Revisiting Reader Consent
These two pieces were originally published in 2011. The first, by Jane, is on general reader consent, and the second, by Robin, is on reader consent and sexual force in Romance. The reader consent issue was raised last week on Twitter, and we figured it might be time to re-run these posts and see how they hold up in the current reader climate, including to our own eyes.
Robin (aka Janet here at the blog) wrote a paper which was presented this past spring’s PCA conference. The core of her paper is the reason that readers have different responses to forced seduction is based on the reader’s grant of consent to the act. In essence, the reader is acting as proxy for the heroine in either withholding consent (rape) or granting consent (seduction). It’s a more nuanced argument than this, but ever since I read her paper, I began to think about the reader and consent in books.
All readers come from a different place because none of us have had the same upbringing and same life experiences. These experiences and biases affect our ability to grant consent or go along with where the author is leading us. It’s the old “It’s not you, it’s me” refrain.
For example, it is hard for me to read a legal romance and grant consent to the liberties taken with the law. This was a huge issue for me in Nancy Gideon’s Chased by Moonlight wherein the lead investigating officer on a murder case was sleeping with the prime suspect and even kissed him in the interrogation room. But witness this commenter’s response:
Now because it is a piece of fiction I don’t care if the a police procedureare right are not. I know it’s not that way in real life and this is just a book.
She was able to give her consent to this scene whereas I was not.
In Willing Victim by Cara McKenna, the heroine wants to be ordered around during sex in an extreme way, yet the author is careful to convey that this is at the heroine’s own direction at each step of the way so that the reader can give consent to the simulated rape. McKenna starts off with a test to prove to the reader, the hero’s restraint. “Michael” is their safe word.
“Michael.”
His posture transformed in an instant. He sat down next to her on the bed, hands clasped between his knees, wary eyes on her face. “Too rough?”
“I’m not sure. I think mostly I just wanted to test the safe word. I think I needed to know you’d stop, if I asked you to.”
“Always.”
It helps a great deal that these scenes are almost all from the female’s point of view so that the reader knows she is hot for every increasingly demanding and threatening act:
Laurel made a fearful, breathy noise and was rewarded with a few violent thrusts. “Stop,” she panted. “Please.”
“I said shut up.”
“Please, stop. ”
“Fine. Gets me hot when you beg, anyway. ”
She alternated pleading with helpless noises, the role-playing arousing her more than she’d imagined possible. Flynn felt godlike behind her, insanely strong and powerful.
Maya Banks uses this technique of being in the heroine’s point of view for a struggle scene in her upcoming “Four Play” contribution (ellipses in place of actual content to attempt to make this post somewhat safe for work):
A decadent thrill washed over her at the thought of Brody forcing his way into her resisting body. Oh yeah. Nice. It obviously didn’t pay to be too accommodating. She’d stop that nonsense right now. – Then, as if realizing her game, he gripped both hips and held her in place-
“I told you what would happen,” Brody said, but he didn’t sound very sorry at all.-.Oh God, he was big and it hurt and she loved every second. She wiggled and squirmed, trying everything she could to unseat him.
But the reader as proxy (not stand in) but proxy works on levels even beyond ones that involve a sexual situation.
Ever put down a book? Why? Sometimes it is because the story is boring but sometimes it is because there is something in the story that bothered you.
This happened to me recently when I was reading a book the other day. The hero declared (to another person) that he was in love with the heroine and I put the book down, metaphorically speaking. I wasn’t ready to go there with the hero. The author hadn’t prepared me well enough for that scene to happen and thus I wasn’t satisfied with the direction of the story.
I read one story in which I entirely skipped over a sex scene because I wasn’t ready for the couple to have sex yet. The hero had done something bad and I needed groveling for him before the heroine allowed him the pleasure of sexual intercourse with her.
And, of course, as I alluded to at the beginning, every reader has a different point at which she consents to the scene. For example, the groveling in an Heir for the Millionaire by Julie James was sufficient for me, but for commenter Holly, it was not, leading the book to be a wallbanger for her:
Based on the recommend I downloaded this to my ereader. I just finished The Greek and the Single Mom by Julia James. I just gotta ask-what the heck were you smoking when you gave this a B? Please tell me you were feeling maudlin and had polished off a bottle of wine before you read this. Shaking head in dismay.
I finished the story and only because I paid a LOT of money for my ereader did I not chuck it at the wall. OMG!!! Just OMG.
*Possible* Spoiler ahead. But then this is often an HP kind of plot device so maybe it isn’t a spoiler.
The guy feels like he’s the aggrieved party all the way through? Exsqueeze me? He was the ultimate in asshat angry boner men and it didn’t take me long to figure that out. His reaction to finding out about his son was-poor. She’s vindictive? Say what?
You know, your review appealed to me because you talked about a fiesty heroine with a spine. Yeah, she had one-right up until the end of the story. Then it appears to have been surgically removed when both she, and I, were not looking.
Near the end of the story the guy commits a calculated, manipulative act with despicable intentions. And the heroine, once he tells her what he did, thanks him for having committed it instead of properly hunting for a spoon with which to dig out his heart (assuming he has one) – cause you use a spoon to make it hurt more. (Alan Rickman/Robin Hood reference). She THANKS him!! Is she an idiot? A masochist? You know she can’t be a masochist because I read BDSM and even masochists aren’t THAT masochistic. OMG. Again.
By the time that the HEA rolled around, this reader wasn’t prepared for it. She didn’t consent to the HEA because the hero committed an egregious act and did not redeem himself sufficiently in her eyes. It didn’t matter that the heroine consents or excuses this behavior, the reader hasn’t consented or excused the behavior thus making the HEA unbelievable for that reader.
The reader’s grant or withholding of consent is not the same thing as being a placeholder. Instead, it is where the reader is emotionally within the story and where she will allow the story to take her Whether the reader grants consent for a particular emotional movement can and will vary based upon the reader’s experiences and personal biases. A woman who was the victim of sexual assault likely has a very different line for consent when it comes to forced seduction as opposed to the reader who has never experienced such an experience.
If an author gets a number of complaints about a particular book maybe it was because she hadn’t fully paved the way for the reader’s consent. Or it could just be that it’s not you, it’s me.
What do you think? Are you, as a reader, consenting?
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When I first started reading Romance, I was stunned by the genre’s apparent comfort with sexual force against female characters and uncomfortable with both the contention that it’s pure fantasy and therefore completely resistant to analysis and that it’s pure patriarchy and therefore part of a reactionary agenda in the genre. Having worked extensively with captivity narratives and 19th century sentimental and sensational fictions, I could recognize the influence of Romance’s literary ancestry, but still, why would a genre so overtly concerned with offering its heroines the True Love ideal make such liberal use of sexual violence toward women?
This piece emerges from an inquiry that I believe requires and is worthy of substantial, long-term critical attention. I am starting and ending with the assertion that not all rape is created equal in the genre, as well as the assertion that the uses of sexual force in Romance are contextualized by both the individual book and the individual reader. The villain’s threat of violence against the heroine is not substantively the same as the hero’s use of sexual force against the heroine, for example. While both instances may constitute fantasy on the most generalized and superficial level, potential rape by a villain is generally not a rape fantasy in the sense that the heroine’s imposed sexual submission to the hero is likely to be.
Further, the rape fantasy, as a romanticized erotic interlude between the hero and heroine, will function as romantically successful, empowering, or liberating to the extent that the heroine and/or the reader responds to the incident and interprets/values its consequences within the context of the relationship and the story itself. For me, the key element in valuing these rape fantasies (sometimes referred to as forced seductions) is the extent to which the reader consents on behalf of the heroine, not only to the hero’s forceful taking, but also to the happy romantic ending that the couple share. Whether these incidents of sexual force are politically liberating or limiting in regard to female sexuality and patriarchal dominance is a distinct if related question, and one to which I will posit the answer as both.
Authors like Mary Jo Putney and Jayne Ann Krentz have argued that “the male protagonist of a romance is often both hero and villain, and the heroine’s task and triumph is to civilize him, to turn him from a marauder into a worthy mate,” a protector (“Welcome to the Dark Side,” from Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women, 1992). Sara Davis explains the compulsive popularity of Romances by pointing out that, “wherever they turn in the popular culture, girls and women are reafï¬rmed in the idea that romance is the dominant and most crucial quest in their lives” (“Values and the Romance: Journeys of the Reader”), echoing Cathy Davidson’s analysis of 18th and 19th century women’s writing and reading patterns – namely that whether and whom to marry have been among the most important choices a woman makes in her life, and our romantic anxieties, hopes, fears, and ideals are projected and mirrored back to us ubiquitously throughout our lives (Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America, 1986). That women often read and talk about what they’re reading communally becomes significant as a means of engaging these issues critically.
Traditional literary criticism of Romance, however, has not been particularly kind to the genre nor considerate of the idea that sexual violence has uses beyond mere escapism or sexual oppression. Similarly, clinical investigation of rape fantasies has not yielded many definitive conclusions. Nancy Friday has remained loyal to the idea that fantasies requiring submission relate back to our early stages of development in which we were powerless, contrasted with an overabundance of responsibility as adults that results in “a chance to relieve ourselves of all responsibility for the delicious, forbidden sex we crave” (Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age, 2009). The notion that these fantasies are taboo, that they exist at a nexus of desire, shame, and even guilt, is reflected in Stacy May Fowles insight that “[p]aradoxically, sexual submission and rape fantasy can only be acceptable in a culture that doesn’t condone them… Many fantasies are taboo for precisely that reason – it’s close to impossible to step beyond the notion that a man interested in domination is akin to a rapist or that if a woman submits, she is a helpless victim of rape culture” (“The Fantasy of Acceptable “Non-Consent’: Why the Female Sexual Submissive Scares Us (and Why She Shouldn’t),” from Yes means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, eds. Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti, 2008). At the very least, the issue is emotionally fraught and intellectually polarizing.
Connected to this notion of taboo is the paradigm of “rape culture,” where cultural representations of rape are extensive and women are held to a double standard of the innate temptress who must conform to particular benchmarks of chastity (i.e. modest dress and demeanor) to be deemed worthy of defense against sexual violation. (Jill Filipovic, “Offensive Feminism: The Conservative Gender Norms That Perpetuate Rape Culture, and How Feminists Can Fight Back,” from Yes means Yes!). As Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti note, “So often it seems as if the discourse is focused solely on the “no means no’ model – which, while of course useful, stops short of truly envisioning how suppressing female sexual agency is a key element of rape culture. . . . [W]omen are rarely taught how to say yes to sex,” they argue, in part because the male subject stubbornly remains the central point of reference and power in regard to female sexuality. Consent is figured relative to the dominant male subject, not as an independent value that is self-affirming to female subjectivity and sexuality.
Even some Romance critics and readers have accepted this phallocentric model. Nina Philadelphoff-Puren insists that in Romance “a woman’s capacity to make or refuse romantic agreements is contingent upon the way her actions are read by the master-reader of the story: the romance hero” (“Contextualising Consent: the Problem of Rape and Romance,” 2005). Here, it is not the author or reader outside the book, most often a woman, who is the “master,” but the male protagonist within the story who controls, even “legitimates” the heroine’s choices/decisions.
Given the fact that recent research indicates upwards of 62% of women have had rape fantasies (“The Nature of Women’s Rape Fantasies: An Analysis of Prevalence, Frequency, and Contents,” Jenny Bivona and Joseph Critelli, 2009), it is depressing, to say the least, to think that we are simply acting out patriarchy’s domination over our psychological and physical selves. The three “key elements” of the rape fantasy have been identified as “force, sex, and nonconsent” (“Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and Research,” Joseph W. Critelli and Jenny M. Bivona, 2008). There is an ongoing debate in Romance-reading communities over whether a rape fantasy is the same thing as a “forced seduction,” but for the purposes of this analysis I am collapsing any potential differences because the very label of “forced seduction” echoes at least two, and perhaps all three of the clinical elements of the rape fantasy.
Further, in both a personal rape fantasy and a forced seduction scene in a Romance novel, two levels of consent remain operable – that of the character playing out the role and the reader or fantasizer who lends a sort of meta-consent to the encounter. While the reader may or may not participate in such a direct way as someone actively creating a rape fantasy within their own imagination, she participates by giving or withholding consent to the rape scenarios and the overall success of the romantic pairing, which sometimes hinges on the acceptability of the forced sex.
This second level of consent (and enjoyment) muddies the question of whether other types of sexual violence in a book are rape fantasies, per se, but for the moment I am distinguishing between, say, a villainous character who attempts to rape the heroine in the absence of any desire or romantic possibility between them, and the hero’s use of sexual force or coercion against the heroine. On the level of the narrative, these representations of force (and usually the villain’s force is stopped by the hero, often at the very last minute) may both be forwarding the romantic bond between hero and heroine, but there is often a clear indication that it is only the hero who has a legitimate claim on the heroine’s body, distinguishing the classic erotic rape fantasy from the aversive rape fantasy scenario that is not generally (or clinically) associated with erotic arousal (“Guided Imagery of Rape: Fantasy, Reality, and the Willing Victim Myth,” Bond and Mosher, 1986).
The classic rape fantasy in Romance is that which many people still associate with the misnomer “bodice ripping.” Take Christina Dodd’s 1997 A Well-Pleasured Lady, in which Sebastian takes Mary’s virginity against a wall, despite her repeated protests, which include hammering him over the head with a silver domed cover and boxing his ears. Despite her pleas of “Please. . . Don’t. Don’t do this. You hurt me more than I can possibly express,” Sebastian insists that he is not hurting Mary, even declaring her tears to be “worth more than [her] maidenhead,” as “gold to [him].” He tells her that he cares not what she feels, just that she reveals those feelings to him. Despite Mary’s resistance, however, we are given numerous cues that we should not necessarily object on her behalf. Extensive descriptions of Mary’s sexual arousal, erotic and emotional intimacy between them that has developed through the first part of the novel, and the reality that what Mary fears is not physical pain or force, but that Sebastian “forced her to feel too much.” Her pleasure frightens her, echoing the idea that a woman like Mary must have the choice taken away from her, to be perfectly powerless, for her to be able to experience pleasure fully and recognize her own growing love for Sebastian.
Another common trope is the hero who cannot control his attraction to the heroine. This character is often larger than life, notorious for his sexual conquests and far beyond the heroine’s expectations for a husband or sexual partner. In Sarah Craven’s 2009 The Innocent’s Surrender, hero Alex has been led to believe that heroine Natasha is sexually experienced and forward, making her coerced offer of marriage in exchange for cooperation on a business deal (her foster brothers basically sell her to business rival Alex) an excuse to take her harshly and against her “passive resistance.” In a hasty apology he acknowledges “I hurt you, Natasha mou, but by the time I realized the truth, it was too late, and I regret that…My only excuse is that I wanted you very badly.” Unbeknownst to the reader and the heroine, Alex saw Natasha several years ago at a party and decided then and there that she was the woman for him: “I was yours since that first night, Natasha, and you have always been mine. My woman, my wife, and the only love of my heart. Now, and for all time.” Like Sebastian, Alex’s sexual force is a byproduct of a deep emotional attraction to the heroine that he cannot control and must literally force on her, coercing her accept him sexually as a means of engaging her emotional loyalty and love.
Anna Campbell’s Claiming the Courtesan, published in 2007, offers another version of this dynamic, when Justin, the dark, brooding, borderline over the edge hero, vows revenge on the courtesan who disappears at the very moment that Justin decides he will propose to her. Verity, of course, became a courtesan out of financial necessity, and her dream has been to live quietly and virtuously away from society and her alter ego Soroya. When he captures her and disregards Verity’s admonition that “[a]nything you take, you take as a thief,” he is determined that he will get her back any way he can, even if he has to use sexual force to remind her of their sexual bond.
Although it is often argued that Romance rape fantasies seek the comprehensive submission of the heroine to the hero’s will and sexual appeal, that is not what Justin insists he wants from Verity; instead his “claim” on her is for an integrated woman, part Soroya and part Verity: “Soroya is you. Soroya’s innate sensuality and sense of adventure are also yours. Verity is sweet and virtuous and Soroya is a woman who goes after what she wants without regret or fear. Those two women unite in you. Until you recognize that, you’re no use to me or yourself.” It is a perfectly ironic scenario: the hero forces himself on the heroine, violates her bodily privacy and autonomy, in order to catalyze her acceptance of her own powerful and passionate nature.
At a basic level, the myriad variations on these scenarios act as a relationship catalyst for the two protagonists. Whether the hero seeks revenge on the heroine for some imagined wrong, whether he seeks to bond her to him emotionally, whether he seeks her emotional submission, the ultimate happiness of the couple is never in question. Which, of course, is the basis for critique of this plot device as idealizing the sexual and social submission of women to men. That the heroine falls in love with the man who forces himself on her sexually violates the “rape” aspect of the rape fantasy, romanticizing sexual violence in a way that perpetuates the rape culture and female desire as passive and dependent (and research demonstrates that fantasies of sexual domination among men — but not women — are linked to real life sexual aggression (“Power, Desire, and Pleasure in Sexual Fantasies,” Eileen L. Zurbriggen and Megan R. Yost, 2004).
Sharon Stockton has argued extensively and persuasively that the rape motif in 20th century literature functions to reaffirm the “mastery” of masculinity as an affirmative subjectivity (as opposed to the feminine as object, or in Lacanian terms, as lack). But the project fails, she argues, because “it is the “sadist'” himself who is in the position of the object-instrument. . . . Agency resides outside the duo of violator and victim, and the rapist himself subject to an external gaze and preexistent script” (The Economics of Fantasy: Rape in Twentieth-Century Literature, 2006,). In the case of the Romance rapist, that external gaze is that of the reader, most often the female reader, and it is ultimately her judgment to which the hero must submit. Whatever choice the heroine may have in regard to the hero (and as I said initially, this is a book by book analysis), the reader has the ultimate choice to accept or reject the hero’s actions and the heroine’s response.
Now if we accept the model of the female reader as passively accepting patriarchal standards of female submissiveness, the argument would flow in much the same direction as it does for critics like Radway. If, however, we posit the reader as active and engaged, as having the capacity to evaluate the repercussions of what she is reading, the dynamic shifts. It shifts more if we make the critical distinction between Romance heroine and Romance reader – namely that for the reader the rape scenario is a rape fantasy in which she may or may not choose to participate. The right to consent, to say yes instead of no, is ultimately hers. I should point out, as well, that in historical Romance, where these rape scenarios seem most common, the hero and heroine’s relationship often represents a substantial social subversion (marriage for love as opposed to arranged unions, for example), giving the heroine much more freedom and authority than she might otherwise secure based on her economic or social standing.
Women are very aware of the unsafety of our physical selves – our persistent vulnerability to violence and violation. In Romance, though, sexual force more often than not rehabilitates the hero for respectful, loving, monogamy. The reader has the choice to vicariously experience that subversion of real life rape, to participate in the fantasy of the hero’s ultimate suitability by consenting to what the heroine does not. Of course that also means that the reader can choose not to give her consent, to find the violation unacceptable, but in either case, the choice is hers. And it is a choice she is not afforded in real life rape or even in the context of the fictional narrative (in the position of the heroine).
One of the reasons this idea of reader consent appeals to me is that it preserves the ambiguity of the text itself while allowing the reader to solve the dilemma for herself through her own personal agency. Note that I am not suggesting that the reader is subjecting another woman, in the form of the heroine, to rape. Rather, I am proposing the idea that the sexual rape fantasy and the emotional fantasy of a sound, emotionally safe romantic relationship, can be subversive and empowering for the consenting reader.
If the key to sexually and politically liberating women from patriarchal double standards is teaching women to say yes when she means yes, then perhaps these Romance rapes can offer more than what the novel itself promises (which often conforms to a socially traditional domestic model). And even if some Romance novels participate in a regressive sexual agenda, the reader’s critical engagement as the agent of consent (or withholder of consent) to a rape fantasy introduces yet another level of potential subversion and a potential shift from the perverse ideal of female sexuality as passive and reactive to that of affirmation and sexual satisfaction without shame.
Addressing the first post here (reader consent surrounding various factors, not just sex).
One sticking point for me in many novels is the Big Reveal. You have a hero or heroine who, for a large part of the novel, has been acting like a total asshat, or a big bundle of angst-ridden mystery, but you (the reader) don’t find out the cause until nearly the end. And then everything is okay, because feelings have been laid bare and every past action is immediately explained! Right? Right?
Can you tell I have a hard time consenting to this?
Here’s the thing about the Big Reveal, and how I think it might affect reader consent (I can’t be the only one who dislikes the device). As a reader, I feel the need to support the hero and heroine, and feel some degree of sympathy for them. Yes, they can do terrible things I don’t agree with, but I need to know why they’re doing them. I don’t think other characters need to know, because part of what interests me about romance novels is the process of discovery between hero and heroine (or hero and hero, etc.). But I need to know.
The example I always use for a book where I like the way it’s done is Lord of Scoundrels. We have that heartbreaking Prologue where the seeds of Dain’s future character are sown; and when we next encounter him as an adult, we understand why he behaves the way he does. Jessica doesn’t, and her journey as heroine involves coming to understand those things about him. But, instead of feeling antagonistic towards Dain for over half the novel, and then suddenly being expected to like him because he’d just blurted out his whole past, I can accept him as a potentially good man from the very start. In contrast, one book where the reveals came too late for me was Kinsale’s Prince of Midnight. Here it was the heroine I disliked; and I disliked her enough that I never finished the book. I just couldn’t sympathize with her, and felt sorry for the hero.
So that’s my main consent issue. I have other minor ones (historical inaccuracies and anachronisms, decisions/actions that seem out of place with what I know of the characters), but my main fear when I start a romance is that I won’t be able to support the main characters in their pursuit of each other. I don’t need to have absolutely every detail laid out in a handy Prologue every single time, but I do need to feel that there’s justification early on for what I’d otherwise believe was unacceptable behavior.
I won’t go into my feelings about this on Dear Author, since I know I will be mocked.
I will say what is the book?
“And, of course, as I alluded to at the beginning, every reader has a different point at which she consents to the scene. For example, the groveling in an Heir for the Millionaire by Julie James was sufficient for me, but for commenter Holly, it was not, leading the book to be a wallbanger for her:
Based on the recommend I downloaded this to my ereader. I just finished The Greek and the Single Mom by Julia James. I just gotta ask-what the heck were you smoking when you gave this a B? Please tell me you were feeling maudlin and had polished off a bottle of wine before you read this. Shaking head in dismay.”
Is it Heir for the Millionaire or The Greek and the Single Mom?
huh
@Anna: Why would you be mocked? It seems to me that the whole point of these essays is that response is very personal.
The confusion about the book titles is because An Heir for the Millionaire contains two stories, one of which is The Greek and the Single Mom.
How much does the reader have to know about or relate to the heroine to consent to the ride? Or is it enough if the reader wants the hero, and doesn’t think much about the heroine – then the heroine’s on page will/consent is supplanted by the reader’s?
I guess what I’m asking is — does the average reader have to like the heroine to consent to the journey the heroine takes, or does the reader only have to be interested in the hero? In a perfect world, and a perfect book, the reader would be emotionally connected to both, of course. But is reader connection to one more likely to elicit reader consent than connection to the other?
Personally, I think I care more about the hero. I just reread Lee Child’s The Hard Way (the one where Reacher is tasked with testing the VP’s security), and I had my usual consent for everything Reacher does – including sleep with his dead brother’s ex-girlfriend – but I found myself not consenting with what the ex-girlfriend did, actually judging her on both a professional level and a personal choices level (sleeping with her dead former boyfriend’s brother! ick). This post is making me wonder why I can view the same exact action with two really different reactions depending on which character I’m considering.
I suppose I’ve read so many Reacher books, I’m connected deeply with him. But of course the women are constantly changing, so they are strangers for the most part – and I find I judge them more harshly than I do Reacher when they sleep with Reacher in the middle of an investigation.
So – is it easier to get us to consent for ongoing characters to take us places in a story where we’d feel troubled about following a relative stranger or a new character? This may explain a lot about Sylvia Day and 50 Shades? And why a secondary character who gets his own story can perhaps be a little more extreme?
Does length of book have any correlation to reader consent?
@Anna Richland: I think the most fascinating aspect of the point you raise (the connection to hero or heroine) is that if you ask five different readers, you’ll get five different answers. I know readers who like to see themselves in the heroine, for example, which is something I’ve never been able to do (for one, I lack the tiny-waisted, red-headed feistiness of most of them ;-) ).
In my own experience, I need to accept both characters as worthy of one another. If there’s a huge imbalance in how much I like one over the other, it usually kills the book for me. And it can be either the hero or heroine that fails me, so I can’t say that I lean more towards one or the other half of the couple. I guess I just need to know that they’re both going to be able to manage a loving, equal, respectful partnership by the end of the novel.
This ties in with my earlier comment, about needing to have some background information for characters whose behavior I might find problematic (i.e. someone is going to behave like a total jerk for much of the novel, and then suddenly turn around). To clarify what I said earlier, I don’t actually need to know absolutely everything about the backstory; just enough to accept that character’s behavior and believe that they’re capable of acting differently (I guess we could call it “redeemability,” though it’s not always that extreme). That way, I don’t have to suddenly believe that the character is worthy of his/her romantic interest after many, many pages of actions that have suggested otherwise. In Lord of Scoundrels, we get enough on Dain to understand his personality, but there are also a couple of surprises for the reader further on that help everything come together in the end. So, although many of the things he says and does are abominable, we know where to find the root of them.
@Anna Richland: “Does length of book have any correlation to reader consent?”
I forgot I wanted to comment on this too!
For me, yes. The shorter the text, the pickier I am. In a long, sprawling novel, there’s plenty of time to play out character arcs and come to accept what takes place with plot and characters. In a short story or novella, on the other hand, the pacing and development have to be done well enough for me to accept the HEA at the end. I’d love to hear from some authors on whether it’s harder or easier to write shorter fiction; but as a reader, I find fewer well-written novellas or short stories than I do longer works.
@The Fallen Professor — I definitely agree about needing some level of background information for characters with problematic behavior. I don’t need the full details right up front, but you have to have enough knowledge to start with that you can like the character in spite of their terrible behavior.
But the redemption itself is equally important. I need the hero to have a moment where he acknowledges that his behavior is a problem (both to himself and to the heroine), apologize for it, and then start changing his behavior. If that doesn’t happen I can’t get on board with jerk heroes. And it needs to be a real, sincere apology, not a halfhearted one. If the behavior is bad enough, I require groveling.
I think the reason I need all those things to happen is that when I start a romance novel, I go into it with the expectation that even if the hero acts like a jerk for the majority of the novel, I will find him worthy of the heroine by the end of it. If that doesn’t happen then I feel let down and the entire novel doesn’t work for me.
For example, I’m a big fan of the Immortal After Dark series by Kresley Cole. She is really good at writing heroes that straddle the line of acceptable behavior but manage to redeem themselves by the end. However, Dreams of a Dark Warrior completely failed on that front. Declan was an asshole, and while he fell in love with the heroine and ended up on her side by the end, he never properly apologized for his actions. Nor did he admit that everything he had done was wrong — he just turns over a new leaf because the heroine wants him too. I could not have accepted him for our heroine without some serious groveling, and it never happened. The entire book didn’t work for me because of it, and I skip it whenever I reread the series.
@Liz: Yup, I’m with you on the redemption needing to feel authentic. It’s hard to present such a complete personal journey within the scope of a story, and easy for that redemption to feel like just a skip over an inconvenient obstacle on the way to the HEA. For me, more often than not I feel like I’m asked to consent to this turnabout way too soon, or too lightly. “Look! I apologized! Unicorns and rainbows for all!” I understand that there are certain constraints in storytelling, but a drastic change in behavior is too important to gloss over. I prefer a conditional HEA to a resolution that feels forced.
I think I recently bought that Kresley Cole collection on sale… I’ll keep your comments in mind when I get around to reading it!
@Liz: I’m with you on Declan. He was a jerk at the beginning of the book and a jerk at the end.