Book Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that’s not the truly fucked up thing.

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

But that’s not the truly fucked up thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Answer, “ he breathed huskily when she paused.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Pardon me, I have to vomit.)

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

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

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

You can guess how well that works out.

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

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

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

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

THE END.

What the fuck.

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.

WHAT IS THIS FUCKERY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m just saying.

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

ARGH.

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

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

Comments are Closed

  1. Kinsey says:

    AgT: That makes perfect sense now – I think my reading comprehension failed me temporarily.

  2. cleo says:

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

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

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

  3. cleo says:

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

    I saw this setup at the movies!  Well kind of – at the start of You Again, Kristen Bell freaks out on a plane and she gets arrested by a handsome air marshal played by The Rock. But sadly, the movie goes in a different direction and there’s no romance between them.  That probably would have been a better movie.

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

    @AgTigress: Glad to see your words again.

  5. beletseri says:

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

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

  6. orangehands says:

    bookstorecat: I will definitely check that out, thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

  7. cleo says:

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

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

    @beletseri – What’s the name of the book?  It sounds interesting.

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

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

    This is realistic to my own experience, but Not In The Good Way.  Why does the only thing that’s realistic about these rapemances have to be the fucked-up stuff about other people enabling the abuse?

  9. AgTigress says:

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

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

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

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

  10. Ranjit says:

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

    I cannot even begin to discern an end the the author’s brilliance.

  11. JamiSings says:

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

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

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

    Having grown up until that momment with rapiest heroes I hadn’t thought anything of it. But that book made me change my opinion about what is and isn’t romantic. Wish I could remember the title, however!

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

  13. Deirdre says:

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

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

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

    side33 …the square root of the times I’ve thrown novels using this trope

  14. Rebecca says:

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

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

    On a related topic – I probably have a sick mind, but does it occur to anyone that the already bizarre plot of the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” might be a metaphor for something a lot nastier, along the same lines?

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

    Oh! Remember the Sky O’Malley series? The “hero” claimed his right to bed the new bride.

  16. AgTigress says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

  17. @Rebecca I don’t get the Princess and the Pea reference.  Did you read “Women Who Run with the Wolves”?  She dissects fairy tales.  Don’t remember if she did ‘Pand the P’ but I never finished it.

  18. @Rebecca:  I’ve done some “in depth” “research” (Wikipedia FTW) and the general consensus is that Hans Christian Anderson was making fun of the nobility for being so anal-retentive about proving the purity of their bloodlines.

  19. Rebecca says:

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

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

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

  20. cleo says:

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

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

  21. Julia Sullivan says:

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

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

  22. AgTigress says:

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

    So that’s all right then.

  23. chestrella says:

    @cleo, this kind of book makes me wanna find a place in the sun where I can take a long nap and give up on ever reading again! MeOw!

  24. beletseri says:

    @olga Solied Doves: Prostitiution in the Early West

    It was actually a fun quick read, even if it tended to slut shame a bit.

  25. Vanilla says:

    Scoundrel’s captive seems to have almost the identical plot as Brave the Wild Wind by Johanna Lindsey (from 1984)…..Not that I would want to admit to having read that.
    But I was young and stupid once.

  26. Kinsey says:

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

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

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

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

    Now, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, where the hell is Cat’s book? Huh?

  27. Darci says:

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

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

  28. bookstorecat says:

    The first alphole hero I encountered. 

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

  29. roserita says:

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

  30. willa says:

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

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

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

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

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