Wherenextcolumbus
Well-Known Member
Wrong thread for this, you can view my comments in the sex positive thread.
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Are Women Realistic Enough to Read Romance Novels?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Wrong thread for this, you can view my comments in the sex positive thread.
Wherenextcolumbus
Well-Known Member
I have read Wuthering Heights which I loved and do not count it as a romance novel.
I would not count it as a romance novel either.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I've got to disagree!! That's romance to the boot, what is the brooding Heathcliff except a darkly romantic capturer of hearts?
Maybe it's that men identify with Rhett. Especially with how he's basically a top notch guy who is badly mistreated for years by the woman he loves. I think that could be it.
Of course, Rhett is actually an unintentional comical figure, as is Scarlett. Rhett is far too perfect, and far too dedicated to Scarlett, to be anything but comical. He has absolutely no serious flaws.
Only Scarlett is flawed. She's contrary. That's her flaw, and it's so basic that Mitchel uses it to explain nearly everything Scarlett does in the novel except that being contrary doesn't explain Scarlett's unexpected aptitude for business.
I suppose you could also argue that Scarlett doesn't know herself -- That's actually Rhett's take on Scarlett, and probably Mitchel's take as well -- but I think that would simply give us two essential flaws: Scarlett is contrary and does not know herself.
I'm not giving up on contrary, you see. Not at all. Even though Mitchel herself might not have thought she was creating a contrary heroine.
It's almost always said that Scarlett is a free spirit who doesn't know herself well enough to know she's compatible with, nor even that she's in love with, Rhett. That's how Scarlett is usually interpreted, I think. But free spirit, poof! Margret Mitchel was a Southern Belle who would not have been capable of identifying a free spirit if she'd been slapped by one.
I only half believe what I'm saying here, of course. I'm really only trying to get a discussion going!
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I agree there's romance, but the characters are way too possible, in some ways, for the novel to be a real romance novel, I think.
I mean, a real romance novel, for one thing, most typically has male characters that quite unlikely to exist outside of fiction.
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Wherenextcolumbus
Well-Known Member
What!? No no no, the novel is about race and class and criticising manhood, it is about how love between a man and woman can crumble because of social expectations, privilege and poverty. It is also about the abused becoming the abuser. Healthcliff becomes a monster, a monster created by other men, and social conventions of masculinity. That's not romantic!
To call it a romantic novel is to undermine all that Bronte was trying to say in my opinion.
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sandandfoam
Veteran Member
OK, my disagreement might be week, but I'll put my cards on the table and we can argue the toss
The reason I perceive Wuthering Heights as full of romance are twofold:
1. Kate Bush (OK so I was 14 or 15 but still, it lingers!)
2. My wife. She read the book when she was a teenager but is still hopelessly in love with Heathcliff. I think this ties into your earlier point about imagination. She would never, she assures me, want to be with a Heathcliff type character IRL - but in her imagination it's wonderful. More than 20 years now she has been in love with that book and all the movies that spun off from it. Particularly the balck and white one (Laurence Olivier?)
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
If i were to try and engage with you on this level I would be turning up to a gunfight with a penknife
OK, my disagreement might be week, but I'll put my cards on the table and we can argue the toss
The reason I perceive Wuthering Heights as full of romance are twofold:
1. Kate Bush (OK so I was 14 or 15 but still, it lingers!)
2. My wife. She read the book when she was a teenager but is still hopelessly in love with Heathcliff. I think this ties into your earlier point about imagination. She would never, she assures me, want to be with a Heathcliff type character IRL - but in her imagination it's wonderful. More than 20 years now she has been in love with that book and all the movies that spun off from it. Particularly the balck and white one (Laurence Olivier?)
Fascinating! I look forward to discussing this with you later today perhaps. Right now, it's just past five in the morning, and I'm headed back to bed on the reasonable grounds I still feel exhausted. I don't know why I woke up in the first place, except that the pressing need to slaughter Scarlett's and Rhett's characters must have been calling me.
Wherenextcolumbus
Well-Known Member
If i were to try and engage with you on this level I would be turning up to a gunfight with a penknife
Can I just add, I have read comments of people saying things like "Cathy is such a b**ch," I don't think so, I think she was doing what she had to do to survive.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I never thought of her like that. She seems a tragic figure to me.
Wherenextcolumbus
Well-Known Member
OK, my disagreement might be week, but I'll put my cards on the table and we can argue the toss
The reason I perceive Wuthering Heights as full of romance are twofold:
1. Kate Bush (OK so I was 14 or 15 but still, it lingers!)
2. My wife. She read the book when she was a teenager but is still hopelessly in love with Heathcliff. I think this ties into your earlier point about imagination. She would never, she assures me, want to be with a Heathcliff type character IRL - but in her imagination it's wonderful. More than 20 years now she has been in love with that book and all the movies that spun off from it. Particularly the balck and white one (Laurence Olivier?)
I think it is the forbidden love story that is so appealing to women, but to romanticize Heathcliff's actions is to romanticize domestic violence.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
I think it is the dark broodiness - not the violence.
To address the OP: I would speculate that there might be a strong correlation between reading romance novels after puberty and playing with dolls before puberty. I had little interest in either one, but did read a couple of romance novels that my mother assigned me to read, and did play with a doll my mother gave me only when she told me to.Now and then I hear someone point out that romance novels typically have male characters that are fundamentally unrealistic -- sometimes to the point of absurdity.
I once had nothing better to do for a few weeks than to take a friend's challenge to read a stack a yard high of romance novels. I couldn't stand them -- because the males were just so impossible! -- and I ended up merely skimming the books.
I've heard again and again that romance novels create in women unrealistic expectations about men. For instance, a heavy reader might be likely to think men are more romantically inclined than they typically are. She might even form the strong opinion that male and female sexuality is absolutely perfectly compatible! (By the way, if men and women had perfectly compatible sexualities, why would there be a demand for romance novels? Why would anyone want what is, essentially, escapist literature?)
I myself scoff at that! I mean, I think the average experienced, adult woman is realistic enough to know BS when she reads it. Some women might not (especially, perhaps, younger women and girls) but I have faith that most women do call BS when they read it.
What do you think, though? Am I just as right about this as I almost always am right about everything else?
Or, are most women suckers for the BS about men found in many -- maybe even most -- romance novels?
I don't see any reason to assume that reading romance novels makes a person unrealistic any more than playing with dolls makes a person unrealistic.
Caladan
Agnostic Pantheist
Let's put it that way, many sectors of society have an escapist literature. Many male sectors have their own versions of Romantic novels, where the men are masculine, experienced, successful, and full of heroism.
There are so much fiction out there which can be branded escapism, sure I'd agree that some of it is more petty, but really as long as the reader is conscious about the difference between fiction and reality it doesn't have to be harmful.
For example I love reading Neil Gaiman, I love the background and setting for his stories, especially when he injects world mythology to the narrative. The worlds he create are mysterious and sensual, but I also close the book at some point and go back to real life. Where there are no supernatural beings and there is less mystery.
Likewise, as long as Romance novels don't enforce false ideals over men, false expectations from women, and the thought that all responsibility for a great sex life, and a great relationship fall solely on men and their (apparently) abundance of confidence, then let everyone read what turns them on.
I think it's better to have many genres and niches, I'd hate it if some of the literature I read turns mainstream.
There are so much fiction out there which can be branded escapism, sure I'd agree that some of it is more petty, but really as long as the reader is conscious about the difference between fiction and reality it doesn't have to be harmful.
For example I love reading Neil Gaiman, I love the background and setting for his stories, especially when he injects world mythology to the narrative. The worlds he create are mysterious and sensual, but I also close the book at some point and go back to real life. Where there are no supernatural beings and there is less mystery.
Likewise, as long as Romance novels don't enforce false ideals over men, false expectations from women, and the thought that all responsibility for a great sex life, and a great relationship fall solely on men and their (apparently) abundance of confidence, then let everyone read what turns them on.
I think it's better to have many genres and niches, I'd hate it if some of the literature I read turns mainstream.
To tell someone that finding a correlation between having played with dolls and later on reading romance novels might logically call into question any significance to finding a correlation between harboring unrealistic expectations of men and being a heavy reader of romance novels is a good rhetorical trick if you can pull it off.
I suspect you're right that a hypothetical romance novel would have relatively greater influence on someone who liked the novel overall, or liked a main character in the novel. I would guess, if I had to, that most romance novels are forgotten by their readers soon after they've put the novel down. I believe forgetting a novel might lessen it's impact on us, but I'd guess the novel still might have some impact.
sandandfoam
Veteran Member
Aha - but do such novels deserve the title 'romance'?
To my mind romance has a very conscious component. Could it be that you're talking about McDonalds and I'm thinking of a restaurant meal?