Have you ever noticed how many bad mothers there are in Romance? And by “bad,†I mean cruel, abusive, dismissively unfaithful, even violently and sexually perverse (Mary Jo Putney’s Dearly Beloved comes to mind here). I recently finished Judith James’s new release, Highland Rebel, and the hero, James Sinclair, describes his mother as “a wanton who played my father for a fool.†Poppy’s mother in Eloisa James’s An Affair Before Christmas almost destroys her daughter’s will and her marriage through her cruelty, selfishness, and usurping interference. Min Dobb’s nagging, social-climbing and superficial mother in Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me does not, as I remember it, enjoy one moment in which the reader might feel sympathy or affection for her. And then there’s Skye Titan’s physically absent mother in Susan Mallery’s recent release, Lip Service, who committed suicide and then set about ensuring that her young daughter would be the one to find the body and the decidedly not reassuring note. Well, you get the idea.
If genre Romance is a mirror for larger social dynamics, we know how much pressure motherhood comes with and how complex the dynamics between mothers and children, especially daughters. We have mythic examples of bad mothering like Medea, as well as horrible taboos associated with mothers, like Queen Jocasta’s tragic marriage to her own son, Oedipus. We have the cultural elevation of motherhood to cult status in the 19th century and the advent of domestic science. Then there’s the evil stepmother from oh so many Disney classics (imported from various fairy and folk tales). And finally we have the backlash in books like Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother, in which the author talks candidly about the judgment and pressure women put on other women around mothering.
So there is a lot of precedent. But still, is it a bit odd how many bad mothers there are in a genre that so strongly validates and celebrates domesticity and fertility? Or is that exactly the point?
Genre Romance has enthusiastically embraced the aspect of Classical Comedy in which the young lovers must displace an antagonistic force, often representative of a previous generation. While the social commentary might not be as overt, the notion that the romantic protagonists will be establishing a family unit that is superior in form, function, and sentiment is clearly part of the happy ending of genre Romance. Further, the love between the couple can be a powerful healing force, and what is more fundamental than the emotional wound inflicted by a bad parent? The rakish hero who learns to trust women after the virtuous, faithful heroine makes him understand that not all women were faithless and heartless like his mother. Or the insecure heroine feels truly accepted for the first time within the comfort of the hero’s unconditional love and can resist the critical interference of her judgmental mother. The antagonistic parent can serve many functions in the genre, simultaneously reinforcing the wisdom of the couple’s love (especially when you have the Romeo and Juliet adaptation), the optimism of future generations that will perpetuate this wisdom, and a general rebuke of parental badness.
I must admit a certain curiosity around the fact that so many writers of genre Romance are women, and I do wonder if that also helps shape the portrayal of mothers – good and bad – in the genre, even as I try to resist a simplistic biographical interpretation. But mostly I wonder whether the mimetic use of the bad mother type is mostly unconscious at this point, a vestige from other genres and other historical moments, or whether it is an intentionally placed element. In which I am back to my initial speculation about the whys and what for’s of the bad mother’s ubiquity in genre Romance.
So help me out here: why do you think there are so many bad mothers in Romance and what purpose(s) do they serve? And is this an element of the genre you love, hate, or are largely indifferent to?
No related posts.
Don’t women who aren’t the objects of sexual attraction tend to get a bad rap in most stories? Ex-wives, old girlfriends, step-mothers, co-workers and so on? Women writers can be as hatefully misogynistic as any man – it’s long been a phenomenon noted in the m/m world that female characters are sharply divided into madonna/whores, or rather the m/m equivalent, yenta/harpy.
Women have a lot of baggage regarding relationships with other women, and none more so than with their own mothers, from whom they are always separating to seek their own identity, and turning to for advice in the roles women traditionally play, those of wife and mother. It’s hardly surprising that women writers use their fiction to exorcise demons, roleplay difficult relationships, or even create the ‘big bad witch’ to frighten themselves with, just for fun.
I don’t know about het romance, but the corollary of this in m/m (again largely female authored) is that the men are *always* good fathers, even if they have no idea how to keep an adult relationship going. (They also have perfect adorable children.) (One of )The refreshing thing about Deidre Knight’s wonderful ‘Butterfly Tattoo’ is that she was brave enough to show a father who wasn’t naturally good at dealing with a troubled kid, and a kid who was as difficult as you could wish on your worst enemy. (Of course, the *other* daddy was the perfect father, so maybe Knight has her cake and eats it on that front.)
Like Philip Larkin said, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” And what fucks you up is a rich vein for any writer to mine.
I think the proliferation of bad mothers coincide with the advent/acceptance of psychotherapy and the ascendancy of ‘nurture’ over ‘nature’ in that debate. I seem to remember reading/seeing a documentary style thing on this very topic, but can’t remember where exactly (maybe it was in Roach’s ‘Bonk’?).
Increasingly every criminal blames bad upbringing aka their mother for their abnormal behavior and the courts and with it society have bought into that fallacy.
But I really don’t think that it’s that new a phenomenon or specific to the romance genre, just look at Grimm’s fairy tales, which abound with evil mothers and stepmothers.
In romance it’s used as a shortcut to explain all kinds of emotional trauma. But from my recent reading, I’d say it’s not so much bad mothers or stepmothers, but bad fathers, stepfathers and horrible first marriages that seem to overwhelm the genre right now.
Quite honestly, I find it rather lazy of authors; it would be so much more interesting to see what authors could do with a ‘normal’ family that doesn’t have any overt abusive or neglectful aspects, but that still leaves the hero/ine unwilling to commit or produce their own family. You know those families where nobody could send in CPS but which nevertheless lacked emotional connection. Much more subtle and, I believe, much truer to life than all the ‘over-the-topness’ we get to read about.
I’m not sure why mothers in so many romances get written as absent, evil, self-absorbed or all of the above.
As the post and some other commenters have noted, it’s an easy dramatic device. But aren’t all dramatic devices inherently weak? I think this is another example of why tension and conflict are best drawn from the relationship and interaction between the characters.
In my faerie series, one of my favorite characters to write about is Viv’s mother who lives her life and runs her house with drama, drive, love for her family, and a twinkle in her eye at how the world misunderstands women generally. A strong family showing a mother as more than a cardboard character is fun to read and write.
It seems to me that too often the world’s bias against strong women creeps over into how mothers get written in romance novels. Authors today are more willing to write strong women, but somehow seem to perceive that their heroine’s strength will be sapped by motherhood. The perception seems to be that a strong mother is automatically a bad one.
Giving birth brings more love and compassion and empathy, but it doesn’t drain strength, determination and direction. Those traits are as admirable in mothers as they are in heroines.
Great post!!
I have two thoughts about this that I suppose aren’t necessarily conflicting. Where I live, there’s a hospital directly across from the mall, making that a very busy road so the hospital often uses their large front yard to make a statement. Last month, two months ago, maybe, I drove by the yard covered in hundreds of silver pinwheels. I drove by several times admiring the silver on green and the way they sparkled when they spun before I read the sign telling me there was one windmill set out for every abused child in the county THIS YEAR. Now this county is spread geographically with a college town amid sprawling rural areas, but I never would have guessed we’d have so many here. It’s a college town. We’re supposed to be educated. Our Burger King employees either have a degree or are working on one. Anyway, it apparently happens more than you’d think.
Theory number two. Many writers write to escape something. Back when I was in college considering the idea, it seemed that 90 percent of historical writers had abuse or death or some trauma they were trying to escape. (Most of whom were also on drugs.) I haven’t carried that research forward. I don’t know how many of today’s writers experienced this kind of past, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them wrote what they knew. (Not that I’m accusing anyone’s parents here, there are certainly writers with happy childhoods, but I’m just as certain there are those that weren’t. I am making absolutely no guesses as to which category any particular belongs.)
Or maybe, simple happy families don’t make good stories. They might make good productive members of society, but who wants to hear about that? Eventually a trauma must happen to make the story interesting so you might as well make it early.
My mother and I have a great relationship, but my characters aren’t so lucky. I was thinking the other day that I like to write about loneliness. My hero/heroines may not realize it, but they are longing for love and companionship. Also, I want to introduce them during a time or change or turmoil. If they have a perfect mother, maybe they aren’t quite as lonely/angsty.
I’m trying to write a mother right now (two, actually, because the heroine is a single mother) who is terribly flawed but not evil or unredeemable.
Oh I have to pop in here too. What an interesting post! First thanks for reading Highland Rebel! I have a large and very close family and my parents and brothers and sisters are among my closest friends. Several of my friends are happy healthy historical romance writers from loving families too. I worked for a few years as a psychologist though, and I’d have to say that both in private and institutional practice, people from warm loving families don’t turn into bad boys or tortured heroes, which many readers myself included, just love. They tend to be well adjusted, caring, and make good choices in relationships and end up with other well adjusted people. They don’t tend to be commitment shy, lonely, or misunderstood, and though their relationships may be lovely, they are often peaceful and lacking the drama and tension we sometimes want in our stories.
If you’re writing about a knight in shining armour who saves a damsel in distress, the loving family is the right home for this kind of heroes. If you’re writing about an anti-heroes or a dark heroes, wounded bad boy etc. realistically he’s going to have a dark background. I’m not sure it’s about the writer or about romance, but about writing characters with realistic flaws that fit the story.
I’ve started and erased several possible replies, finally settling on this. I really have nothing useful to add, other than to say this was a fantastic, thought-provoking post. The Bad Mother device is definitely one I’ve used in the past, and honestly, probably will use again–but you’ve ensured I’ll always look at it a little more closely from now on.
It bothers me, and have been for years. I think it’s because the most important, valued and influential role models during my formative years were women. Sure, they all were flawed, especially my gran, but who aren’t?
I simply can’t relate to the idea of villainous or demonised mothers in fiction.
Or rather, the sheer number of them in the romance genre.
So many that I can’t help but think – at the rate it’s going, hero/ines will be villains to their own children. Whoo hoo(!)
@GrowlyCub
“Quite honestly, I find it rather lazy of authors; it would be so much more interesting to see what authors could do with a ‘normal’ family that doesn’t have any overt abusive or neglectful aspects, but that still leaves the hero/ine unwilling to commit or produce their own family.”
Yes! It’s a lot more exciting and more interesting to have something like this.
@JudithJames
“If you’re writing about an anti-heroes or a dark heroes, wounded bad boy etc. realistically he’s going to have a dark background.”
Does it have to involve demonising the parents, though? In historicals, it rarely makes sense, to be honest.
For example, loving parents would send their sons – and in some cases, daughters – to boarding schools like other families of their status. It was good because it usually gave children opportunities to create a social network with children, which will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
It could be there at the boarding school where the hero had to deal with issues that he shouldn’t deal with.
There are real-life cases of children of the nobility being, for instance, mistreated by their governesses and male tutors. It’s well known that some members of the Royal family were subjected to this as well.
Governesses and male tutors were the “law” in those children’s lives, so many of them got away with it. Not all servants were that nice to children, either.
(Parents weren’t usually informed or aware because of the domestic structure.)
What I’m saying is, there are many other ways of making the heroes or heroines’ backgrounds that dark. It’s actually more common as well.
I think Growly has it by saying it’s a short cut. In horror childhood abuse, rape and molestation is way too often used as a shortcut to developing a real troubled character. I have seen some really, really bad work where characters are just a laundry list of abuse.
Why wouldn’t the case be the same with writers stretching for a way to make character stall in their falling for each other? I don’t think it necessarily is lazy because many times the “issues” a character has explain motivations, but aren’t exactly vital to the story currently going on.
My guess is having a bad mother is an easy way to explain why a character is so incredibly screwed up. I know in real life people with bad mothers have to work hard to overcome their childhoods in order to live happily ever after.
I just finished The Paper Marriage by Susan Kay Law — picked it up actually because I was trying to track down a Western by same author (!) but that’s another story.
The heroine has a mother and a mother-in-law, with whom she is very close. Yes, the mother of the hero’s dd is pretty trashy (think the mother in Robert’s first Bride quartet book) … but the three key women are shown honestly, they evolve … I liked it.
“Shorthand” can be spot on for how its handled by some authors. Like Roberts because she mixes up her mothers — shows her share of loving families (think Peabody in the In Death series).
Romance as a genre requires a strong element of internal conflict and that tends to mean relationships that created wounds in the past and stumbling blocks to love in the present. Pretty natural that this would lead to lots of fictional dysfunction. If you write about really happy families, where’s the conflict in that? That tends to be the payoff in the happy ending.
Well, I’ve written abusive mothers, distant mothers, nurturing mothers, fun mothers, meddling mothers…the gamut. Just like in life. Still, it’s highly unlikely that two characters who’ve both had happy childhoods and now have wonderful relationships with their parents are going to have enough internal conflict to make an interesting story. In real life — yeah, that’s exactly what you want. In fiction, not so much.
As it happens, most adults I know with current relationship issues really can trace those issues directly to problems with one or both parents. Dysfunction breeds dysfunction. The difference is, in romance we can give characters happy endings their real life counterparts might never see.
True, the witchy mother or cold father isn’t the only way of giving characters strong enough internal conflicts to make their resistance to love believable. But is giving them a “bad” parent a shortcut, or simply a reflection of real life, especially since so much of a person’s inability to connect with others does stem from those parent-child relationship issues. However, the sheer number of romance novels published each year tends to make that — and every other device, to be honest — feel overdone, simply because there aren’t that many options to choose from.
Karen, I just finished one of your Silhouette SE novels last night–”A Marriage-Minded Man.” I think you manage amazingly well to have positive depictions of mothers: while Tess’s mother is distant and emotionally unavailable, you balance her coldness quite nicely with the warmth of Aunt Flo–as well as, now that she’s with Eli, with his mother Donna.
On a quick side note–Eli’s one of my fave heros, ever. I couldn’t help but fall in love with him, and I’m (very) happily married. Thanks for the lovely read.
Blue, thank you so much — it’s always gratifying to hear when a story/character works for a reader. (And I love Eli, too — in some ways, he reminds me a lot of my own sons.
)
And AMMM is a case where, while Tess’s conflict/barriers were partly caused by her mother (her father and her ex also had contributing roles), Eli’s wasn’t. He had a perfectly normal, stable upbringing, with loving (if slightly crazy
) parents. So his conflict stems from a later experience. However, Tess’s issues are far more deeply seated than Eli’s, hence she yields last.
Because our earliest imprinting, especially if negative, is far more difficult to shake off than later experiences.
Before I respond more substantively to comments, let me ask a follow up question based on a number of author comments here:
Why such *extremity* in the portrayal of mothers? Why not the difficult mother, or the delicate mother, or the challenging mother? Why the “whore”? Why the villain? Why the “bad mother”? If the goal is to generate conflict in the protags, why is patent badness a better choice than a mixture of bad/good?
Why the mother? The best theory I can come up with is when I used to skin my knees, hurt something in general I wouldn’t cry for my Dad. Yeah, he was there. He’s still there. But even now when I’m going through a crisis, I call my Mother. So, maybe knee-jerk reaction.
My ex stated once after going to a Parent-Teacher conference that the teacher ignore him completely. But she would have noticed, and condemned if he hadn’t been there at all.
So, why the mother? I think it’s just the way our society is. Plus, I have to agree with Ann, the relationships women have with each other are fraught with conflict.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man ask another man how his family is doing, what has he been doing lately, “oh, that’s nice.” Then as soon as the other man leaves, “I can’t stand him.” Or *insert latest gossip.*
We are writing novels for women. We have to talk about their issues.
But “Why the “bad motherâ€?” Hmm, it’s not just the mother that is “bad”. For me, this good vs. evil isn’t isolated with the role as mother. Even well-written stories, the villain, the bad guy, the one who isn’t the heroine/hero, has a quality that is akeen to rubbing their hands together, laughing evilly.
I just think the average reader/viewer better equates “bad” with outrageously evil or cruel. The anti-hero is a hard sell at least in America. Quite frankly if Robert Downey Jr.–a known anit-hero in real life–hadn’t played Iron Man that movie wouldn’t have been the same.
So no one wants to read about happy, well adjusted people – I can understand that. But who are these happy, well adjusted people? I don’t know that I’ve ever met one – no one I know gets along perfectly with their parents and doesn’t have a single issue. I think ‘bad’ is a very subjective term here; mothers are only human but they tend to be judged far more harshly. Going back to Robin’s questions, and the maddona/whore dichotomy, why can’t we read about people with an imperfect but strong relationship with their parents that shaped them, of course, but didn’t ruin their lives or damage them permanently? What I am always looking for in a romance novel is a reflection of myself and my experiences – I suppose because I want to imagine that same happy ending is possible for me. Consequently I want to read about the people in the middle, with mothers who are only human, who did the best they could, who maybe are people before they’re mothers, because I don’t think the world is really divided into black and white like that, into broken people and happy people.
No, of course it’s not. And I know I’ve worked very hard, in many cases, to balance the parental figures in my books so that even the “bad” ones have a sympathetic reason for their behavior, or they see the light by the end.
But again…it’s all about conflict. If the characters don’t have anything to overcome, there’s no story. And if the author chooses to make parental issues the conflict, or at least part of it, they better be strong issues or the hero/heroine just comes across as dumb, weak or self-involved. “Mom made me eat her vegetarian crap when all I wanted was a hamburger” just isn’t going to make a character quite as sympathetic as “Mom beat the crap out of me and nobody ever knew.”
Fiction isn’t real life, but a heightened, cathartic version of it. We say we want to read about people like us, but let’s face it — most of us lead pretty boring lives (which is as it should be.) We might want to read about people to whom we feel we can relate, but that’s not the same thing.
Now, to go back to the whore/madonna dichotomy — that, I’ve never done. Nobody’s all good or all bad, and it’s the rare, rare character I’d write that way. Flaws are what makes human beings interesting. Sometimes, though…people really are stinkers. And if it comes to me to give a character one of those stinkers as a parent, I’m going to do it. Shoot, if I eliminated every device decried as being overdone, I’d have nothing left to write about.
I hate it. The topic was the subject of one of my very first posts, called “The Eeeeevil Mother in Romance”. I mentioned Bet Me, but also Welcome to Temptation, also Nora Roberts’ Born in Fire, and Julia Quinn’s The Lost Duke of Wyndham, Slave to Sensation, Megan Hart’s Dirty, Susan Mallery’s Irresistable.
I can think of very few positive moms in romance.
There are of course real evil mothers, and they can be done well, but too often they are stereotypes.
I think they are easy to write, and the cultural potency of the evil mother is so strong that they will be effective for readers anyway. So I agree with what you say in the end of your post.
Great post.
Sorry; my italics in the above post got out of control!
I had it all. The cold emotionally distant judgmental father who left his wife (my mom) and kids for his trophy wife. The emotionally distant judgmental cold mother who could have cared less if I jumped off a cliff. The truly horrible evil step-mother who resented my, and my siblings, presence. On top of that I’ve had to also deal with people telling me that I “have to love” my parents simply because they are my parents regardless of the way I was emotionally abused (and I am not talking about resenting being told to eat my vegetables here. I’m talking about a 10 year old being told she is a bitch who will never amount to anything in her life type stuff). Parents are people. Having a child does not automatically make you a “good” or even “competent” person. Fortunately I have been able to work through a lot of this stuff with the help of my very supportive and loving husband. What I suppose I am trying to say is that as a reader I recognize my situation in many romances and it rings true so I don’t have a problem at all with the “bad parent” in books. Maybe if I was raised in a “Brady Bunch” type family I would think the abusive or distant parent was just an overused plot device but having lived through that hell I know it happens…a lot. Like many of the heroines I saved myself through my own grit and determination but also with the love of a very good man.
Steph, I’m really glad your story has a happy ending. ((hugs))
Wow, what GREAT responses; thanks!
@Ann Somerville: Very interesting about good fathers in m/m. In trad m/f, especially historicals, fathers are often horrible – physically abusive, cold, distant, weak (especially in the face of a wicked stepmother) and sometimes cruel in the way they see the daughter as baggage to be married off. OR they are ineffectual and the daughter must serve as caretaker. Which is probably another column, lol — the impotent father.
@GrowlyCub: I don’t know, actually. I guess the question is what you consider to be the relevant time-period for this. Like when do you think psychotherapy came into vogue in such a way that it would generate these types?
@Mary Anne Graham: I fear the correlation between the powerful/strong woman and the bad mother, as well. Sometimes I wonder if she’s a warning figure for the heroine — or a foil that softens the heroine, somehow.
@Clothdragon: Jo Goodman is a therapist who works with kids, and I often wonder if the horrible pasts that characters often have (espcially the heroines) is a way for her to gain justice for some of the people she works with. Actually, in her case, it tends to be men who are dangerous, and mothers largely absent. Hmm, I’ll have to think about that, lol. But in any case, I’m sure the reality of abuse makes these scenarios more “realistic.”
@Jill Sorenson: I sometimes find the idyllic parent-child relationship as flat as the patently bad parent, so as a reader I appreciate the portrayal of a complex parent-child relationship — and personally, I think much more conflict comes from conflicting emotions than from outright hatred, for example.
@Judith James: I understand what you’re saying about conflict; for me, it’s more a question of why the extremity of the type. And lest you think I’m picking on HR, here’s a link to my review, so I can say that I did really like the novel: http://is.gd/3aqVg.
@Maili: Your example about the boarding school is really good, IMO, because it reminded me of how in Puritan New England many parents had their kids apprentice out to other families during the kids’ teen years. And there was a fair amount of abuse *by those other family members* because of that. So it’s NOT always the parents, and your point about how women are the most directly influential figures for other women (even in their absence, IMO), hits on one of my biggest problems with the bad mother device, which is that the mother can be so horrible, so abusive, but the love of the heroine/hero can rapidly seem to undo the mother’s damage. So the mother is bad, bad, bad, but her power is still magically reversible.
@Michele Lee: For me, the question of whether or not the bad mother device is a shortcut is related to what is signifies and how it functions in a genre that’s all about empowering love and family. What distinguishes future generations from previous generations? And is the tyrannical mother realistic within the confines of the novels themselves? I find a lot of them seem little more than devices that frustrates me.
@Kimber An: I agree that the destructive parent can provide a great backdrop for the protag to find happiness and emotional security. For example, I love Sebastian’s few memories of his father in Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold, and his conscious project of not being so cold and distant. Where I think it becomes problematic is when the protag merely has to fall in love with the right person to end the parent’s tyranny, which I find more akin to magic than character development.
@JanetW: Oh, Even and Peabody are the perfect opposites, aren’t they? Eve’s mother was like the worst of the worst — just imagine how bad it can be and it will get worse, lol. While Peabody’s mother is the earth mother, the nurturer, the craftswoman, etc. Definitely archetypal extremes there.
@Charlene Teglia: If you’ve read Loretta Chase’s Carsington Brother’s series of historicals, she portrays a very good parent-child relationship. Lord Carsington narrates this hysterical diatribe against his sons at the beginning of the first book, but it’s obvious that he loves them and that he and his wife were good, loving, happily married parents. And I so loved the brothers! But yeah, then you’ve got to compensate by creating conflict elsewhere…
@KarenTempleton: Where I really started to notice the mother thing was precisely in the extremity of the sexually perverse or “whorish” mother and in the unremittingly cruel and tyrannical mother. And I think, especially in historicals, that is a pretty common device. I agree with you that the parent-child relationship is fraught with difficulties that translate powerfully into the child’s life and that such a relationship can add to the conflict in a Romance. But I still find it interesting how the genre is still defining the “good woman” v. the “bad woman” in these ways, often in the contrast between mother and daughter. And sometimes I find that a little disturbing or at least concerning.
@Melissa Blue: I agree with you that women are much more likely to psychologize and analyze, and I definitely think that the fact that women are primary in the lives of other women — as mothers, daughters, sisters, nieces, aunts, grandmothers, etc. — likely means more complexity and issues. But I also think women are incredibly judgmental of other women, and I wonder if it’s not just easier to write the bad mother in terms that readers will immediately understand, because we all share certain ideas about what is “good” and what is “bad” in parenting, especially in mothering. I mean, seriously, how many women do you see giving men nearly the grief we do other women for not doing x, y, and z for the kids?
@Stephanie: I’m with you in that I’d like to see more moderated portrayals of mothers in the genre. More nuance, more thoughtfulness, more purpose beyond some tyrannical force against which the heroine or hero must triumph. But that also means more pages and more time dedicated to a secondary character. Which I imagine that not all authors feel they can or want to dedicate.
@Jessica: I will have to check out your column! I forgot about Phin’s mother in Welcome To Temptation, but YES, she’s one of the stock Crusie bad mothers. Altho she does seem to come around some at the end, which I appreciated. Although she was pretty damn bad for most of the book, wasn’t she?
@Janine: I don’t mind that the bad parent (in this case the bad mother) is a device, per se; I worry when it becomes so reflexive in the genre that the character automatically stands for something with her mere presence in the book. Although you don’t share my appreciation for Jo Goodman’s books, Goodman often uses stock characters and situations, but IMO she always breathes life into them in such a way that it doesn’t matter that I’ve seen the type a hundred times. Because by the end of the book, the character is no longer a type but a person. And as a reader, I love that!
@Steph: I second Blue in saying that I’m so glad you came out of everything okay and found your own happiness!
Karen, true, perfectly adjusted people probably don’t make for very interesting reading (except are there really perfectly adjusted people out there, I don’t know any).
I was more going after the question about why the majority of romanceland mothers seem to be psycho- or sociopaths.
And I think you underestimate readers if you think they always want to be hit over the head with stuff. I’d much prefer reading a more subtle scenario, personally.
Can’t answer for the genre as a whole — to be honest, I’m not that voracious a romance reader to have noticed the nutso mother phenomenon as being that pervasive. As I said, I write all kinds of mothers. And in thirty books, there are bound to be a few crazies.
And while I appreciate your being willing to read a more subtle scenario, considering how popular, say, Presents are,
I think it’s safe to say “subtle” isn’t what many, if not most, readers are looking for. They want characters and situations that are bigger than life, for characters who have dragged through hell to root for. Besides which many a book has been rejected, or sent back for revisions, or been judged as “meh” by readers and reviewers, because the conflict is too weak.
That is not to say that the bad mother is the only device available to provide conflict and/or a troubled backstory. Obviously. But I think what the authors here are trying to say is, that is you *do* choose to use family dysfunction as the driving force behind a character’s inability to connect/commit, you can’t shy away from making that uuuuuugly. Otherwise the story falls flat and the char’s reasons for resisting love feel wishy-washy.
Okay, now a couple of general thoughts that I didn’t put in my post:
I definitely think that in addition to the legacy of Comedy, there is also the progression of genres right through the novels of sentiment and sensation that gained a great deal of popularity among women in the late 18th and 19th centuries, novels which often celebrated the republican (as in a republic, not the political party) values of marriage for love and as the practice of personal liberty. And I think that the tyrannical parent is a vestige of that — an elevation of romantic love as a liberating force, and the advent of a new generation as beneficent social progress.
But I also think there’s a bit of the virgin/whore dichotomy and perhaps the reflexive repetition of a character device that could do with some general reflection. Is it possible that the really bad mother is a reflection of the judgments we women have about other women and about mothering in general? Are we perpetuating tyrannical and perverse images of these female elders to the point where we don’t even notice or question them, and should we be desensitized to these images of women in fiction we’re creating and consuming?
As a reader, I’d like to see more complex, nuanced, parent/child relationships, especially in romantic fiction, because not only do I think these complex relationships help build tension and conflict, but I also think they can help build and facilitate the central romantic relationship as it develops, so that the romance isn’t merely an escape or an almost magical transformation of the hero or heroine’s sense of self.
I actually think the prevalance of bad mother characters (and might I point out I think there are just as many bad and absent fathers in romance fiction, at least in my reading experience, and that negative parental influences do provide fertile ground for commitment issues in later life so probably won’t dissapear from the genre–neither should they) has as much to do with the vital importance of the mother/child relationship than any implied criticism of women and motherhood skills in general. Our relationships with our mothers shape us into the people we are, probably more so than our relationships with our fathers and almost certainly more than other connections we make along the way. Even a ‘good’ mother will make mistakes, or do things differently than we would have liked, and even the smallest slight (the wrong comment or that time when we were ignored when we badly needed to be listened to) may still have the power to impact us in later life. It’s probably human nature to focus on those few negatives rather than emphasize the positives, making even a ‘good’ mother seem inadequate or even bad. Is it any wonder ‘bad’ parenting gets a lot of page time in fiction–all types of fiction, not just romance?
As for the evil villian type of mother, it may be used as a shortcut sometimes but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist in real life, unfortunately.
I think much of modern genre romance is about the heroine’s journey, often including some struggle over roles and expectations of the heroine as individual, partner, and mother. In those works, I read many of the horrible mothers as representing a worst-case scenario for the heroine’s journey, i.e. the consequences of failure to integrate those choices. The mothers often function like the bogeyman, which traditionally has been a reflection of our own fears.
That’s not to say that all the horrible mothers are a positive element in the genre. I do think those portrayals convey that there’s still a sense that women can easily go wrong, and a bad woman can wreck the world. Insofar as that’s a specifically feminine portrays, it does seem to reinforce how judgmental both women and men can be toward women.
OTOH, here’s another reading. When a mother is frequently portrayed as a spectre at the feast, maybe there’s just a teensy bit of intergenerational tension being expressed in the genre
Why mothers? Yes, there are good and bad relationships with moms but I think moms — in very general terms — have control issues that dads don’t necessarily experience because again generally moms are the primary care give throughout the raising of the child. This control can vary from very slight and stories can be humorous and have good relationships to rather intense control issues that can lead to extremes in behavior. It is difficult to let go of the habit of decision making when the child comes to adulthood.
Two examples from real life — or as real life as reality tv gets. On a House Hunters not long ago a young woman in her 20s was looking for a house with the help of her mother. The mother simply could not accept that the daughter could live alone and kept bringing up “safety” and “living so far” when the places they were looking at were very good neighborhoods in the same town. Another example was on Say Yes to the Dress last night. The young lady and her mother had conflicting taste. The MIL was supportive of what the girl wanted (pink) because it was her wedding and expressed her preceived personality and the mother said “I want her to wear what I want her to wear.” “I always envisioned her white.” and didn’t hide her opposing opinion. The viewers were witnessing a mother struggle with letting her daughter have her own life.
Why mothers? Romance is about choosing with whom to spend the rest of their life and disengaging from former ties.
Don’t agree, either, with the idea that the bad mother = demonizing strong women… especially in contrast with the heroine. Why should that be? Even in the most simplistic construct, where mom = evil and heroine = good, why would goodness be interpreted as weak instead of powerful? In fact, isn’t the whole point of many romances to illustrate how the heroine’s goodness (and by that, I do *not* mean virginity, so don’t even go there!
) so often heals the hero’s inability to feel love? IMO, there’s nothing more powerful than that, especially if the heroine is secure about who she is in other ways, as well.
I do think sometimes we can overthink and overanalyze things, looking for spooks where there aren’t any. We write “bad” mothers (and fathers) because they exist in real life, and yes, since the human being’s childhood experiences shapes him/her as an adult, the evil/clueless/distant parent serve as viable devices for constructing a wounded character. We don’t necessarily write them as a reflection of our own experiences as some sort of purging exercise (God knows I don’t), or because, in the case of the bad mother, we’ve harshly judging other women. If that were true, how could we then write sympathetic heroines?
Now, if individual authors *always* write a Demon Mom in *every* book over a long career, that might bear some scrutiny. But my reasons for writing an issue-laden parent aren’t the same as any other author’s, nor do those reasons stem from some deep societal or psychological conditioning (that I’m aware of, anyway). And my including a bad mother in a story’s cast hardly means I’m demonizing either womanhood or motherhood in general — that doesn’t even make sense to me, especially since I tend to write stories about female community, where women are there for each other. So when the occasional Witchy Mom shows up, it’s simply because I felt that’s what works best for that story and that character, based on my personal observations of the human experience.
No more nor less than that.
I think there’s always a difference between how an author approaches a book in writing it and how it’s read and received critically. So while I can appreciate where you’re coming from as an author on this issue, I think that in any form of literature that depends on archetypes to the extent that Romance does, it’s not unfair or “overthinking” to pay some critical attention to those types.
That doesn’t mean every book or every example of a type will be read/judged/analyzed in the same way, and it’s certainly not an attempt to impugn any author or any book.
But just judging from the number and thoughtfulness of the comments on this post — including yours — it’s clear to me that there are strong and diverse feeling and thoughts on this issue, which tells me that *something* is going on with this character type. Authors and readers whose intelligence and critical acumen I respect have weighed in from a multitude of perspectives, and I think that’s reflective of the symbolic significances that motherhood has in virtually every culture.
So while an author might be consciously focused on using a character type in furtherance of a particular plot construct, I don’t think that invalidates symbolic significance of that type well beyond the author’s intentions or what s/he feels s/he has accomplished with the book. Especially when these types are themselves so often and overtly used for their symbolic value.
But can’t that be said about nearly any anything in real life, that an author can use it symbolically to make a point in his/her work? What a character wears, or what sorts of furnishings he surrounds himself with, is all symbolic, since all of that reflects who he is. It’s also been pointed out that — as you say — the reader’s take may have little to do with the author’s intentions, reading symbolism where none was consciously meant. Which is fine — the reader’s experience is entirely hers, and the author’s subconscious is probably a far more vital part of the creative process than the conscious. As long as no one accuses me of consciously trying to promote some sort of agenda that was *never* my intention, subconsciously or not, I’m cool. Like the whole bad mother = strong-women-are-inherently-evil thing. Please.
Now, I do get the fascination with trying to parse why these tropes show up so often. I just think the reasons for that are as varied as the authors who use them, even though at the same time we’re all shaped by everything that’s come before, both in collective human experience and the storytelling tradition.
So. If you have a genre which is predicated on at least one of the characters having problems with connection or commitment (otherwise there’s no conflict), and a huge reason why real people have trouble with relationships is because they had a shaky or even downright horrible relationship with a parent, it’s only logical that so many authors would use that device as the basis for their characters’ internal conflict. And with soooo many romances published each year…
There you are.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to dismiss the concept of strong women being vilified in genre Romance, though. Because I cannot even count the number of conversations I’ve seen over the years that have focused precisely on that notion. It’s been discussed in scenarios where heroines leave high powered corporate positions for small time life and familyhood. It’s been discussed in scenarios where female villains are drawn as sexually perverse or predatory. It’s been talked about in scenarios where the hero has bullied or raped the heroine for her resistance to his authority. And IMO it’s a hugely relevant topic in genre Romance.
That doesn’t mean every bad mother is an exemplar of the demonized strong woman, anymore than it means that there is no significance to the bad Romance mother. This is one of the difficulties in talking about general trends and devices in the genre, of course — how do you discuss the range of issues and examples without in some way overgeneralizing.
But even with that risk, I think that it’s important to acknowledge that even in RL the figure of the mother is associated with feminine power and with the limits/abuses of that power. So why not in fiction, as well, especially fiction in which the family lies at the center of the moral and ethical value of the romantic relationship?
Then doesn’t that answer the primary question posed in your column? Why are there so many bad mothers in romance fiction?
Because mothers do hold that power, for good or ill. And a huge chunk of that power, unwittingly or no, gets passed along to their offspring in the form of their ability or inability to form attachments.
That’s not to say a character can’t be aware of his/her parent’s negative influence, and conscientiously work to overcome it. Often that’s part of the journey, in fact. But I do think there’s your answer, right there.
As for romance villifying strong women, all I can say is…perhaps in some cases, yes. But not always. (Can you tell I hate generalizations?
)
I don’t write or read stories in which the hero rapes the heroine, or bullies her, or tries to gain “control.” Ever. That fantasy might be fine and dandy for some readers, but I won’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole. And in fact, I would only make an exception if the heroine was strong enough to counter the hero’s aggressiveness. And by strong, I don’t necessarily mean equally aggressive, but with an unshakeable, quiet inner strength which, to me, is true power.
As for the eyerolling about heroines leaving the city life for the country (yes, I’m about to go slightly off tangent, but following your lead
)…are you familiar with Ree Drummund, aka Pioneer Woman? (www.pioneerwoman.com), aka the “accidental country wife.” Living the big city life in LA, she ended up marrying a rancher, moving to, in her words, the “middle of nowhere,” and bearing him four kids in seven or eight years. Even got preggers on her honeymoon. Three years ago, she started blogging about her life…and has turned that blog into the beginnings of a business empire. One which her husband clearly supports.
She cooks, she does laundry, she homeschools, she gets up at 4:30 with her husband and kids to move cattle or feed horses, she takes photographs up the wazoo…and she channels the whole shebang into her website. With tens of thousands (if not more) daily visitors, she now has major advertisers and is about to go on a book tour for her new cookbook. IOW, she didn’t give up a blessed thing in exchange for the love of (from everything I can tell) a really good man who happens to be a rancher. A different life, yes, but hardly a “lesser” one.
So for those fictional gals who give up the corporate world for the country life and a passel of kids…why is that automatically considered a weakness? Why not simply a choice? If the author has left the reader feeling the heroine is truly sacrificing her heart’s desire for the sake of love…yes, that’s wrong. Not seeing a long term HEA, there. But if, instead, the heroine sees this as an opportunity, freely embraced without regret, then what’s the problem? Is it because some readers can’t imagine making that choice for themselves that they can’t see it for a heroine?
Frankly, I can’t imagine a stronger woman, real or fictional, than one who voluntarily embraces a life that’s all about hard work and commitment. Strength? Those farm and ranch women have it in spades. And many of them own the farms and ranches, too, with a whole slew of menfolk working under them.
So often it seems to me much of this is about perspective, where, because the trope isn’t always handled as well as it could be, the whole thing gets a bad name. It’s not the device that’s the problem, it’s a) how it’s handled and b) what the reader brings to it that seems to cause so much dismay.
I think that may be *part* of the answer, but I don’t think it’s the whole, for the very reason you gave — the generalization does not serve the diversity of textual examples. I think it’s a complicated question, which is why I posed it — since the thought I’ve given it has not yielded for me a “Eureka” moment of satisfying analytical closure. Although I do think I’ve identified some of the pieces, just as many commenters here have identified some I may not have considered.
As for PW, I’m very familiar with her, but the thing is, she’s a person with a whole story and backstory. Could every Romance heroine who moves to the country and gives up a big CEO job find the same happiness and success as Drummond? Sure, why not. Are they all set up to do that by the novels in which they’re created? I don’t believe so.
And what frustrates me in some of these books is that there is no real reason for the decision, just a disappearance of the heroine’s ambition that suggests it was not real to begin with. And I gotta tell you, that frustrates me almost as much as the heroine who finds her life completely empty until the arrival of the hero.
Frankly, I’d love to see more books like Jo Leigh’s A Dash of Temptation, in which the hero gives up the prominent corporate position because he wants to be able to balance corporate success and family life with the heroine more happily. Although even he gets to keep his spiffy corporate ladder, lol.
Back to PW for a sec, I think it’s worth noting that the Drummonds are not some struggling little ranching family in Oklahoma; they’re an influential and longstanding family and business entity. So there’s already somewhat of a skew on that story. And Ree Drummond was not a CEO, she was a potential law student, so again, specific circumstances. And putting aside the issues one might have with the way Drummond has sold her life as that of a “pioneer,” clearly there are plenty of women who would not be happy on that ranch, and who would feel that giving up a successful job for which they’ve worked hard is unfair when their husband is not willing or even asked to make the same choice, in Romance novels or RL. Just ask the multitude of female law associates who leave practice to have children and then find that returning to practice means starting back on the bottom. Actually, have you ever noticed how many lawyers and ex-lawyers write Romance?
Also, I don’t think the question is one of whether women can or can’t be strong in Romance, or even whether a woman rancher is stronger or weaker than a corporate CEO; I think it’s a question of whether one kind of strength is seen as *superior* to the other, and the way the Romance genre handles these judgments.
And while you dislike generalizations, I am equally frustrated with what I believe is a generalized repetition of certain elements and devices in the genre that don’t in execution always seem well thought-out. I remember, for example, a few years ago that big debate over the value of the virgin widow device. Some did not understand why there was so much reader antipathy toward the device. While there may have been many virgin widows over the course of RL history, and while the device itself might be completely neutral, its persistence in a genre that seems to place a high value on virginity can get old, especially when its existence in various novels seems to amount to little more than preserving the heroine’s virginity.
The dark side of that, though, is that when a novel comes along that uses the device thoughtfully and unusually, sometimes readers won’t touch the book because they just can’t face another VW. So, as you say, it’s *always* in how a device is used, but that’s what I’m trying to get at — how is such a ubiquitous genre device being used, what purposes is it serving, in what variations does it present itself, and how do readers feel about it?
Part of that last question has to do with just how many times they encounter it, which IMO goes back to the issue of whether/how it’s used as genre shorthand, and whether/how that become a genre shortcut at some point.
My day job is in family mental health services (Google “intensive in-home”) and I can say that the mother who is seen by her children as random, if not manipulative, and completely unconcerned with or unconnected to anything that matters to her family is pretty common. Universally, of course, the mother in question believes she is doing everything she can to do the right thing.
There are some people — mothers included — who seek vengeance for their own unhappy lives in the tears of innocents. Those creatures will always be with us. There are people who were so emotionally hurt as children that they protect themselves to the point they can not truly love — or believe in — anyone else. Becoming a husband or wife or parent does not cure this. (Though one hopes becoming a husband or wife or parent may motivate someone to want to cure themselves. That’s when my job kicks in.)
I have no trouble with a “bad mother†in a story, as long as we know she has a reason that makes sense to her for why she is acting the way she does.
What I really want to see, of course, is the heroine of one novel become the bad mother of the next generation.
One more comment:
I daresay there are a lot more bad mothers IRL than there are virgins over 25. So the proportion in romance novels is about right, yes?
It is the wee hours here, and I am not feeling too sparky, so am going to give up on writing something half intelligent.. lol
Just say I have noticed a large amount of bad mothers in my romance reading lately, and am finding it is starting to link to my issues on the representation of feminity and women as a whole in romance books.
Sometimes it strikes me as off that the “bad mother” has more power than the “good heroine” so it can come across as power for women equalling corruption?
Or that could just be from me reading some bad books lately..
ie. Secrets Jude Deveraux Ebil Mum a CEO, the good heroine a stalking ninny.. I mean nanny
OK even to my blurry eyes that does not make much sense..
please feel free to ignore, I think it is nap time.. lol
Robin write: “As a reader, I’d like to see more complex, nuanced, parent/child relationships, especially in romantic fiction, because not only do I think these complex relationships help build tension and conflict, but I also think they can help build and facilitate the central romantic relationship as it develops, so that the romance isn’t merely an escape or an almost magical transformation of the hero or heroine’s sense of self.”
Having just finished Judith Ivory’s Black Silk, where a “father figure” played exactly this role for both hero and heroine, I heartily agree! (and don’t both reading my old post. This is way better!)
Ooh, Black Silk is my most favoritest Romance novel EVAH! Am preparing for re-read so I can review the republished version, and I’m unreasonably excited about it, lol.
Anyway, I was reminded on Twitter (http://twitter.com/JanetNorCal/status/3926651988) that Linda Howard often has positive, but not perfect mothers. In addition to Open Season, there are also the Blair Mallory books (To Die For and Drop Dead Gorgeous), where the elder Mallory woman is idealized, but as a strong, confident woman who teaches her daughters how to get what they want. I liked her.
Also, Lisa Kleypas’s Smooth Talking Stranger, which I really liked, has a pretty awful mother, but at least her two daughters are working through the complicated issues associated with being raised by her. Same with Liberty Jones’s mother in Sugar Daddy, and even Haven Travis’s mother in Blue-Eyed Devil. All these books contain very flawed mothers, but in the case of SD and BED, at least, it’s not an all-good or all-bad portrayal, which, IMO, anyway, made them even more prominent and memorable as characters. Which, I guess, is one of my points, although it is also a repetition of one of the points your made in your RRR post, which is that one or two dimensional characters are just not all that interesting, be they “bad” or “good.”
Those with the most influence usually are in the position of power to do the most damage. Even unknowingly and with the best of intentions, caregivers can greatly hurt children. It’s a matter of perspective. What’s straightforward, logical, and necessary for the future good of the child can be interpreted by the child as being mean, denigrating, and thwarting their goals. It’s a rare parent and child who can safely navigate out of these difficult misunderstandings into a healthy adult relationship with each other. Hence the prevalence, in my opinion, of “bad” parents in fiction.
Robin, apparently we’ve used up our “reply” options up above
, so I’m continuing down here.
Absolutely, most women wouldn’t want to do what PW is doing. God knows I wouldn’t, the occasional prickles of envy about *some* aspects of her life notwithstanding
So ideally the author should make damn sure the character leaving one world for another a) knows exactly what s/he’s getting into and b) is temperamentally suited for the life, whether that be ranching, motherhood or whatever. IOW, it has to make sense — at least to the author and most readers. Some choices will never make sense to some readers, because they can’t imagine ever going whatever that route is.
I agree that a reader probably won’t buy that a character who’s only half-assed about her first choice — corporate life, for instance — is going to suddenly find happiness by “flunking into” marriage and babies, etc. That could be said for any one-to-another choice. One of the criticisms of chick lit is that the protags so often seem uninvolved with their own lives, passively waiting for something to happen to them rather than being passionate about what they’re doing at the moment. But people radically change their lives all the time. Sometimes the “been there, done that” feeling creeps up gradually, sometimes an outside event slaps them upside the head with the realization they want something else/more. And sometimes a person comes along who makes you reevaluate what you thought was important.
Change, leaping into the unknown, willingness to take a risk on a whole new life…those take courage. And these days women (for the most part) make those choices themselves. As opposed to, say, thier husbands saying, “Pack the wagon, honey, we’re heading West tomorrow at sunup whether you like it or not.”
I repeat: It’s not the device, it’s the execution. If we were to toss out every badly handled plot device, there would be nothing left. Which leads me to an admission: Discussions like these definitely make me take a critical eye to my own work to make sure if I do use a maligned device (bearing in mind that many readers adore those same devices) that I justify the character’s actions/decision to the best of my ability. The reader is free to accept the character’s reasoning or not, but at least I tried.
One more thing: I personally know several former lawyers who are now writing romance, all of whom deliberately left the practice because it no longer fulfilled them, or met their expectations. Some left so they could devote more time to writing, whether they had children or not, which — in these cases — had nothing to do with their decision to leave law in any case.
Because it’s all about having the right to shift directions when the one we’re going in isn’t working anymore.
Karen,
I totally agree that it’s all in the way the device is used, but I think you can say that with any discussion of any device, that it’s an automatic premise. So the point you’re making there is pretty much lost on me, I’m afraid.
It’s so difficult for me not to detour off into a long ramble on the PW blog, but I’ll try to limit it to the idea that PW IS a creation. Sure Ree Drummond is a real person, but PW is a character and IMO it’s an intentional construction that calls on, riffs on, perpetuates and subverts the pastoral motif.
Now I know quite a few women who think that PW is a very problematic creation, and I haven’t come to a conclusion like that, but I definitely think that there are many, many elements of her persona that conform to some pretty traditional values, and that there is often a very Romance novel-y structure to her story (esp. her black heels series). The male as head of household, the celebration of fertility, domesticity, Christianity, masculinity, femininity, and home and hearth as the center of things all feature strongly in her self-presentation.
In other words, IMO she’s built a very sophisticated business around the sale of a rather traditional domestic type.
In terms of genre Romance, all I can say is that as a reader I appreciate books that reflect a clear thoughtfulness in the construction of characters, the enlivening of stereotypes with freshness, and the dimensionality of even secondary and tertiary characters. If they’re bad, let me understand why and how (I’m not addressing this to you personally, just making a general plea). If they’re good, let me understand why and how. If she’s a mix of both, as most people are, let me understand why and how. Just give me more than the human equivalent of a speed bump over which one or both protags must maneuver.
It’s not, actually, the country I object to in those Romances where the heroine does the Eva Gabor slide. I enjoy the pastoral novel (Laura Kinsale’s upcoming novel is a pastoral and it’s absolutely wonderful, IMO) and live in the country myself. In fact, I have spent quite a bit of time around all sorts of animals, so I know a thing or two about life in small rural towns.
But as a reader who’s been trained to see patterns across genres, I also think there are some notable points of interest in the Bad Mother device.
In terms of your example of chick lit and protag malaise, what’s always interesting to me is how we, as readers (and I include authors here, too, because, of course, you’re readers, too) tend to use real life examples when defending or criticizing fiction. As a reader, I actually demand much more logic, much more explanation, much more intentional construction in my fiction than in RL. While people in RL do whacky unexpected things all the time, that often doesn’t fly for me in fiction, especially if the left field move is not confined within an overall logic to the book as a whole. In other words, fictional characters must, for me, have much more coherence and cogency than RL people, even if their character arc includes absurd, illogical things.
In terms of the Bad Mother in Romance, I also think it’s relevant to ask what separates the central romantic couple from their parents. Would it be acceptable to Romance readers to find that the ennobled heroine of one book becomes the Bad Mother of another?
Thinking about what RfP said above about intergenerational competition and the Bad Mother, I wonder how much of the “parental problems create character conflict” explanations tend to favor this kind of conflict because women are not always so good about confronting intergenerational anxiety directly.
That there are so many different comments and opinions about this issue, and that so many of them seem driven by autobiographical experience suggests to me that the Bad Mother is definitely more than a literary device. Although I also think there’s some real reluctance to take a close look at it.
And frankly, I think the resistance to look closely is even more indication that we perhaps need to. Because for me, anyway, this issue is not so much about good and bad parenting in RL, or about having more good mothers in the genre; it’s about how the Bad Mother functions across the genre and why she remains so potent and important in a genre that so consistently attempts to disempower and marginalize her through the HEA of the protags.
End of a very long day here, so if this rambles I apologize in advance.
First off, bad characters are *supposed* to be marginalized and disempowered through the protags’ HEA. Such is the purpose of traditional storytelling, where good triumphs and bad gets what it deserves. Or am I missing something?
Then again, your original question was…why are there so *many* bad mothers in romance? Several of us have given you answers, based on our individual perspectives as readers, authors and women. Yet you keep hammering away about our resistance to delving more deeply into the “why” behind the device.
Perhaps what you’re interpreting as resistance is simply that many of us don’t see a there, there. Or at least, nothing more than what we’ve already seen and explained. We’ve dug as deeply as we care to dig, I guess, and it’s frustrating you that we’re not willing to go deeper to give you the answer you’re so determined to get. Whatever that is.
Bad mothers exist as foils in romance because they’ve existed since storytelling began, in all literary forms, because nobody can screw up another person as thoroughly as a bad mother. But using one as a plot device doesn’t make an author an antifeminist, or one who thinks all mothers are inherently bad, or that she’s making some subconscious statement about feminine power being equated with evil. Not across the board, in any case.
Which is frustrating *me* because you’re operating on the principle that all devices in the genre (or least, this one) stem from some collective consciousness. While this may be true to a certain extent — insofar as all literature is at least partly a reflection of our common experience and aspirations as humans — you’re leaving no room for individual, conscious decision-making during the creative process.
In the book I’m working on now, the heroine is a wonderful mother. Her husband’s grandmother, who lives with her, is a crackerjack. Her own mother, although kept from being nearby through circumstances beyond her control, is a strong mother. The book is the 4th in a series that features four brothers whose mother drives them nuts, but in the loving way of mothers since time immemorial.
In other words, none of these women are “perfect,” but they are strong, capable women who happen to be mothers.
But the hero in this book is still overcoming the effects of an abusive father/weak mother combo, and his ex, while not vicious, would win no Mother of the Year awards…because some people are just horrible parents. And that affects their kids, which in turn affects relationships. I’m not using the device as cheap therapy because of my own issues with my mother (not that I don’t have any, but how many grown daughters don’t?
), but because this device makes the most sense for this story and this character.
All I can say is…if there’s some deep sociological/psychological issue at work here, it’s one that’s been in play for a long, long time. And I still maintain the device’s preponderance in romance novels is due far more to the sheer numbers of books being written and the inverse dearth of ways to develop meaty conflict than for any more profound reason.
My take on it is that sometimes there really isn’t all that much of a “because” in answer to the “why.” Clearly you see it differently.
So thanks for the lively discussion, but obviously we’re never going to see eye to eye on the subject.
To me, the real irony here, Karen, is that I’m not at all looking for ONE answer. It’s my frustration with feeling misunderstood and being dismissed as “overthinking” and “hammering away” that made me feel it was important to explain where I’m coming from. Honestly, it was clear to me posts ago that we were not going to agree, but because there are so many people reading this who are not going to be commenting, I felt it was important to try to keep the question open. In case there’s at least one or two people besides me who think the discussion is worth having, lol. Call it stubborn resistance to being told that ‘there is no there, there’ which always sounds little to me like a polite dismissal. And what can I say: I was raised to question authority.
In any case, thanks for an interesting debate.
@Karen Templeton
While I agree that women who work on farms are indeed very strong, I think it’s worth remarking on the fact that there are so many heroines in romance who give up their high powered careers in the city for a country life with the hero, and almost none who give up a country life to go pursue a high powered career in the city.
For that matter, there aren’t any heroes I can think of who give up their high powered careers for a life on the heroine’s farm, either.
It’s not so much any one specific book, but rather the overall pattern that starts to emerge from a plethora of books that makes me think that this fantasy (of giving up corporate work for a more domestic life of farming) is somehow more socially acceptable to us women than some other career choices.
And I think that this does tie in to society’s view of women’s roles. Farm life does revolve aroud the natural world and its cycles of fertility, gestation, birth and rearing. All of which was traditionally viewed as a woman’s sphere more so than being a lawyer, a mathematician or a businesswoman.
So yeah, I think there is something a little more traditional and a little less revolutionary in that trope. Does it mean that I think we shouldn’t have such stories? No. I have certainly enjoyed my share of them.
But I do sometimes wish country life wasn’t so often idealized at the expense of city life. I am a city person myself, though I was born in a kibbutz (an Israeli agricultural community) and I think both lifestyles have benefits and drawbacks. I wish that even-handedness was reflected in the genre more often.
Jude Deveraux wrote a historical I enjoyed in which the heroine gave up a comfortable life in the Northeast to become a mail order bride. Her ineptitude at the farming life was hilarious to read about. She ended up starting a dress-selling business in the nearby town. That’s the kind of thing I would love to read more of.
So why aren’t there more romances with high-powered women? No definitive answers, but I’ll toss out a couple of thoughts.
Certainly, there are romance authors who’ve come from the business sector (although I don’t think there are any CEOs of big corporations now writing romance
) who would have the expertise to write about such women. Since the lifestyle has never appealed to me, however, I probably wouldn’t write a corporate type, since even with research out the wazoo. I can’t relate to that mindset. I admire women who go that route, but it’s not me.
But what comes to me is that those character types might run into the same sort of reader resistance *overall* as musicians and artists and actors do. Because the real-life perception is that celebs don’t generally have stable lives, readers have a hard time buying into fictional performing artists’ HEAs. So — for good or ill — the *perception* is that seriously career-focused women, especially in corporate situations where you’re expected to put business first and family life second, aren’t perhaps the best candidates for what *readers* perceive as a happy, fulfilled personal relationship.
IOW, it’s a hard sell.
Of course, there are, I’m sure, perfectly happy corporate marriages with kids, just as there are perfectly happy celeb marriages (or at least long term relationships — think Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon) with kids. But you don’t often hear about those (and man, talk about a situation rife with possibilities for a future “bad mother” more interested in her career than her kids!
); you hear about the failures.
In series fiction, city-set stories simply don’t sell as well, generally, as small town stories. Whether this reflects the lifestyle of the readers themselves (Harlequins sell far better in the south and midwest, for instance, than in major metro areas on the coasts), or readers’ fantasies about small-town life being idyllic, I don’t know. But with so many women in real life feeling stressed to the max about trying to balance career and family, I’m not sure a heroine about to embark on that path is going to appeal to many readers.
After nearly 15 years in this business — and even though I write more realistic stories than many — I’ve come to accept that romance truly is about escapism and fantasy, not about reality. And since many women in high-powered careers admittedly read romance for that escape, perhaps it’s not as worrying to them, not seeing themselves portrayed in the romance they read, as it is to others.
I’m not saying the reverse of what we see so much shouldn’t, or can’t be done. I’m just not sure how many readers would embrace it. And considering the huge pressure we put on heroines to be selfless
it would be a really neat trick to pull off a heroine immersed in the cut-throat business world.
Excellent post Keira.
I was blessed with two loving and caring parents. However, I once remember a friend who didn’t have a great childhood said” they did the best they could under the circumstances” and I thought what a statement.
I’ve noticed when there is a strong alpha, they’ve had a not loving childhood and that appeals to some. I don’t find fault with an author who uses the past to explain the character.
Well Karen your post was excellent as well.
I Posted on the wrong link, my post was meant for Kiera.
But there is something I would like to say as a reader, I don’t find someone’s background offensive, it’s part of the character development for me.
I have just finished three of Nora Roberts’ trilogies, and all nine books had good mothers (particularly where the mother was herself a heroine) or absent mothers. The reason that works is because all three trilogies had supernatural means of keeping the heroes & heroines apart!
Imagine a character with a good set of parents, a loving & rewarding childhood, and all the support and education needed to get a healthy start in life. Now imagine that character meeting the love of his/her life. The book’s over in a few chapters — unless you toss some ghosts or 3,000-year-old Celtic gods at them.
Plus, do people with loving and healthy families of origin even READ romances? I suspect market research would reveal they make up a small slice of the romance novel readership. So I think evil moms, absent dads, dismissive & cruel siblings, and other nasties from characters’ backstories are here to stay.
I personally don’t mind.
I’m a sucker for trying to find books that fit in with the convo du jour so I picked up The Dream Comes True by Barbara Delinsky (Harlequin Temptation) — story: conflict between easy-going bookstore owner and high powered real estate broker (the woman). I felt maybe because of when it was published, the gal had the book thrown at her (she has an emergency appendectomy, for one) but it didn’t come down to a) quit your job or we can’t get married but it was — get a balanced life or we (because he had a kid) can’t be together. And I thought $$$ was very respected through the book — not the root of all evil but a means to get things that are needed. An interesting book. And yes, her mother was fairly eeeeeeeevil, natch
p.s. All I can do LOL is think of good mothers! Here are a few more: Arabella’s mother in Georgette Heyer’s Arabella, the Duchess of Yeovil, Thea’s mother in Jo Beverley’s Lady Beware … the great strong Irish Catholic mother in Anderson’s series about the ranchers/vets.
Ah yea, the old plot device of the bad parent. I like that sometimes… It really works for me in some books, for example, the Piratess is very open and free, her MIL is very strict and ladylike. Add the two together and you get instant fun…
The absent of unkind father is another that you see often.