Guest Post: A Reader’s Feminist & Her Favorite Romances

NB: Tanvee sent me this essay because, as she put it, she “wrote a sort of rambling piece on why I love romance novels and how they help me feel more connected to my feminism, and I would love to share it,” and would I be interested? HECK YES I AM INTERESTED. I love the ways in which romance shapes us as readers and as women, and how individual books can have a significant and enduring effect on how we see the world. So please welcome Tanvee.

So this is not really a book suggestion, although I do have some suggestions along the way. This is more of a long and involved, and possibly spoiler filled bit of writing on what romance gives me. As a warning, I’ve quoted from a few of my favourite books, and so some of the story might be given away in the dialogue, although I’ve tried to avoid giving away the plot.

I’ve been reading romance novels since I was 12, and I started out with the Mills and Boons and the Harlequins just like many others here, but somehow the Regency was never a preference for me then, maybe because the roles that women had in those books chafed at me, and I didn’t want to read about women who were not strong and in control. To be fair though, women I didn’t see as in control of their own lives existed just as much in contemporary romance, with a different package.

Georgette Heyer was the first author whose Regency novels I loved. They didn’t have much sex in them, or any, and a kiss or two was the most to be found, but the women, they were magnificent. ‘Managing females’ like Frederica and The Grand Sophy ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) filled me with happiness, not because those books were perfect, far from it, but for the first time I was reading about women who were not afraid to be themselves and question others and answer back and stand as equals in a society which refused to let them. Maybe the timing of this was perfect, as at 18, I was slowly growing into my feminist self, although I had years to go before I could call myself that with pride and sincerity.

For a long time, I didn’t accept the truth of my love for romance. Until my early 20s it was definitely a bit of a shameful secret. I read and loved Lauren Weisberger’s Everyone Worth Knowing for the simple reason that one of the protagonists had an addiction for romance and

Truly, until I was introduced to this wonderful, wonderful website about 3 years ago, I hadn’t come to acknowledge that romance was my favourite genre and a valid choice that I could own without embarrassment. It makes me a little bit embarrassed now, in fact, to think that there was a time I was unwilling to own up to my love for romance, especially when I find that some of the most empowering, breathtaking reading I get done is through romance.

I think this discovery began in full force when I read the Troubleshooters Series by Suzanne Brockmann and so many of the amazing novels by Nora Roberts, especially the Bride Quartet (Carter from Vision in White ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) is and always will be beta hero supreme, and Parker’s total capability and pride in her accomplishments in Happy Ever After is competence porn like no other, not to speak of the strong female bond running through all four books).

But no book has ever driven home to me how strong and empowered we can be as much as The Heiress Effect by the brilliant Courtney Milan (and in fact the whole of her Brothers Sinister series — I’m hard put to choose a favourite, though this just happens to be the one with this particular dialogue). This one scene between Jane and Oliver, reduces me to tears and yet gives me unbelievable strength.

“I am not a blight, I am not a pestilence. And I refuse to be a piece of sacrifice for the greater glory of your game.”

She wasn’t touching him. So why did it seem as if she was? He could almost feel the phantom pressure of her hand against his chest, the heat of her breath on his lips. He could almost taste the scent of her, that light twist of lavender. He felt as if she’d shoved him off-centre, and he couldn’t quite find his balance.

“You are not any of those things,” he said. “What are you, then?

“I am ablaze,” she told him.

Courtney Milan probably deserves the most credit for transforming the world of Regency for me, with almost as much credit to Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series (in particular Phoebe Batten and James Trevillion’s story in Dearest Rogue ( A | BN | K | G | AB )and of course the magnificent Bridget Crumb and Valentine Napier in Duke of Sin) and Lisa Kleypas’ Wallflowers and Hathaways series. While it is not Regency, Kleypas’ Travises series, in particular, Blue-Eyed Devil, had the most realistic and sensitive description of domestic abuse within marriage I have ever read. That book has a dialogue which slays me, between Haven and Hardy, towards the end of the book:

It occurred to me in retrospect that I probably should have been nervous about getting married again, in light of my past experiences. But everything was different with Hardy. His love came with no strings attached, which I thought was the greatest gift one human being could give to another.

“You know,” I told him on our wedding night, “I’m just as much me when I’m with you, as I am without you.” (emphasis added)

And because Hardy understood what I meant, he pulled me into his arms, against his heart.

Somehow, that one sentence told me everything I needed to know about falling in love with the right person.

But Courtney Milan and Lisa Kleypas and Elizabeth Hoyt have come into my life at the perfect time, too. I’m a feminist now, in a way I never was at 18, a card-carrying, loud, strident feminist. Their books have come into my life when my fiction, my non-fiction (what little there is), my TV and my movies all revolve around the celebration of women and the many things they are capable of, which is everything.

These books have heroes and heroines both (and it is so important that both should be) equally committed to the causes of women. These books are filled with men who take for granted the fact that women are equally capable, intelligent, strong, if not much more, and it is a wonder to find such men, in fiction or in real life.

As I write this, I realise that romance novels have been with me at every stage of my life, as a secret that made me feel grown up at 12, as a comfort read that only Betty Neels could provide at 18, as a bolster, a support and a strength that I have found through Courtney Milan (among so many others) at 25, when the world is a dark and dreary place, and watching women succeed in fiction and in real life is a joy that makes each day a little easier to bear.

This was supposed to be me writing about the most recent novels I read – Kelly Bowen’s I’ve Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm, which is her first in the Lords of Worth series, which I immediately followed with the second of the series, A Good Rogue is Hard to Find ( A | BN | K | G | AB ), as well as a novella which is 2.5, A Lady’s Guide to Skirting Scandal ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). I read all three between 7 pm and 11 am, with a few hours of sleep mixed in. They are prime examples of the empowerment that romance provides.

In the first, we have a woman who escaped an abusive marriage, and what is most enthralling is that she has spent the four years since her escape helping other women just like her. The hero is a warm and honourable man who knows from day one that his only role to the heroine is to be an equal. He knows she will make her own choices, and he never stands in her way as lover, protector, defender; he gives her strength rather than imposing his strength on her, and this dialogue is a representation of everything I loved about the book:

“I can’t imagine what you endured at his hand, Gisele, but know that no one else ever will. I promise that to you.” His face was hard.

She caught her breath, a sense of inevitability prodding her from her silence. “You want me to tell you what he did—”

“No.” Jamie stopped her before she could finish. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t matter. Because it is something that you’ve defeated. It no longer controls you. He no longer controls you. You are the master of your destiny now, Gisele. No man shall ever again dictate how you choose to live your life. Not your father, not the marquess, and certainly not me. No one can put you in a cage ever again.”

Gisele let out a shaky breath, her truth exposed in a handful of simple words. Something deep inside her soared, “Yes.”

Excerpt from Kelly Bowen’s I’ve Got My Duke to Keep Me Warm (The Lords of Worth)

I have enjoyed each of Kelly Bowen’s books, and found them to be deeply nuanced in many ways. The first book had a rich inner life, a Dowager Duchess who uses chickens as a distraction for the society so she can carry out her good works, provide a second chance to many who deserve it but do not have the opportunity to live it.

The second book had a very different set of protagonists, and it touched a chord in me that is deeply ingrained – the principles of equity and equal opportunity, of making those who are in a privileged position see the things that they have achieved simply through the luck of the draw, the circumstances into which they were born. The hero of this book, the Duke of Worth, is an inherently good man, that is never in doubt. But in the course of the book, through the efforts of the heroine, a woman born outside the circle of nobility, and his mother, the Dowager Duchess, he is able to see his privilege and make a strong and consistent effort towards structural change. Many things may have changed since the period in which this book was written, but the basic fact that some people are simply lucky and garner the privileges of this luck their whole lives is as true today as it was then. The protagonists in this book have so much to offer – the heroine is strong and clever, adept at jobs that were considered ‘male’, and she owns her capability as much as she owns her weaknesses and misfortunes. The hero is, most of all, a good man. It sounds as if I am damning him with faint praise, but the truth is that to me, there is no hero as perfect as a man who has inherent goodness in him, who listens when others are speaking, who learns to open his eyes to the truth around him, and upon learning the truth, makes a change in his behaviour. He went the whole distance in this book, and the end was as satisfactory to the romantic in me as it was to the revolutionary.

Of these three, the novella was perhaps the most challenging. A novella by its very length has to struggle to make a full story, and I am in complete agreement with the reviews that the book received on SBTB. What I loved most about it was that for once the misbehaviour was the heroine’s. The chance to find herself, the chance to discover unlearned depths in her character was given to the heroine, Viola Hextall. The hero was admirable, a surgeon on the ship on which Viola finds herself, as she is banished (in her words) to New York. But all his admirable qualities aside, this book won me over because Viola was given a chance that has often been reserved for the hero. In Devil in Winter (a gem) by Lisa Kleypas, it is rakish Sebastien who finds a depth to his character he had not previously thought he had; in Elizabeth Hoyt’s marvellous Duke of Sin ( A | BN | K | G | AB ), it is Val who finds the line between right and wrong, and is a better man for having Bridget in his life.

In A Lady’s Guide To Skirting Scandal, although it may not be perfect, it is Viola who finds that someone expects more from her than she does from herself, someone who thinks she is worthwhile as a human being and not just a lady, and reading about her finding her true self is a journey worth making. Kelly Bowen’s books are not perfect, no book can be, but each one offers a new perspective, and allows its protagonists, and through them the readers, to find in themselves something special and unique.

These books have given me so much for the 13 years I’ve been reading them, which is half my life, I now realise, and if there was one thing I could do, it would be to explain to the world that they are so much more than erotica for women (although I have read and loved my fair share of those) or fairy tales never to come true. They are parables and examples of women who have dared to dream, dared to work, dared to stand up for what they believe in. They might be fictional, but to young women everywhere who are told at every stage what they cannot do, cannot wear, cannot be: they are a revelation.