On Heroism in Romance
We speak routinely of heroes and heroines in Romance, but do we all share the same definition of those terms? For some, the protagonists of a genre Romance novel must act in ethically or morally upright ways to earn these titles, while for others they are mere genre vocabulary. Most likely fall somewhere in between.
I confess that I tend more toward the vocabulary side of the discussion, in part because I think the genre is already so narrow in its subject matter, that narrowing it in other ways creates too much limitation, repetition, and simplification of the genre. Also, I have a baseline objection to the idea of “earning love,” and I think there is often a fine line in the genre between a protagonist finding love and somehow being “good” enough to have it.
Still, I know this is a hot button issue for many readers, who perceive part of the aspirational message of the genre to be connected to the moral and ethical character of the protagonists, as well. And if we are going to use terms like “hero” and “heroine,” why shouldn’t the characters be elevated in some way above the average individual, perhaps even as moral exemplars. So Romance heroes who are criminals may not be okay, while heroes who fight for personal justice (even to the point of vigilantism) might be acceptable. Still, heroes seem to be able to push the line more readily than heroines, perhaps in part because they are often portrayed as being changed by love. The rake who becomes a faithful husband, for example, is redeemed by love, and therefore elevated by being proved worthy of more.
Heroines are sometimes set against “bad” types of women – the ‘evil ex-wife’ for example. It is sometimes difficult to portray an angry heroine. For example, I remember when Molly O’Keefe’s Crazy Thing Called Love came out, some readers found Maddy unreasonably angry. Then there are some of the unspoken rules around how much sex the heroine should be allowed to have and with whom. Although virtue was originally conceptualized as a masculine ideal (virtus in Latin is sort of the ideal of excellent manly character) has more readily been applied to Romance heroines, especially virginal ones.
It’s actually an interesting question, to think about how different ideas of heroism have passed down into genre Romance, because if you look at Aristotle’s Poetics, his conception of the hero in Comedy, where you’re more likely to see a marriage plot, is that of an average individual, both in social status and moral character. The Tragic Hero, on the other hand, is the more powerful or extremely honorable character who experiences a steep fall, often through error or misjudgment, that allows the audience to feel “fear and pity” and to then purge those feelings though catharsis.
As Romance develops into its various modes – Chivalric or aristocratic, for example – the hero, especially, takes on different postures and forms, elevated or grounded depending on the type of story. Northrop Frye, whose work on literary types has profoundly influenced much contemporary literary theory, has this to say about so-called “domestic comedy”:
Domestic comedy is usually based on the Cinderella archetype, the kind of thing that happens when Pamela’s virtue is rewarded, the incorporation of an individual very like the reader into the society aspired to by both, a society ushered in with a happy rustle of bridal gowns and banknotes. . . .
The romance is nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfilment dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendancy. This is the general character of chivalric romance in the Middle Ages, aristocratic romance in the Renaissance, bourgeois romance since the eighteenth century, and revolutionary romance in contemporary Russia. Yet there is a genuinely “proletarian” element in romance too which is never satisfied with its various incarnations, and in fact the incarnations themselves indicate that no matter how great a change may take place in society, romance will turn up again, as hungry as ever, looking for new hopes and desires to feed on. The perennially child like quality of romance is marked by its extraordinarily persistent nostalgia, its search for some kind of imaginative golden age in time or space. . . .
We can see much of this playing out in genre Romance, too. The Cinderella effect, in which protagonists are rewarded in love with some kind of social or financial boon. Or what about the role of nostalgia in, say, small town Romances or historical Romances? The prettification of history, for example, that we often see in the genre can be part of that search for a ‘golden age,’ where those with social, political, and/or economic power were also necessarily people of moral worth. Or where love could raise them to a level commensurate with their elevated social position (just as a heroine was often raised up through the social ranks by marrying a noble hero). The play on nobility in historicals is another place we may be able to note some merging of the aspirational qualities of Romance with a sort of nostalgia for a more ‘perfect’ historical moment.
Then there’s the wish-fulfillment element in, for example, the virginal heroine whose first time is a wondrous, multiple-orgasm-filled utopia, perhaps in contrast to the reader’s own disappointing experience (I didn’t make that up: an author explained to me that one of the appeals for her of the virgin heroine was the chance to vicariously enjoy this fantasy, in part because it contrasted with her own experience).
When it comes to how ‘heroism’ is represented in Romance, there are many variables and many different considerations related to our expectations of genre and of the experience of reading. What is our expectation of the genre in terms of how the protagonists are represented? Should they represent a social or moral/ethical ideal, and if so can we agree on what those should be? What about values that seem to have a very distinct social context – like virginity or pre-marital sex (even though pre-marital sex was much more common in other historical eras than our Romance novels often want us to believe)? What about the conventions of marriage and child-bearing, or the distribution of domestic labor?
There are, in fact, many different ways in which moral and ethical principles and values are built in to Romance heroes and heroines, and the way a reader engages those values will reflect his or her expectations a) of the genre, and b) of what the genre should present and represent by way of social exemplars. What do we want society to look like, and should a genre focused on love and marriage be held to a certain level of responsibility in terms of projecting that vision?
Where I think we sometimes get caught up is in not looking at our own expectations, or in taking our own standards for granted as universally accepted. For example, although some readers do not want to read inspirational Romance, there is, at least, an overt doctrine that is being relied upon and reproduced in the text. I am not saying that every inspirational author or text or reader replicates the same values or the same religious doctrine, only that the subgenre is written and read with an expectation that certain types of values will be forefronted.
At the same time, there are levels and registers of social homogenization in the genre that are really problematic, and I think some of the ways the genre idealizes certain social contexts can reinforce exclusionary and decidedly non-democratic values. Which I think is why the nostalgia element can come across as reactionary and socially regressive, rather than idealistic in a progressive way. In fact, the tension between social progressivism and nostalgia is very much tied up with the aspirational aspects of the genre. However, I think it can be easier to ignore these larger issues when so many books focus very tightly on a single couple and on their personal growth and happiness.
Complicating matters is the element of fantasy, and how that shapes the reader’s experience, often in a way that is disconnected from social reality. What every reader finds fulfilling as a fantasy will vary, and when we read Romance as a literal social allegory, it can be easy to simplify the role of fantasy and of escapism in the experience of reading. Idealism is a fantasy element, but what constitutes any given ideal is not uniform. For example, some readers will prefer a certain moral character in Romance protagonists, while other readers will connect to an idealized social setting, whatever that may be.
Then there are more abstract ethical and moral principles like “goodness.” I remember my 9th grade Latin teacher trying to explain that virtue, in a Roman context, was more about “the best that [wo]man could be” than about some specific value like chastity or prudence. Yes, I know there were specific values within Roman society, but the idea in the abstract is that for each of us, and every society, there is an ideal in the form of personal potential, and that there is a difference between reaching one’s potential and hitting some behavioral yardstick of what defines you as socially acceptable or worthy of idealization.
For me, it’s this more abstract idea of goodness I tend to embrace in the genre. Not that I need every hero to be a law-abiding guy who can and wants to change a diaper and run a multimillion dollar corporation at the same time. More that I do like reading about people being improved by love (not earning love, but having love make them want to be the best they can be), even if that improvement doesn’t bring them to a level of heroism that is beyond what I might expect of any average person in love. I also like to see society progressing because of that love, although I think the genre is less interested in society as a whole than it is in how a couple functions as a happy unit within a broader social structure that may be more implied than illustrated.
I wonder sometimes if the genre wants me to expect more from characters we call hero and heroine. But that’s not what draws me to the genre; often it’s the idea of ordinary individuals facing extraordinary circumstances. Sometimes, though, I do really enjoy the extraordinary. I just worry that if we ask too much of these characters, the options we have for ‘success’ will narrow to the point where we lose all those characters who reside closer to the edge.
So what do you think? Do you want your hero and heroine to be more aspirational, and if so, for what? Or are you looking for characters who are closer to the ground, and who may be more relatable than admirable?
That’s funny because I was thinking about that subject the other night while reading yet another “dark romance”. The so-called hero kidnapped the homeless and desperate heroine in a diner and raped her the same night. But all of that is A-okay because he was wronged sometime in his past life. The book’s name is “Wanderlust” by Skye Warren and has good reviews on Goodreads.
When I finished it, I honestly didn’t know what to think of it: I liked the writing and the heroine, but the hero was so far from anything good and honorable that it left me confused.
I guess in theory, I like my heroes to be admirable but in reality, if the story is intriguing enough, I can move past that. But I definitely have a double standard; I can like the male escort but the female one ( or courtesan in the historicals) reads sleazy to me.
That was fascinating, Janet. I’m not, strictly speaking, a romance reader (I come here for the essays)–my favorite genre is historical fiction, followed by crime. BUT my favorite books tend to have an element of romance in them, subordinate to the story–the hero and heroine may be solving another problem but at some point you just know they’ll be in a clinch. And I do read romances from time to time for the Historical Novel Society!
The heroism in the books I prefer comes from someplace else in the story–the historical struggle or the race to solve the crime and avenge humanity, or whatever. Which, I suppose, is the same with the romance genre, only that aspect of the plot is more on the fringes.
I’ll take either an aspirational or a relatable character if they’re well written. All the author has to do is to convince me that her story’s not totally contrived, that it COULD have happened, and I’m in. I guess because my main focus isn’t romance I don’t look for a character type, but I do tend to go for certain settings and times, the Civil War for example. So if I come across a blurb that matches the setting and time AND the overall story looks interesting AND there’s a hint that romance is going to be part of the match, I’m most likely to read on.
Interesting. I like “villainous” heroes a LOT; but their villainy has to have a fantasy nature to me — assassins and confidence artists and jewel thieves are A-OK, but no drug dealers or rapists or misogynistic douchehats, please.
So I guess I’d fall into the “aspirational” rather than the “relatable” side of the equation, but the ideal isn’t a moral or ethical one, but a … I don’t know, a certain degree of “scope”, perhaps?
That is, I want heroes and heroines who are on the grand scale, larger than life, who *matter*, whether their particular deal involves fashion statements or homeless orphans or surgery or black ops.
Which is definitely a fantasy scenario, sure; but it is one with a great deal of appeal when I feel helpless and irrelevant.
I guess what it comes down to is my personal philosophy of “story” — stories are the human way of imposing pattern and meaning on the flow of random events. So to be a “hero” (male or female) of a story is to have *agency*, to have the ability to seize the relentless sequence of this-after-that and to bend it to a purpose.
But I viscerally reject the criminal hero who are too close to those I have seen in real life, who may claim to have a “cause” (e.g. punishing all women for the one who cheated on me) but who are too obviously agents of chaos.
Does that make sense?
Interesting. I don’t think of myself as requiring “aspirational” characters, but I do need them to be “relatable”, which is where the edgy heroes of today fail for me. I simply can’t relate (for example) to a drug dealing pimp. I can’t embrace his HEA. And I can’t get behind any woman thinking he’s a good bet as a life partner just because she’s currently not on the receiving end of the violence that pervades his life. And this may be because the real world implications of his lifestyle fail the fantasy test for me in a way that outrageous behavior by an archangel or a vampire or a beast lord don’t.
When I read these wonderful, in-depth, insightful essays, I feel rather shallow about my romance reading. I just read what sounds good to me. For the most part, I have a wide range of tolerance when it comes to both heroines and heroes. So far, I expect little and am pleasantly surprised more often than not.
Some of my favorites are aspirational, some are closer to the ground. I really like that your articles make me think and examine my feelings and thoughts about all aspects of reading.
I prefer realism in both my heroines and my heroes. Even when I read fantasy or paranormal, I want the protagonists to act within parameters that feel “real” to me. I can’t get behind a story that involves things that I find unbelievable. You mentioned the virgin having multiple orgasms during her first sexual encounter. Nah…too unbelievable. Heroine falling in love with the man who rapes/stalks/treats her with no respect? Nah, too realistic but in a way that I can’t identify with. If the hero is disrespectful to the heroine and/or other women, in my mind he doesn’t deserve a HEA. I guess it’s my own personal Darwin Awards, in that I don’t want him to end up with a good woman and have a family, because he doesn’t deserve any of that–I tremble to imagine the warped upbringing he’d provide for children. I don’t believe that all people are redeemable.
Because of my biases, I prefer heroines to be at least in their late twenties or thirties. I want her to have been around and experienced enough to know what kind of man she doesn’t want, so when the kind she wants appears in front of her, she realizes what’s happening. And my heroes have to be men who respect women. I don’t want alpha douchebags who mistreat women and I don’t care what their back-story is. That’s not an enjoyable read for me, no matter what mistreatment made them that way.
Interesting how we all have our preferences which can be so restrictive, yet within the genre of romance, there are a multitude of books that fulfill anyone’s fantasies and provide a good read. I enjoy these articles here that make me think about things in new ways–to define myself. Thanks for that.
Interesting post! In most genres, I like my protagonists flawed, and often darkly and deeply, and I accept and sometimes mourn their bittersweet or even tragic endings. In romance, though, I look on the happy ending as not just a guarantee that the love is secure but that the characters are changed for the better. Still working on faults is fine, but if they’re still coldly causing harm to everyone else in their lives, it isn’t an HEA for me, or even an HFN.
That said, what I love most about romance is you can start with the most unlikable, awful people in the world and, through their connection to each other and a helluva lot of pages, explore how they could grow enough to be happier, and to be part of a better world. You can start from anywhere, with anyone, and as long as the author is good and there’s enough development, you can read about this journey towards sympathy, connection, and rehabilitation. I may not always be in the mood for it (sometimes you just want nice people), but for me the journey the characters make from being protagonists to being heroic is one of the most moving and most significant things the genre can do.
I really enjoyed this essay. Hard for me to respond without blathering on about my own books, though I will try.
I do think one reason why I like to read about ‘dark’ heroes, the type who’ve fully embraced a lawless or amoral existence, is because very often the process of finding love requires them to reconsider. If they’ve truly cut ties with the shared morals & beliefs of their society, they have to start from scratch. Every possibility is examined and tested–what changes can they accept, and what will they reject? WHY would they change in one direction and not another?
These sorts of stories fail for me in two main ways…
One is when the hero is simply recuperated into the status quo. I loathe this conclusion so deeply. Instead of evolving, he abandons everything that made him interesting & by rejecting his former self, insists that the default set of beliefs/principles is best.
The other is when the hero questions but doesn’t come up with any answers. The most infuriating example of this, for me, is Anita Blake. She kept asking herself if, by killing monsters, she was becoming a monster…but her internal monologue stayed the same book after book. There was no real self-reflection and no progress.
Both my hero and my heroines need to have a moral code. I can deal with vigilantism, to a degree, but say they’ll harm anybody and anything to accomplish their goals…I dunno, their mother was murdered when they were a child and now they’ll burn the town just to get justice, up to and including putting kids out of a home?
Nope. I’m not going to get in line with that.
Now take that same scenario, a guy grew up in a rough area of town and his mother was murdered when he was a kid and he goes back and decides to hunt down the men responsible and kills the drug-dealers and pimps who get in his way? That’s different.
I want my hero and heroine to have a moral code. If they harm innocent people and step all over everybody to get what they want, then that’s nothing I can admire, nothing I can relate to and nobody I want to root for.
I think that the question is not an either/or, but a both. Romance heroes and heroines have to be relatable and aspirational. It has to do with a romance reader’s expectations, I think. When I reach for the next romance to read, its conventions and my expectations should coincide. In other words, by definition, romance shows people, as represented by the hero and heroine, at their very best, by the HEA. Where a romance may stand or fall is in the writer’s portrayal of their transgressive acts. The more extreme the transgression, the more difficult it is for the romance writer to bring him/her back from that brink of non-relatability/non-aspirationalability. And depending on the romance reader’s own prejudices and the scope of his or her tolerance, hero/heroine is redeemed, or not. What “works” for one reader may not for another.
There are heroes, in particular, I think, who are irredeemable because the genre breaks down when there can’t be established a core of decency. This is the reason, quite often, that the CEO/billionaire hero of the HP HAS to be revealed to contribute to charity, or take care of his employees, etc. The corporate/business world has its share of sociopaths, people without conscience whose notion of human interactions definitely lie in the I/It, not I/Thou, vision, to take a paradigm from Martin Buber. Romance cannot sustain the I/It relationship, which is why failed romance often concludes in a compartmentalized decency or goodness in the hero. He can be ruthless, he can be vigilante, he can be mercenary, but he’s a pussycat when it comes to his love for the heroine and baby-filled nursery. Nope, this doesn’t work, at least not for me.
In keeping with your Frye-ian reference above, I think it’s important to remember that Frye looked at the totality of what literature offers us; he broke that down into four mythoi, corresponding to the four seasons: spring/comedy; summer/romance; autumn/tragedy; and, winter/irony & satire. “Romance” as we define it, Regis-like, actually falls more into comedy. And we have to look at romance as one aspect of how fiction serves to define and delineate our world. It’s only one piece of the pie: let’s enjoy it without asking it to serve as the totality of the meal. Now, I love pie and prefer to eat it daily, but I still taste of the other mythoi and they serve difference purposes. (Which doesn’t mean of course, that elements of the other mythoi don’t enter romance in microscopic amounts, as it enters others.)
I really really hope this makes some sense …
I was non-plussed by the hero/heroine vocabulary when I first started reading discussions of the genre, and my understanding of what people mean by it, and what it means to me for a protagonist to be a “hero,” has shifted over time. I think there is, for most readers, some idea of goodness/worthiness, though–although what we might mean by that and how we read it in various actions certainly varies widely. Many readers talk about the genre as offering idealized (but also realizable) views of love that include mutual respect, concern for a woman’s desire and agency, etc., for instance.
I am most interested in your objection to the idea of “earning” love, though. I guess it depends on what you mean by that. I don’t think that a character arc in romance always has to be about becoming better/worthy of love, so in that sense I agree with you. But I also see people say genre romance shows how “everyone deserves love” or “we deserve someone who loves everything about us” and, well, I think that’s nonsense. In some ways I think we DO have to “earn” love, though I certainly don’t think that requires us to be perfect or heroic.
Romantic love is not unconditional. There are things I wouldn’t forgive in a partner. And many of us have told a friend “S/he doesn’t deserve you,” because we don’t think cruel, abusive, disrespectful or uncaring people are deserving of their love. I apply those basic standards of decency to characters in romance, too. (I mess up and act cruel and uncaring sometimes, but I try not to, and I wouldn’t expect my husband to love me if I didn’t bother). I have a problem when that decency only extends to the romantic partner, too–all women besides the heroine are “whores,” for instance. The couple may end together and happy even though at least one of them seems like an awful human being to me, but I won’t find the book emotionally satisfying. (And I do apply this in other genres, as well–I have given up on mystery series where lone vigilantism is always the answer).
I suspect that exposure at a young age to Shakespeare’s:
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds”
makes me unsympathetic to Liz Mc2’s:
“Romantic love is not unconditional”.
Of course, Shakespeare wasn’t suggesting that the lovers were perfect to start with; he was contemplating in his sonnet the nature of love itself in a relationship between adults. This probably explains why I can’t warm to ‘boy next door’ heroes…
@Miss Bates: Yes on Frye. I wish I had more time to parse Frye’s ENORMOUS work in relation to genre Romance, because one of the things I find most interesting is the generic relationship between Comedy and genre Rom, and how the norms in some ways are reversed in genre Rom. That is, you often have the model of the hero who thwarts some kind of ‘old guard’ society, with the marriage representing a ‘new guard’ that’s allegedly better, but you also have elements of the tragic figure, even though the fall has kind of been transformed into the ritual death that Regis talks about. I know I’m massively simplifying here, but as you know it’s incredibly complicated.
Still, I think Frye’s reference to Comedy in all of its forms is relevant, precisely because he’s including books like Pamela, which Regis pegs as (in her opinion) the first Romance as we recognize the genre today. And here I was really trying to get at the whole elevated v. average character issue, and the way Romance kind of plays with both of those types. If that makes sense, lol.
@Liz Mc2: I think that for me, there’s a difference between love and a happy relationship. That is, I do believe that everyone is worthy of love. But that doesn’t mean people are going to have lasting romantic happiness without work and compromise, and I guess that’s where I see the ‘earning’ part coming in. Or not really earning, but working for.
I was thinking about @Shiloh Walker‘s reference to a character’s moral code, and my first response was ‘yes, absolutely.’ Then I got to thinking about Ilona Andrews’s Burn For Me, and the fact that one of my favorite things about the book was the hero’s seemingly amoral character. Of course, the book was told from the heroine’s POV almost completely, so I suspect that we’re going to see that he does, in fact, have a strong moral code, just not one that the heroine might always agree with. And part of me might be a little disappointed, because I was kind of digging the idea of a character who was completely amoral. Although there are definitely lines I would not be comfortable with him crossing. For example, ransoming killing people for the fun of it? No. Dealing drugs or pimping? No. Torture? No. So clearly I have a moral lines myself that I’m imposing – consciously and/or unconsciously – when I read the genre.
Still, I can tolerate a hero or heroine who may be problematic for me in various ways, even if they don’t ever get to a stage where I see them as moral exemplars, if that makes sense. I want to see growth, and I want to see compromise within the relationship and work for lasting happiness. And I don’t know how I’d feel about a couple who was super great with each other but who victimized others routinely (e.g. the drug dealing and pimping examples). But I often don’t know my own lines until I read something that crosses them, so I have a difficult time with hard and fast rules around these things.
Actually, what got me thinking about this lately was Beatrice Small’s death, and in particular, the Skye O’Malley books. There are so many things in those books I think would be considered scandalous for readers now, and yet I think those books are important in a number of ways – – just the power the heroine ultimately amassed, for example. So . . . I don’t know. Of course, those books also made a mess of representing other cultures, which gets us back to the whitewashing issue, and that’s a whole other aspect of this discussion that is wound up in how society is “idealized” in the genre. Yeah, so more questions than answers at this point.
@Erin Satie: There’s a lot in your comment I’m resonating with. And I need to think about more, because I agree with you that there’s this common absorption of the once isolated hero (or heroine, or couple) into society, and what are the long-term effects of that absorption? Does it better society or does it ultimately bland out the couple, and draw them back into some of the problems that gave rise to the isolation to begin with?
Although it’s also sometimes different for heroes and heroines, isn’t it? Like heroines are often isolated (orphaned, for example), because it makes it easier to attach them to the hero, but heroes sometimes get to be isolated in ways that have more powerful symbolic import (although PNR often changes this, I think, although your example of Anita Blake is good, too).
One of my favorite series is Shelly Laurenston’s Pride series, in part because there is a great deal of community among the shifters, but there are also profound tensions and differences that are not always resolvable. Also, I love the way Laurenston uses the plot line of full humans hunting hybrids as a racial allegory, which keeps the shifters from simply being some kind of half-assed excuse for diversity. And yet, even with the seriousness of that subplot, there’s still so much straight out fun in her books, because the heroines are not in any way mitigated in their predatory natures, so they are allowed to be both powerful and vulnerable at the same time. What makes them prickly is embraced, and not ‘in spite of’ anything, either. Definitely not “heroic” in simple terms, but I end up really *liking* so many of her characters in a really genuine way. I’m not sure where I was going with this, but I started out with some kind of thought related to your isolation v. community dichotomy.
I think I fall in line with you, Janet, in terms of preferring my h/h’s to be “ordinary individuals facing extraordinary circumstances” and watch them “being improved by love.” Maybe there is an element of fantasy, too, in that I do like to believe we can redeem (or, to use your term, improve) ourselves/our flaws through deep love for another (or from another).
I particularly like characters who adhere to some personal code of honor (it may be skewed, but it is theirs and they own it completely). It’s not so much about me thinking they must “earn” love or be “worthy” of it, as it is that I naturally find particular traits desirable/lovable. Does that make sense? Maybe only to me. ;-)
I don’t enjoy stories with completely unrealistic heroes (the young billionaire who somehow barely has to work, and dedicates almost all of his time to obsessing over and sexing up the heroine). And I don’t enjoy snarky heroines, probably because I am don’t enjoy snarky jabs and find a little of that trait quickly grows tiresome.
Thanks for another interesting and thought-provoking essay!
@Stevie: Oh fine, quote Shakespeare. Look, I’m not saying I’d throw someone under a bus for growing old. But I’ve never met anyone without romantic deal-breakers; it’s not like being a parent. If my husband altered to become emotionally abusive, my love would alter. I think for better or for worse has limits, and it should.
@Robin/Janet: Maybe it’s “love” rather than worthiness we’re defining differently. I think everyone deserves recognition of their humanity, compassion, and understanding (though I’m not saying I’m heroic enough to extend that to everyone). But I struggle to see how an abuser, say, “deserves” romantic love.
@Robin/Janet: It makes perfect sense. This: “I wish I had more time to parse Frye’s ENORMOUS work in relation to genre Romance.” I think Frye is key to understanding genre romance; I think he’s the “great code” to the genre, pun intended. ;-)
@Liz Mc2: But I struggle to see how an abuser, say, “deserves” romantic love.
Because love is an emotion, and I’m uncomfortable with the line between ‘x doesn’t deserve love’ and ‘your love for x is a problem.’
Now, if you’re talking about being in a romantic relationship with someone, that’s very different to me. In real life, I want anyone out of an abusive relationship, regardless of whatever love there might be. In fiction, we first have to determine what’s abusive, because clearly some things I find abusive others don’t, and some things I don’t find abusive others do. But even putting aside that, I can tolerate a Romance with a protagonist who may cross certain lines that are completely uncrossable in real life for me, especially if part of the trajectory of the story is that this person learns and changes for the better. In general, though, my tolerance is much higher in fiction for things I would not tolerate in real life, in part because I can be interested in the way a relationship is portrayed and how any number of dynamics play out in a way that feels much safer to me. I get that some readers think that’s inappropriate or unhealthy or setting a bad example, but I don’t see it that way at all.
In discussions within the romance community be it blogs, message boards, etc., I use the words hero and heroine to refer to the protagonists of the story. Rather or not either/both behave heroically or earn their HEA is a separate issue for me, That gets more into if/how the book worked or didn’t work for me as an individual reader.
Like others, I want the characters to have a moral code but it doesn’t have to match mine. I don’t have to agree or even sympathize with every decision a character makes to enjoy a book.
@Liz Mc2 and @Stevie: You know, one of my favorite Romance subgenres is second chance at love, especially with couples who have separated. Because I do think love often evolves over time, and some relationships successfully weather those changes, while others don’t. One reason I can’t always suspend my disbelief when protagonists are very young is the idea of how many years they will likely be together and the challenge of growing at the same rate/in the same direction.
I also think there’s a difference between conditional love and being in love with a person who changes so drastically that they are basically not the same person. In the case of a husband who turns abusive, that, for me, falls into the second category, and is not a superficial thing. In the case, for example, of someone who suddenly went broke from a position of vast wealth, that would probably fall into the first category, and would make me question the original protestations of love.
@Miss Bates: I definitely think he’s one of them!
@Robin/Janet:
Your comment helped me figure out what I was trying to say in my first one–which has less to do with the couple fitting into a community & runs more like this: in order to reject a worldview, you have to THINK about it. And I’d rather an anti-hero who’s put a lot of thought into his beliefs than a white hat hero who just toes the line.
Obviously, there are plenty of people who are not very thoughtful about being evil jerks, so… that would not be my romance reading bag.
I’m going to have to give Laurenston a try. You’ve brought her up so many times now–something that sticky is worth checking out.
@Erin Satie: Laurenston’s books are wonderful on audio – I almost enjoyed them more on audio, in part because Charlotte Kane, the narrator, does a great job differentiating the characters and their various accents/idioms. I recently listened to all the ones available, a mini glom of her work, which is why they’re fresh in my head right now. If you do try her, start with Beast Behaving Badly, Bo Novikov and Blayne Thorpe’s story (he’s a polar bear shifter professional hockey player, she’s an African wolfdog shifter plumber and roller derby player). Something happens with the series at that point in the plotting and writing — it all tightens up. And you can begin there without losing anything of the overall series storyline.
LizMc2
I get uneasy about where we draw the line between acceptable changes and non-acceptable changes. I certainly agree that, on the face of it, a husband who suddenly becomes abusive might seem an entirely justifiable reason for ending a marriage there and then.
But what if his behavioural change is because he has a brain tumour? I can envisage any number of story lines in a romance about that particular possibility, but it would have to be a remarkably fine writer to create a heroine capable of retaining our sympathy if her response was something along the lines of ‘I didn’t sign on for this’.
If, on the other hand, they are Janet’s ‘ordinary individuals facing extraordinary circumstances” then both hero and heroine can succeed in a way which goes far beyond the hardships of deciding which technology giant/couture house to take over next…
@hapax: It definitely makes sense, and as I’m reading your comment I’m trying to think about how conflicted my own tolerances are. For example, I often like extreme power imbalances in contemporary Romance, because it feels more real to me, while being completely unreal at the same time. I am drawn to authors of historical Romance like Courtney Milan because the ‘meritocracy’ her books champion often feels somewhat contemporary but I appreciate the progressive politics of her books. I often want to read PNR like I read SFF (as social or political allegory), although it doesn’t always work out that way. I do like the kick-ass women aspect of PNR, though. Although I’m sure there’s a level of meta-consistency to my likes and dislikes, I tend to be all over the place in terms of individual books.
@Stevie: Your comment made me think about how popular the amnesia plot is in Romance. Or the Linda Howard White Lies type of book. Although we often don’t get the “before” picture in those books, either, which may affect how easily the reader can relate to a different relationship between protagonists.
I’m so glad I saw this. You articulated where I’m coming from, as both a reader and a writer, brilliantly. I do prefer relatable characters. My heroes are modest types, those behind the lens, rather than posing for the picture. They’re quiet men, who aren’t driven by personal wealth or status, but rather the broader needs of society.
I think the genre is weighted toward either dark heroes or idealized heroes. There’s always room for more authenticity.
@Fiona McGuire I agree with you completely, particularly about not caring about an abuser’s back-story. If the back story is really over the top, then I lose interest in the book as a whole because of the believability problem. Due to the nature of PNR, there is more lead way with the back-story issue.
I avoid bad boys, but I was enthralled with Rachel Bach’s Paradox series. To understand the romance aspect, I had to understand that both Rupert and Devi shared the same basic soldier’s mentality about following orders and trusting their leaders. The conflict was caused by Devi feeling that the ends did not justify the means, while Rupert had spent a lifetime implicitly trusting the establishment. Making the effort to understand why he did what he did and Devi’s reaction to his actions was an interesting process and a testimony to how well written and plotted that series is. Is his a hero? Yes, I think he is. Would I ordinarily forgiven such a dark character? Probably not. I think I only did because Devi was a part of the same mental culture.
I have often said that the best compliment ever given to me was given to my by an old boss who told me that I made other people want to do better. So while I don’t think heroes/heroines have to “earn” love, I think that their relationships have to change them. Otherwise what is the point of the romantic arc? If Joe starts off as a good guy whose basic problem in life is that he doesn’t think he has anything to offer the world, he doesn’t earn love by figuring out that his skills as a carpenter mean he can help an entire town survive. Rather, falling in love with a woman who’s trying to save a town on the edge gets him involved in the rebuilding effort and lets him succeed, so that his growth in the relationship and his growth as a person go together. That’s a bad example, because it sounds boring, but I hope it gets the point across.
I am not a fan of the huge redemption, mostly because I can’t read books where the hero (in particular) starts off as a complete ass. I don’t see anything romantic in a rapist, a drug dealer, a corporate raider. TBH, I’ve known men in all those professions and I don’t want to read about them. They were all, to the very last, sociopaths. I find it a lot easier to believe in werewolves than to believe that any of these guys can change his personality enough to look far enough outside himself to fall in love, to put someone else’s needs even at the same level as his own let alone in front of his own.
When you get outside of romance, to fiction with PROTAGONISTS rather than heroes and heroines, I am fine with those without a moral code. For years, I quite happily read John Sandford’s Prey series. Sandford himself said that Lucas Davenport was a sociopath. If Davenport couldn’t put the bad guys in jail, he just made sure they ended up dead. And I admired Lucas Davenport. I just don’t consider him a romantic hero.
So I guess at base it comes down to my ability to believe that the hero in a romance can put the heroine’s needs ahead of his own, and vice versa. What matters in a relationship is that compromise can be achieved, which only happens when your partner’s needs are important to you, and not just because your partner’s success reflects well on you.