I am lucky enough to have some seriously crush-worthy healthcare providers. My former primary care physician had blue eyes that could make you wish that colds and bronchitis were sexy afflictions (that’s all he ever saw me with, anyway) and a full head of gorgeous grey hair. He is Irish and damn sexy – and on top of that, he is a fantastic doctor.
Then there’s my dentist, who is one of those men who looks unbelievably hot with a fully bald head. Certainly his competence (and liberal applications of novocaine when my dental work this week hurt while in progress) is part of the sexy factor, but even without the confidence, he’s fine to look at.
Since I had nothing to do but think, I got to pondering about romance occupations. There are plenty of romance heroes who are doctors, business tycoons – and sheikhs, if you read any of those books. Heroines I’ve read range from business execs to secretaries, artists to musicians. Part of the fascination of some contemporary romance writers, and Nora Roberts’ books come to mind, is seeing what job the heroine will have.
I know Candy and I have mentioned in passing to each other at least once the many, many heroines who have creative right-brain jobs, and heroes who have businessy left-brain jobs. I’ve encountered it time and again, so it makes the curious exceptions so much more entertaining. And for the hero to have a technically detailed and challenging job such as medicine – which often involves the human element of caring for other people – well, that character line has oft been explored as well. (My personal favorite example, for the record: Dr. Cox on Scrubs. John McGinley does a wonderful job with the crusty-exterior/wounded heart-of-gold character that is almost a cliche sometimes in the hands of the wrong writer.)
When it comes to employment, it must be a challenge to pick your character’s career, especially in the US where your job is so closely tied to your identity. One asks what someone “does” for a living, but often the answer is, “I am….” A job is often a major element to one’s definition of self. So in the context of romance protagonists, career is a big, big choice.
That said, I ask the Bitchery:
1. What careers for heroes and heroines have you noticed as most common?
2. What jobs are unheard of in romance? Meat packer? Butcher? Felon?
3. What job would you LOVE to see?
I write mostly BDSM, and so my first two male Doms were stock Alpha Males and doctors (though doctors of what wasn’t specified. If you look close, you might see that one of them was a botanist, the other might have gotten his degress from the kind of university that advertises on matchbook covers.) I like using doctors because of (a) their natural authority, (b)the healing metaphor—their women are usualy brought to sexual life under their care, and (c) the sexiness of arcane knowledge and the implication that they know their subs better than the subs do themselves, and (d) the perverse sexiness of latex gloves and lab coats—the way a woman’s sexuality can break through that screen of professional objectifatication doctors subject us to.
My first heroine was an ingenue, but I prefer my subs now to be more alpha women. I like the sparks that are generated between two strong personalities, and I want to get away from the idea that sexual submnission involves personal submission and degradation.
I’m abandoning the cliches in my new books. My latest Dom owns a beauty shop and controls his engineer sub through her make-up and clothing, and in another he’s a reclusive nature painter whom a bored housewife has to coax into domming her.
Ok, I’m just commenting so that I can show up after the Doctor, because I love love his stories.
Also umm…I agree with Robin!
the creative/technical divide that’s often ascribed to the arts/sciences as artificial, not the professional/amateur difference.
Yep, thanks Robin. Just to qualify – I wasn’t trying to sweep aside the tremendous amount of work required for anyone to develop their expertise. Just rambling on about how the arts are seen as much more accessible than the sciences.
Since I sit on both sides of the fence, it’s something that I do wonder about. People are willing to listen to me go on and on about my research in an artsy field and will happily comment and make suggestions. Sometimes they even hang around and read bits after I untie them from the chair.
But if I try to explain my job, which actually deals with t’internet and phones and things we actually use, within about 30 seconds their eyes glaze over and they’re chewing through the knots in a desperate bid for freedom. This seems kinda odd.
But these are my own impressions and it sounds like you’d be able to provide a lot of food for thought on this, Anne, so I’d be interested to hear your take on the matter. And anyone else’s, of course (if making this request doesn’t mess up the thread…)
Aw, thanks, Arethusa. You’re sweet.
But as far as writing goes, we’re not in the business of doing studies of people’s jobs. When we’re writing the usual romance or romantica novel,our characters’ occupations are pretty much emblematic of who we want them to be. If my heroine is a soft and sensitive ungenue, I’m not going to make her a CEO or a telephone linesperson or factory worker. Unfortunately, she’s going to end up in a flower shop or art gallery, depending on how much Earth Mother she has in her.
Similarly, if I want her to be a hard-charger with no time for her emotional life, she’s not going to be working in a day-care center or as an editor for a poetry journal. In fiction, occupaton is a function of character, and we tend to choose jobs that have stereotypical qualities associated with them, whether that’s fair or not.
The female submissive in my new novel is a grad student in mechanical engineering. I chose that because it means she’s young, she’s smart, and she’s had to repress her feminine side to compete in this traditionally male field. I know that’s a stereotype and a cliche and unfair to female engineers, but it gives her instant recognizability and gives me something interesting to work with.
I could write a story about an actuary, say, or a communications facilitator, but what do those job descriptions bring to mind? Nothing special, I’d guess, unless you happen to be one, in which case I’d probably get the details wrong and you’d write me a long and rambling letter on the importance of actuaries and communications facilitators in the modern world and how tired you are of people misunderstanding what you do, let alone putting your job in a dirty story.
In fiction, occupaton is a function of character, and we tend to choose jobs that have stereotypical qualities associated with them, whether that’s fair or not.
But don’t you think this depends on the type of fiction we’re talking about? Some fiction obviously makes better and/or more extensive use of types, depending on its purpose. Maybe this is a difference between erotica, particularly BDSM, where roles are so important, and, say, Romance, which I would argue is theoretically, or at least ideally, more character-driven. In character-driven fiction, I think that relying too heavily on type can doom any real power or purpose in the writing. So maybe it depends on whether you see your writing as particularly character-driven or rather purposed based on roles and on behavior stereotypically associated with those roles. It would be interesting, IMO, to explore those differences a bit more.
Overall, though, I find it so refreshing when an author in any genre presents me with a type I think I know and then turns my expectations on their head, because, as someone who has read so many books over the years, I love it when my expectations are thwarted in a good way.
Yeah, Robin. You’re very right. I should have made it clear that I was talking about the kind of quicky romantica I’ve been writing and not capital-f Fiction. Most of the stuff I’ve written concentrates on the romantic and sexual relationship between two people rather than on any sort of in depth character study. I’m more confortablke in short stories where characterization has to be bold and fast.
On the other hand, playing against type can also be a bit too cute and precious. The hard-boiled cop with the tender heart, the ballerina who practices karate, these have become kind of gimmicky. If you’re doing real character-driven stuff, that character’s going to come out in spite of their occupations, not because of them.
EvilAuntiePearl talked about her very real-life job in IT and the way people’s eyes glaze over when she tries to decribe what she does. No offense to her (sorry, darling), but that’s the kind of thing we usually read fiction to get away from. We want to see the occupations that evoke instant association and stereotype. Past a certain level of interest—in office work say—we just don’t care what the person does. They’re an office worker, and we let it go at that.
On the other hand, playing against type can also be a bit too cute and precious.
I agree; in fact, I would argue that some of this—like the examples you rendered—is simply playing to a new type, the against-type types, which we can all easily recognize, as well. I’m not saying that occupation doesn’t matter or that you can’t tell anything about a person because of what they do (or even that people have to be different than the stereotype portrays them to be). All I’m saying is that for character-based and driven fiction, I appreciate characters who are individuated as much as possible, who are more than a clonglomeration of cliches and symbols and veneers. In other words, I want it to be character rather than just caricature.
EvilAuntiePearl talked about her very real-life job in IT and the way people’s eyes glaze over when she tries to decribe what she does. No offense to her (sorry, darling), but that’s the kind of thing we usually read fiction to get away from.
Again, I think it depends on the kind of fiction and your expectations as a reader. I agree with you that sometimes readers seem to want to escape anything close to reality for a while (but even then, I think an overall sense of authenticity and cogent logic still should guide a work of fiction).
Someone, though, in this thread mentioned Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveler’s Wife, which not only features a rather untypical librarian, but also an artist of paper sculpture whose work is sometimes described in quite technical and exalted detail. Niffenegger plays on the symbolism of her craft, for sure (she makes these giant birds), but she was also using the technique in specific ways. And the technique began with the intricacies of paper-making, through which the narrator sometimes tooks us, step by step, piece of equipment by piece of equipment, procedure by procedure, mapping and revealing this technical but transformative process.
Tim O’Brien’s In The Lake of the Woods also comes to mind as a book where occupational detail is quite important.
Then, of course, there are the whaling chapters in Moby Dick . . .
EvilAuntiePeril, I know exactly what you mean about the eyes-glazing-over phenomenon — it’s like clockwork. I go to a party, somebody asks me what I do, and I say I’m in math. I get a lof of “oh, you must be so smart!” (frankly, I think anybody’s Ph.D. is damned difficult), “oh, I could never do that!” (do you see me trying to write poetry? be glad), and “I had this terrible teacher in high school…” People’s eyes do glaze over, even, to some extent, my girlfriend the astrophysics grad student. When my ex-roommate talked about glassblowing, people’s ears perked up. Why?
I think a big part of it is where the difficulty lies in the two fields. In math, if I can explain it and you can understand it, you’re done — you can do it. In glassblowing, my roommate would talk about how you do certain things (say, how you lay colours on a tube then cover them with clear so they won’t discolour in the flame), and I’d understand what he said — but I was still years away from being able to *do* it. The talking and the understanding are not the doing. If something was that easy to understand in math, it would be that easy, period, and it wouldn’t be a subject of research.
That’s not all of it, though; people have a charged relationship with technical fields, especially math. Look at the difference between saying “I just can’t do math” and “I just can’t read” — one will get you sympathy, the other scorn.
Art, on the other hand, you can do at home an get something you like, never mind it’s not as good as something a professional artist would produce. People dabble in art, and produce something they can value. This can happen in technical fields (e.g. http://www.junkyardjet.com/index.html) but for whatever reason, it doesn’t have the same cachet.
I’m not sure it’s just about difficulty. I think it’s also about connection to something that people already understand. So if you’re a biologist and you talk about observing lions, say, people will be interested because they’ve seen nature programmes/they have a cat. But if you’re a bio-chemist studying tiny molecules, people will feel they have less to say about that. Unless it turns out that you’re doing research into cancers, and then they’ll want to know about it, because they’re interested in cancer (but they wouldn’t want to hear exactly what you do to a cell culture in the lab). Similarly, if you say you’re doing literary research they might be interested (literature is about people, they’re people, they read books) but if you said that you focussed on metre and the implications of using different verse forms in medieval French poetry, you’d probably get glazed eyes, and the same if you talked about complicated theories of grammar or if you used particular jargon (e.g feminist literary theory).
It’s not that research on lions is easy, or that writing literary criticism about Shakespeare is easy, but that people may have some clue what the subject is, and so don’t feel excluded. If they don’t have a starting point at all, they’ll find the subject strange and difficult.
Everyone talks and uses words, so subjects that use words have an advantage when trying to create a connection with someone who doesn’t know the subject. Not everyone understands complex pieces of mechanical equipment, computer programming or maths that’s more complicated than addition, subtraction, multiplication or long division. And because of that it’s much harder to get them interested. I think that popular science books tend to use metaphors and examples from daily life (just as at school maths examples include the ‘if you have one cake and four people….’ type problems) because that begins to create a connection with people, making the subject seem more relevant to their daily lives.
because of my out-of-romance interests, i’ve always wanted to get a more lefty guy… bit like the communist in billy wilder’s one two three, or something like that. guess people who talk about consensus decision making and anti-capitalism sneer at romance novels though… sigh. would be nice if the hero asked her out on a demonstration for once.
because of my out-of-romance interests, i’ve always wanted to get a more lefty guy…
Dude! Anarcho-syndicalists and libertarian socialists are TOTALLY FUCKING HOT. I am so not kidding.
But I can’t imagine too many publishers feeling comfortable with injecting that much political commentary into a romance novel, especially since few people bother to differentiate between the many different flavors of socialism, lumping all of us higgledy-piggledy into the Maoist/Stalinist schools. A couple of commies getting an HEA? OH NOES!
I’ve noticed that there’s more politics in historicals, presumably because making a Duke side with the Whigs isn’t going to upset the current social order or offend any readers.
Heh heh. True. And also probably because many readers don’t have a stinkin’ freakin’ clue who the Tories or the Whigs were.
Thanks Laura V., Anne and Robin for the insights. Can I agree with all of you? And also expand some on your points. I’m working on the assumption that everyone’s so distracted by the man-titty they won’t notice me slipping this into the discussion. ‘cos it’s long, and I can’t face editing it.
If people can identify the result of a process in some tangible way, they’re less inclined to worry about understanding the process itself. If we can mentally get a handle on the result, by which I mean things like, “makes sick people well,” “designs houses,” “does something with numbers that encrypts information,” we can assign social and cultural values to it. And if we do this, we can project back these values onto the person who created it.
So someone who bakes cakes is nurturing, warm and caring. If they’re really a violent serial killer, then their cake-baking must be eliminated or explained. Otherwise it’s an uncomfortable anomaly in the mass-murdering scheme of things. But it also has the potential to make said serial killer far more interesting.
Occupations that have an obvious result are therefore an easier way to develop a character by means of this sort of association. Which helps to explain the professions that appear in Romanceland.
Past a certain level of interest—in office work say—we just don’t care what the person does. They’re an office worker, and we let it go at that.
Back on the office job issue, I don’t think Elliot (sorry, darling) quite dealt with the problem to my satisfaction. After all, if that’s the extent of our interest in the office worker, then why should it make a difference whether she works in marketing or IT support? Especially when it’s only a throwaway mention, the office-based heroine usually works in a non-technical role in a non-technical field.
I’d argue that all occupations are stereotyped and the conventional view of technical/scientific work is just jarring enough to affect the easy characterisation of an average office-based heroine. Many people would still feel the need to explain or comment on a woman in a technical role. And then the issue of unapproachability for the layman rears its ugly head.
There are lots more questions that link to the issue of office work. Why is her job in these cases often boring and low-status? Why is the hero’s still higher-status, and (at least to him) interesting? Is this just part of a particular rescue or wish-fulfillment fantasy for bored office-workers or does it have wider things to say about our view of working women? What about the possibilities inherent in the buttoned-down, stiff-shirted passion mentioned earlier on the thread?
Further afield, if jobs are merely a function of character, why are certain jobs avoided and why are there fashions in others, like the wave of alpha male photojournalists in the 80s or the current deluge of similar military types? What happened to the big-haired, shoulder-padded, power-suited, toyboy-shagging corporate mega-beeyatch of early 80s’ bonkbusters?
I’d argue that all of this has less to do with the day-to-day minutiae of any job (even SEALs do paperwork, after all) and more to do with the cultural and social values we assign to a profession. It’s the whys and hows of this that I find intriguing. It’s also been interesting to read how people feel when they know people in real life who don’t fit the stereotype that’s presented, like aging poker-playing FBI agents and cops, or sexy CPAs, actuaries and dentists.
PS. I yearn to read a romance between a female tractor mechanic and a male composer of rousing workers’ anthems set on a collective farm. Or the forbidden love between a sexy eco-warrior and the lumberjack son of a logging company owner.
Here’s another take on it (I did warn that this was too long): If I read, “When Yvonne starting working in her dream job as a legal secretary for Fitz&Frocks, the employment law specialists, little did she know how her life would change,” my reaction is, “Oh, she sounds like a sweet lady. Probably knits floral cardigans in pearls and trained part-time while nursing her aging parents. Bet she gets a pale-blue Volvo and a cat she finds amusingly quirky.”
Compare this to, “When Yvonne started working in her dream job as a legal secretary for Fitz&Frocks, who specialised in dealing with celebrity libel cases, little did she know, etc…” Yvonne has now chucked out her twinset in favour of a pair of f***-me shoes and something tailored by Paul Smith. To say nothing of what she did in her first week with a well-known actor and the pearls to mar the smooth mahogany finish of the boardroom table.
Yvonne #1 would chat to you in a friendly but reserved way at the bus stop. Yvonne #2 would cruise past in her sports car, driving straight through the gigantic puddle and showering you head-to-toe in muddy water. Of course I’ve cheated a bit by using the celebrity effect, but imagine Yvonne working for criminal lawyers. Or human rights or family lawyers.
Everyone’s Yvonne will be slightly different, but unless personal knowledge of a real-life Yvonne comes into it, most of our views would be based on the values we assign to her chosen area of work. The fact that it’s her ambition makes it more telling. Since these stereotypes are often culturally-based, most of us would be able to recognise the description that fits each job.
On the other hand, anything that departs from these conventions will create tension and interest. This doesn’t mean that Yvonne #1 has to have a rubber fetish, just play the jazz saxophone. Yvonne #2 could have big feet. These are pretty crude examples, but this seems to be where stereotypes can be used to an advantage. If it’s deftly done, it’s not playing against character per se, just playing with it.
Just realised that most of my ramble below, while a bit of a revelation to me, is likely old hat to most authors and pretty obvious to most readers. *blushes profusely*. Apologies for the self-indulgence and showing my working-out – it was rather late and I promise to edit in the future. But I still think that even though stereotyping is a useful device for writers, and doesn’t have to be crude, it’s only one turning on the road to character development. It needs more than a job and hair colour, however lustrous, to truly satisfy me. And I don’t think that stereotypes should just be accepted as simply “the way things are” either.
Just wanted to add that even being unemploymed is a “job” and says things about your character, depending on the circumstances of his/her unemployment. (Did they quit, get fired, laid off, resign in protest, opt out of the ratrace etc?) So it’s one of those “not to decided is to decide” things too, with its own connotations and stereotypes.
I think there are two main romantica story archetypes: Sleeping Beauty is one, and Beauty and the Beast is the other. In the first, a woman is awakened by a man’s love, and in the second a woman “tames” a wild male. My first stories followed the Sleeping Beauty archetype—woman with an unsatisfying life is emotionally awakened by a take-charge guy. (I know it’s stereotypical and cliched and maybe even sexist and offensive, but that’s the kind of stuff I was writing, very formulaic.) For my purposes, it made sense to give her some dull and gray job and leave it at that. Her job was a symbol of how unfulfilling her life was.
Now, as to why you dopn’t see more lefty heroes—Both the Sleeping Beauty and the Beauty and the Beast archetype demand male protags who are pretty selfish and willful, arrogant and full of themselvess enough to reach into her life and pluck her out in the SB archetype, or live life as a bad boy in the B&B fantasy
I don’t think you’re going to find many leftists who fit this bill. I’m on the left myself, and I would never think of telling anyone else how they should lead their life, or insisting they should do things my way. But that conflict of wills is just the kind of thing you need to generate some friction in erotic romance.
The values of the left are understanding, compassion, and equality, and for me, at least, it’s just hard to strike some real fire with those qualities.
“The values of the left are understanding, compassion, and equality, and for me, at least, it’s just hard to strike some real fire with those qualities.”
Well, the French managed to have a revolution and the motto ‘liberte, fraternite, egalite’ (sorry, can’t get accents). I think it could be done, but perhaps more of the conflict would be external, rather than within the relationship (unless one of the pair was more committed to going on marches etc and the other was worried about possible negative consequences). But it probably wouldn’t be escapist reading. And another problem with two eco-friendly, feminist/pro-feminist socialists is that neither is going to sweep the other into a world of ease and comfortable riches. And a lot of people associate diamond rings, nice clothes, foreign holidays, expensive restaurants etc with romance. It’s funny, because it used to be that love with poverty-stricken artists, who lived in garrets, was the epitome of romance. Mind you, those romances didn’t tend to have a HEA.
On the subject of jobs and assumptions, I really don’t like stereotypes, and I wouldn’t make assumptions about the secretary depending on which sort of company she worked for. Jobs can be hard to come by, and sometimes one just takes what one can get. Also, not everyone is defined by their job – their job might involve just one facet of their personality.
But maybe this is why I prefer historical romances. In modern romances one is very often presented with a very unreal world. That’s fine if you want escapism and can suspend disbelief. But it’s true that politics is ignored, and people are more often put in jobs in accordance with particular stereotypes.
I really don’t like stereotypes, and I wouldn’t make assumptions about the secretary depending on which sort of company she worked for. Jobs can be hard to come by, and sometimes one just takes what one can get. Also, not everyone is defined by their job – their job might involve just one facet of their personality.
Really good point, Laura, and I do agree with you that it’s not fair to make judgements like this, but it happens. At the least an awareness of a stereotype might act as a guide when to tread warily around certain traits. It can set up expectations in a reader or act as a “hook” to remember a person. Since someone’s job can easily be a matter of circumstance, I called it a “dream job” rather than just stating her place of work. A dream job says something about who a person is or wants to be, even if this in no way resembles the assumptions someone else might make about it.
Also, companies do hire people partly on the basis of judgements about whether a person will fit into their corporate culture. Some of this can be based on assumptions about dress, personal appearance and a rough assessment of character. The diversity in offices shows how effective this sort of strategy is. Frankly, I picked on poor Yvonne because I wanted to explore how even a stereotype like “just an office-worker” quickly opens up to new interpretations at this level.
And you’re also right about the fact that a career often reflects only one facet of someone’s personality. I’ve been thinking about these examples today, feeling guilty because my descriptions short-changed Yvonne. I can’t help thinking that as with any other aspect of someone’s life, a job can be used to explore their personality in more ways than this. There’s the basic “oh, they work in X so they must be Y.” But if we try to refrain from such judgements, it helps to find out about how they feel about X, how they got into it, whether they want to stay etc. etc. Just like having a conversation with a real person, for me, exploring these sorts of questions give the character substance.
I guess how this is used in writing comes down to the writer’s decision on the focus of their writing and the relative importance of their characters?
On the subject of left-wing romance, I’d say that the values of the left include non-conformity, rebellion and independence. These can be very sexy. Particularly compared with values on the right that might be seen to include repression, conformity and obedience of authority.
But when it comes to the latter, the fact that the power hierarchy is clearer (as Elliot pointed out) helps with another convention of romance: the HEA. This is usually presented as a stable condition where all the loose ends are tidied away. Stability is traditionally associated with clearly defined social structures and everything falling into its appointed place, rather than fuzzy edges and ambiguity. So the eco-warriors and anarcho-syndicalists would have to be cleverly handled to fit in with some of the other conventions of the genre. But personally, I’d love to see if someone could make it work.
Now, as to why you dopn’t see more lefty heroes—Both the Sleeping Beauty and the Beauty and the Beast archetype demand male protags who are pretty selfish and willful, arrogant and full of themselvess enough to reach into her life and pluck her out in the SB archetype, or live life as a bad boy in the B&B fantasy
I don’t think you’re going to find many leftists who fit this bill. (…)
The values of the left are understanding, compassion, and equality, and for me, at least, it’s just hard to strike some real fire with those qualities.
Interestingly enough, all my friends lean left to one extent or another, and some of them lean pretty damn hard, and quite a few of them are assertive, and a couple of them are even assholes on occasion. One guy I know looooooooves spanking and ageplay, and he’s pretty far left of center, especially by today’s standards, where the center seems to have shifted a bit towards the right. He’s not quite an anarcho-syndicalist, but frankly, I think it’d be interesting to see one attempt to reconcile his ideals about consensus and collective decision-making with his kinks and dom fantasies.
Then again, isn’t BDSM all about being safe, sane and consensual? But perhaps real-life BDSM has little to do with the fictional portrayal? (I wouldn’t know because I haven’t had a chance to read much BDSM erotica or erotic romance.)
I’d also take issue that the values of the Left are “understanding, compassion, and equality,” since that implies that those on the Right values callousness, cruelty and oppression, and though I’m about as Left as they come, I’m not comfortable to make that sort of a claim. Some on the Right do seem pretty callous, cruel and oppressive, certainly (*koff*gaymarriage*koff*southdakotaabortionban*koffkoff*), but then so do some of the Left.
And now to talk briefly about good-guy heroes and romance novels in general: I also think a lot of people underestimate the power, sexual and otherwise, of true kindness. I again point to Christy Morrell of To Love and to Cherish, who is surely one of the sexiest heroes ever created, and who awakens Anne, the heroine, in all sorts of ways, sexual and otherwise. It’s by no means an erotic romance, nor one with any sort of BDSM overtone, which I realize is Elliot’s focus. I know that I find true kindness and gentleness deeply sexy, and I’ve learned from experience that boys who are shy and sweet can oftentimes turn out to be fun little freaks once you get them naked.
On the subject of left-wing romance, I’d say that the values of the left include non-conformity, rebellion and independence. These can be very sexy.
Thank you, EAP. That strikes me as a more accurate take on what modern Lefties tend to stand for—or like to think we stand for, heh.
Stability is traditionally associated with clearly defined social structures and everything falling into its appointed place, rather than fuzzy edges and ambiguity. (…) So the eco-warriors and anarcho-syndicalists would have to be cleverly handled to fit in with some of the other conventions of the genre. But personally, I’d love to see if someone could make it work.
Excellent point. I know that personally, my tolerance for ambiguity and not knowing all the answers is pretty high, and if it fit, I’d be happy to see a romance end on a very hopeful note (like in Seize the Fire by Laura Kinsale, for example) instead of a traditional six-eerily-happy-kids-and-a-picket-fence HEA.
Just realised that most of my ramble below, while a bit of a revelation to me, is likely old hat to most authors and pretty obvious to most readers. *blushes profusely*.
Forgot to address this: EAP, I, for one, find your comments fascinating and not at all Captain Obvious-ish, and will do all I can to egg you on to post more.
Oh, and Robin said this above: Then, of course, there are the whaling chapters in Moby Dick . . .
Indeed. Such as this excerpt here:
I loved Moby Dick, but even if I hadn’t, wading through that whole book would’ve been SOOOOO worth it just to know that excerpt existed.
Thanks, am quite excited by all the discussion of my rather glib post and seding a rather cumbersome response.
The job/politics/stereotype issue is pretty similar, really, I think and it’s probably most interesting if the characters depart from the cliche in unexpected ways.
As to values that make a ‘good lefty’, I think that what anyone claims ideal and acts is pretty much different. In my humble opinion power, dominance and personal and public struggle about this are quite compatible with that. And let’s not get into Socialist Realist imagery, it might be low on romance/sex but it definitely has lots of idealised masculinity of an ultra-traditional type.
I think the rebellion factor would make a better read then chapters of discussion on facilitating meetings… Which makes me think that a main argument against leftwing romance is that ideology tends to be more group and public focused then about individual, private lives.
The unpublishable argument is quite convincing though.
There is, however:
The Baader-Meinhof Affair
by Erin Cosgrove
Mara was a loner at the very exclusive Norden College until she meets the fascinating Holden Rife who introduces her to a secretive off-campus world of Baader-Meinhof aficionados.
But how far will Holden’s activist group go in playing out their love affair with these uppermiddle-class German terrorist/revolutionaries?
Mara discovers that Holden’s group is more dangerous than she ever imagined. The devotees blur the line between reality and make-believe in the ‘Baader-Meinhof Games,’ while Mara struggles not to lose herself and her heart to the impossible and impossibly handsome Holden Rife.
Which 1. Is an art project; 2. Heavily ironic; 3. Hence (to me) fun but not working as romance; and also possibly 4. morally reprehensible.
I promise if I post again, it will be on another subject.
I’d also take issue that the values of the Left are “understanding, compassion, and equality,†since that implies that those on the Right values callousness, cruelty and oppression, and though I’m about as Left as they come, I’m not comfortable to make that sort of a claim. Some on the Right do seem pretty callous, cruel and oppressive, certainly (*koff*gaymarriage*koff*southdakotaabortionban*koffkoff*), but then so do some of the Left.
One of the things that struck me as I was reading the exchanges on Left and Right values, is how we’ve gotten to the point where political ideologies have become synonymous with moral or character qualities (no wonder we’re so embattled in this country, politically speaking!). We’ve essentialized what should basically be ideas about how our government should operate into intrinsic reflections of what kind of person one is. I know some politically Right folks who are very rebellious and I know some politically Left folks who are pretty conformist. And politically speaking, I think we need some kind of blend of continuity and innovation if we are to have a society that both survives and thrives.
I see the same kind of thing happening in Romance with these little tag elements—career/job, gender, race, culture, historical period, etc. They’ve become these highly essentialized markers for character, rather than the building blocks of characters who (whom?), IMO, we shouldn’t be able to identify and peg quite so quickly in Romance. Because even though Romance can be somewhat allegorical, and even as certain archetypes are generally present and funcational in the genre, I think the tendency toward essentialism is not necessarily aiding our escapist fantasies—it’s contributing to a larger, and IMO more disturbing trend toward laziness in our approach to issues, ideas, differences, etc. in many areas of our reality. I just don’t think escapist literature needs to be mindless—it doesn’t have to strain the intellect, but I think even the most entertaining of books can be quite thoughtful and even thought-provoking on occasion.
Oh, and Candy, WHERE in the HELL is that quote from MD? Why don’t I remember that???? OMG, give me a page number!
One of the things that struck me as I was reading the exchanges on Left and Right values, is how we’ve gotten to the point where political ideologies have become synonymous with moral or character qualities (no wonder we’re so embattled in this country, politically speaking!).
You’re absolutely right, Robin. I’m definitely been guilty of this, and I’ll be more vigilant in the future.
Oh, and Candy, WHERE in the HELL is that quote from MD?
Flip thee to chapter 94. My book is at home, but then I’m not sure how helpful a page number would be, unless you are also in possession of the cheap, crappy Bantam Classics edition of this book. But I must say, I’m astonished you could not remember this scene. He’s squeezing sperm! THE SPERM OF KINDNESS!
You’re absolutely right, Robin. I’m definitely been guilty of this, and I’ll be more vigilant in the future.
Although I wasn’t thinking of the posts in this thread when I made that comment, I do think it’s something we ALL do, Candy, to greater or lesser degree. Sometimes I think we’re just grappling for a shortcut way of identifying something quickly, and sometimes we’re confronted with people who seem to lack character and who have such strong political views, that the two things get merged in our minds. What I think is too bad, though, is that societally, we have gotten so dependent on convenience, that I think we’ve let this desire spill over into our thinking, as well, both public and private. And I think that’s why we’re finding that more and more complex problems are being met with shallower and shallower solutions.
I just want to say, by way of explanation, that the stuff I’ve published so far—the stuff that’s germane to this discussion—is quite honestly more pornographic than it is romantic. I make a distinction: porn is writing that whose sole purpose is sexual titillation and arousal. Romance deals with more subtle feelings.
Because my stuff is quite frankly porn, I haven’t been as concerned with character nuance and depth and reality, and so I’ve tended to fall in with the usual career cliches—political ones too. I guess the right thing to say is that so far I’ve dealt in caricatures rather than characters. Porn itself has been described as sexual propaganda, and I think that’s pretty accurate. As in all propaganda, people and emotions are simplified almost to the point of transparency in order to let the message show through.
This is expecially true in BDSM, where exaggeration of character and use of cliche is almost like a signal to the reader that this is fantasy and not to be taken too seriously. There’s nothing especially sexy about someone being whipped, but set it in Lord Ravenscroft’s torch-lit dungeon, and it becomes kind of fun. The cliche lets the reader know it’s safe.
It’s late (for me) and I’m rambling, but this topic kind of reminds me of a discussion I had once about just how much a romance (or porn) author should be expected to imitate reality in his or her writing, and whether it isn’t possible that, by trying to make things too real, we actually destroy the very elements that make a romance romantic or porn sexy. In other words, if reality is so great, why do we need romantic literature at all?
“isn’t [it] possible that, by trying to make things too real, we actually destroy the very elements that make a romance romantic or porn sexy. In other words, if reality is so great, why do we need romantic literature at all?”
If this were true, I think it would be very sad. It would imply that one could never find romance or sexiness in real life, just as one can never find a unicorn or mermaid in real life. And I don’t think that’s the case. Literature can intensify romance and sexiness, by focussing on certain parts of the experience, but I think if the story becomes too much of a fantasy, it also loses its humanity.
In fantasies, people’s clothes can fly off them at convenient moments, and money is no object when it comes to planning the most ‘romantic’ white wedding ever. But when clothes fly off people, or magically disappear, one misses out on the humour, the absurdity, of sex, and one loses the intimacy that comes from standing in front of someone and being loved and accepted, big underpants, saggy flesh and all. When money is magically forthcoming, one misses out (a) on the socialism, obviously, but also (b) on the human touches which happen when people have to work out what really matters to them. Buying in ‘the best money can buy’ means people buy into an ideology or a mass-produced fantasy. When they spend a less but work out a way to express their own personalities, it’s about that unique couple.
I think it is possible to give enough realism to remind the reader of the romance and sexiness that is present in real life. Too gritty and the novel becomes full of despair and difficulty, too much fantasy, and the novel no longer connects with real lives, or celebrates the beauty and love that does exist all around us.
One you’ll never see: Undertaker/mortician.
Kellie—it’s been done. Pamela Morsi had a mortician hero in her historicals.
Aha! I finally remembered the name of the Morsi book: Wild Oats, and the hero was the town undertaker.