Faith, Love, Hope and Popular Romance Fiction

Faith, Love, Hope and Popular Romance Fiction Laura Vivanco © Laura Vivanco 2020 The right of Laura Vivanco to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2020 by Laura Vivanco, Edinburgh https://www.vivanco.me.uk An online version is available from https://www.vivanco.me.uk/faith-love-hope-and-popular-romance- fiction. A paperback version is available from https://www.lulu.com. The author has tried to ensure that external URLs given in this book are accurate at the time of writing, but can offer no guarantee that the sites remain live or the content appropriate. ISBN 978-1-008-92667-7 Cover image: Woodcut used as final ornament on page 209 of Quintil- ian’s Institutio oratoria, ed. by Pieter Burman(n) the Elder, Leiden 1720. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quintilian,_Institutio_ora toria_ed._Burman_(Leiden_1720),_p._209,_detail.jpg Typeset in EB Garamond using LATEX by David Sterratt. Cover design by Benjamin Sterratt and David Sterratt. Contents About the cover image vii Introduction from a Time of Pandemic ix I Faith, Love, Hope and Pastoral Care 1 1 Faith 3 1.1 The Ecstatic and Legalistic Modes of Faith ...... 8 1.1.1 Rules and Emotion .............. 12 2 Love 19 2.1 Good ......................... 25 2.2 Durable ........................ 27 3 Hope 33 4 Pastoral Care 41 4.1 Healing ........................ 43 4.2 Guiding ........................ 49 4.3 Reconciling ...................... 53 4.4 Sustaining ....................... 57 4.4.1 Writing Better Life Stories .......... 58 4.4.2 Enduring and Growing after Personal Tragedy and Trauma .................. 61 4.4.3 Reframing Collective Stories ......... 64 iii iv CONTENTS II Further Explorations 69 5 Further Explorations 71 6 Words and Power: Piper Huguley’s A Virtuous Ruby 75 6.1 “The right of Representation”: Popular Culture ... 76 6.2 “A history of repeated injuries”: Publishing ...... 80 6.3 “Obstructing the Laws”: Romance Writers of America 88 6.4 “We hold these truths to be self-evident”: The Tasks of Romance Scholarship ................. 91 6.5 “The voice of justice and of consanguinity” ...... 95 7 Ecstatic and Legalistic Literary Traditions: Rose Lerner’s In for a Penny 99 7.1 Ecstasy and Asexuality ................. 109 7.2 Pastoral Care and Escapism .............. 115 8 Metaphors of Hope: Princes and Alyssa Cole’s A Princess in Theory 119 8.1 “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28) ........ 123 8.2 “Thou art my hiding place and my shield” (Psalm 119: 114) 124 8.3 “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” (Matthew 6:26) ................ 127 9 Metaphors of Hope: Saving the Damned and the Devilish 131 9.1 States from Which it is Understood Salvation is Necessary ....................... 131 9.2 An Articulation of What the Final End State of Salvation will be Like ................. 134 9.3 The Processes By Which Salvation is Realized ..... 135 9.3.1 Fighting Demons and Resurrecting the Dead 137 9.3.2 Accepting the Gift of Salvation ........ 140 9.3.3 Saving Devils ................. 141 CONTENTS v 9.4 Salvation as Miracle .................. 143 10 Love and rules “to prevent its aberrations”: Nora Roberts’ Three Sisters Trilogy 145 10.1 Dependence ...................... 148 10.2 Possession ....................... 153 10.3 The Importance of Non-romantic Forms of Love ... 156 10.4 Discernment ..................... 162 11 Conclusion 167 Fiction Cited 169 Non-Fiction Works Cited 175 About the cover image The image comes from an eighteenth-century edition of Quintilian’s In- stitutio oratoria, which I haven’t read, so I don’t know how the image related to its content. In this new context, however, I’d translate “una via est, latrat dum pateat” as “there is one path; it shouts out as it stands open.” That seems to describe romance novels pretty well: they’re not exactly quiet about their belief in love being the way to happiness. There’s a heart at the foot of the design and the labyrinth is held aloft by Cupid. The symbolism of the heart and Cupid are obvious. For my purposes, the labyrinth reflects that fact that, in romance novels at least, the path to true love is not with- out its complications. It’s also the case that labyrinths have been used to spur spiritual growth. The serpent eating its own tail is Ouroboros and represents an eternal cycle of renewal. In this context I find that apt with respect to both love (as depicted in romance novels) and the genre itself, which constantly repeats and renews itself. According to Lucy Hooper’s The Lady’s Book of Flowers and Poetry; to which are added, a Botanical Introduction, a Complete Floral Dictionary, and a Chapter on Plants in Rooms (1845), a tulip is a “declaration of love” (231). In my mind the bees (on the right, flying around a tulip) represent the hard work thatmany would argue is needed before relationships can truly flower and, looking towards the grapes on the left, bear fruit. Since the pair of birds seem to be resting on olive branches I’ve decided they can represent the belief (expressed in a novella by Mary Kirk), that “only when we are guided by love do we find true happiness and peace” (223). vii Introduction from a Time of Pandemic The plot of a romance novel is guaranteed to end happily and according to Dr. Jodi McAlister, in times like this, when everything is really uncertain and we’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, we love that sense of closure. “We like knowing that the arc of the universe will bend towards emotional justice, where two people who love each other will end up together.” (Nobel and Johnson) In the past in times of crisis, some people certainly have turned to romance. The romance publisher Mills & Boon, for example, Like most publishers […] thrived during the [Second World] war, as restrictions on many leisure activities promoted reading, even though paper rationing confined new editions to 4,000 copies and reprints were impossible. ‘Undoubtedly the war encouraged readership,’ Boon said. ‘If we had had paper we would have sold probably ten times as many.’ (McAleer 268) However, as a pessimist, my immediate response was not the same as Jodi McAlister’s: the fear of losing loved ones highlighted for me the emotional risks inherent in loving and made me question the pleasure, in such ix x INTRODUCTION FROM A TIME OF PANDEMIC a context, of reading about “the development of a relationship (a central love story)” (Wherry 53). Yet, on reflection, I remembered that questions of risk and the possibility of loss are addressed in some romance novels: romance’s response, it seems to me, is that love gives meaning to life, that the experience of love improves us, and that in some way love itself is eternal and can never be lost. The romance novel’s roots extend down into myth and fairytale but its more recent ancestors can be found in the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Robert M. Polhemus argues that in the nineteenth century novels became the ways, means, and sites for the propagation of faith. Nineteenth-century novelists assumed pastoral roles and took them seriously. Think of some of the main purposes and functions of religion: to honor creation and the mystery of being; to make people feel the worth of their own souls; to reconcile them to their lives and offer an alternative to the pain of daily existence; to justify, rational- ize, or sublimate power relations; to exalt by holding out the promise of salvation; to lift people out of themselves, free the spirit, and move them to ecstasy; to transmute and control aggression and violent drives; to sublimate sexuality and idealize gender identity. (4–5) Some of these purposes and functions are, of course, controversial: his- torically, faith has had a range of positive and negative impacts. While my opening chapters are descriptive, I do not forget that romances are open to critique, and I hope to address some of these in later chapters. Moreover, when studying romances, it is vital to bear in mind their vari- ety. Religions are not monolithic, and neither is popular romance fiction. However, while recognising that there are both many different types of romance and “many kinds of reader, using romance fiction in different ways, in various contexts, and with specific purposes” (Taylor 1989, 73), I would like to suggest that romance novels have held firm to the tradition outlined by Polhemus: romance authors have assumed pastoral roles, of- INTRODUCTION FROM A TIME OF PANDEMIC xi fering hope to their readers through novels which propagate faith in the goodness and durability of love. Faith, love and hope have long been referred to as the theological virtues, and I will be drawing extensively on theology. This is not be- cause I wish to suggest that all romance readers believe either that love is godlike or that there is a God who is love, though many readers do in- deed believe in a loving God and others express the view that love is a powerful force for good in the world. Rather, as a scholar shaped by the study of the Middle Ages, I perhaps turn to theology in much the same way that early romance critics such as Janice Radway and TaniaModleski had recourse to psychology.

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