Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Meeting
April 2009, New Orleans
These are my notes, and may not reflect with perfect accuracy the views of the presenters. If you are interested in following up, I suggest you email the author for a copy of her paper.
This session focused on capitalism, sex, and culture in writing the romance. Books by Judith McNaught, Brenda Jackson, Georgette Heyer, Cathy Maxwell, and Kayla Perrin were discussed.
Complicating the Capitalist: Money and Marriage in Judith McNaught’s contemporary Novels, Jayashree Kamble, U. Minnesota [This is a chapter from her PhD thesis in English at Minnesota, which she defended in December 2008.]
She begins by asking the audience to recite the first line of Pride and Prejudice, which everyone does. In unison.
Entwinement of capitalism and romantic love has been with us since birth of novel.
She examines trope of businessman used in 2nd half of 20th cent.
Personalizes abstract economic force of market.
Romance genre is highly refined product of capitalism, allied with it, but does not solely validate corporate capitalism.
Genre exhibits valorization of individualism, accumulation of private property ability to create and manipulate desire
Hero uses same skill set to win heroine.
We get a longing for fulfilling of genuine promises of capitalism and fear of its inhumanity
1950s Mills and Boon reflects economic shifts in Britain away from regulation and to unbridled capitalist competition
Battle of sexes between capitalist hero and suspicious working class heroine, reflects shift in UK to liberal political economy away from social democracy
British novel plots imported to US
And US experienced similar shifts in this period.
Many novels retain doubts about capitalism being an ideal system. Genre does not posit alternative to capitalism, but shows its shadow side, its flaws.
Ex. Judith McNaught, Tender Triumph (1983) and someone To Watch Over Me (2003)
TT: Hero’s problematic capitalist identity (his father has almost destroyed the family’s massive corporation) is the truth he is hiding from the heroine.
Heroine fears he is hiding abusive past. Strong undercurrent of violence: destructive potential of the capitalist.
Yet he is stalking her.
Romance reassures readers about rightness of economic system that rewards hard work.
But capitalist wealth and acquisition is associated with competition, aggression, tendency to treat relationships as mercantile exchanges
Neither condemning nor propaganda, instead voicing though plot and hero, concerns about excesses of capitalism.
“Contemporary Black Romance Novels and the Politics of Representation”, Julie Moody-Freeman, Depaul University
Brenda Jackson, Strictly Business
Hero, who had grown up in poverty, chooses workaholism, wealth and power, over relationship with his wife, the heroine
bell hooks, All About Love (2003) – many men choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding, over love. Will not surrender will to power.
So, Mitch turns away from love and towards sex.
Gina becomes a possession.
Reveals his embrace of patriarchal masculinity. One up/one down world. Either controller or controlled.
Fear of intimacy as fear of subjection.
Class:
No maids in Brenda Jackson heroine pantheon. Independently wealthy and self supporting. Holds in scorn women who use men to support themselves.
Hostile to women who have not been independent prior to staying at home to raise kids.
Paired up with men who are at least as well off.
Message: if blacks only covet money and power, they will be doomed to remain loveless.
Brenda Jackson, Strictly Business
Men can love if they are willing to get to root of their personal and racial issues.
Mitch has to first identify problem (workaholism), and then connect it to his racial identity
Clear warnings for women to avoid men who would exploit and abuse them
Jackson offers her own personal love story as testament to possibilities she recounts in her novels
“Rip My Bodice: Sex Positive Culture and the Romance Novel Today”, Catherine Roach, Associate Professor of New College at the University of Alabama, her focus is on cultural studies
This is a new book project: She has ideas, enthusiasm, and questions today more than a tight argument.
Tentative book title: “Book Lovers: Love Desire and Fantasy in Popular Culture Romance Narratives”
Has been attending RWAs and doing qualitative research (1 on 1 interviews with writers)
Story of romance is the most powerful narrative in popular culture, maybe in culture in general
You achieve fulfillment through romance. Our culture’s story.
Genre fiction is just one place where this story is told.
She is not doing critique or defense of genre, or close readings of texts.
Wants to develop a feminist and gender studies/cultural studies framework to ask questions.
Romance novels say women’s lives are incomplete without a man, home, children.
This is limiting.
So she’s very happy about ménage stories, m/m, etc. And women who even after boding remain kick ass vampire killer’s etc.
Why is this image so appealing to women?
Offers an alternative imaginative space away from realities that are less than fulfilling or outright oppressive.
Albert Camus wrote that we all have a sweetness in life towards which we turn when we feel worn out.
Alpha male is immune himself to the predations of patriarchy, which after all oppresses lower caste men as well. She can be safe with him form the dangers of life rape, abuse, etc.
Also, roots of romance narrative stretch into high culture.
Roach’s background is religious studies.
Strong religious overtones to romance narrative.
Christian religious story as romance narrative. Omnipresent in high and low culture.
“Find your one true love and live happily ever after” is the romantic Christian story.
Resurrection power, healing power to love. HEA as afterlife.
Both religion and romance are eschatological. End of story is in its beginning.
Romance ending is end of endings, end beyond endings. Like Christian eschaton.
It’s a foundational premise of heteronormative masculine culture, but it is also fantasy of women.
Sex:
Kayla Perrin “Getting Some”
Heroine asks why women feel bad about being sexual.
Notes sexual norms are rapidly changing.
Sex positive culture.
New era opening up – erotica.
Yet, can still be “good girls”.
LGBTQ has had key role in this.
Roach name checks blogs like Rip My Bodice, Smart Bitches, History Hoydens
Are novelists sex educators?
Paradox: change and counter resistance. Promise Rings, Purity Balls, etc.
“Vulgar v. republican (small r): a comparative discussion of class and origin”, Maryan Wherry, Black Hawk College (Maryan is a historian)
Pop fiction will affirm existing interests and attitudes, and use popular formulas to make conscious critique of society
Romance as a limit-breaking genre
Genre fiction: familiar enough to reassure, but must be different enough (convention and invention)
Historical romance will mingle reality with distance of writer
US writers are working in distinctive cultural milieu
Republicanism is foundation of US –social contract, rights, educated elite
You can be whatever you want to be. Not birthright but action and achievement that creates a person. Individual is more important and influential than society.
Contrast US culture with Regency:
In Regency, society is always a character in the novel
Challenge is juggling social roles and restraints
Social rules are viewed in a positive light. Laws, manners, provide security against bad things happening. If the individual behaves, life will be good.
Americans write different Regencies from English specifically because of attitudes towards class
Case studies: Heyer and Maxwell
Heyer: Sees social divisions as just the way it is.
She avoids the dukes in general in favor of younger brothers, etc. Maybe because they run under radar, can be looser.
Heroines: Avoid vulgar behavior. How can I make success of myself within social constraints? No desire to rebel. Even Abby Windover is appalled at end when she is caught eloping.
Regency aristocracy was itself foppy and lightweight, so Heyer’s books cannot be criticized on those grounds
Lower classes are vulgar, unrefined.
Cathy Maxwell, Because of You
Her heroes break rules, is good, they are bold. Notion of individualism and republicanism.
US books really want higher ranks: Dukes, Earls, etc.
Maybe because they fall harder “they will all be demoted”
Female will marry below her station.
They understand social rules, but they reject them.
American authors’ tactic: take Englishman out of England. Maturation process is out of England.
More likely to incorporate Scots, Americans, American Indian, etc. other than English
Tactic used to prove artificiality of titles.
Heroes must all prove themselves of self-made men.
Ex. You and Only You: Aristocracy is portrayed very negatively. Heroine marries down.
Seduction of An English Lady: Hero is commoner, wants more. Wants seat in house, wants title.
Because of temporal and cultural distance Maxwell’s (and American writers’) Regencies are more fantastical.
This is so interesting.
“Many novels retain doubts about capitalism being an ideal system. Genre does not posit alternative to capitalism, but shows its shadow side, its flaw,”
Does genre here include paranormals? BC as far as alternatives to capitalism, sometimes I think paranormal powers go partly toward an alternative, especially with shifters. I especially think of it in Nalini Singh’s shifter cultures. I suppose it goes back to the pastoral weres thing brought up in a previous paper. I even think about the blue collar-ness of the Alcide and his guys – though they’re doing quite well for themselves, they’re not your classic capitalists.
Thanks for these updates. I really love reading them.
These are some really interesting points.
I tend to think that the role of capitalism in modern romance (and a lesser extent, historical) is used to show off the hero’s “alpha-ness.” If we’re not talking about a physical arena — military men of any era, SEP’s football heroes — we’re left with economic success as a proxy for a man’s ability to dominate other men, to show superiour intellect, to “win,” to accumulate power. At it’s base, economic success is still the caveman dragging the mastodon back to the cave — it’s providing for his mate and the clan.
And I would totally buy & read Roach’s book. It sounds fascinating.
Fascinating. I’d second Nicola’s caveman point. Despite the unpleasant connotations of social Darwinism, I think there is something very basic at work here with all these rich and powerful heroes.
carolyn jean wrote:
This is a great point.
Nicola O. wrote:
Tumperkin wrote:
Yes, I agree. Can you have a hero like the guy from Into the Wild — anti capitalist? A communist hero?
Class and economics ARE gendered, or gender is classed and economoized.