Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained by Maya Rodale

Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained by Maya Rodale

Author:Maya Rodale
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: romance novels, Genre Fiction, feminist theory, literary studies, romance studies, women's studies, feminism, Women's Fiction
Publisher: MayaRodale
Published: 2015-04-20T04:00:00+00:00


PURE HEROINE

FROM “OH, NO” TO “OH, YES”

Women’s sexuality has been endlessly discussed, often by men, and often by celibate men at that. Too often, the options presented are extreme opposites: She must be a virgin or a whore; she is innocent and good and has all the potential in the world, or she is ruined, bad, and useless. She has voracious sexual appetites or no sexual feeling at all.

Romance novels are the space where women can examine their sexuality on their own terms. And while there are plenty of trembling virgins and hard heroes who show them what they’re missing, these books present an alternative view—one that isn’t either/or, black/white, but one with shades of gray.

The virgin heroine: WTF?

Nothing highlights the importance of virginity in romance quite like the virgin widow trope. In these particular plots, the heroine has managed to go through a marriage (for years, in some instances) without having had sex with her husband. This is often due to impotent old men, absent husbands, or kindly old men who just want to marry a very young girl to not have sex with, but to grant her access to his impressive library (there is so much to unpack in that fantasy).

The Virgin Widow has to be one of the most absurd tropes, and it leads one to wonder why authors go to such great lengths to preserve a heroine’s virginity throughout a marriage.

Part of the reason is because romance novels reflect the world in which they are written and read. In real life, for most of human history, a woman’s sole value was in her marriageability, which was dependent upon her virginity, because we developed a system of private property that relied almost entirely on the paternity of offspring. A woman’s virginity was a way to ensure a man’s kids were his and that his wealth was passed on appropriately. A woman’s virginity became her primary possession and currency in a world that did not allow women to legally own anything. Virginity was the one bargaining chip a woman had to cash in or exchange for better circumstances.

In many places in the world, it still is.

Many eighteenth and nineteenth century novels for women tended to emphasize the virtue of the heroine (Hello, Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded). And many historical romance plots hinge on a heroine’s sexual inexperience—for example, a marriage of convenience to protect her reputation, a heroine who deliberately gets “ruined” by a notorious rake to avoid an unwanted marriage, or a couple caught in a compromising position and swiftly marched down the aisle.

Like virtuous women in real life, books with virtuous heroines were deemed acceptable for polite company. While there was a great fear that novels would corrupt innocent young women, a heroine who exemplified virtuous behavior made a book more suitable. This also widened the audience for the books, and thus the potential market and sales. Books deemed “unsuitable for ladies were commercially sunk.”[100] Virtuous, virginal heroines—like virtuous, virginal women—were worth something.

Virginity, then, was all about value.



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