Love
On a whim I decided to read a book I’d read about thirty years ago. I wanted to see if I still felt the same way about the characters, about the setting and perhaps even about the genre: romance. Well, I knew I didn’t feel the same way about the genre. I’ve gone from Harlequin Romances to Eckert Tolle, Coetzee, Atwood, Jin, Mosley, Sinclair, Butler, etc. I’ve changed over the years. Changing doesn’t imply that I’ve changed for the better, just that I’ve moved on to sampling other types of writing. I’m proud these days of saying that I’m an eclectic reader.
I love reading great writers. Science fiction has as much a place on my shelves as fictional autobiographies, satire, literary fiction, mysteries and police procedurals. I have always admired Stephen King and his way with words and the way he makes me shiver. I recall that once, while I was pregnant with my second child, I was so engrossed in one of his books that when the doctor came into my exam room, I didn’t hear him. Consequently when he began to speak, I was so startled my book flew across the room and I started shrieking, I was that nervous. To this day I remember the look on the physicians face – absolute disbelief that I could be reading something intense enough to cause that type of reaction.
Dig Deeper
But that’s what a non-reader sees. Other readers who find themselves engrossed in a good read from time to time understand exactly where I am coming from. So, here I was revisiting my favorite “romance” novel. It was not just any novel though. It is what is referred to as a “bodice ripper.” The type of book where the hero is really a bad, bad boy and the heroine takes his shit because, well, that’s what women do in these books. They flaunt their breasts, their femininity and the men strut around with their “pulsing members.” And, during the course of my reading, I discovered that there is a huge difference between the reader I was at sixteen versus the reader that I am now at forty six. And these are some of the things that I’ve discovered from reading a book reportedly about love, lust, men and women.
First, it makes a difference to me if the female character is tough and resilient
versus quiet, and retiring. I am not a shy woman. Most often, I put my foot in my
mouth. Recently, I wrote an email to an author I wanted to get to know better on
a professional level and I said everything wrong, including the phrase, “I’m not
a stalker.” Ding-dong. Warning bell and stupidity bell should have gone off in my
head at the same time. My point – although I misspoke, I at least spoke. For me,
there is very little to be said for a heroine that sits and takes what the hero
dishes out. In this particular book, no matter what the hero did, the heroine sought
first to reconcile and then seemed to shiver and fear the man if he was the least
bit out of sorts. I found the author’s development of
the female character way off,
although, an argument might be made that it was a period piece and that some women
lacked spines way back when. For me it didn’t work the second time around. I kept
wondering when she would get the frying pan and test it on the man’s head. I’ve
been told that one, good solid thunk, does the trick well.
Another huge thing that didn’t work for me was the stereotypical way in which a slave character was portrayed. Okay, so this novel was set about midway through in the south, on a plantation, and there were slaves. Historically accurate books would have slaves. But this woman was the proverbial slave, fat, grinning and happy because she was really “a part of the family.” She took care of the rich whites as if they were her own and as if her love was not bought and purchased on an auction block. This time around, I wondered about the slave’s family – did she have a man too? How about children? Happiness comes with family in tow – had they sold hers?
I don’t know what hurts most – that I didn’t see or understand this aspect the first time around or that I see and understand this very clearly now. I’ve been wondering, how could I have been so blind? And then, pardon me, but it seems as if the heroine fell into the lavish life too easily. She went from rags to riches; she became a slave owner with no tinge of conscience. I wonder that this didn’t bother me at sixteen. Certainly no dunderhead, I must have been unable or unwilling to see the racism embedded in this best selling book. Youth too often comes with a set of blinders. I’m glad young people today can identify and spot things a lot faster.
There are other problems. This whole issue of “no.” When a woman says “no,” that’s what it means. Here we have a heroine in the 1700’s who said no, was raped despite her protest and still fell in love with the hero, married him, rose to great wealth and learned to love and be loved with more than a healthy dose of heated petting in between the pages.
RevelationsAnd I ate this book up. So did millions of other women in the 1970’s. Reading it this time around I cringed. Was it because of this Cinderella mystique? Is a woman supposed to wait for her Prince Charming and then, when he does rescue her from abject poverty, is she to be so forever grateful that he has the authority to treat her however he wants? Does love mean these things? How could a woman write them? What was she thinking? Now as I’m writing this and thinking about the themes that run through this and other romance novels, I “shiver” for the type of troubles it may bring upon young women, especially women of color. What are we supposed to understand from them, to take away about our female selves, about our beauty? Are we to be forever relegated to the black slave who grins and loves “Master” more than her own flesh and blood family? Weren’t there black women who loved their men and children in those bygone days and who worked alongside their partners everyday to provide the essentials for their family? And white women. They held the ever desirable role but what a role. While black women were third or fourth rate depending upon their ability to serve in “The Big Hose” weren’t they at least second rate to their men? Rape and dependence.
How about the novels today? The covers, the images of half naked bodies – what do they say to our girls? To our boys? Did I find anything of value in this re-read? Yes! I realized this book, as well as others in the same genre, fueled my passion and desire to know about history. I read more after reading books that I thought were good at the time and captured my interest. I moved on when I could have stopped – that alone is immeasurably important.
I don’t know that I would recommend this type of book to a young woman now. Girls these days are much more savvy and would probably have verbalized difficulties with many of the scenes, with its treatment of women and women of color. But, even that said, if a young girl picked up this book and I knew that it would help guide her into a lifetime of more reading, my reaction might be to ask her if she would promise me to read it again in thirty years and let me know her thoughts then.
