to fulfill kink fantasies, then you may very well enjoy seeing the lead male demonstrate his virility and skill in wooing multiple partners.
In two of my own novels, I feature a few menage scenes where the lead male or lead female enjoys relations with another partner—at the behest of their primary partner. I’ve been told these are the hottest love scenes in the books! In another novel of mine, the lead female messes around with another gentleman behind her boyfriends back. Yet she and her boyfriend have not agreed specifically on monogamy, and she does not actually have intercourse or hold any feelings for this other partner. In fact, her few moments of spontaneous indiscretion lead her to realize she truly cares for her boyfriend, and well I won’t give the plot away but let’s just say maybe he knew what she was doing all along anyway and manipulated events in his own favor.
With that being said, I’ve chosen to keep one lead male’s pre-relationship exploits off-camera, as I felt readers would not particularly care to see this particular gentleman with any other woman than his lead girly. Although he encourages her to get with other lovers while he watches, but well, that’s different. 😉
~ Katrina S.
The Real Life Argument doesn’t really hold water with me.
Then I respectfully suggest you stick to authors who write romance as fantasy and escapism. Not all of us do. And, according to what I’m reading here and elsewhere, there’s an audience for both kinds: the romantic fantasy and the more reality-based romantic fiction.
Which is the entire point of this discussion, from my perspective. There’s room for everything within the genre, and a readership for all flavors, so why must anyone tell an author “you can’t do that, it’s not romance”?
You, Jane, keep asking, here and on my blog, why I even bother to address this issue. This would be why.
But who is saying you can’t do that? I guess that is what I don’t get. If you want to write a certain way, then why don’t you? That makes the most sense to me.
I think the romance genre IS changing, as are its readers, but slowly. Way back when it was unthinkable for a heroine to be anything other than a virgin when she meets her hero. Nowadays, depending upon the sub-genre, most readers find virgin heros and heroines unrealistic and unbelievable. I write primarily historical romance myself, so for the most part my heroines are virgins at the start of the story, but I have written a handful of contemporary pieces and not one of my heroines in those has been a virgin at the start of the story.
Of course for some, that’s part of the fantasy – that instantaneous spark, love at first sight thing. Perhaps you only see each other, from across a crowded room, and though you haven’t spoken you refrain from contact with anyone else, knowing you’ve found “the one.”
Let’s face it, infidelity and polyamory have been around since the dawn of time, and quite frankly unless you want your hero to be a bumbling clueless idiot in the sack, he needs to have had some experience, either off camera or on. I like to write about rakes and playboys who finally find “the one” who can settle them down. Sometimes their previous exploits are before the start of the book, sometimes they are during. Hell, one of my current WIPs, Chasing Heaven, the sequel to Leading Her to Heaven, begins with our hero in a deserted hallway trying to get it on with one of the local ladies, who is NOT his ultimate heroine. Another WIP, Shaded Destiny, begins with our hero banging everything with breasts because a fortune telling gypsy once told him a woman would save his soul, and he thinks the only way to know this special woman when he finds her is…well, up close and personal inspection.
I like to write my characters realistically, and some times that means showing them with partners OTHER than their ultimate intended. Have I been criticized for it? Of course. I’ve also been told my heroines are too fiesty, my characters too flawed (they shouldn’t have made that really stupid decision that forms the basis for the entire plot, you see), etc. You can’t please everyone.
Different readers have different tastes and different preferences. I’ll never write a book that pleases every single person who reads it, and quite frankly, I’m not sure I want to.
-Kayleigh J.
Jane-I’m married to a real life Alpha, and he’s not a cretin. He would give you the shirt off his back, but hat doesn’t make him a non-alpha.
Matter of fact-he gets along so well with our corporate attny’s I tell him often he should cash in the chips and go to law school.
And the Non Reality arguement doesn’t wash with me. Characters/story’s HAVE to have basis in reality-especially emotions-or you wouldn’t invest in the conflict/characters what so ever.
I guess you didn’t read all the responses over at Selah’s blog because over there, someone actually said there were “RULES” that MUST be followed and to not follow them… well, then, you’re not writing a real romance and down that way lies madness or something to that effect.
Whatever.
I think there are plenty of authors who write stories that push envelopes, that break these so-called rules, that are every bit as worthy of the title of romance as the Magic HooHoo ones. To say that they’re not, to me, is an insult to the author.
And Jane-there is a hotly debated rumor amongst authors that there is NO WAY you will be published (if you’re a newbie author) UNLESS you adhere to the rules. So that would be Rules=Publication.
I heartily agree with the concept of the fact that there is a reader for every different theme/character type/etc but only some are going to have mass appeal.
So write what you want. No one says you can’t write what you want. You may not be able to sell what you want to write or it might not be as commercially successful but an author can certainly write whatever she wants.
And Jane-there is a hotly debated rumor amongst authors that there is NO WAY you will be published (if you’re a newbie author) UNLESS you adhere to the rules. So that would be Rules=Publication
But isn’t that an entirely different argument? I.e., what to write to be commercially successful and what to write because you feel it is integral to your story?
Because if you are writing for commercial success then yes, I think, by and large there are unwritten rules because of certain number of people prefer the magic hoo ha and what not. I don’t know that I am one of them. I’ll take anything that an author wants to give so long as the story is good.
But if you are talking what an author chooses to write for artistic integrity because you believe that having the onscreen sex scene between the hero and his mistress displays important shit, then, yeah, write whatever you want. No person is preventing you from writing it.
But to rail at the mass readership or the editors or the publishers or whatnot seems to be an entirely different argument between what a writer CAN do and what a writer SHOULD do because it depends on differing motivations and expectations and so forth.
I’m not trying to be offensive or antagonistic, I’m just trying to understand the argument.
Jane, you’re correct. Maybe our more “realistic” romances, in which men speak and act like men, won’t sell.
There’s a whole list of books right here in this comment thread – books people have named from bestselling authors, books they’ve enjoyed from authors who’ve gone on to sell again and again – that contradict the idea that grittier, more realistic romance won’t sell. But you could be right. Maybe that market will dry up tomorrow morning, and that list of authors will be out of a job.
Time will tell, no?
Selah – I have obviously offended you in some way and I sincerely apologize for whatever comment I made that was insulting to you. I’ve always, always maintained that an author should write the best book she’s got in her and readers respond to that.
My original point was what I stated earlier: “Write what you want and if it sells, great and if it doesn’t, maybe you have to rethink some issues.”
I don’t know that we are arguing on the opposite side of the fence but I’ll bow out because I can see that I’m just being offensive and antagonistic which wasn’t my intent.
But to rail at the mass readership or the editors or the publishers or whatnot seems to be an entirely different argument between what a writer CAN do and what a writer SHOULD do because it depends on differing motivations and expectations and so forth.
I must’ve missed the railing. Can you point me to the railing? I do love a good, stiff rail.
Ahem.
An author wrote something. She sent it out for proofreading and critique. She got some negative feedback because some folks – other authors, a couple individual readers – didn’t like a particular plot point. They felt it went against the “rules” of romance.
I blogged about this, because I had an opinion about how the “rules” of romance change and shift with the times, and how we shouldn’t stifle ourselves according to what is likely to be out of fashion tomorrow.
No one is railing against readers. No one is railing against editors. A couple bloggers have an opinion about the “rules” and how they apply to romance and the process of writing it. They posted those opinions on blogs, and got some interest, and it’s generated what I think is valuable discussion.
Please don’t try to make this into another “those damned authors who don’t appreciate their readership” things. It’s not, and never has been, about that. And it’s old, already.
I’m done. Galley proofs to correct, Easter dinner to plan.
Have a happy, y’all.
The Real Life Argument doesn’t really hold water with me.
Then I respectfully suggest you stick to authors who write romance as fantasy and escapism. Not all of us do. And, according to what I’m reading here and elsewhere, there’s an audience for both kinds: the romantic fantasy and the more reality-based romantic fiction.
Maybe the problem is that while we often invoke the “real life argument” or its inverse (which is still the RLA just pitched in the opposite direction), we never really parse out what the actual relationshipS between Romancelandia and the Real World are. Obviously there’s a relationship between the two, since we invoke it all the time, sometimes in the both directions for same issue (i.e. infidelity and forced seduction). I know, for example, that when people argue that rape is “historically accurate” and therefore acceptable in Romance, I can barely contain my frustration. But at the same time, would the device have such emotional impact in the genre if it didn’t have some connection to the real world realities for women?
I wonder if we would do better to take apart some of the elements of the relationship. For example, emotional authenticity seems to play an important role in how readers respond to Romance. So do subjective and objective reading orientations. And then there’s the whole issue of genre expectations v. reader expectations. And of course the dynamics change, depending on where a particular reader stands relative to a particular book.
Perhaps the RLA will always be one that works both ways at once. In a scenario like that in Eva’s book, it seems reasonable to argue that in a real world scenario, the guy’s actions would not be viewed as cheating. But it seems equally valid to me to argue that this isn’t just any guy, he’s the “hero” of a Romance novel, and therefore has certain expectations attached to his character that come from the fact that we have to trust that he’s an appropriate partner for the heroine. BOTH are true, IMO.
And maybe that tension point, the fact that Romance fiction is both “of the world” and “separate from it,” is a big part of why it can reach such tremendous emotional pitch. Even if its direction can be vastly different from one book to the next, from one reader to the next. The intellectual in me would lovelovelove to unlock the complex dynamic between Romance and “the real world,” but the pure reader in me fears that solving the mystery might diminish my enjoyment of certain books.