Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Big topic. :D But before I’d ramble, I need to ask this first—how many romance novels feature the rape scenario nowadays?

I"m with Maili, I haven’t stumbled across a rape-romance in years and years (not counting in erotica, where the dom-fantasy is alive and well). Are these still really common? If so, I’m feeling pretty damn lucky right now.

I always hated them (Lindsey’s FIRES OF WINTER—my first foray into romance—put me off the whole genre for a decade), and I still do.

Not a whole lot, ‘tis true. Good point, actually, and I’ll edit the article. But for decades, rapist heroes were very popular, and there’s a pretty significant contingent of readers who either:

1. Did not mind rapist heroes, but also aren’t particularly bothered by the shift in the portrayals of heroes and heroines in romance, and

2. Looooved the rapist heroes, and long for more pirate/virile sea captain/viking/rampaging conqueror/haugthy duke rape action. Because it’s “historically accurate” and all.

DOH! Forgot to address that last bit in the article, too.

So yeah. Huge subject. Huuuuge.

I dunno, I’ve always liked this quote from Daphne Clair in the essay collection DANGEROUS MEN AND ADVENTUROUS WOMEN:

“Half a century later, in the very teeth of women’s liberation, Kathleen Woodiwiss’s THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER and Rosemary Rogers’s SWEET SAVAGE LOVE generated a flood of immensely succesful rape-romances that enraged feminists, created guilt in many avid readers, and were cited as perpetuating the notion that women really do enjoy being forced. (We might assume then that men, major consumers of thrillers, westerns, and detective fiction, enjoy being beaten up, tortured, shot, stabbed, dragged by galloping horses, and thrown out of moving vehicles.)”

For me, it’s all in how well you tell the story, and how engaged the reader is with the characters.  One of the funnier novels I read last year was DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER, about a serial killer.  He was the hero.  This doesn’t mean I want to meet someone like him, but the author did a fine job of making me connect to Dexter.

I’m still stunned by a comment I got from a couple of 50-something women at a bar in Reno (they were not there for the RWA con). They wanted to know how I could bare to write rape scenes. When I looked at them blankly and said, “What?” They insisted that since I write historicals, my heroines must all lose their virginity that way. I literally didn’t know what to say, I just stood there, stunned with my mouth hanging open like a fish. Eventually I managed to mumble something about women in the past being not any different than women now-a-days, including how most of them lost their virginity, then I bolted.

A theory I’ve heard, but haven’t devoted a whole lot of thought to, is that the rape romances were so prevalent during that time period because of a subliminal reaction to women’s lib.  After the bras were burned and men stopped holding doors for women lest they get bitchslapped, women secretly yearned for strong Alpha heroes to dominate them.

As I said, not my theory, but one I’ve come across.

I think fiction is a safe place for us to let our dark sides out to play. Clearly, conflicted feelings about dominance and rape hang around in the shadow of many womens’ minds. And we as romance writers/readers aren’t the only ones using this conflict. Stephen R. Donaldson’s GAP sci-fi series features a heroine horribly abused by the criminal who ends up being something of a hero in the end. (Fantastic series. Highly recommended!)

I don’t think anything should be off-limits in fiction. My personal feelings about rape plots are conflicted enough, and I appreciate the self-reflection and soul-searching these stories demand from me.

But the bottom line, for me at least, is no subject matter should ever be off-limits in fiction.

Joyce

I have mixed feelings about this topic because we are talking about two different periods: then and now, and ‘then’ does need backstory to lay out whys. 

To make it clear, I do consider Kathleen Winsor’s FOREVER AMBER [written in the 1940s] the mother of romance novels. It’s a shame that she’s never really been recognised for her role in kickstarting the romance genre. But I digress. 

It was 1970s [I think] when the romance genre was finally publicially and commercially recognised as a genre. Along with that is the introduction of sex and author’s freedom to romance, which caused ripples because—well, there are two reasons: a) at the time [between 1930s and 1960s], category romances and such such were pretty much asexual because of b), which is - the romance genre was controlled by publishers [and their wives!] that monitored morals. If an editor felt that the heroine was a bit too saucy, this will be amended, whether the author liked it or not. These new type of romances really rocked the boat. Sex! Adventure! Madness! Epic! The wild success of those American upstarts really knocked everyone flat on their bottoms.

So while this was going on, we have to deal with readers themselves. OK, I’m taking up too much space. I’ll shut up for a break. :D

Publicially? *headwall* Publicly!

” . . . and why to this day there are people who mourn the disappearance of rapist heroes.”

There are also women out there writing love letters to Scott Peterson (and every other murder on death row). I can’t explain them either, but we all know they exist. I understand the illicit thrill of the domination plot (which works for me in erotica, and even sometimes in romantica, where I’m not looking for a HEA), but I just can’t like the idea of the rapist hero in mainstream romance.

“True. And I’ve made a right royal mess of sorting things out. In fact, I didn’t even particularly bother, heh. But I’d still love to hear your two cents about why rape in romance was so popular, and why to this day there are people who mourn the disappearance of rapist heroes.”

My theory:

Now? Date rape is a fairly big cultural no-no—part of every co-ed University’s orientation curriculum, and the subject of multiple Law & Order episodes for a decade and a half.

Then? Date rape didn’t exist. In a time when sexual liberation and easy access to birth control were brand new, “date rape” was instead called “how could I have been so fucking STOOPID as to have gone up to his apartment/let him in my room/gotten into the car with him/had that third glass of wine?”

Date rape was what happened when that nice guy you half-hoped would turn out to be “the one” turned out to be a bastard interested in one thing and one thing only, and it wasn’t in taking “no” for an answer.

I think it happened a whole lot more than anybody was willing to talk about, and I think it led to women forcing themselves to believe a whole bunch of shit about men in general: real men are naturally predatory, real men can’t control themselves, real men WANT you, baby, and they’ll keep on you till they get what they want.

How many women DID decide rape was romantic on those terms? How many decided they weren’t raped at all—just forcefully seduced, and wasn’t it THRILLING?? How many married men who’ve kept up the behavior throughout the relationship?

Like I said, it’s just a theory, and it can’t account for the entire phenomenon—maybe just a small part.

Actually, the Guy Who Won’t Take No for an Answer is alive and well—he’s the romantic hero who pesters the heroine, follows her around, somehow finds her phone number, etc. etc. and finally convinces her to go out on a date at which point they fall madly in love.

In real life, if someone were doing that to you, it’d be called “stalking.” Somehow, in movies, it’s romantic and sweet when a guy overcomes a woman’s objections because he knows she wants him to do it.

My bf and I were watching the original “Heaven Can Wait” (Don Ameche, Gene Tierney) when this subject surfaced, and lo and behold, here it is again. I Googled this just to make sure I wasn’t talking out of my, um, nether regions (too much), and came up with this article:

Every Girl Wants a Stalker

PS: I think a really good contest prize would be a pair of SB eyeglasses like all the chicks on the home page wear.

True to form, I’m going to say that it is the asking of this question that’s important, and not so much the answer.

I think the biggest reason why we saw a surge in rapist heroes during the heyday of late-70’s feminism was becuase of the unconscious clinging to extremes in the face of uncertainty. The late 70s and early 80s were a profoundly uncertain time when it came to gender roles, and historically in times of uncertainty people tend to cling to extremes. Case in point? Smallpox vaccinations, which we now mostly all agree are a wonderful thing but in their infancy were viewed with suspicion and terror.

I think that the explosion of rapist heroes in romance novels was fifty percent this uncertainty in the face of change, twenty percent the “good girl” dynamic- ie, “she was overpowered so she’s still pure- and thirty percent titillating because it was “forbidden”. Rapist heroes in romance were briefly titillating for the same reason homemakers were largely vilified and made inconsequential: because you weren’t “supposed to” want to stay home and clean the house. You were “supposed” to want to “have it all” and hire some damn man to do your housework for you. The titillation factor in rapist heroes faded as the pendulum-swing of gender roles normalized, as people got less and less uncomfortable with the social changes brought about by feminism.

So, again, true to form, I think the important thing here is that romance provided a safe space for women to “work out” that animus, and that the question is still being asked and discussed today. Quite frankly, a discussion of rape presupposes that women have the right to dispose of their bodies in whatever way they wish, and further presupposes that sex is negotiable- both presuppositions that are still not considered true in some countries and even in some American social attitudes.

A question just occurred to me as I was typing this rather windy comment: if we “demonize” the rape fantasy and call it bad, is that a demonization of an aspect of feminine sexuality? I can’t wait to discuss this one… but will stop for now, and go chew my English muffin and think about all this.

—- The less unkind critic would point out that many women secretly want to drive a handsome man crazy for love of their irresistible little selves, even though such behavior in real life would probably result in panicked calls to the police and restraining orders.

Well, women fantasise about this but if it were a reality it would disturbing and quite unpleasant. This is because the fantasy is striped of its unpleasantness and instead taps into our desires.  Kids enjoy stories about children who have to go on grand adventures because they have no one who cares about them.  In reality children without caring gaurdians live pretty unhappy lives.  Yet children’s lit is filled with this fantasy - the fantasy of ridding oneself of adult supervision and control. 

The rape fantasy is also about someone else taking charge and giving up the control. The most total way to give up control is to have it taken rather than to freely give it over. The person who is raped is left with only the sensation.  Of course in a fantasy context this sensation will be pleasurable (applying a broad and subjective defnition of ‘pleasure’).

There’s really nothing wrong with this in my opinion so long as readers acknowledge this is fantasy.

I don’t really understand the conflicts within the romance reader community.  I would assume there was enough room for all kinds of preferences.  If you like weaker more traditionally feminine heroines, buy those books.  Don’t read about the go getters with senstive love interests.

Why all the fuss?  Isn’t the pool big enough to share?

Fascinating discussion. In fact, if this response turns out to be as long as I think it is going to be, I should turn it into a reply blog-entry.

I agree with Sarah about the use of rape to establish the hero as a certain type of character. In order to be a dominant alpha male, people had to quake in his presence, horses had to gentle at his harshly uttered command, and women had to succumb to his will whether they wanted to or not. And since the stereotypical romance heroine of the age was fiesty - as demonstrated by her unwillingness to fall into the hero’s bed immediately - rape was the end result.

Back in the day, when I read those books, I never minded them. I took them for what they were, and since no other options were available, it never occured to me to question the propriety of it all. Today we’ve become so much more aware and there are so many choices out there, I think readers have spoken in their desire for writers to show male dominance in other ways, returning rape back to role of the dispicable thing that it really is.

Too, I do believe - and this is going to earn me some grief - that if you write a historical about pirates or conquerors, to imply that rape was a part of daily life is realistic. Of course, romance novels didn’t portray rape as simply “to the victor go the spoils” but as a stepping stone to love, so it was more a matter of using historical accuracy as a crutch. If someone today was trying to portray a historical situation with as much accuracy as possible, and the hero raped the heroine simply as a matter of that’s what men who won the war did and not because he couldn’t resist the heroine’s appeal (as in, she could have been butt-ugly and he still would have raped her because he’d been at sea for six months), I might be able to buy it when much later, he actually falls in love with her.

I’m of the mind that if a writer wants to use the bodice-ripper scenario in her story, no biggie. I don’t have to read it if it’s not my cup of tea. I don’t, however, ascribe any ulterior motives like the oppression of women or the glorification of rape. It’s just a fictional story. Heck, there are a lot of movies out there with heroes who walk the line but that I cheer for all the same. I don’t want to know them in real life; I want them locked up in jail. But it’s okay if they stay on the screen.

What I’m having trouble with is the rumor/rule/guideline/nonsense that readers refuse to read romance novels with any rape in it at all. I’m talking about real bad guys doing real bad things. Things for which they eventually get punished as they should be. Sometimes that is what makes the villain the villain. He raped the heroine, and now he’s the bad guy. Or because he’s the bad guy, when he had the heroine in his clutches, he raped her.

Can’t this simply be another tool in the writer’s tool box of dispicable behaviour perpetrated by evil bad guys?

Wow. I remember that post from Jean McSpadden on RRA from what feels like eons ago. It broke my young, impressionable mind.

I can’t admit to being politically correct and saying that rape romances disgust me. I won’t say they’re a huge favorite of mine either. It depends on my mood. In my fantasies, a little BDSM isn’t a bad thing, and romances fill in some of that. That’s how rape romances fit in for me. They fulfill a fantasy. I won’t even begin to analyze why some women have this fantasy—a lot’s been hashed out in these comments—but some do. Hit any port or kink site, and it’s a prevalent theme. I don’t think it’s unhealthy if you understand the difference between reality and fantasy.

Although I may be wrong—as I often am—I don’t believe that the rapist Romance hero is as dead as many here seem to.  In fact, I think he’s making a comeback, albeit in somewhat more subtle form in certain cases.

Just off the top of my head, I can recall that Catherine Coulter’s Rosehaven, published within the past five years, features a rapist hero, as does Sasha Lord’s 1994 Into a Wild Wood, which I have not read.  Here’s a snippet from the review on TRR, though: 

“While the cover copy and the quotes from reviews on Lord’s first book are enticing, the first brutal sex scene between Malalia and Brogan was a shocking change of pace, rape thinly disguised as vigorous sex.”

Anne Stuart’s newest book contains a scene that even Stuart has admitted is angry forced sex, and I also think her recent book Into The Fire contains an almost rapist hero.  Judith Ivory’s 2001 book, Untie My Heart (which I adored, by the way), contains a sex scene on a chair which many readers (not me, though) insist is forced sex, and both of Christina Dodd’s books, A well Pleasured Lady and a Well-Favored Gentleman, published in the late 90s, contain VERY controversial forced seduction/rape scenes. 

I have not done a systematic study of Romance novels containing rape and published within the last ten years, but I do wonder whether in the mid and lower level series pubs there is more overt rape than in those books reviewed by say AAR or even TRR. 

I think it would also be interesting to compare overt rapes and so-called forced seduction scenes to see the points of overlap and divergence for some readers.  My own personal distinction is as follows:  consent runs along a continuum, and the point at which the heroine no longer consents, but WE (the reader) must consent in her place is the point at which seduction (forced or not, since for me, the force only continues until the heroine consents) becomes force/rape.

Here is my weird theory. Bear with me.

I think the rape fantasy’s prevalence had to do with what was going on at the time regarding women’s notions of their own sexuality. Many of them had internalized messages of shame and dirtyness. (Hell, some of us still have.) And yet the culture was urging them to enjoy their sexuality, to be more open about expressing it. So they turned to the rape fantasy as some sort of dramatization of these conflicting feelings. The hero and heroine were, in some way, not separate people, in some reader’s minds. They were not wholly free-standing characters. They were, at times, and in part, manifestations of this subconscious struggle, acting out the warring female feelings and cultural messages: fear of enjoyment, forcing of enjoyment, acceptance of enjoyment.

To bolster my theory, I’ll mention the frequency with which sex scenes today are written from the extremely subjective viewpoint of the hero. I think this is not simply done to get into the hero’s head, but also to get into the hero’s body. This enables a reader to be both giver and recipient of pleasure, to reconcile the two roles, active and passive. It reflects women’s more aggressive role and acceptance of mutuality in sexual moments. And it’s a much more peaceful resolution than the old rape fantasy, where the rapist was definitely the Other and such acceptance was a struggle.

I fear I have just written something unintelligible. And I also think there were other factors feeding into it, but that’s the main one, in my mind.

Sherryfair, I think your theory is brilliant. It makes perfect sense. You are right about that time being a time of such conflicting messages. Good girls “didn’t”, but now comes the message that doing it doesn’t make you a bad girl. In fact, it’s your right to not only do it but to enjoy it. So who do you listen to? A lifetime of being told not to or the current trends telling you to go for it?

You say no with your mouth, like a good girl should, you fight back with all your might, like a good girl should, and then you enjoy it because the man is a sex god. You have your cake and you eat it too.

But today, we have much more of the good girls “do” that we don’t need any help in sorting it out. Well, some of us do, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue better saved for my therapist. *g*

Candy, Robin’s reference to Anne Stuart’s Black Ice (I think that’s the one she meant) in which the hero borderline rapes/forcefully seduces the heroine made me think of a question for you.

Seems one of the hardest things for you to accept is the hero who rapes and then never shows remorse for his behaviour. He never seems to understand that what he did was wrong.

What are your thoughts on a hero such as Sebastien, who knows he’s no good, that he’s a bad person who is bound to hurt the heroine and even goes so far as to tell her as much? Yes, he “sort of” rapes her, and yes, he regrets it in that he knows it isn’t the right thing to do. But the writer hasn’t set him up to be a really great guy with a heart of gold who just happens to make some bad choices in the beginning of his relationship.

I’m curious to know what you think. Are these types equally as bad?

(Well, it’s a relief that it made sense to someone else, when written out.)

I’m not entirely satisfied with it as the only explanation, however. I think other points people have made here about notions of gender and the alpha male contribute to it as well. I’m nodding my head while reading many of these posts. What we’re finding out here is that rape fantasy’s prevalence and persistence is a really complex subject and there are multiple reasons.

Sherry, I agree with so much of what you’ve said, and think you were very articulate, as usual.  Like you, I have always believed that the reader identifies with both the hero and the heroine in rape/FS scenes.  That’s because I think at core, rape fantasy in Romance is about empowerment of women, whether that’s by embodying the feminine power of martyrdom (and if you think being a martyr isn’t about power, think about those Catholic saints), embracing the sexual power of being somehow sexually liberated by the hero, converting the terror of being physically violated into an act which ultimately becomes one of deep love, transforming the threat of being victimized into an experience of “letting go” and losing control under tightly controlled circumstances, or, as, Candy said, taming the beast. 

I also think it’s important to note that there may be a big difference between the rape fantasy that women have in their heads and the representation of rape in a Romance—perhaps sometimes they are the same thing, but perhaps not.

And also, even though I believe that the rape fantasy in Romance is all about the co-opting of power, I’m not sure it’s always successful, and am not convinced it actually subverts the patriarchal conventions it sometimes seems to want to (and in some cases clearly doesn’t want to).  But even in the examples Candy illustrates and goes through very logically and rigorously, I kept feeling power for the heroine, whether it’s gained through taming the hero, letting go of her responsibilities and feelings of being overburdened, or basking in the glory of being irresistable.  In fact, I’ve been struck by what I see as a difference between freedom, which I don’t see as functioning in the Romance rape, and power, which I obviously do.

Great post, Candy—very cogent and thoughtful and provocative.

Okay, I’m going back to my cave, er Con Law homework, now.

“I don’t really understand the conflicts within the romance reader community.  I would assume there was enough room for all kinds of preferences.”

I agree with that. Like I said, no matter how disasteful I find rapist heroes, I would never agree to define romance in such a way that it would exclude them or do anything that would restrict a woman’s access to books with these sorts of heroes and stories.

But I think the urge to make people conform is also very strong. The whole “I find it repugnant, and all right-minded people should find it repugnant too!” mindset is pretty commonplace. Sexual taboos are especially strong, and sometimes that urge to make everyone conform only to accepted standards of sexuality spills over into legislation (sodomy laws or laws that ban sex toys, for example). Assorted squabbles—and some have gotten really heated—in Romancelandia about what is and isn’t acceptable in romance are just a manifestation of that, in my opinion.

Sherryfair: that was an awesome analysis.

Lilith: I totally agree with you about how asking questions and discussing this openly is even more important than arriving at any sort of definitive answer. Mostly because I think in this case, any sort of definitive answer is pretty much impossible. Good points about our underlying assumptions re: a woman’s autonomy over her body, assumptions that aren’t shared by pretty big chunks of the world population.

Lynn: I haven’t read Black Ice yet, though I have it in my TBR pile. I’ll have to read it to let you know what I think about Sebastien in particular. I’ve liked Anne Stuart’s asshole heroes, however, every one, even the really iffy ones in Moonrise and Shadow Lover. And let’s face it, much as I love her books, her heroes tend to run along the same mold.

But in general, a hero who’s self-aware and who feels bad about what he’s done, even if he’s a jerk in general, will usually get more leeway from me. It’s the unaware asshole—or worse, the asshole who does shitty things because he believes he’s doing something good, that he’s just trying to tame the heroine, not change her—drive me apeshit because an awareness of how fucked-up his actions are go a long ways towards ensuring better future behavior.

But then that’s coming from my viewpoint, and from my viewpoint, that shit’s fucked up, even for a fantasy. Other viewpoints say that this behavior is perfectly acceptable, especially for a fantasy.

“Too, I do believe - and this is going to earn me some grief - that if you write a historical about pirates or conquerors, to imply that rape was a part of daily life is realistic.”

Daily life? I’m not so sure about daily life. Rape has always been viewed as a crime, if only a property crime instead of crime against a person. I agree that in times of war, rape would be pretty common once a village or town was overrun, but then there’s the sticky wicket of how realistic it would be for a woman to fall in love with the man who not only is an invader and the killer of her family/clan/people, but her rapist and captor. If we want to be realistic about portraying rape, then why not be realistic about her being unable to fall in love with somebody so brutal? The truth is, most historical romances aren’t remotely accurate, from the way the time periods are portrayed to the word usage to the dynamics between men and women. All these books can do is provide a reasonable facsimile—some facismiles being more reasonable than others, depending on the author and the reader. That’s why the whole “it’s historically accurate to include rape” bugs me. Men who would not rape, whatever the provocation, existed back then as they do today, though I understand that legal and societal consequences of being rapist are more severe nowadays than they used to be.

Here’s my theory, coming on the heels of barely glancing at what anyone else has had to say:

Rape fantasy is a fantasy because it’s written as such. Write a real rape, and no women (or at least extremely few) would ever like to read and certainly wouldn’t fantasize about it. I grew up reading the romances that featured the rapist-hero, and the rape scene was invariably presented as very loud protesting and wistful longings of “oh, he’s ruining what would otherwise be beautiful experience” and of course, she’s aroused against her will. But the scenes involve no knife held to her throat, no giving herself up to the belief that the episode will end in her own death, no screaming and begging and crying and desperation, no looking down and seeing herrself covered in her own blood. Et cetera.

Take away the reality of it, and it stops being about rape at all and becomes just a morality play of sorts. It’s all in the language. Or at least that’s what I think.

I think Sherry hit the nail on the head. As always the social climate of the time played a huge role in the prevelance of rape in the social consciousness.

It wasn’t simply romance novels, it was police dramas, soap operas, movie of the week.. it was everywhere in our fictional society, raising consciousness of what constitutes rape, and it’s effect.

Placing rape in an historical context (where women often didn’t own their bodies) I believe helped separate the difference between then and now… As i recall it was the late sixties early seventies when marital rape became illegal, (bear with me on the dating of this, as it was different in other countries), and there was a bit of a dust up about that… I can even remember my mother all wide eyed dismissive of the notion saying.. ‘how can a husband rape his wife?’ because that marriage certificate was in essence the legal right/agreement to have sex, ergo, no saying no.

We’re seeing the same thing happening now with pedophelia. Sex with children=bad… even in an historical context where marriages occurred much earlier in pubescence than now.

X

I have to agree with Beth.  (Though I agree with a lot of what’s been written…)

I’m lucky enough not to have personal knowledge, but when I think ‘rape’, I think of the rape scene from the Sopranos, in the stairwell.  Vivid, traumatic, and horrible.  Which is a far cry from what you read in most romance-novel rape scenes. 

It’s fantasy.  But it’s fantasy with a lot of social and cultural baggage, which is why I’m going to keep reading these comments, eagerly.

What’s the difference between forced seduction and rape?

I don’t mean that rhetorically.

I agree with Beth that the reality of sexual assault is very different from the fantasy portrayal in romance novels, and I also believe readers are smart enough to know the difference and to see plot devices for what they are.

I guess my glitch is that I don’t like rape-fantasy romance. I don’t want to read them. I don’t want to spend my $ on them. But frequently there is no way to know that that’s what you’re getting until you’re well into the book (and then it goes sailing across the room, and it’s all I can do not to take the book back to the store and demand my $ back).

Romantica and Erotica books are very up front about their kink/content, but Romances aren’t. So I end up feeling duped. Happened with the only Coulter book I ever bought, and I’ll never buy another. All I have to do is see her name on the cover and I get the hebbies (I can hear that one hero in my head saying defensively, “But I used cream.” *SHUDDER*).

As I said earlier, I guess I find the rape/dom fantasy more palatable in Romantica/Erotica where I A) know it’s coming, and B) I’m not looking for a HEA. I read a book from LooseID a few months back that was heavy on the rape/dom and I just remember thinking the whole time, “What an asshole, why is she sticking around?” The sex scenes were hot, but the story line/romance was implausible (for me). I just can’t get my head around the idea that these women like the hero’s behavior, or even that they can forgive it.

I did find it interesting that I don’t read any of the authors that were mentioned as having written rape-fantasy books in the last decade (with the mistake of that one Coulter book), guess I’ve been lucky. I have no problem, per se, with these books being written, published, and purchased, I just don’t want to personally partake (and I don’t want to be cornered by any more readers and asked about how I manage to write my own rape scenes; Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr).

Mapletree, I think that’s the $60,000 question when you ask it in context of romance novels.

I would argue that all “rape” done by heroes in romance novels is simply “forced seduction” on an extreme end of the scale. Because, like Jenica said, rape in romance novels done by the hero is never the Sopranos version: brutal, beaten woman, call the police/rape kit type that I think most people would associate with the word “rape”. Instead it seems to be the heroine saying no to the hero, he persists, and even if she continues to say no and to physically resist, eventually she ends up responding. Usually that is a big part of her angst - she hates him and herself for enjoying any part of the incident. You know, that old “her body betrayed her” line.

It seems “forced seduction” is used to describe the scenario when the heroine denies that she has any attraction to the hero. It’s that “her mouth says no but her body says yes” deal, and once the hero forces the issue, she usually capitulates. Afterwards she may have regrets, but she does participate in some small degree (returning kisses, moaning and groaning at his touch, etc.)

I’ll be interested to see other definitions and distinctions.

Tonda, I also immediately thought of that Coulter book where the “hero” uses cream so it wasn’t rape.  I think it was a Viking book, can’t remember the name.  Gee, who knew that lube = consent?  Nasty.

The Coulter book I read was either Regency or early Victorian, so not the same one. Maybe the lube = consent is something she used more than once. Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!

Tonda, I am almost certain the Coulter book you read was “The Heir” (which I think is a reworking of an earlier Regency, “Lord Deverill’s Heir,” though I am less sure of that, because I only read the later reworking).

I also remember Ryder Sherbrooke seizing a jar of cream and putting it to a similar use on the heroine Sophia in “The Hellion Bride.” In this case, I think it wasn’t as egregious as the scene in “The Heir.” Still, not among my favorite books.

“I agree with Beth that the reality of sexual assault is very different from the fantasy portrayal in romance novels, and I also believe readers are smart enough to know the difference and to see plot devices for what they are.”

I know there are people who still draw those simplistic one to one connections between criminal rape and sexual assault and romance rape/FS, but I think that the kind of debate going on here, for example, is more about WHY the device of rape rather than something else.  I don’t think it’s a random choice, in other words.  And I don’t think that all readers who have difficulty with the device think it’s giving men permission to rape women in real life or suggesting that women want to be raped in real life.  But boy oh boy, outside of the rape fantasy, I’m still kind of bowled over by how many near rapes, villain initiated rapes, rape memories, and other forms of sexual violence seem to abound in Romance, and I’m literally fascinated by that fact.  Even Lisa Cach’s recent book Dream of Me has a young girl raped by the villain, and the hero has to bring her sexual healing (in fact, sexual healing is an overt theme of the novel).  Jo Goodman’s new book features a heroine who was a sex slave, a theme picked up from a couple of her Compass Club novels. 

While the rape fantasy doesn’t work for me, I think it’s use in Romance speaks to the struggles women have had in trying to appreciate their sexuality without apology, feel empowered in their sexual choices, and create a safe zone in which they can indulge certain fantasies that are edgy precisely becuase they have a real-world counterpart that’s dangerous and terrifying and potentially lethal, if not permanently damaging emotionally (I’m referring to the real-life counterpart here, not the fantasy). 

The email I sent Candy contained a link to a site that was posted on AAR a while back during a rape discussion there:  http://www.takeninhand.com/node/216  I wa.s afraid of posting it in the other discussion we had recently because that topic wasn’t specifically on rape.  To be perfectly honest, this site leaves me unsettled, despite my adamant defense of women’s right to sexual freedom through any fantasy that turns them on and doesn’t involve real-life harm to anyone or anything else.  Even though I see the rape fantasy as potentially empowering to Romance heroines and reades alike, this site baffles me a little bit, and it suggests, at least to me (although I may just be not thinking this through carefully or effectively) that the use of rape in a genre by and for women is a really complicated phenomenon.  Whenever I personally think about it, I get kind of full-up intellectually and emotionally fairly quickly, simply because the permutations and implications are so diverse and multi-layered.

“Tonda, I am almost certain the Coulter book you read was “The Heir” (which I think is a reworking of an earlier Regency, “Lord Deverill’s Heir,” though I am less sure of that, because I only read the later reworking).”

It must be one of her favorite acoutrements, then, since she employs it in Rosehaven, as well.  That book infuriated me on many levels, but probably the worst thing, IMO, was the way the other women of the household made it clear to the heroine that she deserved what she got because she was not humble enough or submissive enough to her husband.

Wait a second: HOW MANY BOOKS did Catherine Coulter write that used cream as lubricant? Because Sarah told me about Midsummer Magic, in which the heroine’s defloration was performed with the assistance of dairy products.

I’ll write some more about forced seduction when I get home from work. I do think there’s a difference between forced seduction and romance novel rape, but right now I don’t know if I categorize forced seductions as such only because they’re rapes I can stomach and forgive the hero for, or if I actually have some more-or-less objective criteria that differentiate it from actual rape.

“I know there are people who still draw those simplistic one to one connections between criminal rape and sexual assault and romance rape/FS, but I think that the kind of debate going on here, for example, is more about WHY the device of rape rather than something else.  I don’t think it’s a random choice, in other words.  And I don’t think that all readers who have difficulty with the device think it’s giving men permission to rape women in real life or suggesting that women want to be raped in real life.”

Bingo, Robin. Cut to the heart of the matter. Beth and assorted other people are right, romance novel rape is very much stylized, with most of the icky parts either glossed over or completely missing. But it’s still quite clearly sexual assault—or it is to my mind, anyway.

What a fantastic discussion!  I think the commentaries are brilliant, and am especially struck by Sherryfair’s analysis.  I’d agree that the mixed messages of those eras were particularly problematic, but I’d be interested to hear whether folks feel that cultural attitudes about female sexuality (and appetites in general) have really become significantly less ambivalent. This may seem a bizarre tangent, but I’m a dietitian specializing in eating disorders, and it seems like society is more ambivalent then ever about female appetites - and at a time when we are being told that we have unprecedented freedom to make our own choices.  If that’s as true about sex as it is about food (and I suspect it’s pretty close, though we seem to be going through a particularly insane patch with the food), then issues of conflicted sexuality and feeling guilty about wanting what you really want in bed would seem to be alive and well in 2005.

Coulter books have driven me crazy.  Not just the amount of forced sex/seduction but the constant re-canning of characters.  All females are either big bitches or super-feisty heroines, all males are big, buff and confused about women, though of course they are manly studs who ahve ‘pierced’ any number of trollops(or whatever you want to call them).  Feistiness is always in the same flavour, regardless of country or time period.  I have read most of her books, and now I can’t stand to go back to any of them, or read any more.  Argh!  I hate when writers do that.

I think it’s true that there’s not a LOT of this out there in mainstream romance/romantic suspense.  Not like in the 70s and the 80s.

But I think that forced seduction/dominance is a huge seller in the romantica/erotica market.

Like Tonda, I don’t get the appeal.  Unlike Tonda, I don’t even get the appeal in erotica.

I agree that, at least in the 70s-80s, the rape fantasy did “solve” the good-girl problem - she didn’t agree, so she didn’t have to “own” the choice to have sex.  And, even better, it was really love, so she wasn’t even a closet slut - it was TRUE LOVE.

My theory - and I suspect it will be an unpopular one - for why it’s so popular in romantica/erotica is prompted by things I hear from women I work with.  Mostly younger women, by the way.

They complain that they wish they could stay home, didn’t have to work for a living, could find a sugar-daddy to take care of them in the style they’d like to be accustomed to.  They long for the 50s ... well as long as they still have the right to make personal choices, naturally. 

As a child of the 60s, it makes me crazy (I believe, Candy, you used the word “apeshit”) to hear this kind of talk.  I really don’t think they understand the dynamic involved when you give another person total control over your life and livelihood.  (And who’ll probably trade you in 10 years from now for a younger, firmer model).

So, for these women who wish for “simpler days”, the dominance/capture/forced seduction fantasy with the alpha-asshole hero gives her “permission” to have a lifestyle that isn’t exactly PC to claim to want.

Or maybe it’s simpler and it’s just their age.  Over the years, I’ve known too, too many women in abusive relationships (physically or emotionally) to ever see the dominance romance as anything but abuse.  Hell, I liked Luke and Laura - when I was 19 years old.  Today, I’d want to string him up by his b…. well, you know what I mean.

One theory I have is that, for a few women, the rape fantasy is about not wanting to take responsibility for their bodies and their sexuality. Instead of admitting to herself that she intends to have sex with a man and fully owning all the implications of that, she puts herself into a situation where things will end up in such a way that she can’t be “blamed” for it. “Oh, I had too much to drink, and things just sort of happened.” “He was so forceful that he just overpowered me and seduced me against my will.”

FWIW, I do NOT think that the vast majority of women who are date raped fall into this category. I know plenty of women who were date raped who would’ve cut off their legs with a dull, rusted knife instead of walking out of their homes that night, if they’d known that they’d be raped by a friend or acquaintance.

With regard to the appeal of “reforming” a rapist hero, I think it may also have something to do with the woman proving to herself how extraordinary she is. If she can turn around a man who obviously has so little regard for her as a person, then she must be the shit, right? A corollary to this is the appeal of being able to win a man away from a woman everyone acknowledges as extremely beautiful, interesting, wealthy, sexy, etc. If you can get HER man, then how hot must YOU be? I’ve read a number of books where it seemed to me that the woman was far more interested in “proving” herself than she was actually in love with the hero.

I personally find the whole forced seduction/rape thing so repulsive that I will, in effect, boycott an author who has a scene like that in any of her books. And I say this as a person who has been known to enjoy some BDSM novels. BDSM isn’t rape—everybody’s there because he or she wants to be.

I would never advocate censoring books that have rapist heroes, but I’m certainly not going to support them with my book-buying dollars.

Robin, thanks for the link.  I think.

As one whose life has been personally touched by rape - violent, abusive and hurtful, which I believe categorizes all rapes (no, not me, but someone very close to me) I find this so repugnant, I feel the need to go take a shower.

I’ve seen the fallout of rape, up close and personal, and it’s not pretty.  Just reading the title of that woman’s piece - Rape is a Gift - made me nauseous.  I’d love to throw up on her shoes.

I’m a middle-aged wife who’s been having sex pretty much the same way for a lotta years.  Maybe I’m too uptight to be very adventuresome, or maybe it’s a case of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.  To each his own, and all that - but using the word ‘rape’ in the context of pleasurable sex - seriously, I have to go vomit now.  It’s reprehensible at best and damn close to criminal at worst.

She proposes that this is to be done between consenting adults - doesn’t that make it not rape?  Merely role-playing?  I found some of the responses interesting - one chick insisted that she would love to be raped.  But only by someone she loves and trusts.  WTF? 

When I think of rape, I think of my up close and personal knowledge of the aftermath - pain, blood and shame and a whole laundry list of terrible things, like scars to the psyche and the soul.  If this woman got what she says she wants, I suspect she wouldn’t roll over afterward with a happy sigh of contentment.  She’d be in therapy.

Man, this really punched my buttons.  Forgive me for going off about it.  I’m sitting here shaking my head in disbelief.  And I have a certain sadness.  The same one I always get when I see a side to human nature that repels me.

“I do wonder whether in the mid and lower level series pubs there is more overt rape than in those books reviewed by say AAR or even TRR.”

Are you talking about series publications like the Harlequin/Silhouette category books? Desire, Superromance, Presents—that sort of thing?

I don’t read the Presents line at all, because of the tendency toward asshole-ness of the average Presents hero. I don’t know whether there is any overt rape in those books, but those guys are the sort who could be rapist heros. They tend to be the “brutes who need the taming touch of a woman’s love” sort more so than the heros of other lines.

I don’t read much in the Blaze line. The ones I have read focus very much on consensual sex and the woman’s desire for sexual adventure.

As far as I know, the other lines are pretty adamant about no rape fantasies.

I do find it very interesting that Ellora’s Cave doesn’t want any “femdom” submissions because they “don’t sell.” If there are going to be any dominance games, the man better be the dominant.

Gail said:

“I do find it very interesting that Ellora’s Cave doesn’t want any “femdom” submissions because they “don’t sell.” If there are going to be any dominance games, the man better be the dominant.”

They’ve bought a few books with female dominants, though. I was just reading one of Joey Hill’s the other day. Is this policy a new thing at EC?

“They’ve bought a few books with female dominants, though. I was just reading one of Joey Hill’s the other day. Is this policy a new thing at EC?”

I guess so. Or maybe it’s just a new project/“line” they were starting. I read just last week—and I can’t tell you where because I don’t remember—a forwarded e-mail about a call for submissions from EC with that line about “No Fem Dom” in it. I didn’t read the submission requirements too closely, because I’m doing good to get my current projects written. Don’t need any new ones.

another angle on rape/FS fantasies - not sure if this has been covered yet or not.

There are two levels of power flow in these fantasies: overt and covert, physical and emotional. In the overt, physical, power-flow, the man overpowers the woman, forces her to confront her own sexuality and her enjoyment of it.

In the covert power flow, however, the woman overpowers the man: she forces him to become emotionally dependent on her (fall in Luurrvvveee), forces him to give up his Wicked Ways and become domesticated.

In the rape/FS fantasy, while he wins in the short term, she wins in the long run.

ps: I can’t read Catherine Coulter’s romances either. I rather like her early FBI series, but they’re getting boring now. Haven’t read her latest one yet, however: I’m on a Crusie kick.

“FWIW, I do NOT think that the vast majority of women who are date raped fall into this category. I know plenty of women who were date raped who would’ve cut off their legs with a dull, rusted knife instead of walking out of their homes that night, if they’d known that they’d be raped by a friend or acquaintance.”

Of course. In hindsight, anyone would want to take back the “date” that led to the rape…IF they knew it was rape.

But in 1972, they weren’t calling it that. Hell, they weren’t calling it that in my hometown in 1982, either—not even when the victim was underage.

Back then, the average woman who pressed charges against a man she’d seen socially—especially if she’d seen him more than once, or had invited him into her home, or gone into HIS home, or sat in a parked car with him—had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it as far as a courtroom.

So you learned to rationalize. “What happened to me wasn’t rape. I WAS NOT RAPED.” If not rape, then what was it? A forceful seduction? Overwhelming passion? His dominant, lusty nature getting the better of both of you?

Today we call it an assault, because that’s what it is. Back then, we weren’t permitted such truths, so we came up with pretty stories. Maybe some of them made it all the way to the pages of a few mass market paperbacks.

It’s a theory, though, as I said, it probably accounts for only a small portion of the phenomenon.

OT, sort of: Candy, the lubricant of choice used in Coulter’s “The Heir” and in “The Hellion Bride” ought to have been spelled “creme,” the moisturizing product, rather than “cream,” the dairy product. The heroes both get out a little jar from a bureau drawer during the scenes in question. I can’t give you the exact passage. The books are stored away, in boxes, since I don’t read them often. (And no wonder.)

A few random works come to mind:

Johanna Lindsay’s “Prisoner of My Desire” (1991) is an interesting twist on the rape issue here.  ((God, how I loved this book when it came out.  Found it terribly romantic and sexy.  And I very possibly still would.))

Margaret Atwood wrote a wonderful short story called “Rape Fantasies” which is a great exploration of women and fantasy, rape and romanticism - with humorous bits as well!  I highly reccommend it.  It can be found in the story collection “Dancing Girls”.

What a great discussion.  I just have one comment prompted by Sherryfair’s excellent insight about the effects of social norms and issues on what we look for in our novels.  While I agree with the reasons people have given for the enduring popularity of rape and forced-seduction scenes, I think that we need to consider that it’s not always about the sex itself.  That is, sex is not only about sex, it often represents something else (security, adventure, etc.). Rape fantasies aren’t just about not taking responsibility for sex, they might be about not taking responsibility for having to make certain choices about your life.  Feminism and equal rights for women gave us a lot more freedom of choice, but it took away the ability to NOT make the choice.  It’s not possible for most women to say, today, that they are not going to work most of their lives.  No man (that I know of) can be forced to support his wife simply because she’s his wife.  And I have met quite a few women who miss this, who still hope to find men with lucrative careers that will allow them not to work or to work on their own terms (with or without children in the picture). Maybe the submission fantasy is about the good part of the days when women didn’t have many options but men had to take care of them. 

I could be totally off base, since I’ve always worked and never expected anyone to support me (and they haven’t, so my expectations have been met!). 

And this is just about rape scenarios in romance novels, not the discussions on takeninhand.com.  I have NO understanding of those points of view.

Sunita

“I’d be interested to hear whether folks feel that cultural attitudes about female sexuality (and appetites in general) have really become significantly less ambivalent.”

In a word, Evie:  NO!  FWIW, I do think we’re in a transition period, though, in which women are starting to come forward and claim their sexuality for all its complexity, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near a critical mass of comfort with female sexuality. 

“She proposes that this is to be done between consenting adults - doesn’t that make it not rape?  Merely role-playing?  I found some of the responses interesting - one chick insisted that she would love to be raped.  But only by someone she loves and trusts.  WTF?”

I could write for hours on this subject—which I won’t, to your relief, but I do think, Stef, that there’s a tremendous amount of conflating that goes on when we talk about rape v. rape fantasy, representations of rape in media v. rape fantasies, and forced seduction (which, IMO, is no longer force once the woman consents to the sex, which is critical for me to go along with this fantasy myself)v. rape v. rape fantasies.  The thing that really struck me about that website was that some of the women really want the edgiest experience they can get—but within the realm of some certainty and safety.  I don’t have a judgment about that either way, since I haven’t fully grasped what it’s all about yet.  Actually, I’m more disturbed by the site’s overall “male led relationship” paradigm, which I have a hard time seeing as successfully empowering for the women involved.  But who knows; like I said, I’m still groping for understanding.

We’ve talked a lot about what might be going on in the woman’s head that would make a rape/FS scene exciting. I have a question about what’s up with the man. In real life, can a man who has forced sex on a woman be rehabilitated into good relationship material? Or is this something that only happens as a fantasy in a romance novel?

I ask because I honestly don’t believe that most pedophiles and serial rapists CAN be rehabilitated. They just keep doing what they do until they’re incarcerated or dead. Is the rapist hero in a romance novel cut from this same cloth? Is the same thing that’s fucked up in these other guys also fucked up in him?

In a BDSM novella I read recently, the heroine was conviced that her captor, the hero, was a serial rapist/murderer and would only keep her alive if she kept him satisfied sexually. The way he talked to her…man, it totally creeped me out. Sounded just like the things a rapist (or child molester) would say to his or her victims. It turned out that the hero wasn’t guilty of the crimes he’d been accused of committing, but after the things he said and did to the heroine, I just could not see him as hero material.

Okay, Candy, I have a question for you.  What separates Anne Stuart’s heroes from the rapist heroes you don’t like?  There’s a scene from Into the Fire, for example, where Jamie is trying to go to bed and Dillon is stalking her around a table, telling her to “get over it” when she says she doesn’t want to be touched, pinning her down so she can’t move, telling her she can go “safely to bed” as soon as she kisses him, telling her “You’re a sore trial to my self-control” and insisting that it’s “[her] fault” for going braless in front of him, a man she refers to as “immoral, dangerous, heartless, and cruel” (pp. 147-153).  I’m not challenging you, just curious, because frankly, that scene creeped me out more than some rape scenes I’ve read, especially all the physical control and shifting of blame to the woman.

Maybe for you it’s ultimately the same as it is for me—it’s all in the context, how the author handles a given situation, what I can discern about her intent.  In Dodd’s Well-Pleasured Lady, for example, she starts out characterizing her heroine as totally traumatized at her forced-seduction, but then all that trauma magically disappears (along with her virginity), and by the next day or something, she’s playing dominatrix to her new hubby.  That use of FS was so vapid to me, so crudely in the service of mere titillation, that I hated hated hated it.  But those scenes in To Have and To Hold?  They are almost impossible for me to read, but Sebastian redeems himself for me, and that book is one of my most most most favorite.  I trust Gaffney to THINK about what she’s writing and to examine the implications before she writes it.  When authors MINDLESSLY use these devices, however, I seem to find them to be more problematic. 

“Are you talking about series publications like the Harlequin/Silhouette category books? Desire, Superromance, Presents—that sort of thing?”

To be honest, Gail, I don’t know.  The few and far between Harlequin/Silhouette’s I’ve read don’t fit the bill, but I’m wondering about some of the even more discount lines.  The reason I ask is that I’ve by and large found rape in some of the most conservative Romances—or should I say the most traditional.  I find that to be interesting, to say the least, and I wonder if, since the average Romance reader is considered much more conservative than I am, for example, that some of the lines pitched to that “average” reader contain heroes who tend to act in more manly ways (read aggressive, macho, and domineering, both physically and emotionally).  It’s a question, really, not a provable connection that I can or have made.

I’ve recently come through a Cartherine Coulter read-fest, and it strikes me that she was overly fond of the forced seduction (rape) plot device.

I skimmed those particular scenes because I felt rather dirty reading them. Sigh.

Erm… that was meant to read Catherine, and not an Irish version of the name.

As far as that linked post on what I assume is a dominance website (I didn’t stick around), I do see it’s place in this discussion, but I think it’s really a very appalling misuse of the term rape.  Any way you slice that, to my mind, it is consensual sex, and it is Not Cool to equate that with rape.  In fact, that is my only problem with that article, is that she continues on and on with the whole ‘rape is a gift’ bs.  It’s not rape if you make plans, jackass!  Call it rape fantasy at least, to differentiate.

I can speak as a woman who loves the whole being dominated for pleasure thing, and that definitely must include a discussion beforehand.  Any time there are plans made, the inclusion of safe-words, you’re in a safe place with your lover. You don’t have to be there. It’s not rape, it’s freaking playtime. 

When I was 17 someone tried to rape me, and to this day I’m not sure he’s able to father children.  I’m really not sure how it is that it that all that fits in with my current appetites, it’s probably deep and psychological, and for me, not worth digging for.  But do I enjoy these things because it’s my way of taking back the power over the situation again and again? Very probably, and I’m ok with that. 

I think there is alot of merit in the ideas presented here, particular the internal justification of the date-rape, and the mass female confusion with our changing sexual mores. (Wonderful post, Sherryfair).  I’ve never had anything but aversion to the rape-romances, and Catherine Coulter, whenever we walk by her stacks in the bookstore, almost always gets a whispered ‘eww it’s the rape lady’ from me to my husband.  The woman single-handedly put me off romances for 5 years!

I’m not sure if this post really furthers the discussion in any way, but this has all been fascinating to read.  Y’all are making me want to go back to school.

>>“But I used cream.” <<

Oh, GAWD, Tonda. GAAAAWD!  Yes, this is my fantasy of a perfect lover. One who needs cream to lube me up. Or creme. I dream about him every night.

Anybody ever heard the PJ Harvey song “Dry”? One of my favorite lines in a chorus.  “You leave me. . . DRY.” The perfect insult, or apparently an irresistible lure to a real alpha man.

Vicki

Speaking of unusual rape scenarios. . . Does everyone here remember the first time you read Outlander?  *choke*, *GASP*  Um, that was unexpected. Methinks this is no regular romance. If only that had happened to one of those rapist heroes, it would have been PERFECT! But not Jamie! Noooo! Not my sweet Jamie!

There are two questions raised by this that I find fascinating: what’s the male aspect of this, and what exactly is rape about?

We’ve talked a lot about what might be going on in the woman’s head that would make a rape/FS scene exciting. I have a question about what’s up with the man. In real life, can a man who has forced sex on a woman be rehabilitated into good relationship material? Or is this something that only happens as a fantasy in a romance novel?

Would there be any man we know willing to answer that question? Probably not bloody likely, but I’d love to hear from any male lurkers about that question.

And #2, we’re assuming by and large that rape, rape fantasies, and fictional rape is about sex. I think a few people above have made the point that sometimes sex isn’t about sex, but I think it might be worthwhile to examine what else rape, rape fantasies, and fictional rape might be about. Like power, control, rule-breaking, anger… any thoughts?

BTW, I haven’t read any of the famous “cream” books, and now I’m wondering if I should. *retches*

I don’t know if I am enough of an expert to speak to the difference between “forced seduction” and rape, but let me dare a guess: the need for the aformentioned lubricant?

I have never, never enjoyed the rapist hero books, but I’ll admit to the occassional forced seduction fantasy. I can even handle it in a romance novel if it’s done well. (And especially if it is the heroine seducing the hero, but that’s just a personal double standard.) Even better if it is just straight erotica. It’s easier not to have to believe in a happy ending when you’re reading a forced seduction.

But the rapist hero, aside from it being hard to believe a heroine could ever have respect for this man, or that he could ever have respect for the heroine. . . Someone mentioned that it’s hard to believe a rapist or child molester can ever be reformed. Exactly! What if this hero gets the hots for your new friend? “Sorry I raped your friend, sweetie, but she was completely irresistible. I know you understand.”

The rape scenario gets some people off, and that’s fine. But I like to think that most grown women understand that love—genuine happily-ever-after, let’s-get-married love—is about respect. RESPECT. It’s not just a hero who gets hard and wouldn’t want his arch-enemy to rape and kill you. Mmm. My hero.

Bleh.

“And #2, we’re assuming by and large that rape, rape fantasies, and fictional rape is about sex.”

See, this is how I view the huge difference between real rape and romance-novel hero-as-rapist rape. From what I understand, real rape is not about sex in any way. It is about anger and violence and control. The rapist uses sex as a weapon just as he could use a gun or a knife. He’s not in it because he’s attracted to the woman or loves her and is frustrated because she’s refused him sexually or any of that. It’s a manifestation of rage and a sick need to control.

Whereas, it seems in most romance novel rape situations it is about sex. Perhaps there is some anger in it or a need by the hero to control a fiesty heroine, but sex is the motivating factor and the ultimate goal.

In a romance novel rape, the hero wants to have sex with the heroine, and if he needs to dominate her to make it happen, he will. Whearas with real rape, the villain needs to control the victim, and if he has to rape her, he will.

And I think this difference is key. Because real rape is horrible, brutal and unacceptable on any level you could argue it. Rapists should be locked up, no excuses accepted.

But romance-novel rape almost seems as if it is simply one form of sex-play, albeit one that isn’t very appetizing to most people. I see a spectrum ranging from agreed-upon dominance fantasies through forced seduction down to the end with actual rape. Seems like romance novel rapes fall somewhere between forced seduction and actual rape.

And I say this only about the romance novel rape carried out by supposed heroes that eventually end up in loving relationships. Anyone who believes real rape will eventually end up in a loving relationship (a la Luke and Laura in General Hospital) is buying the fantasy a little to seriously.

The rapist uses sex as a weapon just as he could use a gun or a knife. He’s not in it because he’s attracted to the woman or loves her and is frustrated because she’s refused him sexually or any of that. It’s a manifestation of rage and a sick need to control.

Whereas, it seems in most romance novel rape situations it is about sex. Perhaps there is some anger in it or a need by the hero to control a fiesty heroine, but sex is the motivating factor and the ultimate goal.

I would agree that rape is a crime of power, without reservation. I think domestic violence is the same species of crime, with its root cause being power instead of anger.

I would further agree that rape fantasies are about intimacy, rule-breaking, and sex itself.

But I’m hung up on fictional rape. The whole point of a fictional rape sequence is to point how what a bastard the hero is or how alluring the heroine is (maybe?) Is it about intimacy, is it abou woman as Siren, is it about men losing control and showing vulnerability, what is it about? I don’t think fictional rape is purely about sex; if it was, it would only show up in erotica (IMHO).

Mmmh. Must go drink coffee and think about this.

Hi, all.  I’ve never posted here before, though I’ve been lurking a while, and know some of the posters here (and of course, Candy!) from AAR.  This topic has enticed me out of lurkdom, though. 

I’ve been reading romances since my early teens in the early eighties, when hero/heroine rapes and forced seductions were par for the course.  In those days, I was able to enjoy many of those books without thinking too much about the implications of my reading pleasure.  Nowadays, I’m more picky, but I can still enjoy a well-written fantasy rape or forced seduction quite a bit. Patricia Gaffney’s To Have and to Hold is just about my favorite book in the romance genre, ever.

I love Sherryfair’s comment about the hero and heroine in romances also being manifestations of a subconscious struggle.  In fact it always surprises me, in reading discussions on romance boards, how many people assume that it is the heroine, and only the heroine, with whom the reader identifies.  I personally think there is also much reader identification with the hero. 

And IMO in a forced seduction / rape fantasy the reader can identify with both the heroine upon whom sexual pleasure and ultimately, a happily ever after ending is being forced, and the hero, who has tremendous power and freedom in that scenario.  One gets to be at once the “good girl” and the “bad boy,” and that can be a satisfying thing. 

Let me go on a little tangent here about “bad boys” in general.  Not just rapists, but others who break the law or misbehave, including outlaws, con artists, assassins and rakes.  They abound in romances, and elsewhere in popular culture, and I think one of the reasons they fascinate us is because of the freedom they represent. 

I think part of the appeal of the forced seduction / rape fantasy lies in the fact that it gives readers the ability to identify with another such character who doesn’t care about the rules, who just takes what he wants.  Because as women we are raised to always care about the rules, and almost never to just take what we want.

At the same time that one can indulge in that fantasy, one can also identify with the heroine, who is so completely chaste and “good” that she refuses even the hero (who, in the world of the book, is often supposed to represent all things desirable in a man).  The hero goes after all he wants regardless of the consequences, and the heroine refuses what she (in the fantasy world of the book, NOT in reality) secretly wants.  In this way the two characters allow the reader to have both freedom and moral high ground, simultaneously.

All this is somewhat disturbing to me, but I think it’s true.

Anyone who believes real rape will eventually end up in a loving relationship (a la Luke and Laura in General Hospital) is buying the fantasy a little to seriously.

BTW, I have to say that I was a huge fan of General Hospital at that time. I thought Luke and Laura were just the romantic couple ever and the implausibility of their situation never occured to me.

Which makes sense since I accepted the same thing in the romance novels I was reading at the time.

“But hey, evidence that forced seduction is just a euphemism for “rape I can stomach”: what Sebastian does to Rachel in To Have and To Hold.”

I think To Have and To Hold is somewhere in the netherland between rape and forced seduction, in part because Sebastian definitely wants to humiliate Rachel, but she refuses to feel raped, in part because her goal is to feel nothing at all.  It feels too violating to me to be straight rape fantasy (which as I understand it is escapist in nature), but since Rachel is turned on and Sebastian desperately wants to break through Rachel’s indifference, it doesn’t feel like straight rape, either. 

But how about this for a difference between the rape fantasy and FS:  In FS, the heroine ultimately consents.  In rape fantasy, I (as reader) consent for the heroine because I know it’s in the service of the HEA.

Hey all :)

I was sent over here by Lynn, who recommended this discussion in her blog. Ironic, then, that I’m going to disagree with a comment by Lynn. ;)

>>>In a romance novel rape, the hero wants to have sex with the heroine, and if he needs to dominate her to make it happen, he will. Whearas with real rape, the villain needs to control the victim, and if he has to rape her, he will.<<<

I would argue that in both situations it’s still about power. The so-called hero wants power over the heroine. Now, whether he wants that to get his kicks or because he really does find her attractive and refuses to be held at bay really doesn’t make a lot of difference to me. It’s about power, control and a complete lack of respect for the woman - and this is why I simply cannot under any circumstances buy the argument that the ‘hero’ rapes the woman because he ‘loves’ her so much. He doesn’t love her. He has a complete lack of respect for her, no consideration for her feelings; he sees her as simply a body provided for his pleasure. There’s no love in that.

I’ve read some Catherine Coulter books too, and will never read her again. But the very worst rape ‘romance’ I’ve ever read is one of those Candy mentioned in her post: Judith McNaught’s Whitney, My Love. I cannot understand why that book continues to see well. I don’t understand all the rave reviews on Amazon. I don’t understand why even some friends of mine, who are otherwise very sensible individuals and who do have lines they don’t like heroes to cross, actually love that book. The ‘hero’ not only rapes his child-wife, he beats and humiliates her. It was truly sickening and McNaught is now on my ‘never read again’ list.

If there’s anyone reading this who does like ‘Whitney’, can you please tell me why? I don’t know if I’ll even behin to understand the appeal, but I’d be interested to hear.

Really interesting discussion here, It’s going to take me some time to process all the comments. Just goes to show that the use of this device is far more nuanced than many would have it.

Anyhow, very quickly wanted to say regarding reader identification: yes, absolutely. It always puzzles me how people can assume that the reader will only identify with the main character and so on. Most people are far more complex and ambiguous then any novelist could ever hope to portray, and reading is far more than just processing words on a page.

Now I’m off to have some quality thinking time about how the historical settings of many of these novels allow us to separate rape from its reality and turn it into something else. And also about how it tends to happen to “feisty” females who transgress the gender boundaries of that time.

Oh, I just had a realization. I’ve always hated those romances (usually a marraige-of-convenience story) where the h/h hate eachother, but have really hot sex. I’m referring to the scenario where the hero treats the heroine like complete dog shit during the day. You know, humiliation, degradation, insults. Maybe he’s keeping her locked in the tower as punishment for her evil ways. But he can’t resist her smokin’ bod, so he goes there every night to do her. And she hates him with every fiber of her being, thinks that he killed her little brother, but she can’t help but get wet for him.

I just realized that THIS is forced seduction too. And not the kind I like. He thinks she is no better than an animal, and he will use her own body as a weapon to defeat her.

Ick.

“See, this is how I view the huge difference between real rape and romance-novel hero-as-rapist rape. From what I understand, real rape is not about sex in any way. It is about anger and violence and control. The rapist uses sex as a weapon just as he could use a gun or a knife. He’s not in it because he’s attracted to the woman or loves her and is frustrated because she’s refused him sexually or any of that. It’s a manifestation of rage and a sick need to control.”

Interesting comments, Lynn.  They remind me of the evolution of rape laws in the U.S.  Before the 1980s, the presumption in rape cases was that if the woman didn’t physically fight with ferocity against her attacker he couldn’t be convicted of rape.  This presumption against rape comes from the historical tendency to see women as the Eve figure tempting men with their sexuality.  In the 1980s, though, rape laws began to evolve, with lesser degrees of resistance on the part of the woman being acceptable, with some jurisdictions starting to adopt the non-consent rule.  So at the time many of these bodice rippers were being published, rape laws were going through a tremendous evolution, as was the perception of rape as a crime of violence rather than a crime of passion, because those two things go hand in hand.  As long as rape was considered a crime of passion, the woman was somehow the instigator, but once it became a crime of violence, the responsibility shifted to the man, and the woman had to prove less in the way of resistance to the rapist or forced used against her—in other words, she was not punished as much if she just submitted because she either froze or felt it was to her advantage not to fight back.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as rape in the law was becoming less about sex, that rape in Romance was growing in popularity as a sexual fantasy (at least as it occurs between the hero and heroine).  It’s also at this time (during the 80s) that law enforcement was JUST STARTING to treat domestic violence cases as more than just private disputes that warranted no serious attention or intervention.

So perhaps in part women were beginning to feel more protected legally and so they could express the sexual rape fantasy without feeling they would be punished for it.  That still doesn’t explain all the incidents of rape fantasy in Romance that fall outside the rape fantasy, but maybe it’s a place to start.

By the way, I know someone mentioned marital rape in an earlier post, and I wanted to point out that only 15 states have eliminated the marital rape exemption (that is the still somewhat popular assumption that rape cannot occur between spouses).  The landmark criminal case against the marital rape exemption, People v. Liberta, dates only back to 1984.

“I would argue that in both situations it’s still about power. The so-called hero wants power over the heroine. Now, whether he wants that to get his kicks or because he really does find her attractive and refuses to be held at bay really doesn’t make a lot of difference to me. It’s about power, control and a complete lack of respect for the woman - and this is why I simply cannot under any circumstances buy the argument that the ‘hero’ rapes the woman because he ‘loves’ her so much. He doesn’t love her. He has a complete lack of respect for her, no consideration for her feelings; he sees her as simply a body provided for his pleasure. There’s no love in that.”

Hi Wendy—great comments.  This is exactly how I felt at first about rape in Romance, which is still something I don’t personally enjoy or get into.

BUT, I kept hitting this wall of how it was WOMEN writing these stories and WOMEN getting the hero’s love and eternal devotion at the end of the book, and that totally puzzled me.  Yeah, I think there are some authors and books that fall into the “victim of patriarchy” category, where the heroine starts out and ends up as a doormat.  But that’s not the case for all rape fantasy Romances. 

So I finally started thinking, hey, maybe it’s WOMEN who are co-opting the power of rape, as authors, as character, and as readers, and are trying to re-frame something that in real life makes them victims but in Romance can (not in all cases, though) ultimately make them the dominant partner in the relationship.  This doesn’t work for all incidents of rape in Romance, of course, but for the “rape fantasy,” I really wonder if it’s not partly an attempt (not necessarily succesful) to take the power society gives to the man in real rape situations and transfer that to women, either as authors who can craft these books and their happy endings, or as readers who can experience the thrill of being sexually irresistible and the fantasy of domesticating the handsome but morally bankrupt rake.  Not to mention taking sex, which for women is traditionally seen as an expression of love, and changing the most anti-love sex act of rape into something that will ultimately become love.  What do you think?  I’m really interested in seeing the other side of this, since it’s still something I’m struggling with.

I really wonder if it’s not partly an attempt (not necessarily succesful) to take the power society gives to the man in real rape situations and transfer that to women, either as authors who can craft these books and their happy endings, or as readers who can experience the thrill of being sexually irresistible and the fantasy of domesticating the handsome but morally bankrupt rake.  Not to mention taking sex, which for women is traditionally seen as an expression of love, and changing the most anti-love sex act of rape into something that will ultimately become love.

OMG, beautiful. I totally hadn’t considered that. Co-opting that power through fiction? It’s a beautiful theory, one I think works.

*bows down to Robin*

I took the break quite long, but I am glad I did because many offered so much more interesting insights. I agree with Lynn M, THIS! Christine and Sherryfair’s takes most.

What I find interesting is seeing all these degrees of trust [reader’s trust?]. When the hero does something to the heroine, this is the point where it generates a wide of reactions, ranging from continue to have trust [that it’ll work out in the end] to feeling that sense of trust betrayed.

This is probably why there are so many definitions of rape, forced seduction and well as variety of personal boundaries that could be applied to romance novels, such as which context justifies such a scene, which context fails to work, what is acceptable and what isn’t.

There is a non-romance novel by Ayn Rand—oh, what’s it called? ... The Fountainhead? IIRC, there is a scene where Roark raped Dominique, but according to Rand, it’s “rape by engraved invitation” because in her view, it is “clear” that Dominique wanted this all along. Also, IIRC,  according to Rand, Roark is a special man, a breed above average men, so he has a freedom to do what he wants, including answering Dominique’s secret desire. [I may be off the track, but please do feel free to correct me.]

In a way this mentality applies to romance novels. Hm, I am not sure that is even a point, but pleae do take it as an off-the-cuff comment.

Just a quick confirmation that it’s indeed The Fountainhead. Funny that I still could remember their names, but not the book title. :D

Robin, that last post explaining your theory expresses it beautifully. That theory would work for me. With the understanding, of course, that we would still have to look at each instance of rape in a book and the particular context and figure out why the author resorted to the rape device. I, too, think “To Have and to Hold” is a brilliant book, and actually, it’s in my Top 10 of all time. But I was troubled by Coulter’s “The Heir” (I’ve not read “Rosehaven,” and now pribably won’t) and McNaught’s original version of “Whitney, My Love.” (And don’t even get me started on Ayn Rand’s fiction.)

In fact it always surprises me, in reading discussions on romance boards, how many people assume that it is the heroine, and only the heroine, with whom the reader identifies.  I personally think there is also much reader identification with the hero. 

And IMO in a forced seduction / rape fantasy the reader can identify with both the heroine upon whom sexual pleasure and ultimately, a happily ever after ending is being forced, and the hero, who has tremendous power and freedom in that scenario.  One gets to be at once the “good girl” and the “bad boy,” and that can be a satisfying thing.

Good point, LFL—and glad to see you here! Here’s my thought on reader identification: it’s definitely possible to identify with more than one character. Generally speaking, though, a large part of our identification tends to lie with the person whose POV in which we’re immersed. And books with the hero’s POV didn’t become common until fairly late in the game—based on what I’ve read, it was the mid 80s, but people who know more, please feel free to chime in and correct me. When the heroine is raped in these older books, we’re pretty much seeing and feeling what she’s seeing and feeling.

So when the hero is pretty much a cipher interpreted for the reader through the heroine’s lens, as was the case of many older romances that featured rape, what are your thoughts on character identification?

I think To Have and To Hold is somewhere in the netherland between rape and forced seduction, in part because Sebastian definitely wants to humiliate Rachel, but she refuses to feel raped, in part because her goal is to feel nothing at all.

There’s definitely a continuum of violation, with “being kinda pushy” at one end of the spectrum and “outright rape” on the other. Besides intention and effect, I think what pushes things along further to the “rape” end of the spectrum is the woman’s reaction to what happened. If she didn’t feel raped, I don’t think a rape happened. I was re-reading the scenes this morning and I was struck by a few things:

1. Rachel, because of her past with her husband, was scared of sexual intimacy in general.

2. At the same time, she wasn’t necessarily scared of Sebastian.

3. At one point during the first (second?) sex scene, she says something like “Do it, then.” I didn’t take it as consent, but those words, her attitude (she wasn’t afraid of being violated, she was afraid of being turned on), and her bone-deep certainty that Sebastian would never do anything to truly hurt her, pushed her situation away from being rape.

4. Sebastian was ambivalent about the whole thing, too. He knew he was acting like a shit, but his interest was piqued and he wanted to see how far he could push Rachel. I think it was Rosario who pointed out on Romancing the Blog that it’s easier for her to accept and forgive actions that are unpalatable to her rather than attitudes and worldviews, and I think she even used this very example: Sebastian KNOWS he’s being a fuckass, which makes his reformation more believable, as opposed to somebody who feels no remorse. I don’t know how much the aggressor’s intentions count vs. the effect of the aggressor’s actions on the victim, especially for something as touchy as sexual assault. But for fiction, I know it counts for a lot, at least on my part.

I would agree that rape is a crime of power, without reservation. (...) But I’m hung up on fictional rape. The whole point of a fictional rape sequence is to point how what a bastard the hero is or how alluring the heroine is (maybe?) Is it about intimacy, is it abou woman as Siren, is it about men losing control and showing vulnerability, what is it about?

I agree, Lilith. Fictional rape is not real-life rape, but its use as a fictional device has a definite purpose, even if it’s subconscious on the part of the author, or even if it’s there only to titillate. I think it’s so hard to generalize because we’re covering a lot of different books written by a lot of different authors during different time periods, and once you throw reader interpretation in there… Somebody could make this a subject for a PhD dissertation.

Now I’m off to have some quality thinking time (...) about how it tends to happen to “feisty” females who transgress the gender boundaries of that time.

Excellent observation, Evil Auntie Peril. That part of fictional rape bugs me a lot: the punitive aspect. Penile penetration isn’t just the only way for the hero to sexually subdue a heroine; I know I’ve read many books in which the hero kisses or fondles the heroine punishingly.

I think you’re right, and I think that’s the clue that points us to fictional rape being about the co-opting of power. I have only read one fictional forced-seduction/romance rape scene (where the rape is committed by the hero instead of the villain) that didn’t end up with the heroine Gettin’ Her Rocks Off, and that was in a Sharon Green novel.

Also, IIRC, according to Rand, Roark is a special man, a breed above average men, so he has a freedom to do what he wants, including answering Dominique’s secret desire.

Holy crap, Maili. You’ve just described a large class of romance novel heroes. Heh. Ayn Rand, bodice ripper pioneer—who knew?

“That theory would work for me. With the understanding, of course, that we would still have to look at each instance of rape in a book and the particular context and figure out why the author resorted to the rape device.”

Oh, hell, yeah.  Like you said in your earlier post, there are multiple things going on, and many of them are not mutually exclusive.  Your point about sexual ambivalence is so important, IMO, as are Candy’s examples of some of the pay-offs for the heroine in these scenarios, as are the comments of readers like Wendy who see Romance rape as a forcible violation, and as is EAP’s observation that it’s often heroines who step out of the gender norms of their time who are recipients of the hero’s, uh, attention.  Not only are there SO MANY variations on the device in the genre, but also there are SO MANY variations from author to author witin the same use of the device. 

To be honest, it frustrates me a little that there still seems to be a taboo in the Romance community against talking about Romance rape/FS outside of the “it’s harmless/good” or “it’s horrible and violent” polemic.  FWIW, I believe that if we start to ferret out the host of issues related to the use of rape in Romance, we will be right at the heart of some of the most important insights into why and how Romance is such an influential form of communication and connection between and among women (and why it’s not “just porn” or “trash”).

I don’t know what I find more fascinating: the actual points that Candy brought up, or those introduced/expounded on by the rest of the group.  The topic of rape has always been a hot button for me because I’ve had several friends that have been assulted (NOW lists the satistic that 1 in 4 women will be assulted in their lifetime), but at the same time I enjoy Anne Stuart’s scenes that walk the line of what many people find objectionable.  I once heard someone call them “edge of consent” scenes, which (in the context of the law) takes what could have been an act of rape and turns it into a hard seduction.  In the end, the female protag consents, absolving the guilt of rape from the male. 

In real life rape does not have to leave a woman bleeding and beaten to be about power.  Many women who are date-raped have a hard time proving their case because they weren’t beaten at all (due to freezing or the decision to not fight back because of fear).  I still remember a case where a woman—realizing that she couldn’t win in a fight—asked her attacker to use a condom (which, I believe, he did).  When he was brought to trial, his defense attorney argued that by asking him to use a condom, she consented.  The prosecution rebutted with the statement that the condom was the only protection she could provide herself in the situation.  I do not remember the verdict, but I do remember thinking that had this taken place in the 80s, the case would have never made it to trial. 

Due to the ever changing nature of what we define as rape in the court system and socially, I think that we will continue to see rape (in some aspect) used in all literature as a way to deal with our issues.  Where we personally draw the line affects what we read and write. 

A friend of mine (male) just finished reading the Fountainhead.  In the beginning he couldn’t stop talking about how he identified with Rourke, on and on he would go, and then he got to the rape scene with Dominique.  He put the book down for a month, couldn’t touch it, because the character he had so identified with had done something that he couldn’t fathom (his exact quote was, “I’m not okay with that.”).  Suddenly he’s online looking stuff up on Rand, and asking me if it was true that she hated women (“She must to say something like Dominique wanted it, right?”).  I’m tempted to send him the link to this conversation.

L

Here’s a curious question: doth my memory deceive me, or don’t some of the forcible seduction scenes/rape scenes end in the heroine having an almost overpowering against-her-will orgasm?

You’re right, Sarah: a lot of the rape scenes end with the heroine coming her brains out. As with everything else about this issue, I feel torn about it.

On one hand, I it as blatantly manipulative. “Oh, it’s not rape—she CAME! She was obviously enjoying it! A REAL rape wouldn’t have the heroine coming so hard she saw stars and floated in the eternal rhythms of the universe, etc.”

On the other hand, I feel like it’s part of what Robin says is the reclaiming of rape for empowerment in fiction. Take something scary and awful, and in the end, make it pleasurable.

On the other, other hand, I feel like the pleasure is often used punitively, and the smugness of the hero afterwards, like “Ha! I knew better than you what you wanted, little girl” bugs me too. Because in those old romances, I feel as if the hero and heroine were in competition, and the one who was right more often was the winner, and the heroine LOST EVERY TIME. Bugged the hell out of me because I’m so goddamn competitive, and I mostly identified with the heroine. But this probably reveals more about me than about the rape device.

I’m tempted to send him the link to this conversation.

Do it! DO IIIIIT!

We need a good male POV on all this, too. Where the hell are Stephen and Doug, dammit?

“Sebastian was ambivalent about the whole thing, too. He knew he was acting like a shit, but his interest was piqued and he wanted to see how far he could push Rachel. I think it was Rosario who pointed out on Romancing the Blog that it’s easier for her to accept and forgive actions that are unpalatable to her rather than attitudes and worldviews, and I think she even used this very example: Sebastian KNOWS he’s being a fuckass, which makes his reformation more believable, as opposed to somebody who feels no remorse. I don’t know how much the aggressor’s intentions count vs. the effect of the aggressor’s actions on the victim, especially for something as touchy as sexual assault. But for fiction, I know it counts for a lot, at least on my part.”

ABSOLUTELY.  I also love the fact that Sebastian and Rachel talk about all the ways in which he’s victimized her; in fact, I think his initial sacrifice of her to Sully was even worse than what he did to her sexually.  The way they discuss all that earned many many points for Sebastian from me.  Plus, I think it’s important that the incidents happen fairly early on in the book, because IMO Gaffney is tracing Rachel’s evolution from victim to independent and healed woman, a process which in turn frees Sebastian to pursue his own healing.  The fact that neither of them saves the other, but that they both help facilitate healing in each other really works for me, since both of them avoid the martyr/savior paradigm.

“That part of fictional rape bugs me a lot: the punitive aspect. Penile penetration isn’t just the only way for the hero to sexually subdue a heroine; I know I’ve read many books in which the hero kisses or fondles the heroine punishingly.”

Personally, I think it’s often at these points that the reader is meant to identify with the hero rather than the heroine.  Let’s face it—women are often as judgmental of other women, especially as they step out of their assigned gender roles, as men are (maybe more so).  It’s like in Japan where women trained the geishas, keeping the system alive and ensuring the subjugation of other women from generation to generation.  Yes the system was patriarchal, but it was women who helped continue the patriarchy, at least in this way (same with foot binding in China).  I wonder how many readers might think that a heroine deserves to be brought down a peg or two by the hero.

I’m thinking Stephen and Doug know a potentially-deadly conversation when they hear it, and being male may have wisely decided to stay silent. *G* Mostly because I raised this question with the DH, and he got that ol’ “deer-in-the-headlights” look. Poor guy.

BTW, somewhat off-topic: I hope this discussion gets saved somewhere. (I keep debating printing it out, myself, but my coworkers are gonna be surprised to find it spitting out of the printer, between the PowerPoint presentations and the research notes.)  Because I would say this is one of the most interesting threads I’ve ever seen on this topic.

Thank you, Candy and Sarah for being our hostesses on this blog, and for initiating the discussion, for moderating it and taking it further.

Indeed, I’m impressed by both the lack of condemnation and the quality of replies.

Man, Smart Bitches totally rock.

“That part of fictional rape bugs me a lot: the punitive aspect.(...)”

Personally, I think it’s often at these points that the reader is meant to identify with the hero rather than the heroine.  Let’s face it—women are often as judgmental of other women, especially as they step out of their assigned gender roles, as men are (maybe more so).

You have a point there, Robin. If that was the author’s intention, it never works for me—when two characters are equally awful (and the heroines in those romances tend to be highly irritating to me), I root for the heroine.

And you’re totally right about how women do a great job of keeping other women in line, and how we can oftentimes actively perpetuate our own oppression. I believe Simone de Beauvoir talked about that at length in The Second Sex, but it’s been years and years since I’ve read it. Time for a re-read, I guess.

Going somewhat OT: Feminism talks about the destructive male gaze, but has any work been done on the destructive female gaze? The way women assess each other and mete out punishment when they sense some of their own as not belonging can be really destructive. I know most of my problems with body issues and self-esteem stem not from the objectifying gaze of other men, but what my schoolmates said and thought about me and my body in secondary school (equivalent to junior high and high school in the US).

Also, seconding what’s been said by sherryfair and Sarah: this is one of the most interesting discussions on our site so far, and it wouldn’t have been possible without all the incisive, erudite comments from you guys.

Awww, can you feel the love? The Winne-the-Pooh puppy can:

Re. Whitney, My Love, since I loved that book to pieces when I first read it at age fifteen, and have kept it all these years, I will try to explain its appeal.

For me, a lot of it has to do with the character of Whitney, and the way she is introduced in the book.  She is fifteen years old, she wearing boys’ clothes and riding a horse while standing on its back, hoping to impress her friends and neighbors, especially Paul.  Whitney is sent off to France with her aunt and uncle, but she goes determined to win Paul on her return.  While in France, Whitney charms her friend’s brother, Nicholas, a confirmed bachelor and heartbreaker, and the two become good friends.

It’s not until after these events that Clayton enters the story, as a stranger Whitney meets in a masquerade.  It turns out that Clayton has decided to marry Whitney, but he doesn’t want her to know it yet.  Thus begins the central conflict of the book – Clayton is determined to marry Whitney, but Whitney is determined to marry Paul.

At this point, I was totally hooked.  Whitney was my own age at the time (fifteen) when the story began, and she was not a perfect, sophisticated, mature teenager.  She was a believable teenager, and she also reminded me of Anne of Green Gables.  She was also not afraid to speak her mind, she suffered some humiliations, she knew what she wanted and she had male friends other than the hero.  Although in many ways she was idealized (always clever, kind and outgoing), she also felt REAL.  I identified with her in a way that I have with few romance heroines before or since.  And that right there is a huge part of why I loved this book. 

As to other reasons I loved it, McNaught’s other characters came alive on the page for me too.  There’s no question that this author can create a sort of magical, fairy tale world with her side characters.  And Clayton, for all his jealousy and high-handedness, was urbane, human and interesting.

I also loved the book because it was a kind of Cinderella fantasy.  Whitney, a commoner disapproved of by her father and his neighbors, is singled out by a duke who ultimately marries her and elevates her to the rank of duchess.  Many of McNaught’s historicals have this element—the heroine is usually a commoner and often in some kind of unhappy circumstances early on, and often there’s some enemy who schemes to bring her down, but her innate kindness, cleverness and charm bring her to the attentions of a duke, marquess or earl, and she becomes the toast of London before finding a happily ever after.  I actually can’t think of an author who does this Cinderella thing better than McNaught. 

Now as to the “rape” itself.  I put the word in quotes because as horrifying as that scene is, Whitney actually consents before penetration occurs, and even initiates a kiss immediately beforehand.  However, she is still terrified, and prepared to go through with the sex because she loves him and perhaps because she thinks it will placate his anger, rather than out of a feeling of desire for him at that moment. 

I can’t say that this scene was ever erotic to me.  Clayton was too angry and Whitney too terrified.  It was not a forced seduction IMO – Clayton starts to seduce her and then stops, actually saying that he doesn’t want her to enjoy it too much.  Really, a horrifying scene to read. 

But that was actually part of what I liked about it.  At that time – 1985 – rapes and forced seductions in romances were a dime a dozen, but most of them were portrayed as enjoyable to the heroine.  This one was not.  Whitney was clearly traumatized, and even Clayton was haunted by his own actions.  Rather than being portrayed as okay, this scene communicated that this was not okay.  It created a huge stumbling block for Whitney and Clayton’s relationship, and it did not glamorize what Clayton did.  Compared to many of the rapes out there at that time, it felt like a step forward to me.

Lastly, I think part of the appeal of many of McNaught’s books, including this one, and indeed the appeal of many other books in the romance genre too, is a dynamic in which the hero wrongs the heroine in some fashion (whether it’s to rape her, misjudge her, and treat her badly in some other way) and later has to suffer for it or atone for it. 

What’s most emotionally satisfying in those books isn’t the hero’s mistreatment of the heroine, but rather his realization of just how wrong he was, his suffering from that realization, and ultimately, his atonement for it.  The reason this can be so very emotionally satisfying is that it shows that he can’t harm the heroine without consequences.  Love for her makes him vulnerable, so that when he hurts her, he hurts himself.  It’s a fantasy that puts power over the hero in the heroine’s hands, because it proves that his love for her is not something he can escape.

LFL, thanks for weighing in. It’s been several years since I’ve read Whitney, My Love, and part of the reason why the rape scene made me chuck the book on the floor and tear my hair out (OK, I just tugged vigorously, no actual damage was done to the roots) was:

1. I liked Whitney. I liked Whitney quite a bit. Like you said, McNaught has a knack for creating adorable, likeable heroines.

2. Clayton didn’t apologize nearly enough for what he did. In fact, I don’t remember him apologizing for it at all, or feeling too much remorse one way or another about it.

3. WHITNEY ended up grovelling to him at the end, for something not necessarily related to the rape. In fact, didn’t she apologize for the rape, too? I seem to remember her trying to placate him or something right after the dirty deed was done.

So all in all, the resolution of the sexual assault just wasn’t as satisfying for me. I mean, I needed a couple hundred pages of Clay feeling like a complete shit because I get downright vindictive when a hero does something awful to the heroine, but this rape took place near the end of the book, and Clay’s remorse just wasn’t apparent enough for me to forgive him.

I do agree that at least McNaught didn’t romanticize the act to the point of Whitney mysteriously orgasming during the trauma.