How Rape Could ever Have been Found Romantic
Last month, I told my sister-in-law, who lives in my parents' house, to feel free to go through any of my grandmother's romance book collection if she found it. She's teaching a class on romance lit this sem, so I thought she might find the collection useful, if it ever turned up, but I warned her that a lot of it was dated. In many books the ingenue is seduced or raped (including what would be defined as statutory rape these days), and she falls in love with the perpetrator.
I started reading these books when I was fifteen. Not sneakily, my grandmother and mother gave me permission. There were some good stories there but what I can't unsee is how much rape there was--and that it was considered romantic.
This disturbs me all the more because in all other ways my grandmother was a woman ahead of her time. She was the first woman to drive in her hometown, Zamboanga, and she even studied flying (probably inspired by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whose books she also had). She defied her father in going off to marry my grandfather during WWII. He most certainly did not seduce her, by the way, he was over a year younger and was as far as I can tell, a sensitive intellectual. She limited her family to two children--unusual in those days. She helped with the family business and wanted to work outside the home, against my grandfather's wishes. So how could she embrace the paternalistic world presented in so many of these books?
Perhaps its as well I read them at idealistic fifteen to eighteen, when I could question: How could anyone find rape romantic?
Several stick out in my mind. There's one Victoria Holt with a lovely Bavarian setting in Victorian times. The girl is seventeen and she claims she knows about sex and its consequences. But when she meets the guy and he invites her to bed, she feels herself powerless to say either no or yes. She goes to him without willing it, in her words, it's as if her body has a will of its own--and she ends up feeling guilty and worrying about the consequences afterward. And this happens several times. So creepy, but reader, she married him.
I suppose some people might see that as romantic, sort of being swept off your feet. I never did. I read the book for the beauty of the setting and the intriguing mystery but I could just not ship those two.
The Regency ones nearly all had an alpha male advertised in the blurb and I avoided them because of that. Even books I liked could have this issue lurking, though. In The Wind Dancer, Juliette is just fourteen when a much older man starts hitting on her. He doesn't make a secret of it even then. She decides to give in to him five years later. She's attracted, yes, but it's more out of resignation. He gives her great sex as her "reward" and wins her over. Ugh. At least the book contained the more satisfying romance of Francois who helped Juliette's friend Catherine recover from her trauma of rape in a tender, gradual way. But by having the two kinds of relationships alongside, it's like it's saying one is as good as the other. In fact, Catherine's relationship is treated as secondary, implying it's "less" romantic.
Books in modern-day settings (sixties to eighties) could have this element as well. There are two books I read set at this time where an angry, jealous man abused the girl (stupidly) in love with him verbally and physically. In the Mills & Boone one, he even violently rapes the girl on their wedding night and makes her sign divorce papers. Twisted much? But she still loves him! And some remarkable coincidence makes the guy finally believe the girl in each case and all is well.
Let's not lay all the blame on adult romances. Even the rare YA with sex from those years could be problematic. And even by a good Christian writer like Madeleine L'Engle. A House like a Lotus has always sat uneasily on me because of the weirdness of its relationships. Seventeen-year-old Polly dates a guy who's like ten years older. Her parents (insanely) let her, maybe because Polly is such a cold fish. She makes it clear she likes him but is not in love with him. But when she suffers a terrible shock, she calls him and he takes advantage of her vulnerability. He tells her to listen to her body and she does, finding she enjoys it and has no regrets. She still doesn't fall in love with him--don't know if that's to her credit or not. The sex scene is written so poetically I used it in a report in CW class on writing about sex (the class was not about writing about sex, just the report, which my teacher roped me into. He probably figured my younger virginal classmates needed it). But over time I have grown more disturbed about it. She's seventeen and he's like ten years older--it's statutory rape. I do feel that L'Engle could've been making a point that we're okay with that kind of abuse, forgive it easily, but not the drunken terror that Polly's much older woman friend inflicts. But it's also possible that there was no intended point, that L'Engle didn't find it so bad because she was a product of the same generation as my grandmother. As groundbreaking as A Wrinkle in Time and its first three sequels were, L'Engle here reverts to being a product of her patriarchal time, with Meg of A Wrinkle in Time, determined to sacrifice her intellectual interests to raise her children, despite her mother's admirable work-at-home example presented in those other books.
In those days, women were not supposed to have desires but they did, of course. Being seduced or raped absolved the heroine (and the vicarious reader) of responsibility but still allowed her to experience sex. It was romantic to women who couldn't acknowledge their desires because they didn't have to contend with guilt.
Rape in these novels often happens to fulfill the desires of these women that they didn't know they had. This taps in to a more common fantasy: That the lover read the woman's mind and give her what she never knew she wanted. She can thus maintain the chaste purity of her mind while achieving satisfaction. This, psychologists tell us, is highly immature. Communication is key to a healthy relationship, sexual or otherwise, and you need to figure out what you want rather than handing that responsibility to someone else.
Finally there's the suggestion that the guy must really be crazy about her, which is why he just couldn't help himself. I don't think I need to analyze that at length. You might not be able to help how you feel, but you can help how you act. Unfortunately, in earlier times the patriarchal myth that men just couldn't rein in their strong desires persisted. A self-reported article written by a nude male model that I read recently suggests otherwise: A man can control himself in any situation--it's a matter of choice and self-awareness. Naturally, you want to be loved and desired--but surely not by a sick sadist?
That's important to remember. Only in a book could you be so lucky that the guy is hunky, doesn't physically harm you or impregnate you, and ultimately loves you--though that love is questionable. Many seemed to see the woman as just some prize to be won or a creature to be kept in a gilded cage, as modern Karina complains in Love by Square Foot when her fiance offers to ensconce her in a house he decorated himself.
I think it's my growing up in more modern, feminist times, that protected me even at fifteen from being seduced into thinking forced kisses and sex or being stalked, kidnapped, or even just bought with luxury are thrilling beginnings to a beautiful relationship. I didn't even like the ones where men rescued and bossed women around insisting it was for their own good. Occasional rescue and aid is fine and good, of course, but not to the point of the male rescuer treating you as incompetent.
In what seems bid to placate women who loved these books, Brownmiller says in her 1975 book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape: "Fantasies are important to the enjoyment of sex, I think, but it is a rare woman who can successfully fight the culture and come up with her own non-exploitative, non-sadomasochistic, non-power-driven imaginative thrust. For this reason, I believe, most women who reject the masochistic fantasy role reject the temptation of all sexual fantasies, to our sexual loss."
I'd like to believe this is no longer true. Romance, for me and most of the post-women's lib generations, can only blossom where there is equality, mutual respect, and friendship. If all the romances my grandmother owned that showed otherwise were consumed by termites, then it is just as well.
I started reading these books when I was fifteen. Not sneakily, my grandmother and mother gave me permission. There were some good stories there but what I can't unsee is how much rape there was--and that it was considered romantic.
This disturbs me all the more because in all other ways my grandmother was a woman ahead of her time. She was the first woman to drive in her hometown, Zamboanga, and she even studied flying (probably inspired by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whose books she also had). She defied her father in going off to marry my grandfather during WWII. He most certainly did not seduce her, by the way, he was over a year younger and was as far as I can tell, a sensitive intellectual. She limited her family to two children--unusual in those days. She helped with the family business and wanted to work outside the home, against my grandfather's wishes. So how could she embrace the paternalistic world presented in so many of these books?
Perhaps its as well I read them at idealistic fifteen to eighteen, when I could question: How could anyone find rape romantic?
Several stick out in my mind. There's one Victoria Holt with a lovely Bavarian setting in Victorian times. The girl is seventeen and she claims she knows about sex and its consequences. But when she meets the guy and he invites her to bed, she feels herself powerless to say either no or yes. She goes to him without willing it, in her words, it's as if her body has a will of its own--and she ends up feeling guilty and worrying about the consequences afterward. And this happens several times. So creepy, but reader, she married him.
I suppose some people might see that as romantic, sort of being swept off your feet. I never did. I read the book for the beauty of the setting and the intriguing mystery but I could just not ship those two.
The Regency ones nearly all had an alpha male advertised in the blurb and I avoided them because of that. Even books I liked could have this issue lurking, though. In The Wind Dancer, Juliette is just fourteen when a much older man starts hitting on her. He doesn't make a secret of it even then. She decides to give in to him five years later. She's attracted, yes, but it's more out of resignation. He gives her great sex as her "reward" and wins her over. Ugh. At least the book contained the more satisfying romance of Francois who helped Juliette's friend Catherine recover from her trauma of rape in a tender, gradual way. But by having the two kinds of relationships alongside, it's like it's saying one is as good as the other. In fact, Catherine's relationship is treated as secondary, implying it's "less" romantic.
Books in modern-day settings (sixties to eighties) could have this element as well. There are two books I read set at this time where an angry, jealous man abused the girl (stupidly) in love with him verbally and physically. In the Mills & Boone one, he even violently rapes the girl on their wedding night and makes her sign divorce papers. Twisted much? But she still loves him! And some remarkable coincidence makes the guy finally believe the girl in each case and all is well.
Let's not lay all the blame on adult romances. Even the rare YA with sex from those years could be problematic. And even by a good Christian writer like Madeleine L'Engle. A House like a Lotus has always sat uneasily on me because of the weirdness of its relationships. Seventeen-year-old Polly dates a guy who's like ten years older. Her parents (insanely) let her, maybe because Polly is such a cold fish. She makes it clear she likes him but is not in love with him. But when she suffers a terrible shock, she calls him and he takes advantage of her vulnerability. He tells her to listen to her body and she does, finding she enjoys it and has no regrets. She still doesn't fall in love with him--don't know if that's to her credit or not. The sex scene is written so poetically I used it in a report in CW class on writing about sex (the class was not about writing about sex, just the report, which my teacher roped me into. He probably figured my younger virginal classmates needed it). But over time I have grown more disturbed about it. She's seventeen and he's like ten years older--it's statutory rape. I do feel that L'Engle could've been making a point that we're okay with that kind of abuse, forgive it easily, but not the drunken terror that Polly's much older woman friend inflicts. But it's also possible that there was no intended point, that L'Engle didn't find it so bad because she was a product of the same generation as my grandmother. As groundbreaking as A Wrinkle in Time and its first three sequels were, L'Engle here reverts to being a product of her patriarchal time, with Meg of A Wrinkle in Time, determined to sacrifice her intellectual interests to raise her children, despite her mother's admirable work-at-home example presented in those other books.
In those days, women were not supposed to have desires but they did, of course. Being seduced or raped absolved the heroine (and the vicarious reader) of responsibility but still allowed her to experience sex. It was romantic to women who couldn't acknowledge their desires because they didn't have to contend with guilt.
Rape in these novels often happens to fulfill the desires of these women that they didn't know they had. This taps in to a more common fantasy: That the lover read the woman's mind and give her what she never knew she wanted. She can thus maintain the chaste purity of her mind while achieving satisfaction. This, psychologists tell us, is highly immature. Communication is key to a healthy relationship, sexual or otherwise, and you need to figure out what you want rather than handing that responsibility to someone else.
Finally there's the suggestion that the guy must really be crazy about her, which is why he just couldn't help himself. I don't think I need to analyze that at length. You might not be able to help how you feel, but you can help how you act. Unfortunately, in earlier times the patriarchal myth that men just couldn't rein in their strong desires persisted. A self-reported article written by a nude male model that I read recently suggests otherwise: A man can control himself in any situation--it's a matter of choice and self-awareness. Naturally, you want to be loved and desired--but surely not by a sick sadist?
That's important to remember. Only in a book could you be so lucky that the guy is hunky, doesn't physically harm you or impregnate you, and ultimately loves you--though that love is questionable. Many seemed to see the woman as just some prize to be won or a creature to be kept in a gilded cage, as modern Karina complains in Love by Square Foot when her fiance offers to ensconce her in a house he decorated himself.
I think it's my growing up in more modern, feminist times, that protected me even at fifteen from being seduced into thinking forced kisses and sex or being stalked, kidnapped, or even just bought with luxury are thrilling beginnings to a beautiful relationship. I didn't even like the ones where men rescued and bossed women around insisting it was for their own good. Occasional rescue and aid is fine and good, of course, but not to the point of the male rescuer treating you as incompetent.
In what seems bid to placate women who loved these books, Brownmiller says in her 1975 book, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape: "Fantasies are important to the enjoyment of sex, I think, but it is a rare woman who can successfully fight the culture and come up with her own non-exploitative, non-sadomasochistic, non-power-driven imaginative thrust. For this reason, I believe, most women who reject the masochistic fantasy role reject the temptation of all sexual fantasies, to our sexual loss."
I'd like to believe this is no longer true. Romance, for me and most of the post-women's lib generations, can only blossom where there is equality, mutual respect, and friendship. If all the romances my grandmother owned that showed otherwise were consumed by termites, then it is just as well.
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