The other day I read a romance novella, and at first glance I thought its ending was wonderfully romantic. And then I read it again. Upon second reading, I wanted to toss the book against the nearest wall…unfortunately I was sitting outside at the time, without a wall in sight. What had raised my hackles? The heroine, a brilliant and beautiful PhD, decided to give up her career without a second thought to become a high school science teacher so that she could live near the hunky career military man with whom she’d fallen in love. The author of this novella came out of series romance, prompting the question: Why do many series romance novel heroines give up their careers for the men in their lives? And similarly, why do they so often give up their lives in the “big city” to be with small-town or rural heroes? Are these “let’s move back to the 50s/let’s move back to the boonies” scenarios based on our nation’s quaint ideal of rural life, or possibly the antiquated concept that a woman can never be satisfied unless she’s got a man to take care of her and a house to run? What precisely is going on that these books are romantic to us?
Several years ago I read a terrific Nora Roberts single title featuring a dissatisfied psychology professor who, in an effort to become a happier person, moved to Ireland to live for six months in a small village cottage owned by her grandmother. I loved this book, and it didn’t bother me a bit that the heroine eventually decided to stay in Ardmore with the hero – because her choices throughout weren’t passive. This wasn’t a woman who fell in love in the week during which she waited for the part for her broken-down “foreign car” to come in, or a woman previously itching to get back to the big city once her mother’s will was read, or a woman with something to prove to all the small-town people who’d done her wrong while she grew up. No, Roberts’ heroine actively decided to change her life, and changed it wholeheartedly by moving half-way around the world. Not only did she stay in Ardmore with the hero, but she decided to pursue her dream and become a writer, which again was not a passive act, but a courageous choice to give up the safe and try something new and exciting. To me, that’s romantic.
As a modern woman, I like the idea of choice, and I prefer for the women in the romances I read to have as many options open to them as is conceivable. That said, one of the reasons I enjoy historical romance is that the range of choices available to today’s women simply didn’t exist in the past. So I’m far happier reading of an historical heroine in the role of wife, mother, and caretaker of the home because those were primarily the roles available to her. As a matter of fact, I truly enjoy scenes in Medievals and Frontier Romances wherein the heroine cleans up the place (and/or whips up a plate of biscuits), probably because it’s such a foreign concept to me. And of course, it goes without saying that whenever PBS or BBCA airs a “reality series” putting modern people in historic settings, I’m there with the popcorn for every episode. But while “a woman’s place is in the home” may be historically accurate, it’s not a concept most of us accept as modern women. Which leads me to wonder whether all of us who grew up wanting careers like our brothers expected secretly yearned instead for the life of Margaret Anderson, or if too many of those who write romance novels see Margaret Anderson as their model of femininity rather than Barbara Jordan or Carly Fiorina. Don’t get me wrong…I loved watching Margaret Anderson on UHF channel re-runs growing up…but even then she was the type of fictional TV mom I never knew in real life.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with fantasy…but wouldn’t it be great if the new fantasy wasn’t such an old one?
TTFN, Laurie Likes Books
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“I’m glad, though, that some of you who read the piece understand that a major concern for me is the passivity of certain heroines in romances. I do have a tendency to ramble and probably didn’t make that point strong enough.”
I thought this point was crystal clear in your piece, LLB, and that you gave very lucid examples to illustrate the difference between “active” and “passive” actions on the part of heroines. There was nothing in your piece, IMO, that spoke poorly of either SAHMs or WOHMs or working women without children or stay at home wives without children. In fact, I think you went out of your way to explain that the source of your “ire” was most definitely the “passivity” of the heroine, NOT the choice she ultimately made. And really, since so many women do work out of the home, and many of us have careers we love, with or without children (me included), if we’re reading Romance, we’re reading about a lot of heroines who don’t have high powered careers or live in the big city or even want to work or whatever. Many of us are even reading about those heroines and respecting their choices even though they’re not the choices we might make in our own lives. At some level, what you’re responding angrily to, IMO, is a matter of craftmanship, of shallow character development rather than the thoughtful development of the heroine’s feelings and thoughts and choices. At another level, you’re talking about ideology, and about feminism as the ability of women to make active choices regardless of the choice made. I’m assuming from your argument that if you reversed this heroine’s circumstances, and she blindly immersed herself in a professional career because her man told her to, you’d be looking for an equally hard wall against which to throw the book.
To Jennifer L. — I admire your restraint and did not find anything offensive to SAHMs in your posts or anyone else’s.