F
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
Theme: One Night Stand
Archetype: Cop/Sheriff, Doctor/Nurse/Veterinarian, Spy/Assassin
UPDATE: An updated version of Hello Stranger has been released digitally to all retailers, and updated copies should have appeared in digital libraries. The scene in question described below has been removed entirely from the book.
…
I had been waiting so impatiently for Hello Stranger to come, mostly because the heroine is inspired by the first female British physician, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. And I was so mad that it let me down. Why did it let me down? Because of a brief section I am calling: “The Bullshit” (we’ll get to what that is in a minute). Had it not been for The Bullshit, I would have enjoyed this book immensely, which makes me even more bitter about it.
Dr. Garrett Gibson is the only female physician in England. From her earlier interactions with him in a previous novel, she’s sometimes watched over by Ethan Ransom, a former Scotland Yard Detective turned spy, who pines for Garrett from a distance and wants to protect her. Ethan has a dangerous job, so he doesn’t want to involve Garrett in his life, but he’s also kind of in love with her, so instead he just follows her around like a making sure no one hurts her (even though she’s pretty capable of defending herself). This is Romance Hero Logic at its finest.
When the book opens, Garrett is attacked by a group of men intending to rape her, and Ethan jumps in to help her beat the stuffing out of them. Then he offers to teach her self defense more styled to street fighting versus the formal style of instruction she’s received in the past. She agrees and when they’re sparring he gets a boner and Garrett realizes she wants to have an affair with him.
Garrett can’t conceive of a world where she can have a husband and still be allowed to keep her practice but she also wants to experience sex and romance. So she suggests to Ethan that they engage in an affair and he’s all like “No, my life is way to dangerous to involve you in,” and then They Bone Anyway and Feels are Had.
Add to that a big conspiracy Ethan is struggling to unravel which makes for a good suspense subplot, and Garrett being the only person who can save his life
and that all sounds good right?
It is good. It’s a sexy romance between two working class people (not in a ballroom), with a cool, proficient, badass heroine and a great suspense plotline.
It’s got great writing. Take for example this sentence, describing how Ethan feels about Garrett: “The mere thought of her left him like a stray coal on the hearth.”
So this book should have made me really happy, but instead it pissed me off because of The Bullshit.
The Bullshit, you see, is a brief section wherein Ethan explains that he learned all about smexing from an unnamed woman of color while in India as part of his spy training.
Gently he murmured in the hollow space just behind her earlobe, guessing at what would excite or intrigue her. “In India, before a man marries, he’s taught how to please his wife according to ancient texts on the erotic arts. He learns about embraces, kisses, strokes, and bites that bring fulfillment.”
“Bites?” she asked dazedly.
“Love bites, darlin’. Nothing that would hurt you.” To demonstrate, he bent to her neck and nibbled softly. She made an agitated sound and arched toward him. “Tis said the joining of two who are well-matched is a high union,” he whispered. “And if they come so intoxicated by love as to leave faint marks on the skin, their passion for each other will not be lessened even in one hundred years.”
Garrett’s voice was wobbly. “Did you learn any of those erotic arts?”
His lips curved against her skin. “Aye, but I’m still a novice. I only know one hundred and twenty positions.”
“A hundred and…” She broke off as he let two fingers slide gently between the soft lips of her sex, teasing back and forth. After a convulsive swallow, she managed to say, ” I doubt that’s anatomically possible.”
His lips grazed the edge of her jaw. “You’re the medical expert,” he mocked gently. “Who am I to argue?”
She squirmed as one of his fingertips wiggled through soft curls and came to rest on an acutely sensitive place. “Who taught you?” she managed to ask.
“A woman in Calcutta. I’d never met her before. For the first two nights, there was no physical contact at all. We sat on bamboo mats on the floor and talked.”
“About what?” She stared at him with dilated eyes, her flush deepening as he continued to fondle the silky, intricate shape of her.
“The first night she explained about Kama…a word for desire and longing. But it also refers to the well-being of the soul and senses…the appreciation of beauty, art, nature. The second night we talked about pleasures of the body. She said if a man was a true male, he would use the rule of his will to cherish the woman, and fulfill her so thoroughly she would have no desire left for another.”
On the third night, she had undressed him and pulled his hand to her body, whispering, “Women, being of a tender nature, want tender beginnings.”
So let’s talk about how damaging this passage is.
- It’s basically the definition of Orientalism.
- The woman who Ethan describes has no name. She has one speaking line that exists in his memory. She is not a character, nor a person. She’s a prop. She is intended purely as a tool for his learning the sexytimes. It’s prime Bullshit: dehumanizing and racist.
- The fetishizing of people of color as inherently more sexual than White people is a big fucking problem. It contributes to the rape culture we live in RIGHT NOW in which women of color are even less likely to report or see justice for sexual assault than White women are.
I mean, let’s think about the anonymous woman above. She’s got no name as previously mentioned. She doesn’t really speak. She’s a nameless Indian woman who is full of sexual knowledge who is there to teach sex to the hero. She’s living in a country COLONIZED BY WHITE MEN. She’s not a person. She’s a thing he gets to fuck. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
And while all racism is Bullshit, this is especially Dangerous Bullshit because it perpetuates that idea that women of color are nameless, identity-less beings that White men get to have sex with because they’re just so sexual in nature. Ethan then takes his sexual knowledge from this woman of color and brings it to his White one-true-love. This woman’s culture and knowledge exist only in service to the White hero.
So why is this woman even there? For sex. She’s just there for sex, not as a person or a character. There’s no focus on her thoughts, her feelings, her voice, her body. That is rape culture targeted at women of color.
So yeah, I would have liked this book immensely, except for the giant turd in the middle of it that made me rage type a thousand words. I look to romance for depictions of women enjoying healthy, fulfilling relationships, not racist stereotyping.
Update 1 March 2018: a note from Lisa Kleypas
In my life, I’ve had a lot to learn AND unlearn. All I can say is, I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me to understand the lack of awareness I had about this issue. Obviously I would never want to hurt anyone by perpetuating an offensive stereotype, especially about women from a culture I respect so tremendously, and I feel terrible about it.
I will make changes to the book immediately, so all future editions will be culturally sensitive and mindful of how every single character is portrayed. Thank you again for making me aware of this and teaching me something I needed to understand, both as an author and as a person.
Sincerely, Lisa
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Thanks!
I think you are way too sensitive. These books are generally read for escapism. I have this but haven’t read it yet but I’m pretty sure if the rest of the book is good, that one passage will not drop it to an F. I don’t read romance for political or social correctness in all matters cause my book list would be pretty damn short if I tried. Have a cup of tea and relax a bit.
I don’t read romance for political or social correctness in all matters cause my book list would be pretty damn short if I tried. Have a cup of tea and relax a bit.
You probably wouldn’t have tea to drink if India hadn’t been colonized. So I’m pretty sure I’m just sensitive enough!
@Jae Lee – thank you for expressing what I was having trouble getting my head around. I find the excerpted passage kind of squicky (mostly because I’m not interested in hearing about your sexy times with your previous lover while we’re doing it, but ymmv), but likely wouldn’t have noticed the racism without it being pointed out to me. However, as some others have pointed out, I wondered if Elyse would have been so pulled out of the story if Ethan had learned his tricks from a white courtesan or widow? And if not, why not?
Your explanation that this incident is particularly egregious because Ethan’s mysterious woman is, in this case, standing in for all Indian/Eastern women makes sense and has given me a lot to think about.
Again, thanks.
I think you are way too sensitive. These books are generally read for escapism.
Many WOC read these books, too. Why do they have to put up with these type of issues in these books when they are already dealing with it in real life?
Clearly some folks are struggling with how representation, even a small one, can be harmful and stereotypical. https://twitter.com/WckdWallflowers/status/969645228561858560 Here’s a podcast that can help.
@Suleikha Snyder- *mic drop
…. (rushing off to buy your books now)
For the most part, I’m glad at the majority of respectful comments in this thread. However, it’s disheartening to see that we still receive comments that express, “what’s the big deal?”
As a white woman, I have the privilege of reading the noted passage and not being bothered. After all, I’m represented all over romance. In contemporaries, in historicals, in paranormals. And that’s because romance has primarily been written for and by a white community.
But there are romance readers out there – so many of them – who do not have that luxury. They are reduced to nameless, faceless entities that only serve to exemplify the betterment of romance’s white characters and I cannot fathom how that must make POC feel, that they aren’t worthy of their own love stories.
I get racism can be uncomfortable to talk about, but discomfort is needed. Being uncomfortable is a small step in realizing there is a problem. Not just with the books we read, but within ourselves and how normal it may seem to just breeze past the above passage without feeling ill at ease.
I’m grateful for Lisa’s response, though it’s a reminder that the journey to “romance for all” is nowhere near where it should be.
Quite honestly, when I read that my thoughts I went to the Kama Sutra. That made sense to me since the book is Indian therefore I did not have a problem with it. I’ve re-read it and still don’t.
Oh my God. I am EXHAUSTED. Thank you Suleikha (always been a HUGE fangirl of your books and badass internet presence) for fighting the good fight. And thank you SB and Amanda and Elyse for using your white privilege to speak up for us when we’re too tired.
Most white man-Indian woman sex in the Victorian period was RAPE. Rape in the “traditional” sense but also in the sense that there are always going to be very squicky power dynamics when the colonizer has sex with the colonized. If the courtesan refused to have sex with the British officer what would happen? The next week there would be some new ordinance that put her establishment out of business. There is no choice when there is a colonizer.
Also, can you imagine I read all-white romance novels as my “safe space” because I just cannot deal with the misrepresentations of POC in romances where there are POC (excluding the work of amazing POC like Rai, Milan, Synder, Cole etc)? That is a sad state of affairs indeed
@Nicolette- It’s not a book, but the TVTropes website explains and identifies almost every kind of stereotype out there (with helpful examples from multiple genres). Be careful, though, because it’s a worse blackhole than Wikipedia.
On another note, I am so disappointed in all these commenters who think their opinion of the grade is important. You probably think this song is about you, don’t you?
Trigger warnings galore.
At 17, I read a terrifying monograph on the causes cited for legal separations in Britain in the 19th century. Many women cited ‘sodomy’ (in this context, anal rape +duress(?)) as a secondary cause. Secondary because they didn’t know it was illegal. Their husbands misled them.
(Yeah, I know, homophobic laws. However, they had a slim silver lining just in these cases: catching out sexual sadists among married men.)
It was like those battered women who could afford it fronted up to a lawyer’s office citing the battery and the lawyers wormed the rest out of them over time. That would track with patterns recorded in modern social work manuals.
Evidence that significant numbers of British women WERE kept in sexual ignorance.
It has generally been that part of the pairing that sends me running screaming: the culture that cruelly denies sex education to its young, rather than the cultural group set up as a contrast, caricatured as providing thorough sex education such as to turn Everywoman and Everyman, universally, in that group into a repository of sexual knowledge.
I have only encountered the second stereotype – the exoticised sexpert – in the most starkly simplistic form in (epic?) fantasy books I couldn’t get into. Briefly, and as a bit of a baby reader, so I largely wrote it off as invention. (I certainly wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint the targeted regions. With my Australian background, I still tend to focus mainly on Oceania rather than mainland Asia.)
Hence I appreciate the clarification on this point.
I rather wonder whether I’m classifying what I’ve seen as more nuanced portrayals correctly, though. I’m sure I’m safe with (contemporary) “Take One Arranged Marriage…” by Shoma Narayanan, or “Jodhaa Akbar” the (historical) film (which I mainly remember for the scene where Jodhaa pulls a prefitted curtain to divide the marital bed into his side and her side – way to have a tiff in style!), because they are homegrown.
But say, Kev and Phrani in “Seachange” (tv series)? Phrani is far from anonymous, and theirs is the endgame romance, but they are supporting characters, not lead, and Phrani does have the sexpertise, although she puts the emphasis on the emotional component of foreplay.
I dunno quite, and that was my formative experience with comedy-drama writers trying for cultural appreciation (in that particular context).
What I have found helpful by way of books on stereotyping is “Whistling Vivaldi”. I don’t know that it would suit @Nicolette, who suggested recs. It doesn’t provide a lot of historical background. It suits me because it’s practical and contemporary.
And holistic. That’s a biggie. The main focus is on the severe stereotype threats on visible minorities and women, but there is room for the lower-level assumed-to-be-insensitive stereotype threat looming over dominant group members [and invisible minorities btw], and then the mechanisms to short-circuit the threats and enable dialogue.
There’s a steep learning curve for the majority. Many freeze up, daunted. The way I did when I got fast-paced audio files as a substitute for face-to-face classes at 15. It doesn’t mean you’re bad (or stupid, in my case). Just stop expecting to understand everything straight out of the gate. Voila, first hurdle passed.
I suspect a lot of available info in this vein is ‘throw in the deep end’ instead.
Edward Said for instance, as he’s been quoted, seems kind of anti-fan like towards Austen. Pragmatically speaking, Austen fans vastly outnumber Said fans, so the aim of increasing Black History awareness among Austenites would probably be better served initially (esp because fans may well be at the early hurdles stage of the learning curve) and you’d probably get a lot more traction with Austenites saying: ‘Austen was a huge Thomas Clarkson fangirl, said she LURVED him; it would make you a more hardcore Austenite to read Clarkson cover to cover’
Thank you LindaX for your thoughts and your take on various issues with which I heartily agree. Especially that a couple of paragraphs in a whole book does not an F make no matter how you receive them.
Besides, this book is an historical and not at all a contemporary. Putting what we know now in the past is called anachronistic for a reason, is it not?
Kudos to the classy way Lisa K handled this response anyway.
Every reviewer is entitled to their own opinion. As for me, I’ll have to look for my book recs elsewhere because the same blog that gives a C- to Claiming the Courtesan by Anna Campbell, which is basically about a kidnapper and a rapist, and an F to Hello Stranger by Lisa Kleypas isn’t very reliable in my eyes.
Besides, this book is an historical and not at all a contemporary. Putting what we know now in the past is called anachronistic for a reason, is it not?
It is not like people are asking authors to add iPhones in their historical fictions. Actual WOC/POC lived in Victorian England so it is not anachronistic for people to ask that these characters be shown as fully fleshed human beings and not as props to the white characters.
I need to make a correction…
Actual WOC/POC lived in Victorian EnglandWOC/POC are real people and not figments of an author’s imagination so it is not anachronistic for people to ask that these characters be shown as fully fleshed human beings and not as props to the white characters.@Zyva – off topic, but whoa, I have to defend Edward Said from the charge of not being a fan of Jane Austen. Yes, he pointed out that things like slavery and colonialism exist in Austen’s novels. But (and this is important) he did this in the 1970s. The dominant attitude toward Austen at the time was that she was just sweet, old, “Aunt Jane” who made pies in the kitchen and didn’t know or care anything about the wider world. For “serious” reflections of society you had to go to male novelists, not a “lady” who wouldn’t trouble her pretty head about such things. Said was one of several people who pointed out that Austen’s novels are not just light and fluffy. Sure, he criticized and/or disagreed with some of her politics. But he paid her the compliment of taking her seriously. In other words, he did some of the work that this website does, in terms of saying that hey, romance novels are not all just “fluff” and that fiction written by and for women is not necessarily brainless. (If you want to see him being nasty about someone, you should see what he says about Flaubert’s writings about Egypt, which contain a scene with a “courtesan” similar to the one described here…except that Flaubert bothers to give her a name, or at least a nickname, Kuchuk Hanem.)
@Kaye – I think we’re supposed to think of the Kama Sutra. But (as others up thread have said) the problem is that India=Kama Sutra is a lazy and reductive stereotype, and that it’s the ONLY thing Indian that is mentioned or represented. (How often are other sutras mentioned in romance?) “India” (even the modern country and certainly the British colony) is larger than all of Europe and has more language and ethnic diversity (and internecine history, as well). How many Europeans (especially those who are NOT French) would be insulted if every time they traveled outside of Europe people assumed they were BDSM experts because they had heard of the Marquis de Sade (and NO other European writers) and so ALL Europeans must be very good at BDSM? Of course, that would never happen, because colonialism means that the entire world knows the major languages of Europe (because many people been forced to speak one or another), and the tiny cultural differences among imperial powers have been writ large across the globe. I think it’s hard for us to imagine living a world where “all white women must be natural submissives because the Marquis de Sade wrote about it” and Sade is the ONLY EUROPEAN AUTHOR MOST PEOPLE CAN NAME. But if you try you might start seeing why some of the people on this thread are upset.
I guess if the author herself, (who is not some small fish in romance publishing that couldn’t have roughed it through one website giving her a F), admitting she was off this time doesn’t change the minds of people who vehemently disagree with the review grade, then nothing probably will.
And perhaps those same individuals might insist that SBTB and commenters here railroaded Kleypas into that declaration. SBTB doesn’t have to same level of influence and power in this situation as Kleypas and her publishing house does. I believe most big authors who received a low grade here are still thriving (e.g., Mary Balogh). Kleypas listened and followed through – good for her.
SBTB and many commenters here (some of whom are veterans of this type of discussions in romance) stepped up and as an Indian woman, I love how empathetic you all have been.
And to those who feel the need to share their “relaxation” tips – YOU are welcome to sit and relax with your teas and what not and escape into that world. As a non-tea drinker and a mostly “can’t escape even if I want to” reader, I’ll keep chugging my coffees and adding my voice these discussions 😉
Umm I seriously can’t be he only one tonpoint out that this is a freaking historical novel…which means there may be some themes that make a reader uncomfortable- because duh- historically- people were assholes used, abused, oppressed and marginalized one another on many different levels. You can’t read them through your hyper “woke” lens and give them a crappy review based on what you now recognize as wrong. Guess what, back then ( and some would argue to this day) learning sensual arts and martial arts from an ethnic person was not a scandal. And I don’t know how many brothels/pleasure houses you frequent but the whores/workers/artisans ARE nameless and lack a back story because it’s not about THEM it’s about their patron and in this context, what the hell did we need to know about his Kuma Sutra nameless teacher? Was she working her way through school? Did she have dreams beyond teaching European men how to maximize tantric pleasure? Who cares? It isn’t about HER, besides she was probably giving him a fake name anyway-as is common with sex and sensual arts workers.
If you read a book about slavery- you can’t get pissed when you see some slavery shit. When you read a book about the 1700 and 1800’s, you can’t get mad when you see misogynistic shit. I read a book recently where the heroine was FAR more liberated than she should have been for 1800 and it was distracting because- hello 1800!?!
Before we scream our throats raw from our soapboxes, let’s consider what we are reading, when we are reading it and what time in history it is conveying.
*shrug* And as a woman of color, I think I have a dog in this particular fight. So *shrug again*
The only one to*
Typo*
Well, I see the Beckys have come out in full force.
I’m usually a lurker but I can’t get some stuff out of my head so here goes nothing.
As others have stated Elyse’s review is Elyse’s review. If stereotypes and racism (however brief) take her out of the story then that’s what happens. I’m a vegan and I knock at least a grade off for any lazy stereotypical portrayal of vegans/vegetarians. If nothing else, it’s lazy writing. And that’s just one aspect of my personality. Otherwise, as your garden variety white lady, I’m pretty well represented in this genre. And as your garden variety white lady I’m always baffled when white women use the same arguments against WOC that are used by men against women. Relax, it’s just a joke, it’s just entertainment, why does everything have to be political. As though a world full of nothing but white people isn’t an inherent political statement.
As far as “historical accuracy” goes I’m old enough to see history that I’ve actually lived through being re-written. Regan as some sort of Teddy Bear conservative who cared about people? Anyone who knew any gay men at that time can tell you about the funerals because the government didn’t want to fund research for “gay cancer”. All of the white leaders who spout Martin Luther King quotes and pretend like they’d be marching with him before they get into their SUV with their Blue Lives Matter sticker? He was one of the most hated men in America when he was assassinated. Would you know that now? Will they know that in 100 years? History isn’t a monolith that’s set in stone, it’s written and amplified by the people in power to serve the stories of the people in power.
Anyway, like many I was looking forward to this book. I was disappointed when I saw the review and then heartened by LK’s response. If a writer of her stature in the genre actually issues a new version of a book because a racist story line or character was pointed out, that’s kind of a big deal. It sucks that it got through in the first place and proves that diversity is needed at all levels of publishing. But I’m very much interested in the outcome and will be waiting to see a new edition. Now back to my regularly scheduled lurking.
@Rebecca. I couldn’t say I’m so die-hard about anyone that I don’t see faults eg Austen pathologises [long-term] only children in Pride and Prejudice, which I didn’t appreciate.
However, I was not here for the romance when I read my old favourites, Anne Brontë and Austen (tween to early teens). That part snuck in under my radar. I was here for the satire ie the realism and the (dark humour) laughs.
Some of my favourites, Tenant of Wildfell Hall (#1) and Mansfield Park are universally acknowledged as unromantic, profoundly so. TV Tropes summarises Tenant as ‘Toxic Masculinity: a novel’.
It follows that Edward Said seems to devalue exactly what I value in Austen, the satire.
I have been listening to podcasts on Shakespearean criticism lately, and the slide into considering ‘problem plays’ ie plays about a problem for society, as simply problematic (brain pain and/or unfit for representation) rang bells for me regarding Said’s Mansfield Park criticism. (But the slide predates it, I think.)
Granted, Austen’s ‘problem novel(s?)’ are especially difficult, because it’s hard to tell whose viewpoint we’ve segued into sometimes, and if it’s the characters’, well, likely we’re meant to be catching characters out being inconsistent with their ideals/self-image, even when Austen does not prompt us to.
Still, Austen gives pro-slavery agitators’ names to her villains, makes the rich man with a plantation a tyrannical, abysmal parent, and gets as much mileage as she can out of the marriage mart v slave trade parallel popularised by earlier authors. It would all be weaksauce for a modern historical author, but it’s not bad going for someone who had to sell books in a culture that had not progressed far past the point where the powers that be considered slavery socially acceptable – and even after some legal progress, they were at probably about the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ point.
Also, I’ve never found it mentioned in criticism, I don’t think, but Austen personally had a dreadful relative to distance herself from: the pro-slavery Duke of Chandon.
It is an article of faith with me that people are not tainted by association to relatives, but stand on their own merits.
I’m surprised to see the Historical Point of View being trotted out to defend the work of a living person– it’s meant for writers and thinkers who are not our contemporaries. I hold with C. S. Lewis, though, on the merits of this lens, which again is being used inappropriately.
“The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer’s development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man’s own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the “present state of the question.” To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge–to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior–this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. And since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another. But thanks be to Our Father [i.e., Satan] and the Historical Point of View, great scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that “history is bunk.”
All this talk of historical accuracy – you folks do know historical romance is historical FICTION, right? People weren’t all that healthy, men didn’t really respect women, yet writers tweak their era of choice to suit the creative vision *all the time*, importing modern sensibilities so we’re not revolted by what we often consider backward, unenlightened attitudes. But apparently some readers on here desperately need racism in their historical romance because authenticity?! Why include offensive characters that aren’t necessary to your story? If you have the chance, the privilege, to create a world of your own, why drag in lazy racist stereotypes that have real consequences for people living today? You’re not a very good writer, and you’re not that creative. Thankfully Lisa Kleypas seems interested in being a better novelist and person, good for her. Thanks for consistently fighting the good fight, SBTB, you’re the only site I can think of that sees quality romance fiction as fiction for all! And JTaylor, racism is not ‘a different perspective’. Sheesh.