On my commute, I'm listening to the audio recording of Jo Beverley's Winter Fire, which is a tangential Malloren book. I'm somewhat disturbed by this book for several reasons, including the unpindownable origins of the reader's accent. I made myself get over it by making up a story that Jenny Sterlin is an Australian who summered in Nova Scotia, and went to college in Middlesex. That's the only way I can make sense of the accent.
Beyond that madness, however, I've realized that listening to a romance is a very different affair than reading one. My eyes apparently tend to skip over the bits that otherwise might offend me, or perhaps I read them differently than the audible book reader does. I don't know. But I realized while listening to the first big make-out session in this book that the hero treats the heroine rather lower than her rank. In fact, it was altogether like the aristocrat coming on to the pretty scullery maid. Her sexual surrender is implicit, in the hero's mind. Which rather violates sheen of status and propriety--ie, respect--that is supposed to be accorded to the heroine in this particular historical romance.
Not only doesn't this feel right for this book, but upon reflection, it feels quite wrong in many historical romances. I realize that ever since Georgette Heyer, we have really been reading about women of our own time dressed in Empire waists or panniers or wimples, depending on the setting... Sherwood Smith addresses this nicely here... which is perhaps why I looked past it for so long.
Romances, especially historical ones, are fantasies in which every character is deeply focused on the various aspects of the mating ritual. Given. Somehow, the context allows all sorts of bad behavior in the male characters, behavior which is looked upon fondly as romantic. (I once read a checklist of behaviors to watch out for in men who are obsessive/abusive and thinking it fit the heroes of half the romances I'd read... though today, that's not really what I'm talking about.)
So, I was listening to this love scene today--a love scene by an author I've long since decided I really like and trust--and it just hit me, right smack between the eyes, that if any man tried to seduce me as the hero was seducing the heroine, I'd probably drive off, stop taking his calls, and block him on instant messenger.
But it's not as if the romance author has done anything joltingly atypical in this book; no, not at all. It's not as if I haven't read dozens of scenes similar to this and gone along with it just fine, rationalizing it as a different time or chemistry or "it ain't bad reading..." or maybe just not rationalizing it at all. It is all just part of the romance paradigm: the main characters are sexually attracted to each other. Often, the female is reluctant on the surface, yearning beneath; the male senses this and draws the yearning part out. Sometimes he's a bit domineering about it, but it's not usually as bad as that lame sort of "kissing her against her will" thing that happens in bad movies--where she's kissed until she's both subdued and seduced. It doesn't usually jar or grate--not if you're the kind of person who picks up romance novels on a regular basis, anyway.
For whatever reason, I just didn't go to that spot today. All I could see (in headache-inducing double vision) that the hero was not properly courting a respectable woman of 1763, and he wasn't properly courting a woman of 2006, either.
I feel as though I'm articulating this poorly, or perhaps not at all, which usually means I'm lacking the vocabulary. I read about a quarter of a book on reading romances a few years ago (before I had to put the book on reserve), and I think it's time to find that book again. If I can just remember what book it is... All I can guess is that it's one of these... I think it's one of the Ramsdell titles. Or else it's it's on this list, and it's by Radway. All I can remember is that the author began with an R and there was romance in the title. Yes, that's a damn fine memory I possess.
All About Romance Novels - 2005 interview with Connie Brockway
"...for me a romance is a story where the relationship itself is the story's most important character."
Yes.