Emotions are vitally important in romance novels. They tend to manifest in physical ways: skin blushes, tingles, and heats, eyes darken, dance, and shift, breath hisses, comes fast, shallow, or gulping, postures shift, spines straighten, hands clench, hearts speed up. Emotions are often aligned with the body, the physical, and pitted against the mind, reason. They are characterized as “passions”, characters literally passive to them, fighting to regain “control.” The women and men of romance novels “follow their hearts, not their heads,” and not just in lust, but in anger, fear, courage, sympathy, jealousy, compassion, and revenge.
We sympathetically identify with characters and feel, to some extent, their shock, horror, anger, fear, lust, humor, joy and sorrow. The fact that we do so is one of the great joys and wonders of reading fiction, but it has puzzled philosophers for some time. Why should I feel scared when the hero or heroine is in danger? I know they aren’t real, after all. As readers, we have the same physiological manifestation of emotion as the characters, but our behavioral response (doing nothing) reflects the fact that we are aware that the events in the book are not real.
This emotional reaction becomes especially problematic when we consider that emotions are not just bodily reactions, but have cognitive content. For example, the emotion of fear is not just the sweaty palms and racing heart, but the belief that something bad is about to happen and that you can’t prevent it. Several emotions, like anger and fear, are actually very hard to distinguish by bodily criteria alone: we need to understand what’s going on cognitively (what are they thinking about) to tell what a person is feeling. To feel real joy when reading a declaration of love in a romance novel, we seem to need to believe that the hero and heroine really exist. Otherwise, what are we getting mushy about? But we don’t. So are we not actually feeling those emotions? Or what? This is called the paradox of fiction.
My view is that I am really feeling emotions when I am reading a romance novel — or at least when I am reading a well-written one — but I am not sure how to square this with my knowledge that fiction isn’t real. As a reader, I just accept it as one of the gifts that a good writer bestows.
It strikes me that there’s something extra challenging about certain of our emotional responses to romance: we know that the book will have not just a happy ending, but a particular kind of happy ending, one in which the hero and heroine are in love and together. So when I get to that low moment in every romance novel, when I am absolutely devastated by the unfolding events and positive, along with the sorrowing or angry hero or heroine, that this relationship cannot be saved (Pam Regis called it the “point of ritual death”), why can’t I count the pages left, reassure myself it will all work out, and stop feeling what I am feeling? All good fiction engages our emotions, but isn’t it amazing that romance novelists can achieve this kind of emotional reaction in readers, even under the constraints and predictability of the HEA? I think so.
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It’s about the ride, not the destination. We know where we’re going, but we want to see how we get there.
“Why should I feel scared when the hero or heroine is in danger? I know they aren’t real, after all. As readers, we have the same physiological manifestation of emotion as the characters, but our behavioral response (doing nothing) reflects the fact that we are aware that the events in the book are not real.”
I wonder if it’s a fictional version of vaccination. Via fiction you get a safe dose of these emotions, in a carefully controlled situation. The idea of catharsis involves a medical metaphor too, doesn’t it?
Ahhh… but great books make us forget about the HEA guarantee, if only for a moment.
I consider a great romance one which makes me laugh or makes me cry (or better yet, does both). I want to be so into the characters, I feel their pain (because pain is mental, not physical).
That creates challenges for the writer. One wrong word and readers are yanked out of the emotion. Yet another reason why great editors are treasured!
Probably the most common remark I hear from readers of my novel is that there is a chapter (or two) that “made them cry.” They always add that there are parts that made them laugh out loud as well, but I think the emotion of crying is somehow a stronger one – or maybe just a more memorable one?
Very interesting topic as I have been surprised by the emotional involvement of readers – especially men. (Believe it or not, some of them are the criers).
Huh. Is there something mysterious about feeling emotion on behalf of another? If a friend of mine is sad, I can feel sad on her behalf, or empathize with her sadness.
I’m just a simple engineering major (heh) but I don’t see any paradox with empathizing with a fictional character. It’s *why* we read fiction. If the author can’t evoke that, he/she hasn’t done the job.
I can totally get sucked in by a great story and wonder if they *really* are going to get together after all they’ve been through.
I feel sorry for those who guess the ending and can’t put aside their thought process to loose themselves in a story. It takes all the fun out of reading!
G.
You know a book is that good when you have such an emotional response in public, are given a few stares and don’t care and go back to reading hoping for more.
Great comment, katiebabs!
I remember reading The Horse Whisperer at a horse show with tears streaming down my face.
So when I get to that low moment in every romance novel, when I am absolutely devastated by the unfolding events and positive, along with the sorrowing or angry hero or heroine, that this relationship cannot be saved (Pam Regis called it the “point of ritual deathâ€), why can’t I count the pages left, reassure myself it will all work out, and stop feeling what I am feeling?
I think part of the reason is that while reading you are in a suspended state of being. The reader is not present in precisely the same way that a person is, their identity their sense of self, hibernates for the duration of the experience. It’s the same for watching movies. A good movie, a good book, is one in which when you emerge from it it is like emerging from a dream. And like a dream state, even though the emotions are real there also exists a bubble that keeps . . . I don’t know, the ego for lack of a better term . . . quiet, the conscious part of you goes still, becomes suspended.
Experiencing art on that level is one of the very, very few times you don’t have to be yourself. It’s very pleasant, even when you are afraid and angry.
Thanks for these great comments.
I really do find it miraculous that, at any point in a romance, I actually believe the h/h/ will not end up together. It’s a kind of magic romance authors weave, and when it’s not there … ugh.
I didn’t push the paradox too hard in the blog post, but I do think it exists, and I’ll try to explain it better: The paradox is that we have to believe the objects of our emotions are real enough to be moved by them (compare: a friend tells you his sister died tragically. You are devastated. Then he says he was joking. When you know the events are imaginary, your emotions vanish), but not so real that we don’t enjoy them while we read (ordinarily we don’t want to be scared or sad or worried, yet we enjoy it in fiction. So on some level we know it is not real.)
Believe it is real yet not believe it is real. Two beliefs that cannot coexist but both seem true. Hence, a paradox!
Luckily, it a paradox we can bask in and enjoy as readers.
What an interesting post.
I think that good writing, be it in a romance novel or otherwise, like all art, should evoke an emotional response. If it didn’t then we wouldn’t care enough to engage.
I spend hours every day (or, at least I try to) immersed in a fictional world but if I didn’t care about what was happening and what’s to come, then I wouldn’t bother.
I know it’s a good book when I find myself worrying about the characters and wondering how a situation can be resolved.
Also, just because there is an HEA doesn’t mean that the h/h are immune from long lasting and tragic consequences – eg, losing a child, rape etc – and how these are explored and how the hero and heroine get through it (hopefully together!) can be very emotional even though there can be no HEA in so far as that aspect of the story is concerned.
I don’t think it’s necessarily about believing the characters are real; I think it’s maybe about connecting to the reality of emotions via characters who are rendered with enough authenticity (which, of course, is determined by the reader) to create and sustain the connection.
The analogy that comes to mind, although it is imperfect, is that of the synapses. That the relationship between reader and book is similar to that of the connection between synapses – part electrical, part chemical, all sensational.
ITA with you that the hows and the whys of it are titillatingly mysterious, but I wonder how much of it is conditioning. I mean, think about how proficient long-time genre readers are at having precisely the “correct” reactions to characters with minimal textual prompting (i.e. major shorthand in representation). Although that still doesn’t explain why it happens with some books and not with others.
“why can’t I count the pages left, reassure myself it will all work out, and stop feeling what I am feeling?”
You tell me why I cry over my own damn stories, when I know what happens because I *wrote* it, and then maybe I can answer your question
“I think part of the reason is that while reading you are in a suspended state of being.”
That’s a pretty good way of describing it. And as I’ve just exemplified, foreknowledge of the plot/HEA seems to involve the part of the brain that we shut out of that process.
We clearly find it enjoyable to do this, much as we enjoy the temporary relinquishing of control through alcohol (where we allow ourselves to feel happy and relaxed even when the real world predicates these feelings to be irrational, possibly even dangerous.)
I wonder if the scorn directed at romance – and genre fiction – is that the use of this suspension to produce pleasure is much more overt, and therefore it could be considered potentially addictive, morally lazy or unwise? I certainly know people who are literally addicted to the ‘high’ of reading certain forms of romance, in that they must read increasing amounts to keep the pleasure button pressed. But is there anything wrong or dangerous about that?
What Angela said.
The common term is ’suspending disbelief’ but for me it’s more than that. It’s about entering a state of belief; maybe even tricking my own brain into ‘belief’ in order to access emotions that should only properly be felt over a real event.
The process of entering that state is easier and the degree of emotion felt stronger, the more authentic the ‘world’ the author has created. That is why two-dimensional cliched characters are never going to get a really emotional response from me. I can’t access real emotion for obviously unreal characters. My brain can’t be so easily fooled. I might manage a pantomime type of response (boos, jeers etc.) but not real pain or fear.
I suppose this is why we talk about characters who ‘leap off the page’ and how good the ‘world-building’ is. We seek an authentic experience. And, as Angela said, when we’ve finished reading, we don’t continue to believe. We emerge from our virtual world and the emotions dissipate; unlike in the real world.
Thinking about it, I think that’s also why I have always felt the emotional (arguably subjective) response is so important in reviewing books.