Scoundrel’s Captive by JoAnn DeLazzari: A Guest Review by RedHeadedGirl

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by SB Sarah | by SB Sarah | March 21, 2011 | Monday at 10:27 am | 150 Comments

Title: Scoundrel's Captive
Author: JoAnn DeLazzari
Publication Info: Avon Books July 1991
ISBN: 978-0380764204
Genre: Historical: American

You guys do understand that I read these primarily because I enjoy it, right? I mean, some of them were “unpleasant” (Purity’s Passion, I am looking at you), some are off the hook (Forbidden Desires? That’s you) and some are so wonderfully trashy I can’t help but adore them (Henley is my kryptonite).

For the most part, I enjoy it. I think I have a very selective form of masochism. And, in general, if I truly hate it, or it’s just not interesting enough to review, I won’t review it. This book is a bit different, though. Because I did hate it, but there’s a facet here that I haven’t seen discussed a lot.

I blame Zoe Archer for this. She put the cover of this book on her tumblr, with the caption “My books don’t look like this.” That, of course, is like waving a red flag at a bull and throwing him a china shop. I HAD to read it. (Because I’m the bull, see?) (…that sounds rather bad.) (Yes, I know Mythbusters thinks they busted the bull in china shop myth, but they had problems with their methodology in that one, so it’s still open, as far as I am concerned.)

This book is FUCKED. UP. Not deliciously fucked up like Seduced, and not fucked up in a “what the shit is this history you are butchering” like another early Henley a friend of mine loaned me. There is nothing delicious about this. This is FUCKED UP LIKE WHOA.

Our heroine is Jessica, alternatively known as Jess or Jessie, who grew up in St. Louis (which counts as “back East” which I can tell you amuses the hell out of people on the East coast. When they think about these things, which is not a lot). She grew up without her father, because her mother couldn’t hack it in the Wyoming territory. After her mother died, she decides to go to Wyoming to find her father.

One the way there, she is taking a bath in a hotel in some town in Wyoming, where the door is busted down by Steve Kincaid (our….uh, hero, I guess) in the throes of a fight. Jessica pulls on her robe and tell him to leave, while he…. Kisses her, gropes her, and would have taken her to bed right then and there had someone else not come into her room. He leaves and she’s like “what the fuck was that. Thank god I’ll never see him again.”

So she gets to Wyoming, makes friends with the local madam, and finds her father, Jeff, and they have a freakishly perfect relationship right off the bat. Which from my experience in and observation of estranged parent-child relationships, this is not how that ever works.

But that’s not the truly fucked up thing.

Steve is the part owner of a neighboring ranch to Jeff’s place, and realizes that Jess is Jeff’s daughter. He’s been taken with her and hunts her down and turns out that she lived next door- it’s another one of those mostly closed-universes where there’s a limited number of people who show up and they JUST KEEP SHOWING UP. Makes it easier to keep track of everyone, but as far as feeling realistic, well, not so much.

But that’s not the truly fucked up thing.

At some point, when Steve finds Jess, he accosts her and fondles her and is all like “hey baby let’s get it on” and she gets angry and determines that he is at Kincaid’s ranch, and therefore must work for Kincaid, and informs him that she’s going to complain to his boss about his behavior. He tells her to stop struggling, unless she was prepared for him to make love to her there and then, and who would blame him when, “I tell them how prettily you undressed for me?” He allows her to think that she’ll get some satisfaction from complaining to the owner for the Kincaid ranch, and she finds out that her stalker and the next-door neighbor are the same person at a party. Where she wears a smoking hot pimped out dress that makes her boobs look great, so therefore she’s fair game.

You begin to see the truly fucked up thing. What I’m going to try to do (and we will see if it works) is just straight recap- because seriously, none of you need to read this, please don’t let this bullet I’m taking be in vain- and then editorialize and dissect it. Because I will go off on pages and pages of tangents and that’s no way to follow a story line.

Now, Jeff and Jess need money to make improvements to Jeff’s ranch, so Jeff borrows some from Steve. At the party, when Jess discovers that Steve is the douchebag who accosted her in the hotel that one time, she flips her shit, but he, tells her first that she left her skirt behind in their “argument” and he’ll tell everyone, unless she agrees to marry him. And if she doesn’t agree to marry him, he’ll call in the money that he loaned her father, and they just don’t have $500 lying around to pay him back with. She agrees, grudgingly.

The next day, Jess decides that clearly her was bluffing- there’s no other way about it, obviously this guy wouldn’t blackmail her into marriage and/or sex, right? She gets a message from him to come to the ranch, and she sends back a reply that tells him to go to hell (verbatim). His response? “Jessica Morgan, you are one spirited filly, but there’s been not one yet I haven’t broken and ridden.” So he goes after her, and there’s a bit of a horse chase, and he finally catches her, and there’s a whole thing where she tells him to go away, to not touch her, to leave her alone, bargain or no. And he tells her to stop professing to be a lady while she kicks and moans like a common whore. And then he calls her a cold-blooded bitch.

At which point she gives up and gives in, and they have some allegedly great sex, (even though he thinks that he needed her consent, even if given begrudgingly) and he is shocked -shocked!- to discover she was a virgin. Because only an experienced woman would…stand in her own hotel room after a bath with her nipples getting hard and respond to sexual pleasure.

Afterwards, she sleeps and he’s thinking this is great. He needs an heir, and he likes her and wants her, but god knows he doesn’t love her. She naturally, is utterly in love with him, because that’s what the Mighty Wang does. And is convinced that he loves her, because… that’s what the Mighty Wang does. But he asks her to marry him, for real, not because of the money, and she accepts.

Steve goes to a Cattlemen’s Association meeting or something that take him out of town for about a week, and Jess decides that hanging out at his ranch for wedding planning is a good idea. Also living at the ranch are Chad and Sarah- Chad is Steve’s partner, and Sarah is Chad’s wife. They and Jess of course hit it off enormously, and things are going well. There’s also a cook/housekeeper, named Connie, but all her friends call her Red. Because of the red hair. (Which shouldn’t annoy me, since lots of people call me Red, because of the red hair, but STIILL.) (I’m gonna cut to the chase here and tell you that Connie and Jeff hook up and get married.)

Steve runs into an ex of his, Margo, another woman in town that’s a spoiled rich brat who he’s fucked, and kind of thought about marrying until Jess came along. She doesn’t like the idea of not marrying Steve, so first she tries to seduce him, and when that fails, she marches off to Steve’s ranch to get rid of Jess. Which she does by pushing Jess down the stairs and trying to kill her.

(We’re not even a third of way through.)

Jess isn’t sure what made her fall, and isn’t willing to accuse Margo without proof, and then Margo drops the bomb that she is aware of the welts Jess left on Steve’s back while fucking him. Which makes Jess think that Steve and Margo have been making the beast with two backs. Steve comes home to find Jess angry and Margo telling him that she saw Chad and Jess possibily doing the nasty, so Steve flips his shit out and blames Chad for everything, and Jess leaves.

No, seriously, based on one sentence from Margo, Steve beats the shit out of Chad. And it gets sorted by about five minutes of conversation. I mean, really.

Jess goes back into town and seeks refuge from the local Madam (Who’s named Roxy, because of course she is). Jess still thinks that Steve was fucking Margo, and Roxy is all on Team Jess on this point. Steve comes to Roxy, looking for Jess, and Roxy doesn’t tell him that Jess in her house, but thinks that he isn’t acting like a guy who’s dumped Jess for Margo, so obviously he is in love. Then a random gunfight breaks out and Jess gets hit by a stray bullet and leaves town.

Where she gets picked up by the local Native American tribe- Absaroke, or Crow, depending on who is talking. Jess is wounded and all, so she hangs with the Absaroke while she recovers. She’s given the name Valley Woman because… she has hidden depths or something? I don’t even know. But as she’s working on being a productive member of society, she gets the feeling she’s being watched, and the Absaroke woman she’s been living with, Little Sparrow, tells her that there’s a guy who shows up some times, his name is Hawk and he is a member of the tribe, has been watching her for DAYS.

Jess thinks that she might like this guys that she’s never seen, not once, and decides that fucking him will make her forget Steve. So she tells Little Sparrow to tell her husband that if Hawk should visit, she would serve him. In all the ways that means. So he does, and sure enough, Hawk is in fact Steve.

“Why, woman, sigh?” A deep throaty whisper asked against her hair.

Jess nestled her head back against his shoulder. “I…I thought…”

“Answer, “ he breathed huskily when she paused.

Baring her soul, Jess answered honestly, “I thought only one man could make me feel this way.”

“Only one man can, Jess, “ a clear voice growled.

“No!” she shrieked, her body stiffening. It was another bad dream! This was Hawk, not…

So she begs him not to do this, but her body surrenders even as she says no. (Gag.)

In the morning, Jess finds Little Sparrow and is told that Little Sparrow was helping both Jess and Steve- Jess loves Steve and Steve wants Jess, so what’s the problem? Steve does apologize to Jess about the whole Margo thing, and tells her that Little Sparrow’s husband said that what Jess really needs is a beating. But instead he will pick her up and carry her back to the tent, because that’s a much better way of shutting her up. And as he does so, Jess screams for help, and Little Sparrow turn away from Jess and Steve with smiles.

Steve brings Jess back to her father’s house, who is utterly unconcerned with the fact that she’s been gone for weeks, and is hopeful that “maybe Steve had managed to tame his daughter at last.” Of course, he hasn’t, and she’s fuming about how she won’t marry him. Steve eventually says to her that he’ll respect her decisions.

Jess was more wary than ever. Could this be the same self-assured man who had manipulated her life?

“…I’m still going to marry you but I’ve decided to give you time to come to grips with the idea.”

Because clearly what she wants is courting. So courting he shall do. He also decides to forgive the money he’d loaned Jeff as a bride price (because some of the Indian tribes do that). Jess thinks this is bullshit and that she’s being bought and sold, and not because Steve loves her. So she yells enough that Steve storms out (seriously, it’s like Moonlighting, but just tiresome) and everyone tells Jess that she and Steve just need to “stop bickering” and “settle things.”

Jess thinks fine, lets do that then, and tries to settle the money issue so she and Jeff can be free and clear of Steve for real, and Steve again tries to get her to agree to the sex for money exchange, but really, she wouldn’t be a whore. Instead he forces her to bed. Again.

“I’m….I’m sorry, Jessie. I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Steve saw the tears and felt like a bastard.

Because they need money, Jess starts working for Roxy. Not as a whore, god no, that would not do. Instead she works as a hostess, and of course everyone respects the limits she sets, because there’s only one man in the world who won’t take her no for an answer. Steve finds out, of course, and goes to bother her at work, where Roxy is perfectly happy to let them fight it out in public. Of course nothing is solved, because we’re only halfway through, and Steve finally decides, with Jeff’s blessing, to kidnap Jess.

Let me repeat that. Steve decides the only way to get Jess to agree with his view of the world is to KIDNAP her. And her father gives his blessing. “I’m on your side, my boy. I was just picturing my lovely daughter’s reaction when she finds out what you have in store for her.”

(Pardon me, I have to vomit.)

So Steve kidnaps her by WHACKING HER ON THE HEAD, which naturally gives her amnesia (OF COURSE IT DOES), and he tells her, when she wakes up, that they just got married. So they have an enjoyable interlude in a cabin in the mountains. Just about when the snow is going to start falling, a mountain man comes by, who knew Jess’ mother, and tells her she came from St. Louis, which is not the same thing Steve had been telling her. They start fighting, and he is not longer gentle with her and then she remembers everything.

She convinces the mountain man to help her get home, leaving Steve trapped in the cabin for the winter (more contrived timing could not be had). The mountain man convinces Steve to give her until spring, and Steve’s response to that? “…come spring, I’m going, and if I have to bind and gag her to have her back, I will, and not you or anyone else will stand in my way.”

She’s very sad, and misses him a lot, but is determined to go on home and leave him behind for good.

You can guess how well that works out.

Jess also discovers that she is pregnant, because of course she is. She gives birth before Steve can come down off the mountain. But not before she’s told that she has commitment issues. And that’s why she and Steve can’t work their shit out. It’s a boy, and she gets a job working at an orphanage Roxy started (but no one is town knows that she’s backing, because of the whole “hooker” thing).

Steve comes into town and finds Jess there, and finds out that the baby is his son, and not just some random orphan and brings Jess (kicking and screaming, literally) back to the ranch, where he attempts again to court her with no sex. For six weeks. He tells Jess that she has to come with him, or he’ll ruin her father and tell the boarding school that houses Roxy’s daughter what her mother does. So Jess HAS to go with him.

Everyone in town is pleased as punch at this, because Jess and Steve are just perfect for each other, they just need to accept it.

Jess leaves, again, and hides with Absaroke, while Steve runs to St. Louis and back looking for her, and finally finds her with the tribe. Jess is told that she can become a full member of the tribe, if she wants. She’s told that to do that, she must go to a tent hidden in the woods or whatever and stay there for three days. Naturally, Steve is there, and she’s like “…but I’m becoming a member of the tribe!” and he says “Well, actually we’re in a marriage tent right now, and I am a member of the tribe, so yes, by marriage you are!”

THE END.

What the fuck.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.

WHAT IS THIS FUCKERY.

We could talk about the rape, because, face it, there’s a lot of “no, no!” and punishing kisses and overbearing her will, but we’ve talked about that. At length. And I think you guys get it. There’s only a handful of time where Jess is consenting from beginning to end, and a lot of those are when she has amnesia.

When I told Zoe that this was her fault, I also told her that if this book were presented as a spotter’s guide to abusive relationships, that would be one thing. But this relationship, in all of its abusive text that is not subtext, is represented as a happy, fluffy romance, and if they would just admit that they love each other, IT WOULD BE OKAY

Well. As a survivor of an abusive relationship, let me tell you. “Lack of love” is not the problem. The problem is control. The problem is violence. The problem is agency. The problem is that it’s SO HARD to get out. And even though it’s been over ten years, there are still ripples from the entire mess in my life. And I was lucky- I was able to end it comparatively early. So.

We talk a lot about Alpha males, but of all the old school romances I’ve read, and there have been quite a few, this is the most disgustingly abusive asshole I’ve ever seen called a hero. I’ve seen less abusive villains. And I don’t we’ve talked about abusive behavior a great deal- it doesn’t come up much, and usually if there is abusive behavior, the hero (it’s always the hero, never the heroine) makes an effort to change as part of his character arc.

There are so many ways that Steve displays extreme controlling behavior. He won’t let her make choices, he gets angry when he thinks she’s been talking with another man, when he wants sex and she doesn’t, he grabs her hair and yanks her head around until she acquiesces. He threatens her and the people she loves unless she stays with him.

Now, in early Roman law, there was a provision in contract law that consent under duress is still consent. But Roman jurists figured out that that was a douchey thing, and recognized that consent under duress is not consent at all. And Jess consistently says no until it’s clear that “no” isn’t going to make a difference. Now, this could be a case of showing “good girls don’t willingly enjoy sex,” because as written she does enjoy it once she accepts the inevitable. Pairing it with the emotional abuse and ultra-controlling behavior makes it even worse.

The thing that gets me SO MUCH and makes me so angry is that Steve’s behavior is presented as normal and admirable, so there’s no reason for him to grow or change. As long as he admits that he loves Jess, everything will be fine.

And that’s bullshit. No one calls him out, no one says “Dude, SHE SAID NO. Maybe you should leave her alone.” Anywhere Jess tries to go for help ends up throwing her under the bus- he goes so far as to chase her to St. Louis when he thinks she went there. Really, the only realistic end I see for these two characters is one of them will kill the other.

The thing I found most terrifying was the number of people who saw what Steve was doing, and didn’t see a problem with it. Even as Jess is screaming for him to stop, to put her down, to go away, they all either turned away or told her to stop struggling and smiling knowingly. Her own father is down with the idea of Steve kidnapping her and stealing her away for months. At the very end, the Absaroke are willing to let her think she’s performing one ritual, when really she’s getting married without her consent.

Now, I do think that it’s important to explore the mindset of the abuser- if we can understand it, maybe we can prevent it, right? It’s one reason why I like the Eminem-Rhianna song “Love the Way You Lie,” because I think it does explore the mentality of both abuser and abused and how it’s not all bad and certainly not all good and how it all can spiral out of control and why people stay in these relationships. Some of it is awful, but they call the period between outbursts the “Honeymoon period” for a reason.

I’m just saying.

Anyway, this isn’t an exploration of an abusive relationship. It doesn’t try to be anything other than a fluffy romance, but it’s horrible. It’s the Twilight syndrome, only decades early. Stalker = love. Controlling behavior = love. Abuse = love.

ARGH.

The writing itself isn’t good- it’s very first-novel-y and awkward. I mean, I’m told in the early 90s, the publishing houses were pretty much buying anything which is how a bunch of this schlock got published in the first place. But in light of everything else, I don’t care all that much about bad writing. The character of the entire story is off-putting.

The only thing that kept me from throwing this book is the fact that I was on a cross-country flight and the air marshall would have tackled me (and rightfully so). As it was, I suspect my seatmate got pretty tired of me going “WHAT” and “OH GOD” every three pages.

Filed: General Bitching, Reviews, Guest Bitch Reviews, Grade F, Authors, L-P

Tagged: wtfery, writing, sex, romance, old skool, make the burning stop, douchebag, avon

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India Drummond said on 03.21.11 at 11:53 AM • [link]

Holy crap. I’m confused and disgusted at the same time. I’ve got so many thoughts bubbling up here, but I can’t bring myself to say any of them. Just… blergh. I need a shower.

Although, I did get a chuckle out of imagining you getting tackled by the air marshall.
Veronica said on 03.21.11 at 01:04 PM • [link]

Ok, since it was mentioned by the reviewer, I figure it’s ok to talk about this:

I don’t get it when people say Edward is abusive. Arguments can be made for stalkerish…but abusive? Compared to the hero of this story? You can even say he’s controlling, but not excessively so. More like willful (Bella is willful too, and mostly gets what she wants.) I’m not a Twilight fangirl or anything, but I have read the books (well, the first 3), and I’m confused when people compare Edward to the abusers we see in these old school romances. I just don’t see it.

control39 - Heh.
Ann Somerville said on 03.21.11 at 01:16 PM • [link]

You’ve covered the consent issues so nicely (and how you read this stuff without upchucking, I have no idea) so I won’t comment further, except even under current American laws of ridiculousness regarding air travel, no court in the world would convict you if you showed them the actual book you threw.

I will just mention that apart from the rape and lack of consent and the utter stupid of the plot, this tripe also includes my favourite pet peeve - the supposedly harmless use of concussion as anaesthetic. It turns up so often, and makes me grind my teeth so hard (is it possible that now we’re learning so much about the damage of high impact sports on their participants, this idiotic trope will finally die? Probably not.) This article says it all much more pithily than I can.

Good editors don’t let their authors knock out characters willy nilly. Not that a good editor came anywhere near this, by the sound of it!
Cara McKenna / Meg Maguire said on 03.21.11 at 01:52 PM • [link]

…So Steve kidnaps her by WHACKING HER ON THE HEAD, which naturally gives her amnesia (OF COURSE IT DOES)…

This was the point in the review at which I began wheezing so hard I was forced to stop reading.
Diatryma said on 03.21.11 at 02:11 PM • [link]

Someday, I am going to read a book in which a woman fights and objects and is romantically controlled by a man and there’s some huge would-be-creepy-and/or-horrifying-if-they-weren’t-in-love gesture. Only in my fantasy version, they are not in love, it is creepy and/or horrifying, and she kills herself. I feel this would be excellent baggagetastic backstory except for the suicide and enfridgement.

For now, I think I’m due a reread of Crusie’s Crazy for You so a creepy/horrifying would-be hero can get smashed the hell up by a heroine who is not taking that shit any longer.
Laurel said on 03.21.11 at 03:04 PM • [link]

Ick. Ickity ick. I got mad just reading the review…and I never do that.
Jayne said on 03.21.11 at 03:04 PM • [link]

When I got to the part in which Steve compared Jess to a horse to be broken and ridden, my mouth dropped open and my toast fell out of my mouth. My dog was delighted. So it’s official: Oscar the German Shepherd is the only creature ever to get something good out of this book.

It’s upsetting to me that shit like this is still what defines the romance genre to many people. I don’t understand how anybody thinks that repeated rape is sexy.
Darlene Marshall said on 03.21.11 at 03:05 PM • [link]

I confess that I enjoyed envisioning you being tackled by an air marshal while you frantically explain it was all about the book.

In a more serious vein, this is what bothers me about people who picked up a romance in 1978 and haven’t looked at one since. As you say about Crusie, there’s been a lot of good writing come along since then.
redheadedgirl said on 03.21.11 at 03:08 PM • [link]

@Jayne: As Ma Ingalls says, “There’s no great loss without some small gain.”

....which is crap, but yay Oscar!

@Veronica: I have class starting soon, but I’ll give you my thoughts on Edward and his behavior when it’s over.
Noelle Pierce said on 03.21.11 at 03:10 PM • [link]

I got halfway through this retelling and thought, IT’S NOT OVER YET??? It just kept going, and going, and not in a good way. I skipped the second half of the plot, honestly, and jumped to your comments on the abuse itself. I have problems with this, too, and think you did a fantastic job articulating your thoughts on the WTFukery.

I’ve read a few of these types of books, mostly because I was young, and the only time I stopped reading a book was if I didn’t understand the writing at all (a la Shakespeare, or another classic, usually). It just never occurred to me that I could put it down. Luckily, there were also a ton of books that had respectable heroes to whom I could compare the guys I was dating. I kissed a lot of frogs, but never wasted more than a couple weeks on them if I didn’t get my romance hero-vibe from them. The good thing was that I read both and knew what kind of guy to avoid (like the hero of the reviewed book).
Wendy said on 03.21.11 at 03:33 PM • [link]

Wow. In addition to all the rapey, abusive WTFery, there is every single trope of the time period in this book: amnesia! Indians! Trapped in the mountains for the winter! Babies! Whores, but not the goody-two-shoes heroine.
It’s like the author threw a bunch of plotlines in a hat and chose a few to weave together somehow.

Ugh. I’m surprised I managed to drink my tea while reading this. I feel like my mouth was hanging open the whole time.
Babs said on 03.21.11 at 03:33 PM • [link]

I’m..I’m…I don’t know what to say other than that just sounds like one hot mess of a book. *shudder*
Daniela C. said on 03.21.11 at 03:57 PM • [link]

HOLY SHIT! You’re right…this IS FUCKED UP!!!!! And I only got to a third of your blog!!!
AnaB said on 03.21.11 at 04:06 PM • [link]

For now, I think I’m due a reread of Crusie’s Crazy for You so a creepy/horrifying would-be hero can get smashed the hell up by a heroine who is not taking that shit any longer.

I don’t know about that, really. What icked me out about [Crazy for you was the hero (Jack?) telling the heroine how proprieterial romantic possessiveness is not very different from creepy, can’t take no for an answer stalking. Very, very disturbing, that.

And Edward as abusive? Well, you could read this, for starters:

THE GREATEST LOVE STORY
15 signs you’re dating an abuser, probably named Edward Cullen: Has he ever: Looked at you or acted in ways that scare you? Controlled what you do, who you see or where you go? (eg: forbidden you from seeing your werewolf friends?) Made all of your decisions? Acted like the abuse is no big deal, it’s your fault or even deny doing it? Threatened to commit suicide? Threatened to kill you? Was it on your first date? Has he ever tried to isolate you from family or friends? Does he damage your property when angry? Has he thrown you through a glass table? Abandoned you in a dangerous or unfamiliar place? Scared you by driving recklessly? Forced you to leave your home? Prevented you from calling police or seeking medical attention? Views women as objects and believes in rigid gender roles? Accuses you of cheating or is often jealous of your outside relationships? If any of these signs apply to your relationship, you should run immediately. This man is not only a dangerous bastard, but also probably a blood-sucking vampire no matter how many abstinence metaphors he spews. Mind you, if you try to run he’ll probably just start stalking you. Vampires are known to do things like that. Call Buffy Summers and beg her to forgive your dumb ass. She’s your only hope.

And yes, just reading the review of Scoundrel’s Captive made me want to gag. Old Skool, really. And if anyone watches Indian television, they’ll be disturbed to see how very often all these tropes of abuse-as-love are regurgitated in practically every single wildly popular, incredibly regressive soap.
Daniela C. said on 03.21.11 at 04:17 PM • [link]

I was laughing so hard and then I realized your recap was only half over!!!!
By the time I got to the end, I was exhausted! I can’t imagine how you felt reading it! Ugh!

Re: Twilight…I have never heard anyone mention Edward being abusive…hmmm…I would see Jacob being more abusive…no that’s not right…domineering. He is constantly trying to push her toward him. But my real gripe is with Bella…GAH!!!!... She is such a whiney BITCH!!! Grow up!!! “Oh, Edward, (wimper) don’t leave me (wimper) I can’t live without you!” I think Edward is more trying to save her from HERSELF!!!
Kate said on 03.21.11 at 04:33 PM • [link]

On top of all the rapey, abusive, horrible bullshit, what really sticks out to me are the names. Chad? Roxy? Jess? Steve? What is this, 1979?
Sara H said on 03.21.11 at 04:42 PM • [link]

I love that you call books/authors out for this kind of disgusting shit!
FIamma said on 03.21.11 at 04:44 PM • [link]

I just…WOW! The beginnings of romance novels were really awful it seems. I wonder what made someone write this and when they finished they smiled and thought, “This is perfect!” I also want to know who found it sexy and wonderful and romantic.
Cassie Edwards came to mind once the Indian tribe was brought in with the gratuitous beating suggestion.

“Steve does apologize to Jess about the whole Margo thing, and tells her that Little Sparrow’s husband said that what Jess really needs is a beating.”

Excuse me while I go read my Thursday Next novel and enjoy her ass kicking ways.
Rachel Savage said on 03.21.11 at 04:52 PM • [link]

Uh…wow. Sounds like the only good thing about this book was Wyoming (go go home state). Sorry you had to take another one for the team. /bow

Makes me wonder what all I’ll have to look forward to in the old school romances I just bought myself for my birthday this weekend. They were all still “new” too because the one local bookstore never gets rid of stuff. I love to dig through their collection…though that ends up with me getting myself in trouble of the “you spent how much on books???” kind.

And I’m rambling off topic now so I’ll stop.
quichepup said on 03.21.11 at 04:54 PM • [link]

Thanks to RedHeadedGirl for taking another one for the team and congrats for NOT getting thrown off the plane because this was a big ol’ wallbanger of a book. Also congrats to Oscar.

Indians! Who all speak English, are peacefully camped outside of town, whose presence is apparently tolerated by the townsfolk and who randomly adopt people, no questions asked. Oh yeah. The idea of indians as either evil bloodthirsty savages (the traditional view) or a noble enlightened people who lurve white folks and whose can only derive happiness by giving said white folks presents, blessings and adopting them irks me too. Though noble and enlightened nature lovers are slightly better than just being considered bloodthirsty savages. I guess.

Amnesia! Another standard that makes me want to hit my own head against a wall. How it comes and goes, how there’s no after effects, no physical impairment, none of that stuff.

I won’t go off on the rape and aggressor/victim thing since others have done it better than I could but I agree with your confusion and outrage and say WTFBBQ?! at it all.
upfront_reader said on 03.21.11 at 04:58 PM • [link]

The saddest part is that you can still find romance novels with this sort of controlling/abusive crap dressed up as true love. I just finished a Harlequin Presents I found in a used bookstore (published in 2001, but still) called A Vengeful Deception by Lee Wilkinson. The “hero” manipulated, coerced, raped (it was dressed up as seduction, but the “hero” refuses to take no for an answer: “I’ll stop when you can convince me that you really want me to stop.” Gag!) and even imprisoned the heroine to punish her for something he thought she’d done. Turned out she was innocent (in more ways then one, of course) but she still fell in love with him and forgave him for everything after a token apology. Repulsive.
LizW65 said on 03.21.11 at 05:05 PM • [link]

Urgh. Thanks for taking one for the team, so to speak. Disturbing as the content of this book clearly is, what’s up with those weird yellow streaks on the cover? Are they supposed to be the sun’s rays pouring down on the young “lovers”, or did somebody spill their Mountain Dew on the book?
carolyn Jewel said on 03.21.11 at 05:17 PM • [link]

The thing I found most terrifying was the number of people who saw what Steve was doing, and didn’t see a problem with it. Even as Jess is screaming for him to stop, to put her down, to go away, they all either turned away or told her to stop struggling and smiling knowingly..

Welcome to the world women lived in prior to the 1990’s. Yes, it’s horrifying, but as someone who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s this is what people thought and how far too many women were treated. We should all be thanking the heavens for Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinham and others who stood up and said This Is Wrong. That’s only one of the lasting legacies of Feminism.
Blue said on 03.21.11 at 05:50 PM • [link]

Ya’ll can say what you want, I am fixing to find it and read this fucker! It sounds absolutely hideous and I am in the mood lately for hideous…don’t get me wrong, I don’t support abusive relationships, I just want to read mindless stupid shit lately.
Carrie S said on 03.21.11 at 06:04 PM • [link]

What an asshat. Not only does he kidnap and rape her, but according to the cover Steve has also wrenched poor Jess’s neck all out of alignment and broken both of her arms, or so I deduce from the weird angles.
redheadedgirl said on 03.21.11 at 06:10 PM • [link]

@Blue, I will send you my copy. email me at redheadedgirl.boston AT gmail
Ann said on 03.21.11 at 06:21 PM • [link]

UGH! I thought that cover looked familiar. Unfortunately, I read that one back in my teenaged days of reading through the entire romance section of our local public library. I do remember now that sometime in the early nineties I did give up all western romances. Wonder if this one is why?
SuperWendy said on 03.21.11 at 06:26 PM • [link]

I did a double-take on the copyright date. I routinely hear (and surely this can’t just be my experience) in some corners of online Romancelandia that historical romances were sooooo much better during the 1990s. Uh yeah. I’m hoping all these readers meant to say “the late 1990s” - because this is the biggest steamiest pile of WTFBBQ I’ve read about in a long time.

Now I need to file this title away somewhere in my brain. I have an annoying habit of “rescuing” Old Skool western romances from UBSes. I don’t want to accidentally “rescue” this one. Yikes!
Zoe Archer said on 03.21.11 at 06:52 PM • [link]

In the immortal words of Han Solo:

It’s not my fault!
Donna said on 03.21.11 at 06:52 PM • [link]

OK, RHG, you win. You are the goddess of masochistic reading. I weep for your pain. As a fellow been-there done that reader, how anyone writer, editor or reader could consider this a romance is beyond me.

As for publishers of that time period putting out any piece of schlock passing itself off as a romance hoping to cash in on the burgeoning popularity? - well, that’s still going on - hence the number of paranormal romances that read like a 5th grader wrote them. Figure out a way to fit a vampire into your book & you’re golden.
redheadedgirl said on 03.21.11 at 06:58 PM • [link]

Okay. Out of class, so lets go down the line:

@ Veronica: AnaB’s comment sums it up pretty well. Most of the time, abusive relationships don’t start with hitting. They start with emotional manipulation, and Edward has that shit down pat. I will give him a pass for the “throwing through a coffee table” thing, because that was protecting her from Jasper losing his shit over a papercut (if I’m remembering the events correctly) and there wasn’t intent there- Jasper being as fast and strong a predator as Edward means steps have to be taken and FAST, so there’s extenuating circumstances. But everything else on the list applies.

@Kate: I’ve called authors out on bad name choices before, but this one had so much that I wanted to talk about that discussing the writing or the research or the names would have made this review even longer, and I didn’t have that kind of time.

Honestly, when I started it, and up until the forced proposal, I didn’t think I was going to review it, because it didn’t seem that it was going to be all that remarkable and I wouldn’t have anything to say other than “clumsy writing, tired old plot, blah blah blah fishcakes.” All of which I’ve said about other books. So, yeah.

@LizW65: the picture on Amazon is a customer picture sent in- I suspect that’s an artifact of the camera or scanner- I don’t recall mine being that striped, but it’s at home and I’m not.

@ Ann: I actually have a series of Westerns from the same early 90s period I really LIKE that I’m working on reviewing. So it’s not all bad.

@SuperWendy: 1991 is still in the transition period, and the fact that this was so egregious and awful and not from the 70s or 80s is what made me want to talk about it. If this had been published even five years earlier, I may not have bothered. I may not have bothered to even read it.

@Zoe: Mmmmhmmmm.
Noelle said on 03.21.11 at 07:14 PM • [link]

THANK GOD I missed out on this one! I was reading romances at a very early age, which coincided with the early 90s, so who knows what this book would have done to a malleable young mind.

RHG, I tip my hat to your determination. I don’t know how you get through some of these books! I hope they’re going directly to your To Be Burned pile. (Bad pun, sorry.)

Time for a mind cleansing! Even reading a review of a pro-rape book makes me feel icky.
DS said on 03.21.11 at 07:19 PM • [link]

I think I’ve read every one of these abuse scenarios in romance novels except they usually weren’t all in the same book. I have no idea what was going on in the US female zeitgeist that made this a fantasy that women wanted to indulge themselves in then or now.

I did wonder if the author was a man, but apparently not. She was still publishing in 2001 with the same bio. But by then RT was only giving her 2 stars I guess that doesn’t prove anything except that by then RT had been hit by a clue bat that not all professionally published novels were worthy of at lease 3 stars.

Actually there were some good romances written in the 1980’s and some good ones written in the 90’s, but also a lot of bad ones mainly because romance novels were the cash cows of publishing. Only a few people seemed to care if they were good or bad.
Zoe Archer said on 03.21.11 at 07:19 PM • [link]

RHR,seriously, I feel like I said, “There’s this really sketchy-looking dude in the parking lot of the 7-11,” and you said, “I’m going to ask him over for a fun game of Uno.”
Chelsea said on 03.21.11 at 07:41 PM • [link]

Romance novels so often have that unique postion of straddling the line between powerful aggressive male and controling douchebag. Although it sounds like in this case Steve pole vaults over that line to the applause of everyone around him.

I was in one of those relationships where my boyfriend acted jealous and possesive and controling and I never thought to question it. I think I liked it on some level. He called the shots, I answered to him for everything, but I felt taken care of. The breaking point was when he punched a guy I’d made friends with, for no reason other then that he was my friend. The physical violence jolted me awake and I ended things. I was lucky to only have wasted 8 months of my life with him.

Anyway, the Steve/Jess relationship reminds me disturbingly of that dark time…really glad I didn’t read it myself.
Asia M said on 03.21.11 at 07:49 PM • [link]

I’ve also used this cover for an illustration of an article in my blog called “I am a feminist and I read romance”, because of the stereotype it represents… I had an idea that the inside would be tacky/cheesy/cliché, but by no means that awful. :|

I must be lucky, ‘cause I’ve never read anything that bad, either in terms of relationship or overall plot. Gotta say I don’t read much romance from before 2000, except from some specific, famous authors (Nora Roberts, SEP, Lisa Kleypas, Judith McNaught ...).

I remember reading this “she couldn’t be a virgin ‘cause she enjoyed the sex too much” thing in an older Harlequin book and was like, WTF? Especially when the whole misunderstanding between the main characters, hence the whole story, derived from this stupid and presumptuous assumption.
Manna Francis said on 03.21.11 at 08:33 PM • [link]

I would not like that book. On the other hand, anyone out there who has a major kink for creepy abusive asshole heroes, forced sex and concussion, this is a book that will make them very happy :-)
Molly Lyle said on 03.21.11 at 08:45 PM • [link]

I’ve destroyed every book I’ve ever gotten near that had this kind of sick relationship crap in it. I don’t sell them to used book stores. I don’t share them with friends.

In fact, I’ve recently picked up a short collection which has, as I see it, a “forced” sexual encounter (with lots of no’s) between old acquaintances in the very first story. And it’s written by a highly published, best-selling author.

The only reason I haven’t thrown it away is that the other three stories are delighful.
MightyJesse said on 03.21.11 at 08:47 PM • [link]

MMMMKAAAAY.

There are some romances from that period that are like the t-shirt I will one day make for my daughter:

“I can’t tell if it’s love, or Stockholm Syndrome.” (She’s 1, and the gushy pink toddler clothes just aren’t cutting it for my inner goth.)

This? This is FO SHOE a case of mistaken identification. She is not in love. She has started identifying with her captor…

>_<

Was there any chance of throwing the book AT the Marshall in hopes that he would shoot it a couple of times?
kkw said on 03.21.11 at 08:47 PM • [link]

OMG this book sounds awesome. I mean, I am very grateful for the ways the world is changing and I know that this sort of literature supports an evil status quo, and I understand why it makes folks angry. But I love awful romance novels. Maybe Blue can send it on to me when done with it?
If there’s only one or two of the crazy WTF moments, if there’s just a single cliche or offensive stereotype, I tend to find it as irritating as the next person. But when each new page brings another revelation of poor choices it becomes an entirely gleeful experience for me. I’m almost sad they don’t make them like that any more - only not really, cause we’ve made so much progress, and have so much yet to make (and also because they used to publish those things by the bazillions so it’s not like I’ll run out).
Brandi said on 03.21.11 at 08:52 PM • [link]

I just…WOW! The beginnings of romance novels were really awful it seems.

Try looking up “The Sheik” on Project Gutenberg sometime.
redheadedgirl said on 03.21.11 at 08:54 PM • [link]

@Zoe: That’s not fair! I haven’t played Uno for AGES. (I do adore you, you know that, right?)

@brandi: Got halfway through it. It’s on my kindle (free!) and, well. Yeah.
Sara said on 03.21.11 at 09:16 PM • [link]

Wow. Just wow.

The names remind me of “Full House” for some reason…also, “Saved By the Bell”. Except both of those shows are much better than this book sounds.
JaneDrew said on 03.21.11 at 09:22 PM • [link]

Wow… just… wow. Good thing I was not drinking anything while reading that…

(contemporary romance plot idea: meet-cute when she chucks a horrible romance novel at handsome air marshall hero’s head….)
Blue said on 03.21.11 at 09:24 PM • [link]

kkw: I’d be glad to forward it on once I get my hands on one, email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). When you are done just burn it and we will pretend like it never happened.
cleo said on 03.21.11 at 09:52 PM • [link]

@SuperWendy - I agree with RHG that the early 90s were transitional. We had Amanda Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) writing mostly great, non-rapey historicals - which in my opinion, are way better than her current historicals. And then we had crap like this. A lot of crap like this. Ugh.

I got into romances in the early 90’s and garbage like this lovely specimen must be why a) I kept my romance habit a guilty, guilty secret, and b) discovering Quick seemed like such a revelation at the time - smart heroines and non-abusive heroes!?!! Who like each other? What a concept! When I wax nostalgic for the wonderful historicals of yore, I’m thinking of books like Quick’s Ravished or Desire and blocking all the horrible books I picked up and never finished during the same time period.
Carrie S said on 03.21.11 at 10:33 PM • [link]

@Zoe and redheaded girl…uno, eh? Well, if that’s what you young kids are calling it these days…
Carrie S said on 03.21.11 at 10:34 PM • [link]

@Mighty Jesse - check out Think Geek. I bet your goth toddler would love a t shirt that says “Self-rescuing princess”.
Emily said on 03.21.11 at 10:38 PM • [link]

Romance novels were started before the 70’s and 80’s, so I am confused. Why was it such a trend for rape books? I read about ten Barbara Cartland books as a young teen? Her heroines were virgins of course, but eventually they got married and sometimes even included brief if vague descriptions of the wedding nights after everyone was in love where the rake-groom made love to his virgin bride and She enjoyed it. (and she had already decided to hook up with him, even if she didn’t understand what was involved.)
what happened? sorry I am young, and new to this site.
People always say that women needed rape to experience sexuality, but why?
Also if there were people like this; it seems to me there are a lot of people still out there like this.
Diva said on 03.21.11 at 10:42 PM • [link]

All hail RHG! You are the QUEEN! I love your reviews.

This one in particular was very illuminating in that, often times, I am tempted to dismiss such degrading and dangerous plot points as “dated” when in fact, as you say, they equate control with love.

This also sounds like a freakishly long book. I kept thinking the summary would end…and it continued seemingly for eternity. I doubt I would have finished the novel myself.
Lori S. said on 03.21.11 at 10:51 PM • [link]

Wow. Just…wow. Thanks for taking another one for the team, RHG.
infinitieh said on 03.21.11 at 11:00 PM • [link]

The review is hilarious as are many of the comments. I’m so glad I didn’t start reading romances until the last few years (except for some Harlequins in college); I don’t know what my poor mind would have been warped into (the most overtly sexual book - with a sexually frank heroine - I read as a teen was Heinlein’s “Friday”).

As for Edward’s being abuse, I definitely saw him as very controlling throughout the entire series. On one hand, he was a lot older and had more life experience, especially dealing with the dangers of vampires, than Bella. Bella, who was a rather together and responsible teen girl until she met Edward, fell apart after being with him. This is why I didn’t like the series (yes, I read all 4 books). I want to see characters grow in the course of a book, especially for YA, not regress. Bella had plans of college and was taking care of herself and her father. Then the whole Edward thing happened and she can’t even take care of herself, let alone her dreams - no wonder Edward wanted to tell her what to do; I wanted to do so as well. Yes, Jacob at times was manipulative but at least he was an actual teenager so he was bound to make mistakes in a relationship; Edward didn’t have that excuse.
redheadedgirl said on 03.21.11 at 11:00 PM • [link]

@ Diva: It was maybe 400 page, mass market with annoyingly small typeface. I also got annoyingly detailed in the summary because I wanted to make sure I hit most of the low points (but there were SO many more examples of Steve the Asshole I didn’t put it).

@ Emily: The answer to your question is pretty complicated. I will also say that I think the earliest I’ve read is The Flame and the Flower, from… 74? and that’s a pretty classic example of a rape-y OG Old Skool romance.

First, the perception of female sexuality in that era was in major flux, and the rape narrative gave the heroine “permission” to enjoy extra-marital sex without seeming like a slut. Society has been very very VERY screwed up about women and sex for a VERY long time and it gets reflected in the art of society. I do not believe it’s a coincidence that romances got less rapey as women’s sexuality got more….um, mainstream is the word I want, I think? Heroes, as a trend, got less Alpha-Male and controlling as women and society because to put up with that type of shit less. It’s still not perfect, not by any means, but it’s better. And the art, again, reflects that.

Second: a fair number (and I did not know this until I review Purity’s Passion a couple months ago) were written by men. Knowing that, a lot of things that bothered me about Purity’s Passion make sense.

Third: A number of books from the 70s and 80s were more “epic historicals” rather than romances, and were about women (how was it put in the Adora comments?) “fucking through history.” One way people at the time were writing about women and major historical events was putting them at the fringes, and making the majority of those sexual encounters non-consensual made the heroine (again) not a promiscuous slut.

That’s only a couple of reasons, by no means all of them. Sarah and Candy’s book Beyond Heaving Bosoms has a pretty good analysis of Rape in Romance, as well
Fiamma said on 03.21.11 at 11:22 PM • [link]

Brandi - Just read about The Sheik on Wikipedia and you can rest assured I am not touching that book with a ten foot pole.
HelenMac said on 03.21.11 at 11:24 PM • [link]

Oh, RHG, you and your review are SO AWESOME. This book sounds terrible, and I will not be picking it up, ever, because yeah, I don’t need more rage in my life.
Fiamma said on 03.21.11 at 11:24 PM • [link]

Brandi - I just looked up THe Sheik and no, just no. A huge WTF on that one.
Allyson said on 03.21.11 at 11:28 PM • [link]

Isn’t Friday the one where she actually “lies back and enjoys” rape?

I loved Heinlein as a teen and I think he gave me many, many more effed up ideas about what love and sex should be like than the romances I read.
T. L. Haddix said on 03.21.11 at 11:39 PM • [link]

Wow. What to say first?

RHG, you rock. Love your reviews. You mention just up there *points* about ‘epic historicals’. I remember a Diana Palmer book where the heroine is a writer, romance of course, and the hero sneers at her because she has to wear racy clothing to her book signings and thinks she’s a ho because she has racy, steamy scenes in her books. She defends those scenes by saying something along the lines of “Well, they won’t publish the books without it.” (Very loose paraphrasing on my part) She defends the books by saying they’re really historical accounts of things, blah blah. I wondered at the time if this was the author’s way of saying she only includes sex in her books because it’s a requirement to be published. Kind of like having to try out the casting couch in Hollywood…

Okay, another thing - I’m glad I didn’t have access to a ton of books in the early 1990s. I lived in a geographically isolated region, and Wal-Mart/K-Mart were pretty much the only choices for book sources.

Carolyn J., there are unfortunately still regions of the country where this sort of behavior goes unpunished or unacknowledged. Getting less and less common, but it still happens. :(
Maureen O'Danu said on 03.22.11 at 12:02 AM • [link]

I just riffed off your review back at my own blog and gave you some link love. It pisses me off that this shit even gets published. Really? I mean, really? Romances are for women? What makes the publisher think that this is what women want?

I know dozens of talented writers whose writing languishes on the B list while this stuff gets shipped in droves. Gah!

http://amnottheonlyone.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-books-need-warning-labels.html
Miranda said on 03.22.11 at 01:02 AM • [link]

You know, I have to cut Steve a little slack. If I had 2 heads and one of them was a little white horse, I wouldn’t be a very nice person either.

So, show some compassion, y’all :)
Maureen O'Danu said on 03.22.11 at 01:09 AM • [link]

I was wrong. The author really is a female. Found at http://historicalromancewriters.com/authorinfo.cfm?authorid=707 compl,ete with picture:

From the time JoAnn could read, the written word became a passion. She could be anyone and go anywhere. Married for over thirty years to husband Tom, she has been blessed with a man who supports her passion for writing. Stimulated by several authors, she found the literary world as fascinating as the real one and set out to write a novel. And re-write as she learned the craft. Her first book, Scoundrel’s Captive, introduced her to the wonderful world of networking and travel. Scoundrel’s Desire opened the doors to feminine bonding from all over the world. When not writing, she works full time, fishes whenever possible with her husband, and still keeps reading, researching and learning. As an Administative Assistant for Healing the Children, JoAnn feels she has the best of all worlds.
infinitieh said on 03.22.11 at 01:13 AM • [link]

@Allyson, I vaguely remember some scifi book in which the heroine endured being gang-raped by provoking her captors with how none of them are man enough to satisfy her or something. That might have been from Heinlein’s “Friday”. I just didn’t like the idea that in the future, when space travel and engineered people are common place, they still had to kill a rabbit for a pregnancy test.
cleo said on 03.22.11 at 01:58 AM • [link]

@ infinitieh and Allyson - I remember reading Friday many years ago. Talk about WTF. Not only is she gang-raped, but her nipple is sawn off by bad-guys and then later re-grown (so that makes it ok). And at some point she’s part of a group marriage (that made an impression on me - pretty sure that was my first introduction to poly-amorous-ness, if that’s the right term). I had to look this up on Amazon to make sure I remembered this right, and wow, it’s way worse than I remembered. I’d forgotten that she marries one of her rapists. Ick.
sandra said on 03.22.11 at 02:24 AM • [link]

I have have actually read THE SHIEK. I bet if you typed it up as a manuscript, and offered it to Harlequin under the title THE DESERT SHIEK’S CAPTIVE BLONDE VIRGIN, it would get published.
elph said on 03.22.11 at 02:39 AM • [link]

Heinlen had some pretty WTF stuff back in the day. In high school I made a bet with a buddy as to who could finish his The Number of the Beast first. Neither of us could finish it, as it turned out, so the bet was forfeit. There was consensual incest in that one - but it was to save humanity, so apparently that made it okay (blergh).
DM said on 03.22.11 at 03:41 AM • [link]

@ Superwendy

I did a double-take on the copyright date. I routinely hear (and surely this can’t just be my experience) in some corners of online Romancelandia that historical romances were sooooo much better during the 1990s. Uh yeah. I’m hoping all these readers meant to say “the late 1990s”

I’m pretty sure Mary Jo Putney’s Silk trilogy came out in 1991 or 1992. I think when readers reminisce about historicals from that time, they aren’t yearning for the rapey stuff; they miss the variety in time periods and depth of research that has become tough to find today. Regencies used to be category books. Now they dominate the single title market. If you want something a little different (and Putney’s silk books are Victorian and take you places like Afghanistan during the Great Game) you have to search harder these days. Not that you can’t find them (and most of the breakout authors recently aren’t writing Regencies ie Bourne, Milan, Duran) but I suspect that books like Scoundrel’s Captive are the reason why readers, publishers, and authors shy away from other periods. With a Regency, the conventional settings preclude rape in a teepee.
oldbitey said on 03.22.11 at 03:42 AM • [link]

Jay-sus, RHG. You are the Richard Harris of romance masochism. Reading this book seems like the equivalent of being strung up by your nipples al la A Man Called Horse.
Kinsey said on 03.22.11 at 03:55 AM • [link]

Holy f’ing shit.

While I was writing a very long post about La Woodiwiss for the MacMillan blog, I had to go back and read some of her stuff, because it’s been literally 35 years since I last read them (in junior high in the 70s). And I was agog, anew, at all the rapetastic elements in The Flame and the Flower and, even more so, in The Wolf and The Dove (I hate Wolfgar. Fucking hate him.) Reading these books as a grown woman was very strange. I was appalled, and disappointed, in the way you’re disappointed when you remember loving something as a youngster and finding it not at all the same thing when you’re grown.

All of which is to say that compared to THIS fuckery, Woodiwiss was enlightened.

RHG - I would never ask you to read this, but a while back my MIL gave me a Violet Winspear book - apparently she was hugely popular in the 60s and 70s - IOW, before and after Woodiwiss. A Brit, she was originally a Mills and Boon author. Her books didn’t have explicit sex, but boy howdy did they have rapetastic, abusive heroes. The hero of The Honey Is Bitter, the book I read, blackmails the heroine into marriage. He’s cold and taunting and controlling but of course, when the lights go out she can’t help herself. The Magic Wang, it’s just that good.

The prose is stilted and the narrative has this oddly detached air. It felt like I was reading a story about a story, if you know what I mean. No emotional depth to the characters whatsoever. It was so bad I looked up Violet (long dead) at Wikipedia and found that she wrote a hell of a lot of books and was wildly popular. I also ran across this quote from her:

“I get my heroes so that they’re lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they’ve got to be rich and then I make it that they’re only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they’re well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it’s dangerous to be alone in the room with.”

What the fuck indeed.

It also occurs to me that I may have commented about Violet here before and, if I did, I apologize. I’m getting old.
Jen B. said on 03.22.11 at 04:14 AM • [link]

I need an Excedrin!
redheadedgirl said on 03.22.11 at 04:15 AM • [link]

OMG, Kinsey. I’ve got The Wolf and the Dove on my kindle and HOLY CRAP.
Kinsey said on 03.22.11 at 05:02 AM • [link]

Yep. Something I didn’t recall from my junior high days - the part where they lose the baby? And at first she’s all distraught but then it’s like - oh well, the baby’s gone. Might as well go home. Now, I know losing a child in the Dark Ages was far more common than today but holy crap - he wasn’t dead, he was kidnapped! Why wasn’t she beating Wulfgar with his own sword and yelling “Get your men and find my baby RIGHT THIS GODDAMN MINUTE YOU ASSHOLE!”
orangehands said on 03.22.11 at 05:32 AM • [link]

Now, in early Roman law, there was a provision in contract law that consent under duress is still consent. But Roman jurists figured out that that was a douchey thing, and recognized that consent under duress is not consent at all.

Yeah, rape activists are still working on getting people to recognize that today.

AnaB: As much as I love Crusie, I always had issues with that book too. I thought Bill was done excellently and (except for the jail term ending) realistically, but I had issues with Nick. Esp there was a seduction scene that was borderline for me, because it was from the heroine’s pov and you read her wanting it, but if you look at it from the hero’s it was just her saying no several times.
Kris said on 03.22.11 at 06:06 AM • [link]

First book of Mom’s that I ever swiped and read under cover of blankets with a flashlight was “A Pirate’s Lady” by Johanna Lindsey. At age 13, I can’t believe that I wasn’t completely put off romances for the rest of my life with that bit of rap-e tomfuckery. I would get the physical shits if I even had a CLUE that my 15 year old had read a book like that!

It just reinforces Dark Helmet’s stupid little domination game with the dolls in Spaceballs, right?
Cakes said on 03.22.11 at 06:40 AM • [link]

holy crappers. I had a panic attack just reading the review. Why would nobody help her?!
LG said on 03.22.11 at 07:10 AM • [link]

On the subject of younger selves reading the rapey hero books and enjoying them: I was talking with a friend the other day, and she mentioned that she was a bit horrified, now, thinking about the romance novels she read and enjoyed when she was younger and thought her younger self should have read books where the heroes weren’t quite so…rapey. I know my mom was horrified when, after I’d grown up, she found out about some of the books I read when I was younger. I’ve reread some of those books, and they bother me now, too.

The thing is, though, I really do think quite a bit of it must have either gone over my younger self’s head, or gotten twisted to suit my needs. Somehow I gradually got to the point where I started disliking some of the things the uber Alpha heroes did, and disliking that the heroines only ever offered token protests. And somehow this happened without me ever having to sit down with someone and talk about just what was so very wrong about the way the the characters in these books were acting.

So, I’m not saying I’d ever say, “Yay, here, read these!” if my niece started taking in interest in romance novels with uber Alpha rapey heroes (my niece isn’t even a year old yet, so there’s time before this would ever be an issue), but I’d like to think I wouldn’t freak out if I found out she was reading stuff like this (well, hopefully not exactly stuff like this). I’d just have to make sure I left some palate cleaners lying around.
Deirdre said on 03.22.11 at 07:54 AM • [link]

Also thinking of my younger self (or my daughter…quelle horreur!) reading these rape-ventures passing as romance novels and shivering. (I would have been reading as a late teen, twenty-something in the late 70’s/early 80’s). As LG said, much of the story must have gone over our heads or we re-imagined it to fit our somewhat limited construct at the time. I do know that in my dealings with the men in my life I utilized what I picked up in my readings…when I said “No”, I made sure that the man of the moment respected that I, indeed, meant an absolute, resolute, uncompromising “No”. And the minute I got the hint of “I am a manly man and you must recognize and respect that”, he was outta there. So perhaps, for some of us, these hideous stories learned us a little somethin’. That being said, I’m glad their day has waned to the point that so many of you younger women are horrified and fascinated, as if by an animal that is extinct. Yay!

ball49…even if you have that many brass ones, I still mean “No”
Karen said on 03.22.11 at 11:49 AM • [link]

Good lord, how did you read the whole book? I couldn’t even read the whole review—I had to cut to the chase (your analysis at the end) about half way through.

Of course, in my younger days, I’d have likely read the whole damn thing. Heaven knows, I read my share of Winspear and Woodiwiss, et al. They all belong, with varying degrees, to the subgenre of “romance” in which the hero spends the vast majority of the book verbally (if not physically) abusing the heroine, believing despite all evidence to the contrary the absolute worst about her whenever possible and in the final HEA scene asks, “Couldn’t you tell how much I loved you all this time?” To which any sensible woman would have responded, “????? You mean, all those times you called me a bitch and a whore and thief and socially deficient? You mean all THOSE little clues? Yeah, no, “I love you, woman” wasn’t exactly the message I took from that.” But of course the heroine usually responded with something a bit less insightful, like “Oh, darling, I was a fool!”

Hit54—over the years, I’ve wanted to hit more heroines than that (for the above….)
Aryn said on 03.22.11 at 12:09 PM • [link]

Living it will make you a whole lot more sensitive to this sort of thing. I know I absolutely hate/cannot stand/scream icky-icky in situations of a character being helpless no-chance-to-stand-up-for-oneself trapped. Glad you made it out.
Bets said on 03.22.11 at 12:30 PM • [link]

I feel your pain. I just finished a John Ringo novella (SF) where the main character is abducted, repeatedly raped, then “falls in love with” her rapist (an asshat who could give Hitler stiff competition for the title of Most Self-Righteous Narcissistic Sociopath of All Time). It was marketed as erotica, although the novella isn’t exceptionally explicit. (Or particularly erotic—it totally lacked the heat that a good author can generate when they pay attention to more than slot A—> tab B.) Trust me, it wasn’t the orgy I found disturbing.

It was the complete and utter WTF-ery of the author’s attempt to convince the reader that the heroine was a kick-ass genius who a) had Stockholm Syndrome and b) enjoyed being raped while c) also plotting the villain’s demise. Yeah.

The rape/dominance/submission theme was really heavy handed, and after reading it, I kinda wish I could take a whiteboard eraser to my brain and scrub the last hour from my memory. I like some of his other work, but reading this made me feel—unclean.
DeeAnnW said on 03.22.11 at 12:43 PM • [link]

RHG, I loved your review! You remind me of myself with the exception that I have the sound effect. For example: “eh uhhhh,” and tilting my head in confusion. A lot of reality shows use the sound effect and I insert my own. Crazy yes, but I amuse myself. You did better than I and finished the book whereas I would have left it in the pouch on the airplane seat in front of me. And think of the joy it would bring to someone on the next flight! NOT!

I am a Twi-Mom and I didn’t discover the Twilight series until I took my daughter to see Eclipse. (She saw the first two movies.) I came out thinking ‘what is so great about Bella and why does everyone want her?” Then I got sucked into the series. I gloss over the controlling/stalking factor and stare at Edward because 1) he’s tall and 2) has a strong jawline. Stupid, I know.

I read Flame and the Flower and it was passed around to my girlfriends while I was in high school. Definitely two rape scenes that I recall but romance has evolved (one would hope). At least I don’t get that far in the book because I give it the heave-ho before my gag reflex cranks up.

Great review—as always!
Bets said on 03.22.11 at 01:12 PM • [link]

Oh, and if this novel bugged you DO NOT read Linda Howard’s An Independent Wife. Under Any Circumstances. Over the course of the novel, the asshat “hero” destroys his estranged wife’s career, gets her pregnant, and behaves like a seriously scary stalker. At one point, he even cleans out her apartment and tells the landlady to find a new tenant, to force the heroine to “turn to him for help.” ‘Cause any guy who intentionally forces a woman into a situation where she is homeless, pregnant, and unemployed is CLEARLY hero material. Shudder.
MicheleKS said on 03.22.11 at 02:05 PM • [link]

Books like this were the reason I didn’t get into historical romance when I first got hot and heavy into romance (1992-1993). I gravitated toward contemporary (discovered my author-goddess Nora Roberts) though I did read Amanda Quick (loved the early books) and Mary Jo Putney’s Silk Series. But speaking of Mary Jo Putney, does anyone remember ‘Dearly Beloved’? The first sex scene is so clearly a rape but there were people who tried to- I don’t know- minimize it or something. I kept it on my shelf for awhile then tossed it after I thought about it. Speaking of Linda Howard, anyone remember ‘Duncan’s Bride’ and ‘Loving Evangeline’? Duncan’s wasn’t a total asshat-fest but I can’t read ‘Evangeline’ now. And how about ‘Sarah’s Child’? I finally had to get rid of that one because why would any woman stay with a man who was so emotionally unavailable to her?

Thank doG we’ve come a long way from this and that heroines are so much more demanding. And that heroes don’t have their heads stuck up their backsides as much as they used to.
Steph said on 03.22.11 at 03:00 PM • [link]

You know I haven;t read the comments so someone may already have mentioned that not too long ago in TX, I believe, consent under duress = consent was still being argued in a criminal case. A woman asked a man to wear a condom as he raped her and that was construed as consent. Can’t recall the outcome since it dragged on for ages.

Books such as this may have been what the defense lawyer was reading.
Donna said on 03.22.11 at 07:35 PM • [link]

Again, I stand by my 35 yr old position: Laurie McBain. All the WTF, none of the rape.
redgirl said on 03.22.11 at 10:04 PM • [link]

Wow. I’ll add my voice to the throng in saying Great Review! Really makes me want to pull out my quill and crimson ink and review some of the crazier stuff I have lying around….
infinitieh said on 03.22.11 at 10:36 PM • [link]

Come to think if it, “Friday” may be the reason I never read another Heinlein even though I read a lot of scifi books.
Kinsey said on 03.23.11 at 12:10 AM • [link]

Donna: I just found McBain’s Moonstruck Madness on PBSwap - the original cover, which I adore. Can’t wait to read it again.

I remember reading The Wind Flower when it first came out and thinking - whoa - he’s not gonna force her? I was in college by this time and hadn’t read romance in a long time - I was completely over the whole historical rapes ‘n creams style, and I thought that’s what all romance was. Windflower was a HUGE shock - no forcible seduction, no threatening to kill the heroine or her family or her kitten to make her acquiesce, and quite a bit of lighthearted humor, which was seriously lacking in romance at that time.
Melody said on 03.23.11 at 12:15 AM • [link]

I feel your pain. I just finished a John Ringo novella (SF) where the main character is abducted, repeatedly raped, then “falls in love with” her rapist (an asshat who could give Hitler stiff competition for the title of Most Self-Righteous Narcissistic Sociopath of All Time).

Yes. There’s a reason why the phrase OH JOHN RINGO NO is popular on the internet.
Alpha Lyra said on 03.23.11 at 12:40 AM • [link]

I have a theory that part of the audience of books like these is women who’ve been in abusive relationships like this (perhaps still are) and want to “rewrite the ending.”
lunarocket said on 03.23.11 at 01:34 AM • [link]

this tripe also includes my favourite pet peeve - the supposedly harmless use of concussion as anaesthetic. It turns up so often, and makes me grind my teeth so hard

I’ve come across quite a few concussions (mostly accidental, fortunately) but what drives me nuts is how the hero (usually the hero) manages to have great sex because hey’ the blood rushing to the other end makes the head ache better. Maybe this is so in some cases, I don’t know, but I do know one thing. I had a nasty concussion a couple years ago and there was NO WAY IN HELL I was in the mood for any kind of sex, never mind mind blowing sex. I was more in the mood to throw up. But hey, maybe you have to be in a REAL romance for sex to cure concussions.
Kinsey said on 03.23.11 at 02:06 AM • [link]

Oh Melody. Oh Melody, oh….holy shit. I just spent 45 minutes reading that whole thing, plus the comments, and….shudder. I only knew of Ringo through the alien invasion books - I read the first two, thought they were okay, but this…I had no idea. I’ve read Mack Bolan-type crap from the 50s and 60s that wasn’t NEARLY this kind of fucked up.

I mean, I have a very high tolerance for weird shit, and I sometimes read comments around here by people who threw books against the wall for stuff I frankly found not the least bit squiffy or offensive, but if I ever picked up a book that contained the kind of crap this Paladin of Shadows shit has, I think I’d put a few bullets in the book and mail it to Ringo.

I mean, of course I wouldn’t really, because then I’d be investigated by the FBI but sweet Jesus in the lap of Mary. That is some kind of FUBAR.
bookstorecat said on 03.23.11 at 03:32 AM • [link]

At one point, he even cleans out her apartment and tells the landlady to find a new tenant, to force the heroine to “turn to him for help.”

I couldn’t imagine this was set in modern times…but it is. Wow.
Susan/DC said on 03.23.11 at 05:24 AM • [link]

Linda Howard’s An Independent Wife should be banned for misleading advertising or something, as the wife is anything but. It’s the first book of hers I read and I almost swore off her entirely, but then others recommended Son of the Morning, which I loved. Hard to believe the same woman wrote both books.

Not having read either book I can’t really compare, but from what I’ve heard Christine Monson’s Stormfire could give Scoundrel’s Captive a run for its money. I think the hero, Sean, rapes the heroine, Catherine, when she’s a teenager and sends her undergarments to her father to show what he’s done (it’s an historical revenge kind of thing). Later he locks her up and gives her to his men to have their way with her. And there’s more. I think it’s one of those books where it’s supposed to show how hard he is and that she’s the only one who can soften him (somehow that didn’t come out right in the context of a romance novel)—the old bad boy tamed by the love of a good woman trope. Perhaps RHG could do a compare and contrast, Steve versus Sean, just like all those school exams.
de Pizan said on 03.23.11 at 07:09 AM • [link]

Not that I’d expect much historical accuracy from a book of this level of WTFery, but I have to respond about part of it. Although some American Indian tribes were free and easy with the loving, others had strict moral codes regarding sleeping around. The Crow were among the latter. It’s extremely unlikely that a Crow woman would help pimp out a woman who was a guest in her camp unless a marriage had taken place.
LG said on 03.23.11 at 01:26 PM • [link]

@Melody - !!! I had to stop reading the post you linked to, because OH JOHN RINGO NO wasn’t helping. I cheered at the introduction of the character who actually hates the “hero,” because, even just from what I was reading in the post, I hated the hero, too. But I had to stop reading, because my brain was starting to shut down from the horror.
AgTigress said on 03.23.11 at 02:28 PM • [link]

Linda Howard’s An Independent Wife should be banned for misleading advertising or something, as the wife is anything but. It’s the first book of hers I read and I almost swore off her entirely, but then others recommended Son of the Morning, which I loved. Hard to believe the same woman wrote both books.

This is the thing about Linda Howard, Susan/DC; when she is good, she is very, very good, and when she is bad, she is horrid. Split personality, or something. An Independent Wife is probably the very worst of her early novels with abusive ‘heroes’ and Patient Griselda, masochistic heroines, but there are several others of the same type. Sarah’s Child and The Cutting Edge (both published in 1985) run it very close, and you should also give a wide berth to Tears of the Renegade (same year) and Almost Forever (1986). Personally I find the ‘heroes’ who try to control and intimidate heroines psychologically even sicker and scarier than the rapists, because it is obvious that they totally despise the women. Physical violence can be a brief, even uncharacteristic, loss of control: sustained emotional abuse is innate, part of the perpetrator’s character. The loathsome ‘hero’ of Howard’s The Cutting Edge could act the way he does only if he thought the heroine to be both dishonest and stupid, definitely not a recipe for a happy relationship. But by 1990, in Duncan’s Bride, Howard had the heroine fighting back, asserting herself and totally turning the tables on the hero, and of course other books of hers of this period, like Mackenzie’s Mountain (1989) have become romance classics.

I am not sure how much influence was wielded by the publishers of category romance at the period, though I do know that some younger editors coming in to the Harlequin set-up in the 1990s were opposed to the abusive heroes and doormat heroines, and were therefore instrumental in bringing about change.

Remember that many readers actively enjoyed books like this at the time: they would not have bought and read them otherwise. Some of you admitted to enjoying them when younger yourselves. We should be very careful about making judgements based on our own current socio-cultural norms and assumptions in the early 21st century. Women who have lived through the considerable changes of the six decades since the end of the Second World War all know how they have changed within themselves, and how society around them has changed. These novels need to be seen in chronological and cultural context.

I think the theory mentioned by Alpha Lyra, above, has much to be said for it: that some women who had experienced abusive relationships may have liked such stories because they outline a different, and happier, outcome, in which the male is converted or ‘domesticated’ (that is, ultimately changed and even controlled) by the patient love and tolerance of the woman. There is also the ever-present element of fantasy to take into account. Rather than use the highly emotive example of violent, forced sex, consider the very common sexual fantasy of ‘sex in a public place’. Many women actively enjoy that fantasy, with its implicit element of lust so irresistible that it cannot be fought, and find it arousing to read about such scenes. But most of those same women would never tolerate public copulation in reality. The turn-on applies only in a fantasy context, not real life.

One thing stands out for me: romance novels, far more than ‘literary fiction’, and more than other ‘genre’ fiction, too, are a mine of information about the mores of their own time, about the experiences, fears and desires of their readers in a given culture and at a specific point in time. There is still a huge amount of study to be done on them. What we should not do is simply dismiss certain tropes out of hand from our own contemporary viewpoint, without trying to understand what they may tell us about the society which gave rise to them. For example, what are we (and future generations) to make of the popularity of vampire fantasy with young readers at the present time? To me, from the vantage point of old age, it seems every bit as weird as the acceptance of cruel, arrogant, controlling males as ‘heroes’ a mere 25 years ago.
bookstorecat said on 03.23.11 at 04:20 PM • [link]

What I see in the rise of paranormal romance is that we’ve taken these unacceptable behaviors—possessiveness, aggressiveness, violence (even sexual violence)—and made up a new excuse for them…He’s a WEREWOLF…/vampire/half-demon/dragon/whatever.

So it’s okay. “He can’t help it; it was the night before the full-moon, so he HAD to have sex with me (against my will).” Or, “It’s not like a TEENAGE BOY is stalking me, watching me sleep, bossing me around like he’s my owner, etc., etc. He’s a vampire, so it’s…sweet.”
LG said on 03.23.11 at 05:09 PM • [link]

@bookstorecat - Actually, that’s why I can stand this kind of thing a little better in paranormal romance - there is an extra layer of fantasy. And, even then, I require that the paranormal aspects actually be an important part of the book - I’m not as big of a fan if the vampire is essentially a regular guy with sharp teeth and a special power tacked on, or the werewolf is just a regular guy who just happens to be able to turn into a wolf. These kinds of things shouldn’t be just surface level - I find them most believable when they actually have an effect on how the characters think. For me, a good example is Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten (I thought Clay was a bastard and didn’t actually start to warm up to him until later in the series. It helps a lot that Elena was also pissed at him for what he did).
orangehands said on 03.23.11 at 07:53 PM • [link]

Melody: I just finished reading the link and OH MY GOD STOP IT JOHN RINGO. The reviewer is definitely giving too much credit to a couple of paragraphs for *changing* the dynamic of the story. *shudders until she takes a bleach shower* Hell that’s sick. I really wished Katya used her strength to kill the hero cause he’s got a level of squick that is just…ugh, I need more brain bleach.

bookstorecat: I definitely agree with you there.
AgTigress said on 03.23.11 at 07:53 PM • [link]

What I see in the rise of paranormal romance is that we’ve taken these unacceptable behaviors—possessiveness, aggressiveness, violence (even sexual violence)—and made up a new excuse for them…He’s a WEREWOLF…/vampire/half-demon/dragon/whatever.

That is my interpretation too, Bookstorecat, but I have sometimes been shouted down quite angrily when I have suggested (too simply, perhaps) that the vampire is often just the vicious 1980s ‘hero’ in a different guise. The paranormal trappings do provide a context that separates the characterisation and events from contemporary real life, and so did many of the historicals of the 1970s/80s. Eighteenth-century pirates were probably a pretty rough lot, and 18thC women lacked the legal and social status we take for granted, so there was indeed an excuse for the depiction of male aggression against women. Particularly in poorly-researched historical novels, there is no doubt that the setting is being used as an invented fantasy world, only loosely based on the real past (which is not to say that the real past was not often quite grim, of course).

There is no such explanation for the Linda Howard and Elizabeth Lowell contemporaries of the 1980s with abusive heroes. Women read these stories and enjoyed them. We have to get over it.
kkw said on 03.23.11 at 08:13 PM • [link]

What AgTigress said, times a million.
Life imitates art, and fiction can propagate and reinforce all kinds of terrible cultural mores, which is certainly scary. But intentionally didactic art leaves me cold; art should be for its own sake, not an attempt to reform or edify. If you find something offensive, by all means, say you don’t like it and why, as redheadedgirl does so phenomenally. But why try to censor or control other people’s access to or enjoyment of if?
I’m perturbed by the underlying notion that I can’t separate fantasy and reality, and the idea that I don’t have the right to enjoy whatever fantasies I please without being judged. I think that saying ‘this sort of trash shouldn’t be published’, or ‘only sick individuals could enjoy this’ (not actual quotes, I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to call anyone out specifically) is a very slippery slope.
I enjoy all sorts of scenarios in a book that are utterly unacceptable to me in reality, and I have never been raped, abused sexually or otherwise, stalked, or even really treated disrespectfully by a boyfriend (other than 1 guy I dated briefly when I was a teenager who cheated on me but it wasn’t part of a pattern or formative so I can’t see any relevance). I’ve never struggled with sexual agency or guilt/shame around sex.
I like variety in the sexual situations I read in fiction precisely the same way I don’t need to identify with a heroine to enjoy seeing things from her perspective, or the way I love reading about heroes who aren’t my type. I don’t read romance novels because something is lacking in my own life, or because of my sadly damaged kinkiness, I just enjoy a good escape.
Although I freely admit I may be on a very different soapbox after I read this book.
Emily said on 03.23.11 at 09:17 PM • [link]

@redheadedgirl
I really liked your review and the way you responded to my comments.
That being said this book sounds awful.
bookstorecat said on 03.23.11 at 09:59 PM • [link]

@AgTigress

just the vicious 1980s ‘hero’ in a different guise

This seems particularly apt when the supernatural hero is also a very wealthy guy, especially of the “self-made millionaire” type. That’s a trope—not, I know, exclusive to then—that I will always associate with the kind of contemporaries I read growing up in the 80s.

@LG
I have been curious about Bitten recently because I enjoyed Armstrong’s teen books (an excellent escape from reality, especially while home sick). I read the sample on my nook just last week, in fact.
LG said on 03.23.11 at 10:22 PM • [link]

@bookstorecat - It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember it being very good and very different from anything I’d read before at that time. Not technically paranormal romance (more urban fantasy, one of the earliest examples, I think), so it maybe wasn’t the best example to use, but Clay is definitely not just a human with werewolf characteristics tacked on. He does things prior to the start of the book, and throughout the series, that I think I would have had more problems forgiving/moving past if he weren’t so “other.”
DM said on 03.23.11 at 10:29 PM • [link]

If I recall correctly, Heaving Bossoms also talks about the migration of the abusive hero to the paranormal genre. And having read widely in old skool historicals, newer historicals, and paranormals, I find this idea convincing. Supernatural heroes routines abduct the heroine, isolate her from friends and family, and engage in forced seduction/rape. The layer of fantasy cited by LG is just a different flavor of fantasy. The world of say, Regency London, in a great many historicals, is just as much a fantasy as the wold of the Carpathians. In historicals, much hero behavior was justified by aristocratic status of the hero and the mores of the place and time, and the heroine’s will was violated “for her own good.” In paranormals the hero’s behavior is justified by the rules of the supernatural world created by the author, and the heroine’s will is violated “for her own good.”

If you consider the similarities, and the fact that paranormals now occupy the top selling spot that historicals once did, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that we are still avid consumers of rapist heros.
Kinsey said on 03.23.11 at 10:34 PM • [link]

I thought Clay was a bastard and didn’t actually start to warm up to him until later in the series

See, I had no problem with Clay - yes, he was an asshole and he needed to understand how badly he behaved. But the guy is permanently f’ed up, broken in a very real sense. A feral child attacked by a werewolf and living in a swamp, surviving on road kill and other children, will never develop an innate understanding of human social mores. It’s like asking a human being to grow a new leg. We don’t work that way.
LG said on 03.23.11 at 10:59 PM • [link]

But the guy is permanently f’ed up, broken in a very real sense. A feral child attacked by a werewolf and living in a swamp, surviving on road kill and other children, will never develop an innate understanding of human social mores. It’s like asking a human being to grow a new leg. We don’t work that way.

Yeah, but that was something I didn’t really get until later, at which time I softened towards him. At first, though, he was just a guy who happened to be a werewolf who’d taken the heroine’s choices away. Actually, I don’t think I really understood him until Men of the Otherworld - part of the reason why I loved that book. I still haven’t reread Bitten since reading that book, but I want to, just to see how I feel about him now.
Melody said on 03.23.11 at 11:54 PM • [link]

@ Kinsey, LG, and orangehands—I completely agree. When I read that review, I simply could not believe that those books had actually been published. The fact that there is apparently an audience for such deeply fucked-up works makes me weep for humanity.
Kinsey said on 03.24.11 at 01:14 AM • [link]

The fact that there is apparently an audience for such deeply fucked-up works makes me weep for humanity.

Me too, but then again so does Jersey Shore, Eat, Pray Love, Scientology and any movie Michael Bay makes.
Kinsey said on 03.24.11 at 01:46 AM • [link]

I agree with kkw - we can’t judge what others enjoy reading, and most of us will enjoy fictional scenarios that we’d find horrific or appalling in real life. As much as I hesitate to disagree with AgT about something, because the depth and breadth of her knowledge is so intimidating and her arguments so erudite, I’m not sure that people who enjoy the Linda Howard books - or even, much as I don’t understand it, the Ringo books—need to get over it.

And remember, there are women who choose to live this way. (One word: Gorean. That’s all I’m gonna say. And if you choose to google it just be prepared – you may need Ringo-levels of brain bleach.)
orangehands said on 03.24.11 at 02:20 AM • [link]

kkw: I definitely believe everyone has their own kink and there’s no shame in that (provided that those acting on the kink in real life are consenting adults), but I do think its worth looking into what it is about the rape fantasy that appealed then and appeals now. How is it separate or complimented by rape culture in real life? What does it mean that authors who write these rape fantasies have such large followings? How do people use the lack of consent in fantasy to deal with lack of consent in reality?

Which ties into the Bitten series by Armstrong. There’s a scene in Frostbitten (the one that takes place partly in Alaska, I believe that was Frostbitten) where Elena *um background spoiler alert* is having rough sex with Clay, and she talks about the difference between what her and Clay are doing and what happened to her as a child (she was sexually abused by her foster dads/brothers). And that by Clay having control, with the knowledge that at the slightest twinge he would stop, helped her process and deal with her foster dads/brothers taking control of her when she was a child.

All of which to say I do know women who read rape fantasy romances (or in real life set up the rape fantasy scenario with a trusted loved one) as a way of processing what happened to them in real life. So I wonder how much that plays into some of the interest in the rape hero. I also know plenty of people who used the rape fantasy because they didn’t have access yet to BSDM in more “mainstream” romances. (And then there’s others, like me, who can find the rape fantasy very triggering.)

Which is not to say all kinks have a root like that, or need to be dissected like that. We do seem to give more attention and thought to the rape fantasy than probably other kinks. But I think the rape fantasy is very worth studying because I think rape culture is very worth studying, and I wonder how much the fantasy can and does reinforce and help propagate rape culture.

Also, while the paranormal subgenre seems to have taken over for the historical subgenre for rape heroes, the aphole hero is still alive and well in contemporary romance. Example: Susan Elizabeth Phillips. She’s had several sex scenes that cross the line, or at least skates on it, while at the same time having heroes who delight in humiliating and controlling the heroine. And she’s a best seller with a huge following. And I definitely think that’s worth looking into.
redheadedgirl said on 03.24.11 at 02:30 AM • [link]

School is eating my brain this week, but I adore ALL OF YOU.
dm said on 03.24.11 at 03:29 AM • [link]

Books like this were the reason I didn’t get into historical romance when I first got hot and heavy into romance (1992-1993). I gravitated toward contemporary (discovered my author-goddess Nora Roberts) though I did read Amanda Quick (loved the early books) and Mary Jo Putney’s Silk Series. But speaking of Mary Jo Putney, does anyone remember ‘Dearly Beloved’? The first sex scene is so clearly a rape but there were people who tried to- I don’t know- minimize it or something.

@MicheleKS

Dearly Beloved is an interesting book. In my mind, it represents a marked turning away from the old skool paradigm, because it does not normalize rape. It doesn’t present it as an acceptable form of sexual expression. It presents it as a crime that is the central obstacle to the union of hero and heroine. The author certainly doesn’t try to minimize it. She sets her characters the task of deciding whether it is or isn’t a forgivable crime.

In story terms, the rape in Dearly Beloved is the inciting incident. It is the event that sets both protagonists on their story quest. This is also markedly different from how rape is used in old skool romances, where it is often a stand in for a conventional sex scene, and has no repercussions or influence on the plot.

That said, the book has structure issues and drags in the middle, so I don’t recommend running out and reading it.
bookstorecat said on 03.24.11 at 04:24 AM • [link]

@orangehands

It occurs to me that Margaret Atwood had a short story called “Rape Fantasies,” and maybe I should go back and reread it now that I’m no longer in jr. high school and might actually be able to understand what it’s about.
Kinsey said on 03.24.11 at 06:20 AM • [link]

orangehands - quite a while back I posted a some thoughts (not really a review) on Bitten, and in it I said that I didn’t think the scene where Clay ties Elena to a tree was crossing the line because implicit to the scene - and, vitally, to Elena’s understanding - was the fact that she could have said “stop” at any time, and she KNEW he would. That’s not attempted rape. I had several readers take issue with me, and it was an interesting conversation.

When she was going through her divorce, Sandra Tsing Loh wrote a piece in the Atlantic about the dissatisfaction so many 40-something women are experiencing in what look like, from the outside, the marriages of equals that 21st women are supposed to crave - not to threadjack, but it’s here. The end is most interesting:

(Interestingly, according to EnlightenNext magazine, some northern European women are reportedly eschewing their progressive northern European male counterparts and dating Muslims, who are more like “real men.”) To work, to parent, to housekeep, to be the ones who schedule “date night,” only to be reprimanded in the home by male kitchen bitches, and then, in the bedroom, to be ignored—it’s a bum deal.

That part about “real men” and “kitchen bitches” (which she discusses earlier in the post) could launch a thousand threads in itself. As AgTigress says, romance novels are a remarkably clear prism through which to view the cultural zeitgeist at a given point in time.

Lastly, I just had a post up at Heroes and Heartbreakers about Woodiwiss and the Old Skool. I swear to God that I’m not link whoring - or maybe I am, but my intentions are pure, the link doesn’t go to my site or anything—it’s just that it’s germaine to the conversation and it discusses Woodiwiss, the Old Skool, and the context of those books in the 70s.
Alissa said on 03.24.11 at 06:57 AM • [link]

You people are amazing!! I’m writing an undergrad honors thesis on romance novels, and I really wish I could just copy and paste this whole damn thing into my thesis because its so freakin hilarious and captures perfectly the fact that romance readers are able to critique the genre that they love so much, and that they seek to improve it.

RHG- I’d love to know more about you or contact you.. just so you know, I’m a huge fan and I’m quoting you a LOT in my thesis..
AgTigress said on 03.24.11 at 11:31 AM • [link]

I’m not sure that people who enjoy the Linda Howard books - or even, much as I don’t understand it, the Ringo books—need to get over it.

Kinsey, obviously I did not express myself clearly. I meant that we need to get over the fact that people’s tastes vary, and to accept that diversity, even when some people enjoy things that we think is just wrong.
LG said on 03.24.11 at 01:40 PM • [link]

and captures perfectly the fact that romance readers are able to critique the genre that they love so much

@Alissa - Discussions on SBTB are fun, but you know what else I like? Even when people disagree with each other, the disagreements tend to be more civil and more intelligent than disagreements on my professional discussion lists.
MicheleKS said on 03.24.11 at 01:50 PM • [link]

&dm;: I hadn’t read a historical romance up until that point where there was an out-and-out rape to introduce the hero and heroine and I kept reading only because I’d heard so much about this book. But looking back I realized that it was a huge turn-off for me and the book went bye-bye.

&orangehands;: I’m not a big Susan Elizabeth Phillips fan either because of some of her heroes behavior. That kind of thing just really ruins it for me.

For a hero, there’s being overly stubborn and stupid at times then there’s just being an asshat and totally tuning the heroine out and turning on her. It’s what I remember about a lot of the old skool 80’s romances I read back in the day and why I got rid of them.
redheadedgirl said on 03.24.11 at 02:03 PM • [link]

@Alissa: Wow! I’m incredibly flattered. You can email me at redheadedgirl.boston AT gmail, and I’ll be happy to talk about myself. I love doing that. :D
Kinsey said on 03.24.11 at 02:12 PM • [link]

AgT: That makes perfect sense now - I think my reading comprehension failed me temporarily.
cleo said on 03.24.11 at 06:13 PM • [link]

romance novels, far more than ‘literary fiction’, and more than other ‘genre’ fiction, too, are a mine of information about the mores of their own time, about the experiences, fears and desires of their readers in a given culture and at a specific point in time.

Beautifully put, AgTigress. That’s why I like this blog. It makes me think. Usually I just try to avoid books with overly controlling heroes and I don’t think about what they say about us as a culture. To me, it says that we’re still trying to figure this all out - gender roles, equality, the whole shebang. I think the contemporaries mentioned (and to a lesser extent the rapey vampires) show that as a culture, we’re still working out the difference between a sexy, take charge man and a controlling, abusive one. We’re still trying to figure out where to go next. I don’t want to go backwards, to the kind of marriages my grandparents had, but I also don’t want a “kitchen bitch” (love that term).

On a slightly different note, it could just be me, but I find it much harder to avoid books with controlling aphole heroes than books with rape / forced seduction. I know which authors and sub-genres to avoid for rape, but a lot of popular authors trick me by sometimes writing awesome heroes and sometimes writing icky, controlling heroes. SEP is one, and Lisa Kleypas is another. Ugh. It completely takes me out of the story when I realize that if I were friends with the heroine, I’d be leaving her brochures about domestic violence and planning an intervention.
cleo said on 03.24.11 at 06:28 PM • [link]

(contemporary romance plot idea: meet-cute when she chucks a horrible romance novel at handsome air marshal hero’s head….)

I saw this setup at the movies! Well kind of - at the start of You Again, Kristen Bell freaks out on a plane and she gets arrested by a handsome air marshal played by The Rock. But sadly, the movie goes in a different direction and there’s no romance between them. That probably would have been a better movie.
Virginia Llorca said on 03.24.11 at 08:48 PM • [link]

I’m too tired and too medicated to do even a little research today, but that movie, supposedly about a real person, (“The Duchess” maybe?) where Keira Knightly marries Raphe Fiennes and he lifts up her skirts and sticks it in every night. Cuz they are married. Cuz he has to. Cuz she has to. This just keeps running through my head when I read about forced sex and enjoying rape and stuff. It will click into perspective (my perspective) after a while.

@AgTigress: Glad to see your words again.
beletseri said on 03.24.11 at 10:22 PM • [link]

Ugh, gross. Romance novels like this stress and piss me off. I want to read fun sexy romances, not romances that make me hate the world.

Also I just finished reading a book about prostitution in the old west, and everything written about Roxy is inaccurate. Especially in regards to the orphanage. Many madams in the old west were pillars of their community (they were tolerated more than accepted in most places, but still tolerated) often these women would donate LOADS of money to local churches, governments, they would do all sorts of neighborhood charity work. If anything they would have to do more for the church BECAUSE they were madams. They were trying to avoid the stigmas and the long hand of the law that would come down on them. Prostitution was illegal, but those laws just weren’t enforced, large donations kept them from being enforced. ANYway the point is that Roxy would probably be known for donating or opening the orphanage. That whole blackmail bit at the end with Steve is just lazy research.
orangehands said on 03.24.11 at 10:56 PM • [link]

bookstorecat: I will definitely check that out, thanks.

Kinsey: Link away! I love links! The Sandra Tsing Loh was interesting (even if I had issues with some of the wording), and does point out that romances, in general, seem to have a very set idea of HEA. While we’re moving towards HFN (Happy For Now endings) in certain subgenres, we still tend to put H/H (and sometimes /H) together like that’s the only family run-down, which is even weirder because a higher percentage of people don’t live and didn’t grow up in the nuclear family dynamic. Divorce, grandparents, aunts/uncles moving in with their families, and so on…I would actually expect to see paranormal - especially shifter stories - start to explore different family dynamics than two parents, maybe one previous child from marriage, and maybe kids. (Also strange to me - and always has been - is the complete lack of reality in a lot of step parent stories. Kids do not just say ‘welcome to the family, new daddy/mommy’ when a stepparent enters the scene. There is battle, war even, and some of them never move beyond that stage.) Also, and I think this is because the majority of writers and the majority of readers are white and somewhere in the middle class bracket and not immigrants, that we tend to have a lack of multi-generational families living together.

As for Bitten, I tend to fall on your side for that scene, because their dynamic - one that they’ve had for a number of years - was that kind of scene, and the fantasy of not having to say yes works for Elena because (as I believe Clay points out before or after in the book, it means saying yes to the man who did this to her, which would act like forgiveness), but I could understand that the line is crossed for some people because she didn’t say yes, she just didn’t say no. But when I talk about the lack of consent in the book, its not the sex, its the bite. I don’t know if there can or should be forgiveness (and this is where the extra level of fantasy mentioned above in the comments comes in, because I can let it pass in the context of the “supernatural,” which if this was just a rape scene between H/H I would have been gone.) But I like that even after ten years in the original, and ten books in the series (another ten years, I believe), they’re still working through what Clay did with that bite, and the betrayal of trust it took. It still affects their relationship, and I think it always will. And that the author didn’t pull “all is forgiven” even after they start to live HEA makes me happy.

Alissa: Are you going to give SBTB a chance to read it? Because I would absolutely love it.

To me, it says that we’re still trying to figure this all out - gender roles, equality, the whole shebang. I think the contemporaries mentioned (and to a lesser extent the rapey vampires) show that as a culture, we’re still working out the difference between a sexy, take charge man and a controlling, abusive one.

I’m also curious about the difference - if there is a major one- between younger authors figuring this out and older authors and the age of their followings. Because some authors I read grew up during or right after the second wave of feminism, and some are growing up through the third, and a lot of them lived their teen/twenties in the backlash against feminism, and I’m wondering how that’s affected how they write and how we - who also vary on when we grew up - interact with the gender roles they put in books. For instance, a lot of contemporaries use “no means no” in their understanding of rape, and therefore their sex scenes, which was the prevailing school of thought from rape activists, whereas now rape activists are trying to teach “yes means yes”. So how - or will it? - change how sex scenes are written by authors who are now just beginning to write. (Don’t worry, I realize their are a load of assumptions in the above paragraph that affect my root questions. *g* )
cleo said on 03.25.11 at 12:34 AM • [link]

I’m also curious about the difference - if there is a major one - between younger authors figuring this out and older authors and the age of their followings.

Wow. Excellent point orangehands. Now I’m curious about that too.

@beletseri - What’s the name of the book? It sounds interesting.
Julia Sullivan said on 03.25.11 at 01:17 AM • [link]

Thank you for throwing yourself on that particular grenade of horribleness. You deserve a medal.

The thing I found most terrifying was the number of people who saw what Steve was doing, and didn’t see a problem with it. Even as Jess is screaming for him to stop, to put her down, to go away, they all either turned away or told her to stop struggling and smiling knowingly.

This is realistic to my own experience, but Not In The Good Way. Why does the only thing that’s realistic about these rapemances have to be the fucked-up stuff about other people enabling the abuse?
AgTigress said on 03.25.11 at 01:41 AM • [link]

...as a culture, we’re still working out the difference between a sexy, take charge man and a controlling, abusive one.

Cleo, I’m sure you are right. But actually it goes even deeper, and ultimately it is not primarily about gender roles but about social hierarchies in competitive industries and professions. In Western cultures today, many people find it very hard indeed to draw a line between healthy self-esteem and confidence on the one hand, and rude, selfish, arrogant ruthlessness on the other, in both men and women. A quiet, polite and modest demeanour is misinterpreted by many as weak, passive and ineffectual; in many workplaces, people have to be rude and abusive to succeed, and this is still true.

It is a real problem in our societies, and it first really became a major issue in, guess when, the 1980s. Aggressive self-interest and self-aggrandisement were considered positive character traits by the management culture of the period. The abusive ‘heroes’ we have been talking about actually exemplified the perfect 1980s corporate achievers: vicious bastards, with sky-high opinions of themselves, and total contempt for others. Although in the romance novels, they are represented as ideal ‘alpha’ males, there were plenty of female specimens of the breed as well, and there still are.

The adoption of the term ‘alpha’, borrowed from animal ethology, has been unfortunate, because it is extremely inaccurate as a term for these kinds of men and women. Their characteristics and behaviour are wholly unlike those of powerful animals in the social hierarchies of canids, equids and the like, not least because the alpha individuals in other species exert their strength and influence for the protection of the group, rather than as a means of crushing its members. True (human) alphas have charisma as well as power, and are admired and trusted, not hated and feared, by their subordinates; others follow them without being forced to do so, because their confidence and competence are recognised and depended upon. They do not have to be rude and abusive, or even particularly loud, to get people to do their bidding.
Ranjit said on 03.25.11 at 08:16 PM • [link]

Your review of this book was simply the funniest thing that I’ve read in a very, very long time.
I was just laughing the entire time.

I cannot even begin to discern an end the the author’s brilliance.
JamiSings said on 03.25.11 at 11:31 PM • [link]

Everytime this subject comes up, I want to ask - do you remember the moment, if you had one, that you realized that rape-heroes are NOT heroes? That defining moment where you finally said, “This is not right and it’s not romantic at all!”

I can’t remember the title of the book - something like White Fire or White Flame - but I remember the cover was mostly white with a redheaded woman on a horse. It took place in Russia during winter. First time the hero comes on the scene he thinks she’s just a peasent and rapes her in the middle of a snowstorm. Later he and his troops come to her home, he realizes she’s a nobleman’s daughter, and sets out to win her heart because of what he did to her.

I remember thinking, “Wait a minute - so it’s okay to rape her when he thinks she’s just a commoner but now that he knows she’s noble it’s now wrong?!” It just stuck to me and I realized she’d never have a happy marriage, even though it being a romance he did succeed. But I still to this day imagine him raping peasent women willy-nilly and thinking it’s okay because “They’re just commoners.”

Having grown up until that momment with rapiest heroes I hadn’t thought anything of it. But that book made me change my opinion about what is and isn’t romantic. Wish I could remember the title, however!
Alexis Harrington said on 03.26.11 at 02:02 AM • [link]

Wow. And I missed this gem in the way back?? What a pity. I’m reminded of those days of yore when publishers were so eager for books they’d buy just about anything, and here’s the proof. It is crappy, and confusing, so, many thanks to our Fearless Reader, RedHeadedGirl, for falling on this grenade and living to tell about it. I hope her sanity isn’t impacted.
Deirdre said on 03.26.11 at 03:07 AM • [link]

Everytime this subject comes up, I want to ask - do you remember the moment, if you had one, that you realized that rape-heroes are NOT heroes? That defining moment where you finally said, “This is not right and it’s not romantic at all!”

JamiSings…I do emember that moment very clearly. It came during the novel “Whitney, My Love” by Judith McNaught. I was so stunned and as I read through the remainder of the novel while they did the dance of ‘does he/she hate/love me’, I kept trying to wrap my mind around the horrific act that, in my mind, made him unredeemable. That he could justify the behavior in the planning stage and then regret it after finding out that she was a virgin…WHAT, if she hadn’t been “intact” (dreadful term), it would have been okay to rape her????

And that horrible story line of raping a commoner being acceptable, but having to make it right if she was from gentry or nobility…ick, just ick…those books almost always become drywall denters and are left unfinished.

side33 ...the square root of the times I’ve thrown novels using this trope
Rebecca said on 03.26.11 at 06:33 AM • [link]

And that horrible story line of raping a commoner being acceptable, but having to make it right if she was from gentry or nobility…ick, just ick…

YES. THIS. I remember when I’d first started reading in Spanish, and I was so proud of trying to read a dual language version of Cervantes…and OF COURSE the first thing I read was the horrible horrible novella “La fuerza de la sangre” which has the “happy ending” where the girl marries the guy who has abducted her on a dark street, held her prisoner, raped her, and then thrown her out into the street to die…but it’s a happy ending because he discovers that she’s noble and her honor is restored. That traumatized my teenage self something awful. And you know what - the whole “it’s historical, it was a different time and place” did NOT make it better. It took me ages to read Cervantes again, and then I discovered the wonderful and ROMANTIC “La gitanilla” (which badly needs to be made into a movie) and the cool “history of the captive” episode in Don Quixote, and couldn’t believe the same guy had written them. Why do you suppose some authors (even really good ones) have these weird brain farts where they suddenly abandon the ability to write sympathetic characters?

On a related topic - I probably have a sick mind, but does it occur to anyone that the already bizarre plot of the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” might be a metaphor for something a lot nastier, along the same lines?
Alexis Harrington said on 03.26.11 at 06:55 AM • [link]

And that horrible story line of raping a commoner being acceptable, but having to make it right if she was from gentry or nobility…ick, just ick…those books almost always become drywall denters and are left unfinished.

Oh! Remember the Sky O’Malley series? The “hero” claimed his right to bed the new bride.
AgTigress said on 03.26.11 at 01:01 PM • [link]

Before anyone misunderstands me, I must state again that rape is wrong, and always was.

Okay, two interesting exercises in trying to achieve the detachment and cool objectivity necessary when reading work written in another cultural milieu (whether it was written by an author about his/her own time, or was ‘historical’, e.g. Heyer writing in the 1930s-60s about the Regency period, thus a double layer of cultural dislocation for today’s readers).

For the first exercise, one needs to be over about 40. Try to remember some story in a book or a film that you liked a lot 25 years ago, and that you now find repellent, or even one that you hated and despised when younger, and now enjoy and admire. What has changed? You? Your circumstances? The world and society? Maybe a single event brought about the change in your opinion: maybe all of those parameters have changed in an intricate, shifting pattern. But the original story is still the same. It just looks different now, to a changed you, and in a different context. You are seeing it from a different angle.

The other exercise is harder, but you can do it at any age. Think about the fiction tropes you really enjoy at this moment, and the evocation of our contemporary society that is expressed in well-written contemporary novels. The things that are taken ‘as read’, because they are ‘normal’. Now try to think yourself into the future (very difficult) or even the past (a little easier), and ask yourself whether all of the ‘normal’ things in today’s books would still seem normal to a reader in a past or future generation, or would some of them seem weird and bizarre, or even just plain wrong?

For example, almost all adults smoked a lot of the time in the 1930s-50s, in real life and in books, and nobody thought anything of it, but we notice it now, and it affects our opinion of the characters, if we allow it to do so. Younger readers today are sometimes shocked and outraged when couples have sex without using condoms in 1960s/70s books, but that was safe and normal at the time: traditional sexually-transmitted diseases had become very rare, pregnancy was controlled by the contraceptive pill, and AIDS was not yet an issue. Condoms were used chiefly by men consorting with prostitutes, rather than in social or domestic sexual relationships.

Remember that our own societies are far from perfect. There are still serious social inequalities and injustices. It is fine to be scandalised by the things that we know were bad in other times and places, but it is also vital to remember that we are not much better, merely slightly different. We must try never to judge people of other times and places by our own standards. We should not like it if they judged us by theirs.
Virginia Llorca said on 03.26.11 at 06:02 PM • [link]

@Rebecca I don’t get the Princess and the Pea reference. Did you read “Women Who Run with the Wolves”? She dissects fairy tales. Don’t remember if she did ‘Pand the P’ but I never finished it.
redheadedgirl said on 03.26.11 at 06:36 PM • [link]

@Rebecca: I’ve done some “in depth” “research” (Wikipedia FTW) and the general consensus is that Hans Christian Anderson was making fun of the nobility for being so anal-retentive about proving the purity of their bloodlines.
Rebecca said on 03.26.11 at 08:58 PM • [link]

@AgTigress: I have a funny example of your cultural detachment exercise, courtesy of teaching high school students: I read Roald Dahl’s classic “Lamb to the Slaughter” with 15 year olds this year and was startled that some of them instantly leaped to the conclusion that Mary Maloney was a bad person (and potential murderess) because she is described as drinking scotch while pregnant. They have all had the dangers of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome dinned into them, and are completely unfamiliar with the huge amounts of alcohol quite casually consumed in older books.

That said, I think what creeped me out about “La fuerza de la sangre” was that the rape was so clearly presented as a social deviation. There was no suggestion that Leonor (the heroine) was “asking for it” or that “boys will be boys” or anything like that. It was presented as an act of malicious violence. Having built up something that horrible, the ending felt rushed, and as if Cervantes was trying to reassure the reader (and perhaps himself) that there really was a happy ending. So perhaps the problem is one of literary composition, since he was trying to keep to the short novella form? I’ll have to take a look at it again (thus fulfilling your first cultural exercise, since it’s more than 20 years since I first read it, and I’m a lot more knowledgeable now about Golden Age Spanish literature in general….where, by the by, rape is generally presented as anti-social behavior, unworthy of the hero).

@Virginia: About the Princess and the Pea. In the context of the discussion above, it occurred to me that the suggestion that only a princess could feel a certain kind of discomfort in bed was a rather nasty conflation of the twin excuses of “it’s okay to force her because she’s not a virgin” and “it’s okay to force her because she’s a commoner.” The prince is able to marry the girl who proves that she is both a virgin and high-born by virtue of her feeling pain when bedded. Nice.
cleo said on 03.26.11 at 10:54 PM • [link]

@ JamieSings and Deirdre - Whitney My Love brought about my moment too. I remember that very clearly. Great question JamieSings.

I also remember, with even more clarity, the moment, some 20 years ago, when I recognized the “nice women don’t like ‘kinky’ sex” trope and knew that it was bogus. It came while reading The Second Lady by Irving Wallace and some SF/F book I don’t remember as clearly. In both books, the heroine had much less interesting sex than the villain-ess. (In The Second Lady, the main heroine didn’t like oral sex but the sexy Soviet spy did). What I remember about this revelation is how excited my college aged self was to have identified this ALL BY MYSELF. No smarty-pants Women Studies major had to point it out to me (unlike, say, the rape in Gone with the Wind). I was able to apply my relatively new critical thinking skills to a trashy novel, and I was so proud of myself.
Julia Sullivan said on 03.27.11 at 05:42 AM • [link]

We must try never to judge people of other times and places by our own standards.

I feel perfectly fine judging some other woman from the US for writing a rapemance in 1991. As I felt fine judging the rapemances I read in the 1970s. (::shudders at memories of Luke ‘n’ Laura from General Hospital::)
AgTigress said on 03.27.11 at 12:33 PM • [link]

I feel perfectly fine judging some other woman from the US for writing a rapemance in 1991

So that’s all right then.
chestrella said on 03.28.11 at 04:52 AM • [link]

@cleo, this kind of book makes me wanna find a place in the sun where I can take a long nap and give up on ever reading again! MeOw!
beletseri said on 03.29.11 at 01:47 AM • [link]

@olga Solied Doves: Prostitiution in the Early West

It was actually a fun quick read, even if it tended to slut shame a bit.
Vanilla said on 03.30.11 at 04:22 AM • [link]

Scoundrel’s captive seems to have almost the identical plot as Brave the Wild Wind by Johanna Lindsey (from 1984).....Not that I would want to admit to having read that.
But I was young and stupid once.
Kinsey said on 03.30.11 at 04:40 AM • [link]

ya know, I wasn’t going to bring the Windflower into this, since we all praise it enough already, but Vanilla gave me an opening, because 1984 is the year The Windflower came out, and that was the book that finally made me realize (at the age of 20) how much I’d hated those Old Skool romances without knowing why. I mean, I knew why - I hated the heroes treating the heroines like shit, and the heroines going back for more, or making excuses for them; I hated the rapes and the near-rapes; mostly I hated how it was always so f’ing dramatic, one horrible thing after another - heroes and heroines fought a lot and fucked a lot but rarely made each other laugh. Grim - I just remember the Old Skool romances being grim.

So I pick up The Windflower one day while working at Waldenbooks and once I start reading, I can’t put it down. It starts out like it’s gonna be a typical virgin-gets-raped-by-a-pirate-and-decides-she-likes-it-book (Devon grabs Merry’s face for a kiss and says something about making her body turn traitor) - but, once they’re aboard the ship, guess what? No rape. No beatings. No passing her around the crew. Jokes and laughter and people liking each other. Now, granted, Morgan realizes early on who she is, and because of that he’s determined not to let Devon get his hands all over her but still - once you’re into the book you realize Morgan and Devon and the crew aren’t especially rape-y pirates anyway.

There’s lots of drama on board, and there’s more drama when they get to England, but she doesn’t have to circumnavigate the freaking globe and escape from multiple sadists before she finally falls into the arms of her True Love. And by the time they’re married, you believe they really love each other.

And it was written in 1984 when other romance authors were still writing the rapey rapey alphole books.

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, where the hell is Cat’s book? Huh?
Darci said on 03.30.11 at 07:48 AM • [link]

It came during the novel “Whitney, My Love” by Judith McNaught.

I actually just read Whitney, My Love. My friend gave it to me and she commented that even though the guy was a bit of an ass, he was still really sweet and hot. I read it and I can’t help thinking that practically RAPING a woman does not make a man sweet, and I don’t care HOW hot you are, you are STILL not allowed to disrespect a woman like that. Ugh. Oh, and to make matters worse, my friend is an independent woman in college. She honestly didn’t see anything wrong with it. She’s supposed to be the educated, strong, modern woman but she still sees nothing wrong with a man forcing himself on a woman, in literature at least. So I have a question for all you Smart Bitches out there: what is it that makes the rape so palatable to some women? Is it the idea that a woman actually wanting sex is bad, and that rape makes it permissible?
bookstorecat said on 03.31.11 at 05:04 AM • [link]

The first alphole hero I encountered.

My grandma isn’t around anymore, but I wish she was so I could thank her for only keeping good romances with decent heroes and non-wishy-washy heroines around her house, because that is where I did all my early romance reading. It was only when I figured out in high school that I could check romances out at the library w/o my parents noticing, that I encountered the kind of dick—sorry… “hero,” I mean—who thinks sexual harassment, etc., etc., etc. makes him a stand-up guy and super-groovy chick-magnet.
roserita said on 04.07.11 at 01:22 AM • [link]

Random thoughts from someone coming late to the party:
1. Back a very very long time ago, Barbara Cartland started her career by ripping off the plots of other authors. (This was before she had settled on the four plots that she would recycle for the rest of her career). One of the plots she swiped was The Sheik. I remember reading this back in the seventies when all of her books were reissued with really beautiful covers.
2. Violet Winspear specialized in the very young virgin/older dude forced marriage thing. But that wasn’t that unusual, then. Anne Hampson, and I don’t remember how many other Harlequin authors did the same thing.
3. I read a book that I think was Margaret Widdemer’s The Golden Wildcat, originally came out in hardcover in 1957. I still remember it because:
Act 1: Heroine is betrothed to her true love.
Act 2: Heroine has to go on a journey through the wilderness (upstate New York during the French and Indian Wars). They are ambushed, friendly Indian guide is killed. Heroine is taken prisoner and raped by noble French dude, who is tall, dark, and handsome, as I recall.
Act 3: Rapist/hero? what’s going on here? says that heroine should submit to his desires or whatever. She says no. He keeps raping her as they travel across Canada(?).
Act 4: Rapist takes her to his homecastle where he announces that he WILL marry her. She’s supposed to be all swoony and grateful. His two little old aunts are thrilled and start putting together a trouseau. Heroine says no.
Act 5: Hero FINALLY shows up, shoots the rapist. Dying rapist is like, ??!!! I loved you! Heroine says I never loved you. Excuse me while go off with the the Hero and live Happily Ever After.
willa said on 04.14.11 at 11:41 PM • [link]

I feel perfectly fine judging some other woman from the US for writing a rapemance in 1991. As I felt fine judging the rapemances I read in the 1970s. (::shudders at memories of Luke ‘n’ Laura from General Hospital::)

Ah, jeez, me too. I judge! I JUDGE!!!!!!!!

The first romance that made me realize the hero was an asshole: Johanna Lindsey’s A Pirate’s Love. As I read further and further I kept feeling more and more nauseated and horrified and confused—what the hell was going on, here? What the hell?

There’s still this popular trope today that all women submit when having hetero sex with men.Psychology Today has a recent article out explaining that mating rats and evo psych prove that women submit in bed, are dominated—that’s just the way it is! And guess what also proves this—romance novels!!! Did Smart Bitches cover this? You might find it “interesting”. A feminist website recently did a post on this article, tearing it to pieces.