Warning: This is not your average Valentine's Day post.
It may not have passed your notice that all of the writers here at the Blue Bookcase happen to be women, and if you are truly perceptive, you've probably picked up on the fact that many of us tend to be more than a little opinionated and not at all shy about being equal rights feminists (i.e. we're not bra-burning man-haters; we just wanted to be treated fairly). There, it's said. WHEW.
The elephant of the blog now having been acknowledged, what more perfect topic to address today, the day of sweethearts and candy boxes and roses and love, than the issue of romance plot lines in literature and what that means for women?
Relationship Addiction
Relationship addiction is an affliction addressed by Anne Wilson Schaef in her book, Escape from Intimacy: Untangling the "Love" Addictions: Sex, Romance, Relationships. What a title, eh? As it suggests, Schaef includes chapters on various "love addictions." The one I will be focusing on today is relationship addiction. She says:
Men who are relationship addicts believe they cannot survive without a wife, and women relationship addicts believe they have no identity without a husband...It is absolutely essential to be part of a couple. Persons suffering from this addiction look to the relationship to tell them who they are. They have no concept of establishing an identity of their own, on their own.Unfortunately, so many female protagonists in literature are relationship addicts of varying levels, and reading about them feeds into women's own relationship addictions.
Level One, Anorexia, includes persons obsessed with relationships; they are obsessed with avoiding them.A little counter-intuitive, huh? I don't want to spend much time on this one, as it's less common in literature, but books about women who are anti-love, anti-relationship, feed into that same stereotype that love is the controlling motivator for women.
At Level Two, the addict spends much of his or her time in fantasied relationships...The fantasy is in being coupled with another person. There is little content to the fantasy other than the coupledness, the need for the belief that theirs is a relationship.Your standard plot-line of woman spending all her time thinking about a man, wondering if he could possibly feel the same way. As much as I love Gone With the Wind, the Scarlett/Ashley relationship is a perfect example of this -- an obsessive relationship that's not really based on anything real (good thing that's not the driving plot of the book). I recently began reading The Hangman's Daughter. The opening chapter about the hangman was fascinating, but once it skipped to the part that was actually about the daughter, it was all about her fantasizing about an imagined relationship with a forbidden man she hardly ever even talks to. Gag.
Level Three... These are the people who are acting out their relationship addiction in relationships... There is a frantic quality to their quest for relationships and a terror that is palpable if they think they may be alone.Pretty much any "romance novel" here (which genre, by the way, is booming, according to this interesting article). Getting closer to the level I really want to talk about...
The Vampire Phenomenon
Level Four includes violence and death...Because of the mood-altering, insane, illusionary aspect of relationship addiction...At this level of the disease, judgment is so impaired and self-esteem is so low that they simply cannot mobilize themselves. They may even hope to be killed. In fact, they are frequently suicidal.Aha! We have arrived at last. This is the level I find to be the most dangerous in literature right now, and a large portion of it can be attributed to the Twilight saga. Even more disturbing than the terrible prose of the books is how popular they have become despite the series' anti-feminism in terms of Bella's advanced stages of relationship addiction. Observe:
Note the severe depression that results from her "man" leaving her, the self-destructive habits, and that the ONLY THING THAT MAKES HER FEEL BETTER AGAIN IS ANOTHER "MAN" (Jacob, the shirtless wonder). Does no one else notice anything wrong with this picture? Plus, when Edward and Bella finally have sex in the upcoming book/movie, she wakes up with bruises all over her, and she LIKES it. Can't wait for it to happen to her again.(.....)
It is alarming that this is the kind of romance young adult (and even adult) readers (mostly female) are aspiring to, looking to find their "Edward." It has sparked a resurgence of popularity in "vampire romance," which has always been popular among romance novel readers but is now being extensively read by fiction and young adult fiction readers.
It didn't take us here at the Blue Bookcase long to figure out that in the book blogosphere, for every literary or general fiction book blog, there are 30 "paranormal romance" and "vampire romance" blogs.
So the big question: Can romance exist in novels without being anti-feminist?
The question that remains is obvious: is it possible to write about romance without stereotyping and degrading women?
Surprisingly enough, I would answer that question, "yes." If we return to Schaef's original definition of "relationship addiction," it says, "Persons suffering from this addiction look to the relationship to tell them who they are. They have no concept of establishing an identity of their own, on their own."
Therein lies the key. In my opinion, romance is a perfectly legitimate dimension to include in a novel of literary merit, as long as it is not presented as the defining aspect of the female protagonist's sense of self.
And yes, there are plenty of novels out there that do so successfully! But I have spent enough of your time rambling on about this. If you want to find out what love stories get my stamp of approval, come back tomorrow for Top Ten Tuesday (favorite love stories).
Your thoughts?
P.S.
Happy Valentine's Day
Logging you in...
Falaise · 737 weeks ago
Isabell · 737 weeks ago
Besides, the purpose of novels (IMHO) is to mirror the human experience. If women are being stereotyped in real life, if women suffer from relationship addiction in the world, then it is in no way wondrous that we find that in novels as well. I am not one of those who believe that novels must teach or enhance. They must show and observe.
I am personally a little tired of the tirade against Twilight. It's a book about teenage love, which is almost always obsessive and usually very unhealthy. And in that context, the vampire allegory is very effective.
I do agree with you in that most of the books that profess to be literature about love make me gag, but it is seldom because of any sort of anti-feminist agenda. It's simply the bad writing.
Marta · 737 weeks ago
Marta
parrishlantern 39p · 737 weeks ago
parrishlantern 39p · 737 weeks ago
R @ journal de novo. · 737 weeks ago
I think the Bechdel Test could conceivably be applied to books as well.
1. Two or more women...
2. Who talk to each other...
3. About something other than men (or shoes or makeup or pretty clothes, for that matter).
They could definitely talk about men at some point, and have romances ensue - as you said, as long as that isn't the exclusive or primary thing they are concerned with.
Jane For Books' Sake · 737 weeks ago
In the run-up to Valentine's Day, we ran a feature where we tried to come up with single ladies in literature who were happy about it, and with a couple of notable exceptions, most of the ones we came up with were carers or teachers of some kind, suggesting that women are all too easily cast in binary roles of either mother or sex object.
Anyway, it's here if you want to have a nosey: http://forbookssake.net/2011/02/11/lets-get-criti...
Wendy · 737 weeks ago
Greg Zimmerman · 737 weeks ago
Fantastic post, Connie - really enjoyed reading this.
Eatthebooks · 737 weeks ago
Jennifer · 737 weeks ago
I definitely agree with your conclusion though I'm having trouble coming up with examples at the moment. Definitely food for thought.
Emily · 737 weeks ago
On a slightly different subject, I wonder why even books that have good feminist female characters (like maybe Pride and Prejudice) almost always end with them being rewarded with marriage? That's not to say that marriage is a bad thing or an anti-feminist thing, but it just seems strange to me that the reward for our good character's hard work is almost always marriage, rather than anything else. It's almost like it's ok to be an independent woman so long as you still end up in a stable relationship in the end.
What good books can I think of that show healthy relationships between real people with personalities? I think that Possession by A.S. Byatt is a good example. Christabel and Maud, the two female characters, are both independent to a fault and do things on their own terms, only loving men who respect them as equals and love them for their intellect, and only when it doesn't interfere with their own freedom. Most of the women in Byatt's other novel The Children's Book never even get married, mostly because they are busy with studying or careers. Those women seem extremely real to me, because they want love, but they know that at their time they can't have both an education and a marriage. Some of them decide that "having thoughts" is more important than being married, and some don't, and some don't even get to choose, and all those options are realistic to me. I also think that Never Let Me Go by Kazou ishiguro has some pretty good characters. Though they aren't exactly independent, they aren't defined simply by romantic relationships. They are influenced more by the interactions between friends.
Laura · 721 weeks ago
and not just books, but I've been disturbed by the between the lines message of popular movies too... Thelma and Louise, Urban Cowboy. While people loved the fiercely independent authority-bucking Thelma and Louise, the ultimate lesson said, 'see what happens girls when you be all on your own? better stay home little girl." or Urban Cowboy where a girl test the waters of her own decisions and gets beat up for it only to go back to a safer, but none the less controlling relationship. grrrr.
I think of the books I've read lately, The Thirteenth Tale was a good, non-relationship driven, work that focuses on women as women who can be friends with other interests.
befabian 11p · 709 weeks ago
In terms of paranormal romantic fiction, Christine Warren's books almost all have an interesting discussion about male/female gender roles and expectations. The Mercy Thompson series and Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs are some of the best novels I've read in this genre featuring women who save themselves, their partners, and the day, despite there being big strong men (and werewolves and vampires) around.
Feminism and romance CAN exist, and I personally believe have been doing so from the time of Jane Austen - who was writing very independent women for her time - to Gene Stratton Porter, who was writing in the early 1900s and not only lived a unique lifestyle (maintaining a separate residence from her husband who she did love and have a child with), but also wrote about strong women who stood on their own two feet, even as they fell in love with men who supported them, to Scarlett O'Hara from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind and authorized sequel Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley, to those authors I mentioned who are writing today.