Book Review

Purity’s Passion by Janette Seymour, a Guest Review by RedHeadedGirl

C-

Title: Purity's Passion
Author: Janette Seymour
Publication Info: Pocket 1977
ISBN: 978-0671810368
Genre: Historical: European

imageWell.  That was…unpleasant.

I’m done with the 1970s-early 1980s OG Old School.  That was one of the most unpleasant reading experiences I’ve ever had, and I read The Phantom of Manhattan.  I finished it because I was kind of interested in where this story would end (and how much shit can be heaped upon the head of the heroine), and I have a finely developed case of trainwreck syndrome.  (Also, my copy didn’t stink, so that helped.)

I’m having a really hard time coming up with a Letter Grade, because I’ve read worse, and I’ve read better. I had a more entertaining time reading Passion’s Bold Fire than this, but Purity’s Passion wasn’t badly written, not by a long shot. I just hated reading it.  But it doesn’t deserve an F.  I’m going to call it a qualified C-.

The heroine is Purity, whose beauty and fine young body drive men wild.  She is born in France on the eve of the French revolution, the daughter of the bailiff on the estate of the Marquis de Fayelle. When she is about 8 or so, the French Revolution shows up on the doorstep and kills almost everyone in the chateau.  Purity witnesses all of it.

And it’s pretty clear what kind of a book this is when a woman begs for the life of her lover, and in exchange, goes to the bed of the riot leader, and finds herself orgasmically enjoying the rape.

It’s pretty awful. 

So Purity is rescued from a life of poverty in France by Mark Landless (you can tell he’s the hero because the cover copy says he’s the hero)  (Also he has a scar on his face that does not mar his hotness), and brought to Bath where he is her guardian.  The reason Mark comes for her is because the Marquise was his cousin, and Purity’s father tried to help the Marquise escape from the evil Marquis, and Mark swore to take care of the bailiff’s family, or something.  He did a bang up job, considering the bailiff and his wife were murdered by the French Revolution.  If you think this makes no goddamn sense, you would be right.

Anyway, in the course of the next 8 years or so, Purity falls in Girlish Infatuation with Mark, and makes him the Ugliest Tea Cozy In The World, which he tosses into the fireplace (not realizing she made it) and she is packed off to an upper class, ladies boarding school.  In her dorm, the other girls have found porn, and, as happens in all these stories, start experimenting in all ways that they can without losing their all-important virginity.  They make a pact to tell each other everything about their sexual exploits.

In the course of all of this, Purity meets Freddy, a wastrel younger son who thinks she’s very pretty.  At one point, to discourage his attentions, she shoves him in a fountain.

The lead Mean Girl, Phillida, hauls up the mentally deficient son of the gardener to experiment with, and when he is in bed with one of the girls, he rapes her and she eventually kills herself due to her loss of virtue.  Purity is disgusted by all of this, and refusing to tell them about Freddy, so for her punishment, she is tied to her bed hand and foot.  The Mean Girl tells her she is going to let the gardener’s son have his way with her.

Yeah.

One of the other girls knocks over a candle and unties Purity, she runs home to Mark, to find him in the process of screwing a maid, and she flies into a rage and goes to Freddy’s house, where she tells him she will marry him, and they go to bed.  Mark is like, “Hey ’grats on the wedding, see you there.” After the wedding (where he is cold and indifferent) he goes off with the Army to go fight Napoleon.

And on the wedding night she discovers that Freddy is a sadistic rapist who beats her and ravishes her every night, he’s in serious debt and only married her to make his rich great-aunt happy so the rich great aunt wouldn’t disinherit him.  At some point, she runs into this 18-year-old soldier who was about to leave for a rendezvous with fate at Trafalgar, so she very generously has sex with him so he need not die a virgin.

Her coachman saw all of this go down, and blackmails Purity into screwing him many many times to keep him from telling her evil husband.  Purity falls pregnant, and doesn’t know who the father is- it might be the young soldier or it might be the coachman- but it’s definitely not her husband.  The coachman takes her to a midwife who gives her an abortificant, and in the process the coachman gets killed by a Plot Mob.

Purity doesn’t take the abortificant, and the rich great aunt realizes she is pregnant and is so thrilled she confirms Freddy as her heir.  Freddy is fine with the fact that he’s not the father, until his cousins overhear Purity telling him that she doesn’t know who the father is, they promptly go tell the great aunt, and Freddy beats the shit out of Purity, rapes her (again), and she loses the baby and….he dies, somehow.

He owes a crap ton of money to everyone in the world, so she’s left with nothing, so she heads off to go find a job, because going home to Mark and his slutty screwing of the maids is not acceptable.  This does not work well, since she went to a ladies finishing school and knows NOTHING about ANYTHING.  She gets picked up by a woman who offers her a “position” as a “ladies maid” to a “family” but really it’s a position “on her back” as a “high-class whore” to “men who can afford the fee.”  Purity runs out of the house, nekkid, and is picked up by Alastair Monmouth, who does “stuff” but is also pretty clearly a hypnotist.  He hypnotizes her into taking a bunch of men to her bed.  She knows that she did all these things, but had no control over herself when doing them.  The men, I mean.

The shit hits the fan when Mean Girl from boarding school shows up at the same time as Mark (who showed up because Hypnotist is a war criminal) and Mean Girl throws all this crap in Purity’s face- hypnotist was using her as part of the payment to get these men to do things to further his Evil War Criminal Agenda.  Mark is completely enraged that Purity would fuck men at Monmouth’s command and rapes her as she’s shrieking “Don’t rape me, Mark!  Please don’t rape me!”

We’re at the midpoint of the book, and let us tot it up:  Purity has had consensual sex twice, been raped by six men (two of them multiple times), and nearly raped by a seventh.

So she runs away from Monmouth and finds a Gypsy man that she knew in her previous term of homelessness, and he nearly dies in a prizefight, and while he is in recovery, they trek to Wales and become lovers. After a year or so, the Gypsy leaves her, and she goes back to Mark’s house in Bath with the intent of confronting him. And saying that she now knows what she had for him was just Girlish Infatuation, but now that he’s raped her and she went off on a Gypsy hermitage for a year, she’s forgiven him and loves him.  And if he’s still angry with her for all the things that weren’t really her fault, that’s fine, she’ll leave.  Mark has resigned from the Army and spent the past year looking for her, because he realized that Raping The Woman You Love Is Bad.

Oh, well, then.  Good for him.

Turns out, Purity is not the daughter of the bailiff at the chateau in France, she was the daughter of the Marquise and some dandy at Versailles, and was smuggled out to be raised by the bailiff and his wife.  And the Marquise was the childhood sweetheart of Mark, who fell in love with her daughter (That’s Purity), and was angry at the Marquise because he never got to have sex with her, so he took it out on Purity.

As long as he can identify his anger, or something.

So they get married, he rejoins the Army to defeat Napoleon once and for all, and she follows him to the Iberian Peninsula.  Where who should show up while Mark is away killing Frenchies but Monmouth, who tells Purity that he has proof that Mark let him get out of the country ahead of a charge of High Treason, because of her, thus committing high treason himself, and in order to get possession of that evidence (a letter), she must allow him to fuck her in her marriage bed.

So she does, many times (because he can set a world record for turnaround time).  And then in the morning, he tells her that Mark wouldn’t be so stupid has to put that kind of offer in writing, Monmouth just wanted to fuck her while she was in her full possession of her senses.  And then Monmouth leaves and Mark comes home and it’s all good, except for this whole shame thing she’s got going on, and Monmouth shows up as the guest of honor at a dinner party they were invited to.  Monmouth tells Mark EVERYTHING, all the depraved stuff he got Purity to do, Mark kills Monmouth in a duel and Purity is like “well fuck this noise” and goes back to the Chateau where she grew up and whips all the peasants into shape.

Mark goes on to Waterloo, where he finds a bunch of French POWs that are also Purity’s Peasants, and finds her and they run into each other’s arms and… curtain.

Okay, so there’s a lot to unpack here.  And I really can’t separate the fact that I am a woman in 2010 reading this, with the benefits provided to me by second and third wave feminism, the fact that I live with an activist whose primary goals are ending rape and promoting healthy sexuality (I’ve learned a lot from her), and just the changes in perceptions of women’s sexuality that has happened in the 30 years since this book has been written.  In addition to all of that, there has been several sea changes in the romance genre since the 1970s.  I can’t look at this book in the context in which it was written; because that’s not the context I read it in.

This is about as subjective as you can get.  I admit that.

First and foremost is all the rape.  ALL THE RAPE.  Seven rapists (three may not have know she was not consenting to sex with them, but we’re looking at her POV), including the hero.  Six near-rapes I can think of.  Four partners consensually, two of which raped her before or after she consented.  It’s seriously fucked up.

And even when she is having consensual sex, the author talks about the men “taking her.”  As if she’s not really active in the sex.  Even in the case of the Gypsy dude, where he’s broken and battered and “not yet a real man” she goes to him and offers herself for him to take.  The lesson here is passivity in all encounters.

(I am SO SO glad I was reading Zoe Archer’s Scoundrel on my iPod during my commute to school while reading this book at bedtime.  Archer knows how to write a heroine that knows what she wants from sex and life and is an active participant in both.  Sometimes even the instigator.  Thank you, Zoe, you may have saved my sanity.)

We have several tropes of female sexuality here, and they are all disturbing.  First, there’s Purity herself, who is only allowed to be a passive recipient. She’s cursed with having this body that drives men wild (says so on the cover copy) and the only man that could bring her to orgasm (I think… if I’m reading the 70s euphemisms right) was Mark, until Monmouth comes along (and comes, and comes, and comes- shortest turnaround time known to man, for real) and he deliberately brings her to orgasm several times because that’s the revenge on Mark that he wanted. (Instead of flinging herself off a mountain, she’s flinging herself into a pit of perfect despair.  I don’t even know.)

The second trope is “those women who embrace their sexuality are evil whores” and we see this is Mean Girl Phillida.  She was the one who organized the whole “let’s experiment with the porn!” thing, and she’s presented as mean, conniving, evil, and without morals- she’ll screw anything that moves.  She told Purity that she fucked Mark just to make Purity upset.  She told Mark about Monmouth being Purity’s pimp and being a war criminal, and gets killed but Monmouth’s men on the way (and tries to fuck her way out of it, and fails).

The other girls from boarding school we run into both die as a result of sex- one I previously mentioned killed herself because she couldn’t prove her virginity to prospective in-laws, and the other becomes a low-class whore Purity runs into while with the Army in Portugal, and dies of the pox.

Purity’s own mother is said to have Purity’s same problem- her body just drives men crazy and they can’t help but fuck her, but Purity’s mother didn’t have the same strength of character or whatever that Purity has.  I really don’t know what that means, except maybe Purity refusing to “give her heart” to any man but Mark is strength of character?  I mean, her other options were to give heart to one of her many rapists, so….

Oh, wait.

I know this seems kind of disingenuous, since I liked Magnus from Season of the Sun (to an extent), yet I want Mark dead.  But I do.  I hated all the men in this book.  I feel bad for Purity because her author give her nothing- not a backbone, not a personality, not a talent, not a scrap of luck, nothing.  Hot guy with scar doesn’t make all this better.

Here’s another thing, and I don’t know if it’s a OG Old School issue, or just a result of my small sample size, but there’s no flesh to the character of Mark at ALL.  He’s this guy who stalks in an out of the story with a stony expression, and sometimes Purity thinks wistfully about him (or gets mad at him for screwing the maids.  In fact, she’s more mad at him for screwing the maids than she is mad at him for raping her), but there’s nothing about what he thinks, or feels, or wants.  I mentioned in my review of Adora I want a romance to be a story about a relationship.  Yes, they tend to be more about the heroine than the hero, but the hero has to have something to him other than a scar.  This is all Purity’s story, not their story, and we have no idea what makes him tick, or why she loves him, or why he loves her.  They do, because the story requires them to love each other.

But really, I want to have some words with the author, because who puts her heroine through all this shit?  Seriously?  And to have the end be “and they run across the field into each other’s arms to swelling orchestral music” and THAT IS IT?  No conclusion to what happened with Monmouth?  Does Mark know about the blackmail or not?  WHY IS THE DANGLING END OF THIS ANNOYING THREAD BOTHERING ME.

The argument of “IT’S HISTORICALLY ACCURATE OKAY” doesn’t really fly with me, or at least, not when the abuse of your main character is this thorough.  You don’t have to put your heroine through all of this shit.  You don’t have to make your hero a cardboard cutout with a scar on his face.  You can make your characters likeable, even with all the abuse and horror (okay, that’s more of a dig at Bertrice Small, I admit that Purity was sort of likeable, if you like your friends rather dim).  You can be historically accurate and not make the reading experience so miserable.

On a more shallow note, the writing was, on the whole, not bad.  It wasn’t as over-wrought as Bertrice Small, (can you tell I really don’t like her?) and the dialogue sounded like the author had at least listened to how people talk (and then mixed it with a more formal “this is how people in Olden Times talked”).  However, and this is another convention of the 70s, I’m pretty sure, while there was a LOT of sex (like a LOT), it’s not explicitly described.  There are a lot of mountains of pure bliss, and jumping off mountains, and taking, but no specifics.  Even when Monmouth is making her do all these depraved things, she revolts at his “most outrageous demand,” and he offers to get his servant to make her do it…. But I have no idea what that could be.  Oral on him?  Oral on her?  Anal?  Did they know about heterosexual anal in the 70s?  Watersports?  SERIOUSLY THIS DEMAND WHAT IS IT I NEED TO KNOW.

I know that the mores of how explicit a sex scene can be has changed over the past 40 years- I think we were talking in the Book Club Discussion in September about how nothing is complete without anal anymore, whereas about 20 years ago, the idea of her going down on him was like, DIRTY.  I can’t be the only one that’s read The Pearl, the Victorian magazine of erotica.  For the time, the stories are rather lewd, but not as graphic as they could be.  And as I was reading the section of Purity’s Passion that takes place in the boarding school, it almost seemed like I was reading a cleaned up version of Victorian porn.

Someone in the comments of the Season of the Sun review talked about how these OG Old School books with all the rape are more like forced orgasm fantasies.  Which, if the main audience for this type of book is women who are just old enough to feel like they missed the Sexual Revolution, and are still stuck in the idea that active enjoyment of sex is something forbidden, then yes, I can accept that argument.  It makes me incredibly sad, that this is one of the few acceptable places where women’s sexuality is even up for discussion, and even then it’s all passive reception on the woman’s part.  You are allowed to enjoy it, as long as you didn’t initiate it, and you’re not an active participant.

My own theory on rape fantasies is that part of the attraction is that the onus of the active portion of the sex on the top, so if the bottom has no idea what they are doing, it’s okay.  This is a completely unscientific theory, and does not, obviously, apply to everyone.

Here’s something that’s been turning over in my head for the past week: In the time these were written, by women for women, we, as a society, were still deep in the throes of putting the onus of preventing rape on women (“She shouldn’t have been wearing that short skirt” and “Well what the hell did she expect, being in a bar and having fun”) and still defining rape as unwanted sex that the woman resisted “to the utmost.”  (You want an exercise in Rage?  Look at the Model Penal Code’s suggestions on what rape statutes should be like.  And then thank your lucky stars that very few jurisdictions even considered them).  Anyway, I feel like there is some connection between the romance novels by and for women being so rape-heavy, and the culture being even more rape-culture-y than it is now.  I don’t know if the rape culture created the trend in the literature, or it is just correlation, not causation.  I’ve been pondering this for a while now, and haven’t reached any conclusions.  Any thoughts, or am I just making shit up?

To conclude, as Abigail Bartlet says, “It’s our history. Better or worse, it’s our history. We’re not going to lock it in the basement or brush it with a new coat of paint. It’s our history.” The evolution from this leads to Vivian Vaughn (one of my favorite early 90’s writers, who we will be discussing in the future), La Nora, and the awesomeness that is Joanna Bourne, my beloved Caroline Linden, and my new favorite person, Zoe Archer.  (SERIOUSLY.  SAVED MY SANITY.)  But just because it’s history and we can’t ignore the fact that it exists doesn’t mean I have to read it.

I don’t mind reading with a look of perpetual “WTF” on my face.  I think I’ve made that pretty clear.  But this?  Reading with my lip curled in disgust the entire time?  No.  Many times no.  No more OG Old School- I’m going to stick with the early 90s bubblegum. 

EDITED TO ADD:  I see while digging up the publication info that there is two more books in the Purity Series- Purity’s Ecstasy and Purity’s Shame (and no summaries for either, except apparently there are pirates involved (OF COURSE THERE ARE))). So I suppose that my complaints about the rather abrupt ending were addressed, and it’s possible that Mark and Purity have an actual conversation (but no money on that bet.  Why would they start now?).  However, looking at just the title for Purity’s Shame makes me go, “…my god, Seymour is going to heap another 800 pages of crap on her heroine’s head?” Of course my Trainwreck Syndrome is shouting, “Oooooo!  We HAVE to find out how bad this gets.  WE ARE A COMPLETIST IT MUST BE DONE” but I’m going to resist that urge for as long as I can.

Comments are Closed

  1. Bridget says:

    @Laura Vivanco – I know what you mean about heroines getting over it insanely quickly. But have you read The Hunger Games trilogy? It’s quite violent (though no rape) but also a love story, and the main characters all take pretty much the whole third book to deal with their problems, without it seeming overly angsty or whiny. They had serious problems; it took them a long time to deal with it. It felt real. One of the many reasons I love those books 🙂

  2. But have you read The Hunger Games trilogy? It’s quite violent (though no rape) but also a love story, and the main characters all take pretty much the whole third book to deal with their problems

    Bridget, I don’t think I could/should read it; I have to be very careful about the kinds of books I read. However, I read the review of the final book at Dear Author (and the comments people made about that review) and, interestingly, it seemed that one of the reasons that quite a lot of people were disappointed by the final book in the trilogy was that they wanted a more upbeat ending, more of a “triumph over adversity.” For example, Jia herself wrote that

    I anticipated the story arc of the Hunger Games trilogy to be one in which Katniss gains agency and freedom. […] This never happens. Katniss remains a pawn until the end. Even in the climactic act, which should have been emblematic of her reaching autonomy, Katniss was driven to it, reacting to her circumstances. […]

    Objectively, I think it is an excellent book, gripping and realistic. I think it accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. But it’s not the story I expected and it is the not the story I wanted to read.

    and here’s a comment from a reader called Amy:

    this might sound shallow, if I pick up fiction I expect glimpses of hope and love even at the worst of times. I expect the story to make sense. I don’t need a happy end, but I want a heroine who takes action, someone I can root for.

    All that was missing for me from Mockingjay. Katniss was broken and pushed around, things just happened around her.

  3. JamiSings says:

    @Susan – Disco RULES thank you very much. Better lyrics and because there was no Autotune people actually had to be able to sing to get a recording contract – not like today when all they need is a pretty body and know how to lipsync. And the clothing back then is WAY better then today’s. At least men wore their pant waists AT their waists rather then at their knees like they do today.

    The books might’ve been crap but the music and clothing is FAR SUPERIOR to today’s. *blows raspberry*

  4. zinemama says:

    RHG, looking forward to your review of Adora! I read it at 14 and can’t imagine reading it again, but while certain images got imprinted indelibly on my innocent (up till then) young mind, I don’t remember enough of it to say much more than that it made quite an impression. I know there was an awful lot of WTF in there, and am grateful in advance for you tackling it so I don’t have to!

  5. I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy about a month ago. It’s amazingly violent but there’s no sex beyond a few kisses, hand-holding, and “warm” feelings. I really liked the books despite the savagery (and I don’t think I’m far off with this description) but I was surprised that they’re YAs.

    Despite references in some passages to fantastic colors of costumes, surroundings, etc., the very tone of the books made me think of gray shades.

    No rapes—just decapitations, full body meltdowns (literally), and yeah, kind of a less than HEA.

  6. beggar1015 says:

    JamiSings:

    Disco RULES thank you very much

    I just read this as I was listening to the Bee Gees. Yeah! Disco rules! But no, can’t say the same thing about the clothes. Lord, what were we thinking?

    Susan: Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with The Love Boat! At least they had power and working toilets.

    catchphrase: ways38
    There are 38 ways to get down, get down, get down, get down, get down tonight

  7. I read Purity’s Passion roughly 20 years ago, and haven’t been able to scrub it from my memory.  It remains the single most painful romance reading experience of my life. 

    The story had the quality of a nightmare I could not wake up from.  I kept reading because I hoped Purity would get some happiness in the end, but the suffering just went from bad to worse.

    I have always considered this the most horrifying romance I’ve ever read and would not hesitate to give this book an F grade. 
    And I have a fairly high tolerance for conflict and darkness in a romance, and don’t even categorically oppose rape.  My favorite book in the romance genre is Gaffney’s To Have and to Hold which does contain rape, and still, I haven’t found a more horrific book in this genre than Purity’s Passion.

    I really appreciated this review (finally, someone else who has read this nightmare!) but have a hard time fathoming the C- grade.

  8. orangehands says:

    I read the review (and managed not to throw up, yeah me), and then the comments. One of the things I find very interesting is this basic underwriting that these books are “historic” or “old school” in whatever genre (erotica, chick-lit or romance) they fall into, as if they aren’t still popping up today. I’m not just talking about the re-releases of these books like Erin mentioned, but newly written books. Not as explicit, not in the same way, but they’re still there.

    I’m not saying the rape fantasy is bad. There were a lot of reasons for it then (the good girls don’t like sex trope, the first allowance of female sexuality, the subtext of BSDM before (actual, with consent) BSDM entered into romance novels, people working through their rapes in real life, the forced orgasm fantasy, etc etc.) I don’t really get it, but I understand that other people get it, and need it, and and I don’t have any right to dictate people’s fantasies.

    But I think we as a society are so fucking clueless and off about what consent really is, what rape is, that we’re ignoring that it is still popping up in books and being treated as part of a normal, sexual scene. There are a lot of books that I find blur the line, and a lot of books I didn’t even realize where blurring the line until someone pointed it out. (This is not to say all, or the majority, but it appears more than I think is given credit.) As rape activists have been trying to point out, there is a difference between saying yes to sex and saying nothing, and there’s a pressure that can happen for men and women that may not be our understanding of rape but blurs the line of complete consent. (The no, no, no, yes scenes, the really drunk scenes, the power imbalance scenes.)

    Like RHG said, I’m a product of the first, second, and third wave of feminism, and all the acts that went in-between those waves, I worked with rape victims, hell I am one, and I try to promote healthy sexuality. (I may call myself a prude but I’ve also spent a lot of time talking to girls/women about female masturbation.) And even I don’t always recognize this blurred line because I think society has so enforced rape culture that rape in its more subtle shades can show up and slip by without any acknowledgment for what it is. Sometimes because the characters themselves don’t see it that way, sometimes because we read the scene from the pursued instead of the pursuer (and so we can read his/her desire while she’s saying no), and sometimes because it’s just that subtle and we don’t know to call it rape, and sometimes because we have been taught not to think about it as rape. Laurel mentioned that rape victims don’t orgasm, and people were quick to point out she was completely wrong, but that idea and misconception is not an uncommon one, and neither is a lot of other myths about rape.

    So anyway, RGH, good post, and interesting comments. Very thought-provoking. Though now I need to go scrub my brain with bleach so I can forget the description of the book and sleep well.

  9. David says:

    I am interested in reading P&P, is a favorite of one of my friends, who reccommended it to me !
    Thanks for the review

  10. thetawnytart says:

    @Laura Vivanco I read and enjoyed the Hunger Games series but I think people who commented that Katniss seems to lose her autonomy in the end of the book are right.  The third book is mostly spent dealing with fall out from the first two, which I agree is more realistic than heroine’s just getting up and brushing traumas off of them, but she just seems to kind of re-disintegrate every 30 pages or so.  Of course she was forced to kill people so it doesn’t come off as whiny, since her mental issues were genuine.  I think when the character dealing with something comes off as whiny is when it is just them thinking about how terrible their life is or was without any new experiences going on.  I think there is a big difference in tone if, for example, character X has a PTSD flashback in a grocery store and you see what she sees etc or her just sitting at home saying I can’t go to the grocery store because I am scared (I have no idea why I picked grocery store)  I think that’s more about how it’s written than what is written. 

    I guess it comes down to a matter of personal taste.  I agree with the reader Amy that you quoted. I like heros and heroines who take the bull by the horns and I like there to always be some sort of redeeming good even in the worst of circumstances, maybe because it meshes with my world view or what I would like the world to be.  I agree with you that some characters who are “overcoming adversity” are just being passive and complaining, in which case it isn’t interesting to me.  But, in a rape case for example, my ideal character would be a person who was raped and then took that and turned it into a tool to help others, like becoming a rape counselor perhaps.  I think those are the kinds of characters we like to read about, or at least those are the kind of characters I like to read about.

  11. george says:

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  12. Sarah says:

    I once read part of an academic paper that I thought had a compelling theory about why there was so much rape in Old Skool romances, particularly rape by the hero.  The idea was that the story was a way for women to confront in imagination the possibility (or reality, for many) of being raped and bend it into a story line that ends with the rapist hero repenting and the heroine finding happiness – to bring an uncontrollable reality under control in imagination, and to re-tell the story in a way that is healing in some way.  This is related to the point that SB Sarah made above that these story lines do represent an early step away from the story of rape leading to ostracism and death for the victim (as happens in Tess of the D’Urbervilles – not to mention as happens in the reality of many cultures, including European).  I’m not that familiar with rape fantasies in a BDSM context, but from what I know I think they may be for some people a similar way to take emotional ownership of a situation that is about ownership being taken away when it happens in reality.

    Also, I don’t have a theory about this, but human beings seem to be really fascinated by all kinds of violence in storytelling.  If you read old versions of fairy tales (such as the original versions collected by the Grimm Brothers), they’re often extremely gruesome, with people eating each other’s lungs, cooking each other in ovens, etc.  Not to mention violence in tv shows and Hollywood movies – today’s fairy tales.  There’s something exciting about violence (for whatever reason), and maybe that’s true of sexual violence as well – when you’re reading about it in fiction.

    Last, I agree with those who pointed out that a lot of today’s romances have really questionable sex scenes where one character says no and the other character finds a way to seduce the first into wanting it after all.  Real life is complicated, and there’s nothing wrong or unusual about feeling ambivalent or changing your mind.  But it does bother me that these scenes are written without any recognition that what they’re describing is at least morally ambiguous. 

    Personally, I think it would help us recognize these situations as problematic if we had a more nuanced set of words for not-ok sex.  Rape is a very strong word (with legal implications), and we hesitate to apply it to lots of situations that don’t seem to deserve such a severe judgment, but because it’s the only word we’ve got, there seems to be this implication that any sex that’s not rape is totally morally acceptable.  From my personal experience of being manipulated and pressured into giving consent when I didn’t want sex, I know that’s not true.  (No there was no alcohol or similar involved – I was in complete possession of my faculties, except for a lot of missing self-esteem.)  Sometimes people who recognize that these situations are not-ok sex want to call them rape as a way of communicating that this is not acceptable behavior, but I think it would be better to reject the hidden assumption that all sex that’s not rape is acceptable.

  13. thetawnytart says:

    @Sarah
    I think you are absolutely right.  I am currently in law school and last year in criminal law we studied rape law.  There are lots of situations that do not qualify as rape legally but that we would probably all consider to be immoral.  For example fraud in getting consent.  If a Doctor says to his patient you have a terrible disease and the only way for me to cure you is to have sex with you and she agrees that is not rape even though it is a complete lie.  And no I didn’t invent that fact scenario we actually read that case.  Fraud only eliminates consent if it involves lying about the act itself.  So if the Doctor said I’m going to do a pelvic exam and then has sex with the patient that would in fact be rape, but not the first scenario.  I think clearly the first scenario is morally wrong and should be punished but because it legally isn’t rape it isn’t dealt with.  So I think you are right that we need a broader range of names for things that we may not want to term as rape as well as a better definition of what is rape.

  14. orangehands says:

    Rape is a very strong word (with legal implications), and we hesitate to apply it to lots of situations that don’t seem to deserve such a severe judgment, but because it’s the only word we’ve got, there seems to be this implication that any sex that’s not rape is totally morally acceptable.

    I completely agree with this.

  15. @ thetawnytart

    I wanted to bring that up, but my notes on those particular classes are sketchy (I think I got too damn pissed off at that point- did you have a bunch of rape apologists in your class, too?) and couldn’t remember where “fraud in the inducement” and blackmail falls on the “rape/not rape/wasn’t rape before, is now” continuum. 

    And I remember that doctor case.  ::shudder::

  16. Elemental says:

    I don’t really have anything useful to add, but this is a very interesting and informative discussion.

  17. thetawnytart says:

    @ redheadedgirl
    We didn’t have a lot of rape apologists, or at least many who wanted to argue it in the class.  Our teacher, who was really awesome, ended up arguing for it not being rape herself.  And then I think someone said we don’t want to burden physicians at which point I got really REALLY pissed off because if anything I would want to give the doctor with his “special serum” extra jail time for abusing his position as a doctor.  I don’t remember blackmail…my guess would be that the MPC makes blackmail rape and some states probably have it as not rape… I don’t know rape law in any of the states, but I hope none of them still have the very old school rule of unless you resist as much as you can then it’s not rape.  Sadly I bet there are.

  18. Maddy says:

    Ok, so, this is kiiiind of unrelated to the current review.  I was reading the one for Season of the Sun, where you mentioned being 3rd-gen Swedish from Minnesota.  Have you ever read Scandinavian Humor (and Other Myths)?  It’s quite funny, and all about, well, Scandinavians who live in Minnesota.

    On the subject of this book though… yeah, poor girl.  Maybe the pirate’s’ll treat her better (which wouldn’t be hard), but by the sound of things, probably not.  Ah well.  Zoe Archer is now on my list of authors to check out, though.

  19. Have you ever read Scandinavian Humor (and Other Myths)?  It’s quite funny, and all about, well, Scandinavians who live in Minnesota.

    I *loved* that one.  It was all funny because it was true. 

    Zoe is awesomesauce squared.  That is all.

  20. Rich says:

    redheadedgirl: you nicked my line!

    That is all.

    Being as you obviously have a talent for writing infectious reviews full of character i’l take it as a compliment 😉

    canvas art

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