See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332104673
Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings: The Flame and the Flower, Sweet Savage Love, and the lost diversities of Blockbuster historical romance
Chapter · March 2019
CITATIONS READS 3 258
2 authors, including:
Eric Selinger DePaul University
33 PUBLICATIONS 57 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Jewish American Poetry View project
Popular Romance Studies View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Eric Selinger on 31 March 2019.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. 1 Chapter 5 1 2 2 3 Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings: 3 4 The Flame and the Flower, Sweet Savage 4 5 5 6 Love, and the Lost Diversities of 6 7 7 8 Blockbuster Historical Romance 8 9 Sarah Frantz Lyons and Eric Murphy Selinger 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 Betty Friedan opens The Feminine Mystique, that iconic feminist text from 1963, 14 15 with this memorable passage: “The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years 15 16 in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, 16 17 a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United 17 18 States.”1 Nine years later, in Kathleen Woodiwiss’s iconic historical romance novel, 18 19 The Flame and the Flower, the phrase “strange stirring” recurs. Pregnant heroine 19 20 Heather gazes on her new husband, the sleeping, naked Brandon: 20 21 21 22 His body lay bare to her gaze now, but she did not turn away though her face 22 23 flamed with her own temerity. Instead she let her eyes roam over him slowly and 23 24 with much interest, satisfying her curiosity. There was no need of others to tell 24 25 her what she could see herself—that he was magnificently made, like some wild, 25 26 grand beast of the forests. Long, flexible muscles were superbly conditioned, his 26 27 belly flat and hard, his hips narrow. Her hand, slim and white, appeared out of 27 place upon his brown and hairy chest. 28 28 Disturbed by the strange stirring within her, she eased from him and moved 29 29 toward her side of the bed. She turned away, trying not to think how her eyes 30 had lingered on his body, and she saw a leaf fall to the floor of the balcony. She 30 31 huddled under the covers, wishing she were as warm-blooded as the man beside 31 32 her.2 32 33 33 34 Thus begins not only Heather’s erotic awakening, but the sweeping plot arc that 34 35 will carry this couple from the callous, almost casual, sexual assaults that Brandon 35 36 inflicts on Heather in the novel’s first chapter to the mutual love and focus on 36 37 Proof Copy 37 female sexual pleasure that marks its conclusion. 38 Woodiwiss’s use of Friedan’s evocative phrase “strange stirring” may well have 38 39 been entirely unconscious. But the unconscious is a wily thing, and those two 39 40 words had been quoted and discussed and argued over by American society for 40 41 41 42 1 Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. Reprint with an introduction by Anna 42 43 Quinlan (New York: Norton, 1997), 11. 43 44 2 Woodiwiss, Kathleen. The Flame and the Flower (New York: Avon, 1972), 107–8. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 89 10/23/2015 7:17:25 PM 90 Romance Fiction and American Culture
nearly a decade when they show up in Woodiwiss’s novel. If Friedan’s diagnosis of 1 1 the strange stirring in American women augured the coming Second Wave feminist 2 2 movement, the strange stirring that Woodiwiss describes in Heather was, likewise, 3 3 a harbinger, signaling the emergence of a new subset of the romance novel, the 4 4 “women’s historical romance” or “erotic historical romance” or “bodice ripper,” 5 5 as the American media eventually dubbed it, which would reshape the landscape 6 6 of American publishing across the 1970s. How can we productively relate the first 7 7 strange stirring, that of domestic dissatisfaction, with the second strange stirring, 8 8 that of sexual curiosity? (The leaf that falls outside Heather’s window near the 9 9 end of the passage we’ve quoted isn’t literally a fig leaf, but it might as well be.) 10 10 And what are we to make of the fact that Heather’s strange stirring occurs just 11 11 two chapters after she has been raped by the same man she now peruses “with 12 12 much interest”: an assault which was not masked in erotic or romantic terms, but 13 13 presented as “burning pain” and “endless weeping”?3 Forty-two years and one or 14 14 two waves of feminist thinking later, how can scholars begin to reread, not just 15 15 this particular novel, but the whole subgenre that it inaugurates, the one that Sarah 16 16 Wendell and Candy Tan have named the “rapetastic” romance?4 17 17 This chapter can sketch only a preliminary answer to any of these questions— 18 18 indeed, to be honest, what we can offer in these pages is as much a polemical call 19 19 to arms as it is an academic argument. It is long past time for scholars of popular 20 20 romance fiction, and of American culture more generally, to take seriously the work 21 21 of Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers and the other original Avon Ladies 22 22 (Laurie McBain, Joyce Verrette, Johanna Lindsey, Shirlee Busbee, and the inimitable 23 23 Bertrice Small), and to read their novels as situated within and responding to the 24 24 same historical moment as foundational feminist thinkers (Betty Friedan, Kate 25 25 Millett, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Susan Brownmiller) and foundational 26 26 sex-positive authors (Betty Dodson, Nancy Friday). We do not mean that the novels 27 27 should be treated as primary sources that prove the arguments laid out in the 28 28 secondary source feminist manifestos of the 1970s. Quite the contrary. Rather, we 29 29 must examine both the novels and the manifestos as primary source representations 30 30 of the cultural conversations of the 1970s about gendered oppression, rape culture 31 31 and practice, female subjectivity, and women’s sexual pleasure. 32 32 To do so, we will have to get not just “beyond heaving bosoms,” as Wendell 33 33 and Tan recommend in their book of that name, but beyond the sweeping myth 34 34 about the “rapetastic” genre of the bodice ripper that scholars and readers, bloggers 35 35 and journalists have all perpetuated about these romances.5 This myth obscures 36 36 the differencesProof between what once were recognized Copy subgenres within the women’s 37 37 historical romance and also the marked contrasts between particular authors and 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 3 Woodiwiss, 30. 41 42 4 Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide 42 43 to Romance Novels (New York: Fireside, 2009), 11. 43 44 5 Wendell and Tan, 11. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 90 10/23/2015 7:17:25 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 91
novels—contrasts which were by no means unnoticed by critics and readers at the 1 1 time. 2 2 The discovery, publication, and impact of The Flame and the Flower remains, 3 3 in Eileen Fallon’s words, “the stuff of publishing legend.”6 One “sultry August 4 4 weekend in 1970,”7 Avon editor Nancy Coffey brought the novel’s unsolicited 5 5 manuscript home, reading it as part of the publisher’s search for paperback originals 6 6 that might compete with the paperback reprints of older bestsellers offered by 7 7 other houses. “She couldn’t put the damned thing down, she couldn’t get it out 8 8 of her head, and eventually she persuaded the company to publish it as an Avon 9 9 Spectacular,” Alice K. Turner would explain in a breathless New York magazine 10 10 retrospective, “The Tempestuous, Tumultuous, Turbulent, Torrid, and Terribly 11 11 Profitable World of Paperback Passion.”8 Promoted and advertised as though it 12 12 were already a proven bestseller, The Flame and the Flower was “convey[ed] 13 13 directly to its natural drugstore, chain-store, subway-riding paperback audience 14 14 rather than going through the usual farce of snide notices from ex-English-major 15 15 critics.”9 The strategy worked, the novel drew “thousands of fan letters,”10 and by 16 16 the time of Turner’s article in 1978, Woodiwiss’s debut novel had been through 40 17 17 printings, with 2,655,000 copies in print.11 18 18 In both journalistic and more scholarly accounts, the success of The Flame and 19 19 the Flower led promptly, almost inevitably, to the discovery, publishing, promotion, 20 20 and success of a second novel, Rosemary Roger’s Sweet Savage Love (1974), and 21 21 thence to the emergence of a new subgenre. Turner’s account gives the relationship 22 22 between the two novels a Biblical cadence, as though we were reading a series 23 23 of begats. “And in due course,” Turner intones, “Sweet Savage Love arrived, 24 24 addressed ‘To the Editor of The Flame and the Flower.’And Ms. Coffey announced 25 25 at the next editorial meeting, ‘I hate to tell you, but I think we’ve got another one.”12 26 26 Thirty years later, in Beyond Heaving Bosoms, Wendell and Tan echo the story, 27 27 although they update the style. The Flame and the Flower “is, in many ways, the 28 28 Platonic ideal of the bodice ripper,” they explain. “The heroine’s bodice is, in fact, 29 29 ripped; the hero is appropriately arrogant and hard-edged before being brought 30 30 low by the power of love; swashes are buckled, buckles are swashed; villains are 31 31 suitably hideous; and the adventure runs at quite the fever pitch.”13 The Woodiwiss 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 6 Eileen Fallon, Words of Love: A Complete Guide to Romance Fiction (New York and 35 36 London: Garland Publishing, 1984), 53. 36 37 7 Fallon,Proof 53. Copy 37 38 8 Turner, Alice K. “The Tempestuous, Tumultuous, Turbulent, Torrid, and Terribly 38 39 Profitable World ofP aperback Passion,” New York Magazine (February 13, 1978), 49. 39 40 9 Turner, 49. 40 41 10 Turner, 48. 41 42 11 Turner, 49. 42 43 12 Turner, 49. 43 44 13 Wendell and Tan, 11. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 91 10/23/2015 7:17:25 PM 92 Romance Fiction and American Culture
novel “spawned countless books that followed, with various degrees of success, 1 1 that particular formula, such as Rosemary Rogers’s infamous Sweet Savage Love.”14 2 2 It is worth noting that Turner calls the genre she’s discussing the “Women’s 3 3 Historical Romance,” not the “bodice ripper.” Indeed, the latter term never occurs 4 4 in her article, which says instead that “the Erotic Historical, the Sweet Savage 5 5 Romance, or, irreverently, the Hysterical Romance” are terms of art that readers 6 6 might want to know.15 The first print use of “bodice ripper,” according to the OED, 7 7 would not come for another 18 months, and although both that first use (in theNew 8 8 York Times) and the one that quickly followed (in the Chicago Tribune) take pains 9 9 to explain that the phrase was already circulating “in the trade,” there was little 10 10 consensus.16 People dubbed the books “erotic gothic” (December 27, 1976), Time 11 11 preferred “costume epic” (January 17, 1977; Darrach 100), and the Wall Street 12 12 Journal, in a front-page story, cast its vote for “bodice-buster.”17 Whatever the 13 13 term, however, there was and is still widespread agreement that sexual violence 14 14 was a hallmark of the genre. “Our heroine does not merely lose her virtue,” Turner 15 15 explains; “she is almost invariably abducted, raped, ravished, indentured, bonded 16 16 (sometimes branded), enslaved, prostituted, and betrayed in a dozen different 17 17 ways.”18 “Honestly, ‘sweet, savage love’ serves as a neat encapsulation of the older 18 18 style of romances,” Wendell and Tan concur, since in them, “it was well-nigh de 19 19 rigueur for the heroine to be raped by the hero.”19 20 20 21 21 14 22 Wendell and Tan, 11. 22 15 23 Turner, 48. 23 16 24 The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first print use of “bodice ripper” for a 24 romance genre to a New York Times book review from September 2, 1979; in it, Vanessa 25 25 Royall is described as “enjoying a good reputation and lucrative income as the author of 26 26 the sort of breathless historical romances … that are known in the publishing trade as 27 bodice-rippers.” The same rhetorical gesture occurs in the Chicago Tribune at the end of 27 28 that month, where Joseph Epstein laments that “serious books cannot avail themselves of 28 29 the flash or luridness of dust-jacket art of the kind used, say, by the sort of gothic novel that 29 30 in the trade is known as ‘a bodice-ripper.’” The term may have been used in the publishing 30 31 industry by the fall of 1979, but precisely what it referred to—the cover? the “breathless” 31 32 content?—was evidently still not settled. 32 33 17 Stephen Grover, “The Bodice-Busters: A Sure-Fire Formula for Literary Success,” 33 34 Wall Street Journal, November 5, 1980, 1, 14. 34 18 35 Turner, 48. 35 19 36 Wendell and Tan, 12. According to Carol Thurston’s painstaking tally of 52 “erotic 36 historical romances”Proof published between 1972 and 1981,Copy slightly more than half the heroines 37 37 38 (54 percent of them, to be exact) are raped in the course of the novel (78). That said, Thurston 38 continues, “in only 18.5 percent of the stories is rape portrayed as a sexual act—the ‘rape 39 39 fantasy’—an act of seduction in which the heroine ultimately finds pleasure and even reaches 40 40 orgasm” (78), and in “nearly three quarters” of the novels that include rape of any kind, “the 41 hero expresses the belief that the victim suffered a physical and psychological assault that 41 42 was not her fault—a decidedly contemporary point of view” (78). Corpus selection and 42 43 analytical bias are always an issue in such statistical claims, but the overall picture here bears 43 44 little resemblance to the myth. The vast majority of these narrative rapes were full-on violent 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 92 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 93
We find a remarkable agreement, then, between the early journalistic account of 1 1 the Women’s Historical Romance and the more recent one written by crucial figures 2 2 in the American romance blogosphere: an agreement not just about what was “de 3 3 rigueur” in “these novels,” but about the comfortable convergence between the 4 4 Woodiwiss and Rogers volumes, such that they are spoken of as a pair. The phrase 5 5 “romances like Sweet Savage Love and The Flame and the Flower,” as Beyond 6 6 Heaving Bosoms puts it, comes readily to the lips of romance readers, reviewers, 7 7 and bloggers, and scholarship has often followed suit. Sometimes the two books 8 8 are even conflated. Literary historian and theorist Anne Williams sagely observes 9 9 in Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic that “the publication of Rosemary Rogers’s 10 10 The Flame and the Flower in 1974 marked the end of the 50s Gothic craze and the 11 11 ascendancy of the ‘bodice ripper.’”20 To be sure, this slip comes in a footnote; the 12 12 main text of the study gets the attributions right. Yet it still suggests that, whether 13 13 to Williams or to her copyeditors, on some level, the two books are really one, and 14 14 the one thing they are is a bodice ripper. 15 15 To shake off the power this literary historiography has over us, we might begin 16 16 by asking how closely, in fact, Sweet Savage Love really followed the model of 17 17 The Flame and the Flower. In a 2012 interview, the editor who first read them 18 18 both, Nancy Coffey, recalled that her own initial impression was of difference, 19 19 not similarity. Despite how the manuscript was addressed, Coffey did not think 20 20 that Woodiwiss’s readers would like the Rogers volume. It was too sexual, too 21 21 violent, too far removed from what ends up, in Woodiwiss’s hands, a rather sweet 22 22 and redemptive narrative. Although Turner quotes Coffey as saying “we’ve got 23 23 another one,” the editor suspected at the time that that there would be very little 24 24 overlap between the novels’ readerships.21 Indeed, although they’re both historical 25 25 novels with an early rape of the heroine, and although Rogers gives a nod to the 26 26 earlier text in her heroine’s surname—could it really be a coincidence that she’s 27 27 named Ginny Brandon?—the books mostly offer a series of sharp contrasts. 28 28 In The Flame and the Flower, the hero and heroine are in each other’s company 29 29 for almost the entire book. They have sex only with each other; indeed, after 30 30 Brandon forces Heather, he spends the next year celibate, restored to a flustered, 31 31 unhappy state of metaphorical virginity and unable to muster attraction to anyone 32 32 else. (The virginity motif isn’t particularly subtle: “He felt as if he were again a 33 33 virgin,”22 Brandon notes with alarm a few chapters after the rape. He finds himself 34 34 “blushing like an unsullied virgin!”23 shortly thereafter, and so on.) After a year 35 35 36 36 37 representationsProof of patriarchal dominion over the heroine, Copy whether by the hero or by others, with 37 38 “contemporary” antirape discourse, largely an outgrowth of second-wave feminist thinking 38 39 and activism, making its way not just into the novels, but into the mouths of their heroes. 39 40 20 Anne Williams, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (Chicago: University of 40 41 Chicago Press, 1995), 159. 41 42 21 Nancy Coffey, in-person interview with Sarah S. G. Frantz. New York, June 24, 2011. 42 43 22 Woodiwiss, 165. 43 44 23 Woodiwiss, 182. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 93 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM 94 Romance Fiction and American Culture
of both lusting after Heather and learning to appreciate her worth, the impulse to 1 1 assault her again crosses his mind. “Damn, it’s come to rape,”24 he muses naked in 2 2 front of a mirror—but this time the thought fills him with wistful regret, spurring 3 3 him into a memorably overwrought soliloquy: 4 4 5 He sighed heavily. “I had such thoughts of tender tidings sweetly exchanged 5 6 between us. But now I must lie upon my bed of thorns or none at all and to 6 7 have nothing of her frightens me more than the battle yet to come. But perhaps 7 8 this moment yet to be will lead to more fertile ground between us and we might 8 9 sometime hence share tender passion more bent of love.”25 9 10 10 11 Meanwhile, in a soliloquy of her own, Heather runs through a series of possible 11 12 responses to his desire. “No longer am I frightened nor just a girl,” she reflects, 12 13 deciding first to “fight and claw and scratch and keep my thighs closed tightly until 13 14 my strength has been exhausted,” none of which she did in the initial terrified rape 14 15 scene.26 A moment later, she changes her mind. “He is my husband and father of 15 16 my child. He owns me and I am the one without right to hold myself from him.”27 16 17 Yet if Heather is no longer a frightened girl, she is just as certainly not submissive 17 18 chattel—and Woodiwiss interrupts her heroine’s second, submissive thought with 18 19 an assertive realization. “This”—a sexual marriage to Brandon—“is what I’ve 19 20 wanted and yearned for,” Heather abruptly admits to herself. “This is what I’ve 20 21 planned for, worked to have.”28 When hapless Brandon enters the bedroom, he 21 22 is flustered to find his wife neither resistant nor grimly submissive, but seductive, 22 23 even aggressive in her sexuality. “She slipped her hand behind his neck and drew 23 24 him down to her,” Woodiwiss writes, and Heather whispers to her flummoxed 24 25 husband, “It took you long enough, my darling.”29 A page later, as their orgasms 25 26 subside, Heather jokes that “had I known before what it was like, I would have 26 27 demanded my rights”30: a neat reversal of her husband’s earlier patriarchal rhetoric. 27 28 From this pivotal love scene onward, Heather’s sexual desire for Brandon, her 28 29 enthusiastic consent to sex with him, and her complete satisfaction by him are 29 30 never in doubt. She throws herself into sexual exploration within the marriage 30 31 “with an abandon that left her radiant,”31 we are told; their lovemaking is variously 31 32 tender and rough, with the latter scenes echoing and transforming the earlier 32 33 assault, now restaged as a source of pleasure for her,32 to the point where she can 33 34 even “slyly” joke with him about the rape, in the novel’s closing pages, as part 34 35 35 36 24 Woodiwiss, 391. 36 25 Proof Copy 37 Woodiwiss, 391. 37 38 26 Woodiwiss, 390. 38 39 27 Woodiwiss, 390. 39 40 28 Woodiwiss, 390. 40 41 29 Woodiwiss, 392. 41 42 30 Woodiwiss, 394. 42 43 31 Woodiwiss, 409. 43 44 32 Woodiwiss, 410. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 94 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 95
of their erotic banter.33 “It’s always an adventure, going to bed with you,”34 she 1 1 tells her husband dreamily, and the structure of the novel transvalues the opening 2 2 rape from a horrific misunderstanding—Brandon thinks she’s a prostitute playing 3 3 a game of resistance to arouse him—into a sort of fortunate fall. “He snatched me 4 4 away from a nightmare and gave me joy,” she tells a friend late in the novel,35 with 5 5 Woodiwiss deftly substituting the etymological root meaning of “rape”—from the 6 6 Latin rapere, says the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning among other things, “to 7 7 carry off, snatch away”—rather than the expected, more purely sexual and legal 8 8 term. (Woodiwiss is not known for her subtlety with language, but this is a truly 9 9 artful moment, and deserves our recognition.) 10 10 The transformative and recuperative story arc of The Flame and the Flower 11 11 is utterly lacking in Sweet Savage Love. Well before our central couple meet, we 12 12 see the novel’s hero, Steve, have rough, ambiguously consensual sex with Sonya, 13 13 the sexually frustrated stepmother of the heroine, Ginny. Initially Sonya takes the 14 14 initiative, ripping his shirt (not he her bodice) and reaching down to “uncover” 15 15 him, but Sonya’s brief “cry of despair” as he penetrates her and her tears of shame 16 16 afterwards trouble the scene.36 She subsequently “despised herself and hated him,”37 17 17 we’re told, yet she continues to both crave and enjoy sex with Steve: a pornographic 18 18 paradigm of female ambivalence, body set against mind, which will haunt the novel 19 19 as a whole. When Steve and Ginny first meet, he gropes her—as in Heather’s case, 20 20 he thinks she’s a prostitute sent up to him—but he stops when she slaps him, the 21 21 slap itself filling Ginny with “savage pleasure.”38 When they meet again, the novel 22 22 repeatedly emphasizes both her virginal curiosity and her desire for Steve as a man 23 23 who is “honest with women,”39 refreshingly frank about his lust. Ultimately, in a 24 24 long, sensual scene, Ginny asks Steve to take her virginity, which he is happy to do.40 25 25 Where, then, do things go wrong? Just a few pages after sleeping with Steve, 26 26 Ginny finds herself, likeS onya, self-divided and self-chastising: 27 27 28 A grimace of distaste pulled at the corners of her mouth. Oh, God, she was no 28 29 better than he, than any loose woman who had no control over her own baser 29 30 emotions! How easily she had given herself to him—another conquest in a long 30 31 line of them, no doubt. Well, he would not find her as easy again—not him, nor 31 32 any other man.41 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 33 Woodiwiss, 480. 36 37 34 Woodiwiss,Proof 442. Copy 37 38 35 Woodiwiss, 412. 38 39 36 Rosemary Rogers, Sweet Savage Love (New York: Avon Books, 1974), 25–6. 39 40 37 Rogers, 27. 40 41 38 Rogers, 71. 41 42 39 Rogers, 137. 42 43 40 Rogers, 163. 43 44 41 Rogers, 171. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 95 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM 96 Romance Fiction and American Culture
Where Woodiwiss repeatedly emphasizes Heather’s innocence, both before and 1 1 after the rape, Rogers emphasizes Ginny’s ambivalence, her bodily desire and 2 2 sexual agency at odds with her socially mandated desire to see herself as different 3 3 from other, less-refined women (“any loose woman”; “a cheap dance-hall girl,” 4 4 as she thinks of herself a few pages later), and from the world of sexual frankness 5 5 associated with Steve’s working-class masculinity (“she was no better than he”). 6 6 Having aspired in her youth to the sexual freedom of a “courtesan” and not the 7 7 burdens and strictures of marriage,42 Ginny recoils from the way that her sexually 8 8 liberated version of herself has begun to be realized, and she is repulsed by the 9 9 “strange yearning”43 that her mind, full of proprieties, has been unable to control. 10 10 (That strange yearning bears comparison to Heather’s strange stirring, a point we 11 11 will return to in our conclusion.) 12 12 Ginny does her best to reinscribe herself into social norms by shunning and 13 13 declaring her hatred of Steve and by cozying up instead, without desire, to the 14 14 hapless and proper Carl Hoskins—a turn which Steve misreads as a new sexual 15 15 interest on her part. Rogers aims for us to read the heroine’s “scorn and rejection”44 16 16 of Steve as a sort of false consciousness, as false as his own disgusted assumption, 17 17 for most of the novel, that having lost her virginity Ginny has become an easy, 18 18 promiscuous, and hypocritical woman.45 The shocking thing about Steve’s first 19 19 rape of Ginny, then, a few chapters later, is that Rogers presents it to us not as a 20 20 psychological assault, and not as a turning point in their relationship, but as an 21 21 obvious, even inevitable instantiation of this love-hate, odi-et-amo relationship. It’s 22 22 a moment of somatic honesty, in which Ginny’s body “betrayed her” by responding 23 23 in a way that her conscious mind refuses to do46: a hoary pornographic trope which 24 24 the novel returns to again and again (“her body was a traitor to her mind”47 we read 25 25 again almost 150 pages later), but one which is entirely absent from The Flame and 26 26 the Flower. (To borrow terms from twenty-first-century romance scholar Angela 27 27 Toscano, a pioneer of the narratological—rather than sociological—study of rape 28 28 in the genre, the Woodiwiss novel features a “Rape of Mistaken Identity” while the 29 29 Rogers deploys the “Rape of Possession”48 motif.) 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 42 Rogers, 172–3. 34 34 43 Rogers, 171. 35 35 44 Rogers, 224. 36 36 45 OverProof a hundred and fifty pages after theirCopy first sexual intercourse, for example, 37 37 Steve is still galled by his sense that “he’d relieved her of her virginity and taught her that 38 sex was enjoyable—and she’d promptly turned around and sought further enjoyment in 38 39 numbers” (379). 39 40 46 Rogers, 226. 40 41 47 Rogers, 361. 41 42 48 Angela R. Toscano, “A Parody of Love: The Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular 42 43 Romance,” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 2, no. 2 (2012), http://jprstudies.org/2012/04/ 43 44 a-parody-of-love-the-narrative-uses-of-rape-in-popular-romance-by-angela-toscano/. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 96 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 97
If the sexual arc of the Woodiwiss novel runs from rape to mutual pleasure, 1 1 then, the arc of the Rogers runs from body-mind division to an erotic and romantic 2 2 wholeheartedness, and it takes much, much longer to get there. Over the course 3 3 of Sweet Savage Love, Steve repeatedly rapes Ginny, using not just her inevitable 4 4 orgasm but the fact of their former consensual sex against her. Once given, he 5 5 assumes, consent can never truly be taken away; unlike the rapist-turned-virgin 6 6 Brandon, Steve feels entitled to force Ginny whenever he chooses. A modicum of 7 7 respect slips into their relationship when, during one assault, Ginny knifes Steve, 8 8 filling him with “puzzled wonder” but “no anger.”49 Quite the contrary: “I still 9 9 want to make love to you,” he quietly tells her, and in a remarkable scene, she 10 10 accepts, his blood dripping down on her breasts as they have sex.50 But although 11 11 Steve proposes that they not “underestimate each other anymore” after this 12 12 encounter,51 Ginny remembers the words more with fear than with contentment,52 13 13 and Steve’s new estimation of her does not entail emotional commitment or sexual 14 14 exclusivity. Brandon may lose interest in all other women after raping Heather, but 15 15 Steve continues to engage in frequent consensual encounters, both casually and 16 16 as part of long-term relationships. Both men may be forced into marrying their 17 17 respective heroines, but only one ditches his bride to sleep with another woman on 18 18 his wedding night. 19 19 The motif of physical separation between hero and heroine becomes crucial 20 20 in the final third of Sweet Savage Love. Public history (the overthrow of Emperor 21 21 Maximilian and the restoration of the Mexican Republic) keeps the protagonists 22 22 apart for many chapters at a time, as does Steve’s imprisonment, with Ginny sure 23 23 he’s been killed by a firing squad. This separation delays the resolution of the 24 24 Steve-Ginny love plot, but it does not lessen the novel’s fascination with violence, 25 25 sexual and otherwise. After sleeping with Steve’s captor, Colonel Devereaux, to 26 26 save Steve’s life—the first sexual encounter in the novel that is described with 27 27 revulsion, as Heather’s rape had been, and the moment when Ginny first admits 28 28 to herself how much she loves Steve and how much she has “really wanted him”53 29 29 every time—Ginny finds herself enduring chapter after chapter of rape and forced 30 30 prostitution, eventually stabbing her prime tormentor, the sexual sadist Beal, and 31 31 finding some succor (if not happiness) as the consensual mistress of the gracious 32 32 French officer Michel. Steve, in turn, gets whipped, branded, shackled, imprisoned, 33 33 homosexually molested (though not raped), and staked out in the blazing sun for 34 34 ants to consume, sure all along that Ginny has laughingly betrayed him to this fate. 35 35 Even when the two are reunited, violence marks their relationship. Ginny knife- 36 36 fights Steve’s lover, Concepción, to claim him for herself; when her declaration 37 Proof Copy 37 of love enrages him, she taunts him that he can’t scare her any longer, holds a 38 38 39 39 40 49 Rogers, 307. 40 41 50 Rogers, 307. 41 42 51 Rogers, 310. 42 43 52 Rogers, 361. 43 44 53 Rogers, 501. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 97 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM 98 Romance Fiction and American Culture
knife to his throat, and demands her “rights” from him, ordering him to strip54 1 1 and “forc[ing] him to admit he wanted her.”55 “You see how easy I am to rape,”56 2 2 he muses afterwards, ruefully acknowledging that precisely because she’s become 3 3 such a “bitch,”57 he’s met his match, a woman “almost as depraved as [he].”58 4 4 Others before us have noted how different these novels are: differences that 5 5 ripple outward into the contrasting subgenres that each founds. For example, 6 6 Kristin Ramsdell’s Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre (2012)—a third edition 7 7 of her detailed advisory volume for American librarians—distinguishes between 8 8 the “Sensual Historical” and the “Sweet /Savage historical” subgenres of the “Hot 9 9 Historical Explosion” of the 1970s, with Woodiwiss and Rogers as a representative 10 10 figure for each.59 Writing at the end of the 1980s, Carol Thurston marks the same 11 11 distinction, contrasting what we might think of as a romance-centered romance 12 12 novel, hinging on the development of the hero-heroine relationship, with a sort of 13 13 female picaresque romance novel, one which might be threaded on a heterosexual 14 14 romance plot, but whose primary focus is the testing and resilience of the heroine. 15 15 “Woodiwiss’s books,” Thurston writes, “focus unremittingly on the developing 16 16 physical and emotional relationship between heroine and hero, while Rogers’s 17 17 stories ‘travel’—from England, France, Spain, and Tripoli to Texas, Louisiana, and 18 18 Mexico—with the heroine experiencing a variety of adventures and men, leaving 19 19 the reader near exhaustion.”60 Push back a few years more, and the distinctions 20 20 grow even more granular. In 1981, Publishers Weekly enumerated three varieties. 21 21 Some readers might choose the “sensual historical” embodied by The Flame 22 22 and the Flower, which is primarily distinguished by the “unfailing fidelity of the 23 23 heroine for the hero—and exclusive sex between them.” Others might prefer the 24 24 “romantic historical” novel: a text which might well be marketed in a similar style, 25 25 and exhibit a comparable heft (Anna Lee Waldo’s Sacajawea weighs in at just over 26 26 1,000 pages), but which distinguishes itself by being “scrupulously researched” 27 27 with “a literary prose style and considerable historical accuracy” that set it apart 28 28 from its lower-brow cousins. Finally, alongside the “sensual” and “romantic” 29 29 historical novel, readers will discover books where the heroine has “explicit sex 30 30 with the hero and additional male characters; graphic sexual variations; abuse and/ 31 31 or rape; and no guarantee that the heroine will end up with the first man” she has 32 32 sex with. Only this third type is labeled by Publisher’s Weekly as a “bodice-ripper.”61 33 33 34 34 35 54 Rogers, 638. 35 36 55 Rogers, 640. 36 56 Proof Copy 37 Rogers, 640. 37 38 57 Rogers, 640. 38 39 58 Rogers, 643. 39 40 59 Kristin Ramsdell, Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara: 40 41 Libraries Unlimited, 2012), 189. 41 42 60 Carol Thurston, The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest 42 43 for a New Sexual Identity (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 50. 43 44 61 Fallon,, 63. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 98 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 99
One final piece of evidence from the 1980s bears remembering. In Reading 1 1 the Romance, her pioneering ethnographic study of a group of white, middle-aged 2 2 Midwestern American romance readers—many of them born before or quite early 3 3 in the Baby Boom,62 whose preferred form of recreational reading was the then 4 4 decade-old genre of the blockbuster historical romance—Janice Radway notes 5 5 how differently the Smithton readers speak of Woodiwiss’s and Rogers’s novels. 6 6 Woodiwiss is loved, so much so that the Woodiwiss-style sensual historical romance 7 7 provides Radway with her structural model for what one chapter calls “The Ideal 8 8 Romance.” Rogers, by contrast, is “universally detested,” her work seen by the 9 9 Smithton women as “‘trashy,’ ‘filthy,’ and ‘perverted.’”63 Sweet Savage Love was 10 10 not reviled per se—most of the women, Radway writes, “confessed that they liked 11 11 [this] first novel”—but Rogers’s subsequent novels serve as “perfect examples of 12 12 bad romances,” illustrating the structural features which constitute the “garbage- 13 13 dump” romance or (as one of Radway’s chapter titles puts it) “The Failed Romance.”64 14 14 How do the structures differ? The “Ideal Romance” features a “spare, tightly 15 15 organized narrative core” that highlights the hero and heroine “gradually and 16 16 inexorably” moving toward coupledom; indeed, writes Radway, such a romance 17 17 “appears to be about the inevitability of the deepening of ‘true love’ into an intense 18 18 conjugal commitment.”65 The “Failed Romance,” by contrast, is “characterized by 19 19 a rising and falling action that seems to parallel the couple’s alternating connections 20 20 and separation,”66 an exhausting inner “travel” that matches the outer one noted 21 21 by Thurston.67 Thematically, then, “failed” romance novels “take as their principal 22 22 subject the myriad problems and difficulties that must be overcome if mere sexual 23 23 attraction is not to deteriorate into violence, indifference, or abandonment.”68 The 24 24 final union of the hero and heroine fails to satisfy the Smithton readers, Radway 25 25 hypothesizes, because the “interim paths” of the narrative steer too far from the 26 26 “ameliorable internal problems” faced by the couple for those problems to feel 27 27 believably resolved.69 Both types of novels, the critic insists, may feature difficult 28 28 or painful “events,” including sexual violence. Ultimately “it matters less what 29 29 30 30 62 31 Dorothy (“Dot”) Evans, the bookstore owner who put Radway in touch with her 31 customers, was “forty-eight years old at the time of the study,” Radway reports (57), which 32 32 means she was born around 1932. The ages of the other Smithton readers are not stated 33 33 directly. However, the vast majority had at least one child 18 years old or older, and since 34 the “mean age at marriage was 19.9 years” (57), this suggests that many of the women 34 35 were in their late thirties when Radway met them, putting their birth in the early 1940s. See 35 36 Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984; 36 37 reprint withProof a new introduction, Chapel Hill: University Copy of North Carolina Press, 1991). 37 38 63 Radway, 69. See also Thurston, 51, for a similar judgment. 38 39 64 Radway, 160. 39 40 65 Radway, 162. 40 41 66 Radway, 162. 41 42 67 Thurston, 50. 42 43 68 Radway, 162. 43 44 69 Radway, 171. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 99 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM 100 Romance Fiction and American Culture
events are used,” writes Radway, and more whether these “events” are used in a 1 1 particular way by the narrative.70 For the romance to be “ideal,” or anything like 2 2 it, the dangerous “events” must be embedded in a structurally, ideologically, and 3 3 emotionally reassuring narrative. 4 4 Thirty years on, it’s clear that Reading the Romance was researched and written 5 5 at a crucial turning point in American romance history. Researched in middle 6 6 America in 1980, published in 1984, Radway’s study captures the period when 7 7 the Woodiwiss-style sensual historical novel was beginning to prevail over the 8 8 true bodice ripper in the evolution of American romance: a triumph so decisive, in 9 9 fact, that the latter subgenre has effectively disappeared from the romance market, 10 10 although its moniker remains. Even self-consciously retro twenty-first-century 11 11 novels, books which deliberately court the bodice-ripper label—Australian novelist 12 12 Anna Campbell’s controversial Avon debut, Claiming the Courtesan (2007), that 13 13 featured a mind-body split in the heroine that hearkened back to Rogers, comes 14 14 to mind71—generally stick to the structural, emotional, and ideological model of 15 15 the sensual historical, in which, as Radway puts it, problems are “ameliorable,” 16 16 mutual fidelity is assured, and a crescendo of “mutual appreciation” provides 17 17 the soundtrack to the happy ending.72 It seems no coincidence that the shift 18 18 inadvertently captured by Reading the Romance occurs during the years when 19 19 the Romance Writers of America is founded (1980) and begins to hold its annual 20 20 conferences (the first is 1981): events which bring editors, agents, and authors 21 21 together, and which therefore lend themselves to an increasing self-consciousness 22 22 and epitextual standardization of the genre, a clarification of what popular romance 23 23 is in the eyes of key industry participants. 24 24 “During the seventies,” Thurston explains, “readers had become not only fans 25 25 but critics, and they objected more and more to rape and violence” and to “the 26 26 long separations lovers were subjected to during their wide ranging adventures,”73 27 27 characteristic features of the Rogers-styled bodice ripper rather than the sensual 28 28 historical. Thurston quotes an unnamed romance editor at the firstR WA conference, 29 29 who tells the assembled authors that readers now, in 1981, want “No more rape!” 30 30 Keeping our terminology clear, we might see this transition as a market-based 31 31 selection of the sensual historical romance over the bodice ripper in the evolution 32 32 of the broader, overarching genre of American women’s historical romance: a 33 33 selection that has led not only to the ecological marginalization of rapist heroes, with 34 34 a few notable exceptions (some literal, some metaphorical),74 but perhaps also, in 35 35 the process, to the sidelining of other tonal, structural, and ideological possibilities 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 70 Radway, 184. 38 39 71 Anna Campbell, Claiming the Courtesan (New York: Avon Books, 2007). 39 40 72 Radway, 170. 40 41 73 Thurston, 51. 41 42 74 Wendell and Tan, for example, point out the resurgence of “forced seduction” and 42 43 forced transformation motifs in paranormal romance, where they play a similar structural 43 44 role to the rapes in earlier historical romances. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 100 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 101
within the genre. The grand, teleological narrative that carries romance forward 1 1 from a ”rapetastic” past75 to a more egalitarian, feminist present elides the fact, for 2 2 example, that at least some of those earlier romances were, for example, far less 3 3 committed to telling a “central love story with an optimistic, emotionally satisfying 4 4 ending” than the RWA’s current definition of the genre now demands. American 5 5 popular romance once flirted with stories where heroines had extended sexual and 6 6 amorous relationships, sometimes quite happy ones, with men other than the hero, 7 7 as in Bertrice Small’s sprawling Skye O’Malley (1984), a blockbuster far more 8 8 in the Rogers vein than the Woodiwiss. (Small has explained that she wrote her 9 9 first novel, The Kadin, as historical fiction tout court; in a very real sense it only 10 10 became a “historical romance novel” by virtue of its being published, after years 11 11 of rejections, by Avon.) Likewise, as Ginny’s knife-fighting inSweet Savage Love 12 12 suggests, the actual “bodice- ripper” subgenre tended to be at home, not just with 13 13 anger and violence, but specifically with female anger and violence—a motif that 14 14 we now associate primarily with paranormal romance, rather than the historical— 15 15 while Ginny’s ambivalent journey from an unsettling “strange yearning”76 to a 16 16 “depraved” sexual self-confidence77 finds its home now mostly in erotic romance 17 17 and erotica proper. 18 18 Pam Rosenthal calls the “bodice ripper” and its sensual historical sister “the 19 19 sexual radical fringe of romance.”78 “It was during the first decade or so ofS econd 20 20 Wave feminism that women were encountering fictions of extreme sexuality,” she 21 21 explains: “Not stuff you actually wanted to do, but portrayals of states of mind.” 22 22 In a 2010 discussion of “Imagining Sex,” Rosenthal—a RITA-award winning 23 23 historical romance author who is also, as Molly Weatherfield, the author of two 24 24 celebrated volumes of metatextual BDSM erotica, Carrie’s Story and Safe Word— 25 25 notes that the seventies novels opened a “conversation in the romance world about 26 26 sexuality and its complexities,” including “issues of power and pleasure,” that has 27 27 continued to the present. Then, as now, that conversation was not limited to the 28 28 world of romance. A “parallel discussion,” Rosenthal observes, “was happening 29 29 among feminists at the same time”: feminists whom she worked and argued and 30 30 sometimes marched with in the Bay Area, feminists whose work she read and 31 31 recommended to others as a bookseller. 32 32 The parallels between these discussions haven’t always been so clear; indeed, 33 33 as a rule, feminism and the blockbuster historical romance novels have been seen 34 34 as in tension with one another, or on a collision course. Nancy Coffey recalls that 35 35 the Hearst Building was picketed by feminists because Avon, owned by Hearst, 36 36 was “publishing such dreck,” work that was, in the protesters’ eyes, profoundly 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 75 Wendell and Tan, 11. 39 40 76 Rogers, 171. 40 41 77 Rogers, 643. 41 42 78 Pam Rosenthal, “A Generation of Erotic Romance,” History Hoydens (blog), 42 43 November 5, 2010, accessed June 30, 2014, http://historyhoydens.blogspot.com/2010/11/ 43 44 generation-of-erotic-romance.html. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 101 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM 102 Romance Fiction and American Culture
damaging to women.79 “What does it all mean,” Turner muses, a little smarmily, 1 1 in 1978, “this fantasy of ravishment and degradation which appears to have 2 2 overtaken the women of the liberated seventies?” As late as 1990, feminist scholars 3 3 JoAnn Castagna and Robin L. Radespiel would still comfortably excoriate the 4 4 “glorification of male aggression as an intensifier of female sexual pleasure” in a 5 5 genre which, in their account, “portrays rape as romantic and rapists as heroes,”80 6 6 and they worry about what the popularity of the bodice rippers, especially Rogers’s 7 7 novels, reveals about their audience. “In order to remain interested in the novels, 8 8 on some level they must agree with this ideology,” they declare,81 adding that “it is 9 9 no surprise to us that Sweet Savage Love was published at the same time as Against 10 10 Our Will.”82 11 11 Castagna and Radespiel present this juxtaposition as though its meaning were 12 12 self-evident. Rogers’s sweeping, epic novel is a symptom of rape culture, while 13 13 Susan Brownmiller’s sweeping, epochal examination of rape culture offers the 14 14 diagnosis, or the cure.83 Readers can see eye to eye with the novelist in “Making 15 15 Rape Romantic”—thus the title of the scholars’ essay—or they can side with the 16 16 antirape theorist and activist; after all, Castagna and Radespiel aver, “[W]here 17 17 feminist analyses define rape as an assertion of an unacceptable male fear and 18 18 hatred of women, bodice rippers offer an understanding of rape as the ultimate 19 19 measure of male love and commitment,” two incompatible, mutually exclusive 20 20 conceptual frameworks.84 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 79 The protest doesn’t seem to have been covered in the news, but it’s well documented 25 that the National Organization for Women picketed the Hearst Building in San Francisco 25 26 in 1968, to protest the San Francisco Chronicle’s sex-segregated want ads, and activists 26 27 led by Robin Morgan (who later coined the slogan “pornography is the theory; rape is 27 28 the practice”) occupied the offices of Grove Press in 1970 to protest both its resistance to 28 29 unionization and its publishing of what one pamphlet called “humiliating, degrading, and 29 30 dehumanizing” material. A protest of Avon in New York is hardly unlikely. See Stephanie 30 31 Gilmore, Groundswell: Grassroots Feminist Activism in Postwar America (110) and 31 32 Perversion for Profit (220). 32 80 33 JoAnn Castagna and Robin L. Radespiel, “Making Rape Romantic: A Study of 33 34 Rosemary Rogers’ ‘Steve and Ginny’ Novels,” in Women and Violence in Literature: An 34 Essay Collection, ed. Katherine Anne Ackley (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 35 35 1990), 299. 36 36 81 CastagnaProof and Radespiel, 321–2. Copy 37 37 82 Castagna and Radespiel, 322. 38 38 83 Although Castagna and Radespiel do not actually pursue a close reading of 1970s 39 39 historical romance fiction through Brownmiller’s ideas, and although we have not done so here, 40 the project might be fruitful. Heather’s need to pair up with Brandon to avoid assault by other, 40 41 worse men, for example, resonates with Brownmiller’s theory that protection from rape (or, at 41 42 least, rape by other men) lies at the origin of heterosexual coupledom. See Susan Brownmiller, 42 43 Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1975). 43 44 84 Castagna and Radespiel, 322. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 102 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 103
There are, however, several problems with this analysis. First, the general claim 1 1 that bodice rippers represent rape as love or the measure of love falls apart when 2 2 you test it against the narrative deployments of rape in particular texts. The claim 3 3 is demonstrably false as a reading of Sweet Savage Love, in which Steve’s rapes of 4 4 Ginny are presented as acts of punishment and assertions of his male power over 5 5 her (including his power over her sexual response), but never as the measure of 6 6 his love—and in which, one must note, many men other than Steve commit rapes, 7 7 not just of Ginny, but of many other women, named and nameless, such that rape 8 8 is portrayed as a pervasive act of brutality by men against women as a class, as 9 9 well as an act of sexual domination by one individual man, the hero, against a 10 10 particular woman. Indeed, the “ultimate measure of male love and commitment” 11 11 in Sweet Savage Love is Steve’s return to Ginny at the end of the novel, having 12 12 finally faced up to and acknowledged his own sexual victimization, at the hands 13 13 of an “effeminate young doctor” in prison.85 In a repulsive but revealing twist, we 14 14 are invited to rejoice that the doctor, a smirking caricature, has been murdered in 15 15 revenge by one of his later victims, with the strong implication that the doctor was, 16 16 himself, anally raped by his killer, his throat slashed by the edge of a bottle whose 17 17 top was snapped off, the prison guards chuckle, “up there.”86 Rape in Sweet Savage 18 18 Love thus turns out to be, at least sometimes, a measure not of love but precisely 19 19 of “fear and hatred”87 both of women and of effeminacy in men; it is, in fact, a 20 20 defining feature of patriarchal power over both sexes, a structural insight that is far 21 21 closer to Brownmiller’s than the scholars’ account would allow. 22 22 The same resistance to romanticizing rape can be found in The Flame and the 23 23 Flower. Brandon, you’ll recall, first rapes Heather as part of what he assumes is 24 24 a sexual game being played by a prostitute and himself as her client. He thinks 25 25 they are playing a game like the one that Eric Berne, in the bestselling Games 26 26 People Play (1964),88 called “rapo”: a game that had been seen as so remarkable 27 27 and unobjectionable when Berne’s book was published, less than a decade before 28 28 Woodiwiss’s novel, that advertisements for Games People Play in The New York 29 29 Times, the New Republic, and the Saturday Review all cheerfully trumpeted his 30 30 analysis of this game as a titillating highlight. “Rapo” was, they smirked, “our 31 31 subterranean, national sex game—the unspoken call to arms that silently goes forth 32 32 each night across the land.”89 In the Woodiwiss novel, by contrast, rape is no game, 33 33 nor is it the “ultimate measure of male love and commitment.”90 The fact that 34 34 Brandon rapes Heather several times at the start of the novel is a barrier to love and 35 35 commitment, not a measure of it, and Woodiwiss casts his thought of assaulting her 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 85 Rogers, 678. 38 39 86 Rogers, 691. 39 40 87 Castagna and Radespiel, 322. 40 41 88 Eric Berne, Games People Play (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964). 41 42 89 See, for example, “Games People Play,” Advertisement, Saturday Review 48, no. 2 42 43 (1965): 15. 43 44 90 Castagna and Radespiel, 322. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 103 10/23/2015 7:17:26 PM 104 Romance Fiction and American Culture
just before the novel’s pivotal sex scene (“Damn, it’s come to rape”91) as a stumble 1 1 or failure on his part, a recursion to the gender norms that he had been slowly 2 2 leaving behind. 3 3 Brandon victimizes Heather at the start of the novel, and almost does it 4 4 again halfway through, because he has internalized what the novel presents as 5 5 patriarchally warped notions of female sexual coyness and male sexual authority, 6 6 notions which the novel itself implicitly critiques. (It’s not a trivial matter that 7 7 Brandon names the act of forcing sex on his wife, in that second scene, as “rape”; 8 8 in every state in the union, when the novel was published, he could have forced 9 9 her without the assault being classified, legally, as a rape.) The novel is not about 10 10 “making rape romantic,” then, but rather about the utopian hope that romance— 11 11 including happy, mutual, exuberant sexual love—can still be found in the face 12 12 of a culture of rape: a romance which takes the form of a cleansed or purified 13 13 heterosexuality, one from which the memory of rape has been so thoroughly healed 14 14 and rewritten as to be all but unrecognizable. Woodiwiss is not, by any means, 15 15 a radical feminist author, but she clearly wants to free both her heroine and her 16 16 hero from the mind-forced manacles of what second-wave feminists were then just 17 17 beginning to label “rape culture.” 18 18 If Castagna and Radespiel’s account of rape in the bodice rippers falls apart 19 19 when we look closely at these individual novels, what of their account of romance 20 20 readers? Did readers really have to choose between feminism and the blockbuster 21 21 historical romances? An essay in Time magazine, at the start of 1977, jokingly 22 22 suggested that “author Rogers seems to think that regular ravishment can raise 23 23 a woman’s consciousness. ‘I’m tired of being raped,’ Marisa announces at last on 24 24 page 654. ‘Don’t I count as a person?’”92 We’re meant to find the page number 25 25 amusing, as though any actual consciousness-raising novel would strike such 26 26 questioning, critical notes both earlier and more often. (Think of Marilyn French’s 27 27 The Women’s Room, the bestselling middlebrow feminist novel published later that 28 28 year.) Yet when the Time magazine columnist notes that “Avon’s editors believe the 29 29 question [Marisa’s “Don’t I count as a person?”] echoes a cry from the hearts of 30 30 millions of American wives and mothers,” he undermines his own smarminess, 31 31 offering a bit of contemporary evidence for the compatibility between romance and 32 32 feminism that one of those wives and mothers, romance reader and future romance 33 33 author Susan Elizabeth Phillips, would also attest to in retrospect. In an essay from 34 34 the early 1990s, Phillips writes that she and a female friend, “the most outspoken 35 35 feminists in our neighborhood,” felt “no conflict between our feminist views and 36 36 the contentProof of the books we were reading” inCopy the 1970s, all of them blockbuster 37 37 historical romances.93 If we reread these novels with an eye to where and when 38 38 39 39 40 91 Woodiwiss, 391. 40 41 92 Brad Darrach, “Rosemary’s Babies,” Time (January 17, 1977): 100. 41 42 93 Susan Elizabeth Phillips, “The Romance and the Empowerment of Women,” in 42 43 Dangerous Men & Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance, 43 44 ed. Jayne Ann Krentz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 66. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 104 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 105
and how feminist discourse enters them, even simply as an overdue objection to 1 1 mistreatment, we may well find more of it than we expect. (In Sweet Savage Love, 2 2 for example, Steve’s rapes of Ginny are never directly critiqued, but late in the 3 3 novel Ginny objects quite bitterly and pointedly to the hero’s sexist assumption 4 4 that he needs to “forgive” her for having been raped by others and forced into 5 5 prostitution, thus “making her pay,” as he ultimately realizes, “for the very crimes 6 6 that had been committed against her,” by others and by himself.94) 7 7 In closing, let us offer two suggestions as to how future work on the blockbuster 8 8 historical romances might better proceed. First, these novels need to be reread in 9 9 a context that includes, yes, Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, but also the rest of 10 10 the varied and volatile media landscape that dealt with sex and women’s lives. 11 11 We cannot claim that historical romance novels trafficked in “rape fantasies,” for 12 12 example, without comparing the representations of nonconsensual sex in these 13 13 books with the way such sex appears in My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday, 14 14 the groundbreaking compendium of female sexual fantasies published in 1973, 15 15 the year between The Flame and the Flower and Sweet Savage Love, and in the 16 16 contemporaneously emerging world of female-authored slash fiction, much of it, 17 17 as Edi Bjorkland has noted, delighting in scenes of male-male sexual violence.95 18 18 Many mainstream literary and middlebrow bestsellers of the early 1970s also 19 19 depended on rape as a plot device,96 as did popular novels in other genres, from 20 20 thrillers to science fiction and fantasy. Were the romance versions actually different, 21 21 or have they simply been treated differently? We do not yet know. 22 22 Nor have scholars yet addressed how the treatments of sex, violence, and love 23 23 in the blockbuster romances compare to their treatments in film and television. 24 24 The years that brought readers Woodiwiss and Rogers also brought groundbreaking 25 25 “made-for-TV movies that offered ‘serious’ treatment of sex-themed social issues, 26 26 most notably CBS’s Cry Rape! (27 November 1973) and NBC’s A Case of Rape 27 27 (20 February 1974),”97 as well as almost two dozen plots involving sexual assault 28 28 on 1970s daytime soaps, including All My Children, Another World, Days of Our 29 29 Lives, The Doctors, Guiding Light, Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, One Life 30 30 to Live, The Young and the Restless, and, most famously, General Hospital, where 31 31 Luke’s rape of Laura in 1979 provoked fans to cry, “Rape me, Luke! Rape me,” 32 32 at actor Anthony Geary at an appearance in Fort Worth, Texas, the following year.98 33 33 34 34 35 35 94 Rogers, 680. 36 36 95 Edi Bjorkland, “Attraction and Rage: Pain and Violence in Women’s Recent 37 Proof Copy 37 Underground Fiction,” in Women and Violence in Literature: An Essay Collection, ed. 38 Katherine Anne Ackley ( New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990), 255–98. 38 39 96 Elaine Showalter, “Rethinking the Seventies: Women Writers and Violence,” in 39 40 Women and Violence in Literature: An Essay Collection, ed. Katherine Anne Ackley (New 40 41 York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990), 237–54. 41 42 97 Elana Levine, Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American 42 43 Television (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 29. 43 44 98 Levine, 246. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 105 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM 106 Romance Fiction and American Culture
“Before the feminist anti-rape movement successfully intervened in public 1 1 discourses of rape,” Elana Levine has argued, rape plots in daytime dramas were 2 2 “sympathetic to the victim (as opposed to blaming her for ‘asking for it’),”99 but 3 3 they generally presented the act as “shameful, but not violent or criminal” on the 4 4 part of the rapist, and “hurtful but not especially damaging or enraging” on the 5 5 side of the victim.100 In these “old-fashioned” rape plots, as Levine calls them, 6 6 sexual assault was portrayed “more as an unfortunate expression of an individual’s 7 7 intense emotions than as a socially sanctioned wrong deeply rooted in a patriarchal 8 8 disregard for women”101; this as opposed to the stark portrayals of criminal injustice, 9 9 including ill-treatment by the criminal justice system, in the contrasting “social 10 10 issue rape plot” dramas that emerged as the decade went on.102 “Conceptions of 11 11 rape as an act of sexual passion and as an outpouring of hostility coexisted,” 12 12 Levine writes, capturing an “ongoing ambivalence in American society’s attitude 13 13 toward rape in the wake of the sexual revolution and the anti-rape movement”103 14 14 and contributing to the production of a third category, the “ambiguous rape plot”104 15 15 in which the conflicting narratives of passion and hostility were deliberately 16 16 intertwined so that writers and viewers could untangle, revisit, and repeatedly 17 17 reinterpret them as the plot of the show moved forward. In a sentence, Levine 18 18 notes the contemporaneous popularity of romance novels with rape plots, but she 19 19 quickly drops the subject; her threefold conceptual model might well prove fruitful 20 20 in a more sustained comparative investigation. 21 21 Finally, scholars need to think more, and more subtly, about the ways in which 22 22 the blockbuster historical romances offered fictions of sexual awakening, both 23 23 for their characters and for their readers. These awakenings may happen in the 24 24 contexts of gender oppression and sexualized violence, but they are never reducible 25 25 to oppression or violence: an important distinction, given the debates over female 26 26 sexual fantasy and lived experience at that time and in ours. In a famous passage 27 27 from Against Our Will, for example, Brownmiller declares, in categorical italics, 28 28 that “the rape fantasy exists in women as a man-made iceberg,” and “[i]t can 29 29 be destroyed—by feminism.”105 Less famously, a moment later, she mourns the 30 30 impact that this internalized “man-made” context has had on women’s erotic 31 31 imaginations: “Rarely have we been allowed to explore, discover and present what 32 32 might be some workable sexual daydreams, if only we could give them free rein.” 33 33 She writes, “Rather, our female sexual fantasies have been handed to us on a brass 34 34 platter by those very same men who have labored so lovingly to promote their own 35 35 fantasies. Because of this deliberate cultural imbalance, most women, I think have 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 99 Levine, 220. 38 39 100 Levine, 216. 39 40 101 Levine, 220. 40 41 102 Levine, 232. 41 42 103 Levine, 232. 42 43 104 Levine, 238. 43 44 105 Brownmiller, 322. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 106 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 107
an unsatisfactory fantasy life when it comes to sex.”106 Her conclusion is striking: 1 1 “Fantasies are important to the enjoyment of sex, I think, but it is a rare woman 2 2 who can successfully fight the culture and come up with her own non-exploitative, 3 3 non-sadomasochistic, non-power-driven imaginative thrust. For this reason, I 4 4 believe, most women who reject the masochistic fantasy role reject the temptation 5 5 of all sexual fantasies, to our sexual loss.”107 6 6 As we have argued repeatedly in this chapter, neither The Flame and the 7 7 Flower nor Sweet Savage Love can be described as a vehicle for “rape fantasy” 8 8 without doing violence—in the case of Woodiwiss, considerable violence—to the 9 9 actual text of the novels. That said, both novels do offer striking portrayals of the 10 10 attractions and perils of sexual fantasy for women, and more broadly of women’s 11 11 acknowledging their strange stirrings and strange yearnings in the context of 12 12 patriarchy. As these phrases suggest, both Heather and Ginny start out estranged 13 13 from their own desires. Not ignorant of them—both experience sexual curiosity 14 14 early on, both in looking at men’s bodies and in autoerotic contemplations of 15 15 their own physical beauty—but estranged from them, unwilling or unable to own 16 16 them completely. A psychoanalytic critic might see this inability as structural and 17 17 inevitable, a function of the nature of desire itself, but in each of these novels, a new 18 18 connection to her own “strange” sexuality dawns in the heroine after she loses her 19 19 virginity. For Ginny, the connection is disturbing, and she does her best to repress 20 20 it, rejecting Steve and this part of herself, only to have that repressed sexuality 21 21 forced on her by Steve, again and again, as though he can force her to own and 22 22 accept it. (Only the rapes by Steve fit into this plot arc in the novel; neither rapes by 23 23 other men, nor dutiful sex with them, plays any part in Ginny’s awakening.) If this 24 24 is a sexual fantasy, it is, as Sallie Tisdale explains, “the dream of being dominated 25 25 by sex itself—being forced, as it were, by the intensity of the sex to submit to and 26 26 accept sex, be bound by sex, mastered by sex,”108 and it’s suggestive that Ginny’s 27 27 ultimate acceptance of “sex itself” comes not in a scene with Steve, or any other 28 28 man, but when she is dancing “like a Mexican gypsy”109 in the closing pages of the 29 29 novel, with self-delighting erotic abandon. 30 30 As for Heather? Let us return to the curious passage where we began, the one 31 31 where, pregnant, newly married, Heather she gazes on her sleeping husband: 32 32 33 His body lay bare to her gaze now, but she did not turn away though her face 33 34 flamed with her own temerity.I nstead she let her eyes roam over him slowly and 34 35 with much interest, satisfying her curiosity. There was no need of others to tell 35 36 her what she could see herself—that he was magnificently made, like some wild, 36 37 grandProof beast of the forests. Long, flexible musclesCopy were superbly conditioned, his 37 38 38 39 39 40 106 Brownmiller, 323. 40 41 107 Brownmiller, 324. 41 42 108 Sallie Tisdale, Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (New York: 42 43 Doubleday, 1994), 221. This passage is quoted by Rosenthal in her “Imagining Sex” talk. 43 44 109 Rogers, 701. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 107 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM 108 Romance Fiction and American Culture
belly flat and hard, his hips narrow. Her hand, slim and white, appeared out of 1 1 place upon his brown and hairy chest. 2 Disturbed by the strange stirring within her, she eased from him and moved 2 3 toward her side of the bed. She turned away, trying not to think how her eyes had 3 4 lingered on his body, and she saw a leaf fall to the floor of the balcony. 4 5 She huddled under the covers, wishing she were as warm-blooded as the man 5 6 beside her.110 6 7 7 8 The simplest way to read this scene is as one of sexual curiosity about Brandon’s 8 9 “superbly conditioned” physique, and although Heather looks away before her gaze 9 10 reaches his phallus, we’re reminded of the contradiction it—and he—embodies, as 10 11 both the perpetrator of rape and, potentially, the provider of pleasure. Yet the falling 11 12 leaf that rounds out the scene is not simply the symbolic fig leaf that once covered 12 13 Brandon but is now fallen away, baring him to her inspection; it’s also, presumably, 13 14 the fig leaf that coveredH eather’s own sexuality, which she begins in this scene to 14 15 explore. That plot arc ends when she is, herself, fully sexual, “as warm-blooded as 15 16 the man beside her”: a woman able to enjoy the bedroom “adventure”111 that is made 16 17 possible once rape and the threat of rape, at least by Brandon, have been expelled 17 18 from the novel by Heather’s willingness to own and act on her desires. This is, to 18 19 be sure, a utopian scenario—but it is also a profound and provocative one, based 19 20 on the hope that what Brownmiller calls “workable sexual daydreams”112 can be 20 21 found by passing through the oppressive dynamics imposed by patriarchy, rather 21 22 than by proving oneself the “rare woman who successfully fights the culture”113 22 23 and starts from a clean political and erotic slate. 23 24 Heather’s progress invites the reader to follow—and, as subsequent history 24 25 shows, millions of readers accepted the invitation. We can claim too much for this 25 26 “romance revolution,” which brought female sexuality into mass-market consumer 26 27 culture without, one might argue, causing the sorts of radical social transformations 27 28 that Brownmiller and others hoped to see. But we can also claim too little. In the 28 29 twenty-first century, American romance is replete with framing devices which 29 30 prepare readers for sexual daydreams of every variety: paratextual lists of the 30 31 kinks and scenarios to be explored, which serve double-duty as sales pitches and 31 32 trigger warnings. Within the texts, readers now find negotiations over safe words, 32 33 hard and soft limits, and other contractual motifs associated with BDSM power 33 34 exchange, as well as the simple, transformative question “what are you into?”114 34 35 Online romance analysis, discussion, and review sites regularly light up with 35 36 critically Proofsavvy debates over the enduring presenceCopy of nonconsensual (noncon) 36 37 and dubiously consensual (dubcon) sexual material in the genre. Even in relatively 37 38 tame romances, characters anticipate what the narrative refers to, with a wink, as 38 39 39 40 110 Woodiwiss, 107–8. 40 41 111 Woodiwiss, 442. 41 42 112 Brownmiller, 323. 42 43 113 Brownmiller, 323. 43 44 114 Victoria Dahl, Real Men Will (Don Mills, Ontario: Harlequin, 2011), 261. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 108 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings 109
“bodice ripping.”115 Each of these changes is due, at least in part, to the publishing 1 1 and cultural changes sparked by the women’s historical romances of the 1970s. 2 2 Stephanie Coontz has written of the “shock of recognition” and “overwhelming 3 3 sense of relief” experienced by many readers of The Feminine Mystique, women 4 4 surprised and gratified to “learn that they were not alone in their feelings” of 5 5 isolation and alienation116—and also in what Friedan called, in her opening 6 6 paragraph, “a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning.”117 The women’s historical 7 7 romances of the 1970s likewise testified to the shared, communal nature of strange 8 8 stirrings and strange yearnings, both in the erotic realm and in the gender-political 9 9 world where love and romance must find, however awkwardly, a home. 10 10 11 11 12 Works Cited 12 13 13 14 Berne, Eric. Games People Play. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964. 14 15 Bjorkland, Edi. “Attraction and Rage: Pain and Violence in Women’s Recent 15 16 Underground Fiction.” In Women and Violence in Literature: An Essay 16 17 Collection, edited by Katherine Anne Ackley, 255–98. New York and London: 17 18 Garland Publishing, 1990. 18 19 Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Fawcett 19 20 Columbine, 1975. 20 21 Campbell, Anna. Claiming the Courtesan. New York: Avon Books, 2007. 21 22 Castagna, JoAnn, and Robin L. Radespiel. “Making Rape Romantic: A Study 22 23 of Rosemary Rogers’ ‘Steve and Ginny’ Novels.” In Women and Violence in 23 24 Literature: An Essay Collection, edited by Katherine Anne Ackley, 299–325. 24 25 New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990. 25 26 Coffey, Nancy. Interview with Sarah Frantz Lyons. New York, June 24, 2011. 26 27 Coontz, Stephanie. A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American 27 28 Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. New York: Basic Books, 2011. 28 29 Dahl, Victoria. Real Men Will. Don Mills, Ontario: Harlequin, 2011. 29 30 Darrach, Brad. “Rosemary’s Babies,” Time. January 17, 1977: 100. 30 31 Fallon, Eileen. Words of Love: A Complete Guide to Romance Fiction. New York 31 32 and London: Garland Publishing, 1984. 32 33 Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. Reprint with an introduction by 33 34 Anna Quinlan. New York: Norton, 1997. 34 35 “Games People Play.” Advertisement. Saturday Review 48, no. 2 (1965): 99. Web. 35 36 Grover, Stephen. “The Bodice-Busters: A Sure-Fire Formula for Literary Success.” 36 37 Wall StreetProof Journal, November 5, 1980. Copy 37 38 Levine, Elana. Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American 38 39 Television. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007. 39 40 40 41 115 Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Natural Born Charmer (New York: Avon, 2008), 227. 41 42 116 Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American 42 43 Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 20. 43 44 117 Quoted in Coontz, 19. 44
Romance Fiction book.indb 109 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM 110 Romance Fiction and American Culture
Phillips, Susan Elizabeth. Natural Born Charmer. New York: Avon, 2008. 1 1 ———. “The Romance and the Empowerment of Women.” In Dangerous Men & 2 2 Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance, edited 3 3 by Jayne Ann Krentz, 53–9. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 4 4 1992. 5 5 Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular 6 6 Literature. 1984. Reprint with a new introduction. Chapel Hill: University of 7 7 North Carolina Press, 1991. 8 8 Ramsdell, Kristin. Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara: 9 9 Libraries Unlimited, 2012. 10 10 Rogers, Rosemary. Sweet Savage Love. New York: Avon Books, 1974. 11 11 Rosenthal, Pam. “A Generation of Erotic Romance.” History Hoydens (blog). 12 12 November 5, 2010. Accessed June 30, 2014. http://historyhoydens.blogspot. 13 13 com/2010/11/generation-of-erotic-romance.html. 14 14 Showalter, Elaine. “Rethinking the Seventies: Women Writers and Violence.” In 15 15 Women and Violence in Literature: An Essay Collection, edited by Katherine 16 16 Anne Ackley, 237–54. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990. 17 17 Thurston, Carol. The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest 18 18 for a New Sexual Identity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. 19 19 Tisdale, Sallie. Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex. New York: 20 20 Doubleday, 1994. 21 21 Toscano, Angela R. “A Parody of Love: The Narrative Uses of Rape in Popular 22 22 Romance.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 2, no. 2 (Spring 2012). 23 23 http://jprstudies.org/2012/04/a-parody-of-love-the-narrative-uses-of-rape-in- 24 24 popular-romance-by-angela-toscano/. 25 25 Turner, Alice K. “The Tempestuous, Tumultuous, Turbulent, Torrid, and Terribly 26 26 Profitable World of Paperback Passion.” New York Magazine, February 13, 27 27 1978: 46–9. 28 28 “The 25 Most Intriguing People of 1976.” People 6, no. 26 (December 27, 1976). 29 29 http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,20067253,00.html . 30 30 Wendell, Sarah, and Candy Tan. Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ 31 31 Guide to Romance Novels. New York: Fireside, 2009. 32 32 Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: University of 33 33 Chicago Press, 1995. 34 34 Woodiwiss, Kathleen. The Flame and the Flower. New York: Avon, 1972. 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44
RomanceView Fiction publication book.indb stats 110 10/23/2015 7:17:27 PM