Well, that’s the theory. It isn’t changing the person; it’s giving the person a safe place to be who he is inside. Or maybe to develop a side of himself that he has never previously seen a reward in developing.

Ummm… I should never have second-guessed myself. He wasn’t an alpha. He was an ass. My husband’s a real alpha, and he’s the best. A real alpha doesn’t have to be an ass to get his point across, to lead, or let his strong personality shine. I write alpha males like that. =o)

I just wanted to reiterate, though, that I see a huge difference between stories in which the heroine believes *her* love can change the hero (a dangerous path to trod, IMO), and those in which the hero’s love for the *heroine* brings about the transformation. The first rarely, if ever, works for me, the second turns me to J-ello every time.

I think the best romances are about individual redemption as much as romantic love.

This is an idea that’s been discussed in academic circles, specifically by Tania Modleski and Janice Radway, but I think most romance readers are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality. To paraphrase Modleski, we may enjoy reading about such men in fiction, but if we were confronted by some of them in real life, most of us would show them the door–and fast.

I think that the way in which extremely alpha males are brought to their knees at the end of the romance novel–through the power of the heroine’s love–can be an incredibly empowering fantasy. But real men don’t slay dragons, and most of us don’t expect them to–any more than most men expect the women they love to look like a Playboy centerfold model.

Of course, some people will always have difficulties distinguishing between fantasy and reality, but I think that’s the exception, rather than the norm.

(Although the first juice to flow was mine, when, yawning, I sat down to my computer to discover the post I’d scheduled for tomorrow had been moved up to TODAY. )

Kerry says: “The romance novel alpha male does not suddenly don a suit of shining armor. The gleam just starts to show through the tarnish concealing the one he’s always worn.”

See, that’s the point I was trying to make in the examples I gave (although I’m not sure that’s true, unfortunately, of all romance novel alphas). If I can see those gleams, the guys works for me. If I can’t — and fairly soon, although I am willing to give the author SOME time to let me hate him – then he doesn’t.

I also think there’s a difference (and maybe I didn’t make this clear) in stories about love making someone want to be a better person and those in which a woman believes *her* love can change a man. I completely believe in the first, but have far more problems with the second.

Love, all by itself, is a powerful force for good, on so many levels. Heaven knows we’ve all heard testimonies from people who credit that one person who believed in them — who saw the shining armor beneath the tarnish — with saving their lives, sometimes literally. Unselfish love for someone else very often can shake that person awake to his or her true potential, which in turn often unleashes that person’s own capacity to love in return.

But the kind of love that sees the true person underneath the dreck does not tolerate or enable or excuse the dreck, either. I do believe in reformation — assuming one isn’t dealing with a hardened psychopath, that is. But I also think it’s easier to believe in the reformation of someone who got somehow bumped off course, rather than someone who was never on the right course to begin with.

That’s why I (and apparently, lotsa other readers) love stories about guys-gone-wrong who find the one woman who can get their heads screwed back on straight. Darcy, Rochester, Gabe Bonner — none of them were bad, just misguided. Or hurting. A whole ‘nother animal, however, from the real life so-called men who are, for all intents and purposes, waaaay beyond redemption. In those cases, love is definitely not enough — as their women’s lives can attest.

And now, back to you.

Btw…
The heroine should really be that person.