*I couldn’t have written this post without the help of Laura Vivanco especially the background on Mills & boon, Emma Darcy and in tracking down citations. All the opinions expressed here are mine.
I haven’t been all that satisfied with feminist engagement with popular romance, on either side. Feminists often operate with ignorance as to the diversity of the genre, or they don’t clarify their theoretical grounding for feminism, while romance defenders can sometimes use the word “feminism” or “feminists” in a bit of a loosey goosey way. While in the popular imagination there may be some monolith called “Feminism”, there is no such thing in either history or theory. Just as romance scholars rightfully reject the idea that Romance is one book being written over and over in slightly different ways, I have been hopeful for a parallel recognition on the part of romance defenders of the diversity, tensions, and complex history of feminism and feminist theory. Understanding the vigorous debates among feminists over issues like pornography and cultural diversity, and the equally significant disagreements in feminist theory over how to define even basic terms like sexism, oppression, equality (of what? between whom?), and gender, the word “feminist” has very little meaning for me unless it is situated somewhere in that complex terrain, no matter who is using it.
Given that hope, I was excited to find: “THE BARRISTER’S BEDMATE: Harlequin Mills & Boon and the Bridget Jones Debate” by Rochelle Hurst, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 24, No. 62, December 2009. I saw she cited real feminist theorists, like Linda Alcoff, Iris Young, and Judith Butler, and looked forward to reading the article. As Hurst writes:
This article ultimately endeavours to demonstrate that, textually, even the most recent incarnations of the Harlequin Mills & Boon brand fail to withstand feminist scrutiny. … Something of an antidote to the Harlequin Mills & Boon romance, Bridget Jones’s Diary explicitly answers and counters many of the low-brow romance’s perceived ideological failings,
Hurst rejects the more positive reader response takes on romance that appeared after Radway, including, for example, the work of someone named Alison Light. But the author cites, not Light, but Helen Taylor’s essay, “Romantic Readers”, in From my guy to sci-fi: Genre and women’s writing in the postmodern world, edited by Helen Carr (London: Pandora Press).
To rely on other scholars too heavily is problematic for two reasons (1) it looks lazy — if you this is your field, you yourself should have read the cited work, and (2) you risk replicating scholarly mistakes, if your source has not, for example, properly cited the original source. This turns out to be a serious problem for Hurst, as you will see in a minute.
As I mentioned, Hurst says that there was a wave of reader response scholarship on romance following Radway that attempted to demonstrate that while the texts themselves are retrograde, readers put the texts to emancipatory uses. but Hurst is skeptical, noting that
This type of scholarship has ultimately facilitated some absurd analyses of
the Harlequin Mills & Boon brand, in that many of the claims that practitioners of this
approach make are hyperbolic in the extreme. In response to one such defence of the
genre*that ‘reading and writing a romance may be amongst the most subversive acts a
woman can engage in when it comes to challenging patriarchal culture’ (Modleski 1998,
66)*Tania Modleski retorts, tongue-in-cheek: ‘Right up there, I guess, with struggling for
effective sexual harassment policies, working at rape crisis centres, and protecting
abortion clinics’ (1998, 66).
I haven’t read Modelski (I know, for shame), but I knew someone who has read absolutely everything in romance scholarship … Laura Vivanco, and within .00001 seconds, I had this response:
That quote from Modleski was first published in Paradoxa in response to the other contributors to anearlier volume of Paradoxa to which Modleski had also contributed. She rips into Crusie, in particular, quoting her article repeatedly, though that’s not the article Modleski is quoting in this paragraph. Here Modleski is referring to Lynn Coddington’s article, in which Coddington paraphrases something in Deborah Chappel’s doctoral dissertation: “Deborah Chappel believes that reading and writing a romance may be among the most subversive acts a woman can engage in when it comes to challenging patriarchal culture” (59). So what we have is Hurst quoting Modleski quoting Coddington who’s paraphrasing Chappel!
I am not going to comment on Hurst’s points about Bridget Jones’ Diary, except to note that her argument for BJD’s feminist superiority to romance, depends largely on her faulty take on the romance genre. I want to focus instead on Hurst’s portrayal and dismissal of romance, and her “scholarship”.
At least thrice in the text of this article, Hurst has truncated or quoted out of context the words of an original source in order to support her points:
1. Hurst:
Jones also observes this absence, claiming, ‘woman-to-woman relationships are [invariably] tangential or fraught’ (1986, 214).
What Jones actually wrote (thanks to Laura Vivanco, who had access to the text) is this:
Another result of the centrality of the hero is that woman-to-woman relationships are tangential or fraught; although some novels represent strong families, including energetic and capable mothers, the heroine is more likely to be given a woman friend as a merely temporary confidente – or to confront heartless or amoral rivals for the hero’s love. (214)
2. Hurst again, quoting not the original, but a secondary source:
The Harlequin Mills & Boon novel posits women and men as essentially, drastically, at odds, presenting femininity as inborn. Female friendship is absent and the romance is all. Jay Dixon argues compellingly that Harlequin Mills & Boon and feminism ‘are antithetical to each
other’ (Makinen 2001, 37).
What? Jay Dixon, former Mills & Boon editor and lover of romances, wrote that? Actually, no, she didn’t. Hurst is quoting Makinen, who is quoting Dixon’s The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1990s. London: UCL Press, 1999.
Here’s what Dixon actually wrote:
…on the surface it might seem that romance ideology and feminist politics are diametrically opposed, except that both set out to claim for women the right to attain what they want. So, as Carolyn Smalley, a Mills & Boon copyeditor and feminist, put it: “In so far as the heroine always gets what she wants, on her terms, in a strange way, Mills & Boon’s are feminist.” Maybe it is that sense of empowerment that I, and other readers, get from both feminism in the public sphere and Mills & Boon novels in the private. (41)
In the final paragraphs of her book Dixon writes that:
a close examination of Mills & Boon texts shows how romance writers have adapted certain creeds of both the First and Second Waves of feminism to fit the dominant beliefs which their own writings exemplify. In particular, both feminist philosophy and romance ideology demand a change in the way sexual, emotional, economic and working relationships between men and women are conducted. They both have a Utopian vision of a society which puts women’s desires first, where men adapt themselves to women’s needs, and not vice versa, and where there is no perceived difference between the status and social position of men and women. Mills & Boon romances and feminism have differing political frameworks, but it may just be that under the skin they are sisters. Feminism has many faces. Perhaps romance fiction is one of them. (194-195)
Who made the error? Hurst or Makinen (Merja Makinen, Feminist Popular Fiction, Palgrave MacMillan, 2001)? I don;t have access ot all of the Makinen text (and no, I am not spending $100 on the Kindle version), but I know form Amazon’s Search Inside feature that she refers to Dixon as a “former Mills&Boon editor, feminist and avid reader of romances”, noting that Dixon claims romances “depict the difficulties specific to women in a patriarchal world” (p. 34). If I were a betting woman, I’d put my money on Hurst.
3. Hurst writes, “Merja Makinen describes the Harlequin Mills & Boon novel as ‘one of the last bastions against feminism’ (2001, 30), (Hurst, 3)
Thanks to Amazon’s search inside (again, pointer courtesy Laura Vivanco), here’s what Makinen actually wrote:
“while some romance writers saw the genre as one of the last bastions against feminism, others willingly identified themselves as feminists.”
By this point, I am not inclined to exercise any charity in interpreting Hurst’s article. Read on.
1. Hurst says she doesn’t want to take the cheap way out. She knows feminist critics of romance tend to pick the worst examples of the genre. So, she has two tactics:
In this discussion, comparisons will be limited to titles from Harlequin Mills & Boon’s
Sexy range, given their proliferation*eight are issued each month, as opposed to only six
Desire and four Temptation titles*and the fact that these are ostensibly sexually
progressive, ‘sophisticated’ takes on romance (eHarlequin n.d.).
Here Hurst is equating sexiness with progressiveness. Where did she get this crazy idea? A chaste romance is just as likely to be a feminist one as an erotic romance. Strike one for her method.
To avoid such charges, the oeuvre of Emma
Darcy* romance novelist extraordinaire, author of hundreds of Harlequin Mills & Boon
titles, founder of the Emma Darcy Award (which assists aspiring authors to complete their
manuscripts), and writer of the industry guide The Secrets of Successful Romance Writing*
has been specifically consulted, along with numerous other representative titles
Emma. Darcy? the Emma Darcy that wrote The Billionaire’s Housekeeper Mistress? and The Pleasure King’s Bride? and The Bedroom Surrender? This is the author (or authors — Emma Darcy was until 1995 a husband wife team) Hurst chose when she went looking for feminist romance novels?
Strike two for Hurst’s supposedly fair and unbiased method.
2.
Margolies notes another of feminism’s grievances against Harlequin Mills & Boon:
the heroine is unvaryingly solitary, ‘there is no sisterhood’ (1982, 9). Jones also observes
this absence, claiming, ‘woman-to-woman relationships are [invariably] tangential or
fraught’ (1986, 214). As Mairead Owen remarks, the heroine is ‘curiously socially isolated’
(1997, 541):
Here again, why is Hurst quoting other scholars’ assertions about romance novels? Hasn’t she herself ever read one? But ok, fine. Is heroine isolation categorically true? I can attest this is patently false in both the Harlequins and single title romances I read here in the States. Laura Vivanco opined it is not true with respect to the Mills & Boons she reads. What do you think?
Also, I think knowing something about category romance and the purpose of different lines may be helpful here. With a line that focuses very tightly on the relationship between hero and heroine, there just isn’t time for the kind of scope needed to introduce a cast of friends and family. I guess we can ask the question why that is, but you;d have to know something about category romance to even formulate it.
3.
Feminising processes such as depilation, cosmetic application and exercise are entirely absent from the mass-market romance. The heroine’s exaggeratedly feminine physique is an apparently natural manifestation of her gender.
Ok, first of all, one could well argue that it’s no improvement, from the perspective of a feminist critique of the beauty myth, to have chick lit heroines constantly getting waxed and tweezed. Does chick lit provide a critique of these often costly and painful processes? Do the women of chick lit toss out their flat irons, tweezer, and Jimmy Choo’s, walking barefoot, uni-browed, and frizzy into their smug married futures?
4. Hurst:
[These novels portray] … romance as a woman’s singular and supreme source of pleasure. In the Harlequin Mills & Boon novel, every single page *every paragraph* pertains to the pursuit of love.
Really? What do you think, dear reader? For my part, I love the smell of hyperbole in the morning!
5. Hurst writes:
Whereas, however, the ending
of Edge of Reason is suitably ambiguous, the final pages of Bridget Jones’s Diary reinstate
the primacy of romance:
So…ambiguity is good, but the fact that Bridget calls the year a good one, thanks to her relationship with Mr. Darcy is “arguably regressive” and “ideologically suspect”. first, we can ask, why is ambiguity better for feminist purposes? But second, this is exactly the kind of thing I meant in the first paragraph: why is romantic love “ideologically suspect” for a feminist point of view? I teach feminist theory and I don’t even know what she means. She needs to explain, is she using the framework of Simone de Beauvoir? Kate Millet? Kathryn Pauly Morgan? Sarah Hoagland? Who?
In sum, this was a real disappointment, not just in the author, but in the peer reviewers and journal editor. I’m referring here not to the faulty assumptions, bad logic, and suspect research “method”, which, alas, you can find in practically any academic journal, but in the misattributions. I think it would be terrible for Dixon and the others if these misquotes made their way into later articles. Laura and I exchanged a flurry of fast and furious emails (she was fast, I was furious) and one thing we discussed, without coming to a conclusion, was whether we (or I) had any responsibility to do more than feel angry and blog about it. What do you think?
Related posts:
- Is Verity Durant a “Feminist” Heroine? Rachel Potter’s C+ review of Sherry Thomas’s Delicious over at All About Romance is, IMO, very well done, although I...
- Capitalism and Sexuality in the Romance Novel Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Meeting April 2009, New Orleans These are my notes, and may not reflect with...
- Romantic Fiction as Popular Culture This is a summary of “Reading Romantic Fiction”, Chapter 4 of Joanne Hollows’ Feminism Femininity and Popular Culture. I needed...
- Romance Blogging Resolutions for 2009 So I remember what I planned to do, and can berate myself appropriately next year at this time. [I am...
- If Romance Novels are Neither High Culture nor Pop Culture, What the Hell Are They? In which the dismissal of romance gets personal. After the Popular Culture Association meeting in April, I approached editors for...
- Fat Heroines Ain’t Easy I just finished reading Jane Graves’ Tall Tales and Wedding Veils (review to follow), and the heroine partly blames her...
#1 by dunnettreader on February 10, 2010 - 7:30 pm
whether we (or I) had any responsibility to do more than feel angry and blog about it
Responsibility? No, in that you don’t have an affirmative duty, so you shouldn’t be “punished” for failure to do anything further.
But since you and Laura do have a commitment to the academic field in which this article is being held out as meeting professional standards of attribution, you have a personal and professional interest in seeing the public record corrected about the sources Hurst (mis)cited. So you would certainly be justified in taking further action.
I suppose the first step would be to finish documenting very clearly the blatantly erroneous quotes/attributions and then to contact the author and/or the journal directly, suggesting that the next issue of the journal publish appropriate corrections. You might also consider contacting the authors whose quotes were most mangled, and have them get in touch with Hurst and/or the journal’s editors. The journal might publish letters from authors who take issue with specific positions Hurst has attributed to them.
Even if the journal doesn’t publish a correction or a “letter to the editor” in a later issue, your blog posts about the article will get picked up by Google’s general web search, so they should pop up for anyone who searches on Hurst’s article or on the quoted authors. If you want to ensure that someone searching for Hurst or the authors she cites also sees your misgivings about her attributions, you can improve your Google ranking by encouraging other blogs to link to your posts. And to juice your search engine rankings, you can add the names of Hurst and the authors she cites to your metadata in the header of your blog posts on the topic.
Unfortunately, unless the journal prints a correction, none of that will get your misgivings picked up by Google Scholar, which is where they would preferably show up as cites to Hurst’s article. To get your remarks picked up by Google Scholar would require your getting a review piece published by another scholarly publication with an e-edition that is indexed by Google.
#2 by BevBB on February 10, 2010 - 7:33 pm
Oh. My. God. Emma Darcy. Head desk.
I’m not even sure where to start. Emma Darcy was one of the authors that turned me off Harlequin Presents for good. Several of that author’s/AKA’s books were, um, odd, but one of them – The Sheikh’s Revenge, well, let’s just say it was downright disturbing to me in many ways. It literally felt like the relationship was nothing more than the Stockholm Syndrome in action.
So, you tell me, does that sound like empowerment to you? Or a random backlist to use as an example of the genre at large?
#3 by Magdalen on February 10, 2010 - 8:05 pm
Wow.
Do I betray feminism by reading romances? By writing romances? And if so, how? Surely my choice to leave the practice of law and return — 30+ years later — to writing romances (the thing I wanted to do in the first place) is all about making free and personal choices in my own life as a well-educated woman.
We’ve agreed elsewhere that there are actions and scenes in romances that we would not countenance in real life. But if a romance novel has, as necessary elements, a relationship and an HEA, then I would agree an ambiguous ending is antithetical to the romance genre. Bridget Jones seems happy at the end; was it insufficiently “ever after” to count?
And what about the relative correlation, over the past 50 years, of the proliferation of romance novels with the increase in societal and cultural freedoms (with concomitant responsibilities) for women? I don’t see those things as entirely unrelated. I would guess that as women began to accrue the benefits of feminism, we also gained more ambiguity in our lives. (I sure did.) Reading an unambiguous book maybe feels nice in the midst of an ambiguous life.
How is it wrong to have books reflect a world in which women can be, and often are, successful professionally but want also to love and be loved?
As for the absence of rigor in Hurst’s analysis — does it remind anyone else of Alan Elsner’s so-called investigation of the romance genre? This feels predetermined to me: she wanted to find some evidence to fit her theory that romances are bad.
And that’s the part I don’t get. I remember when no one in the US was writing anything that could be called a romance novel. No one. I read Harlequin Romances when they were 100% reprints of books written in English Empire countries. Long-format romances (Kathleen Woodiwiss, etc.) came along ten years before Reagan named Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. What’s the theory, then — that we’d have made greater strides as feminists if romances had never been written?
Or is it possible that the explosion of romances as a genre in the 70s and 80s is connected to the progress of feminism. I’m not suggest that romance novels made a huge difference in promoting feminism, but they can hardly be tied to the suppression of women’s rights.
In the end, I really wonder what academics like Hurst hope to prove. That we’re ninnies for reading romances (an absurd conclusion), that women would be better off if they read any other genre (if so, why), or that it just offends their academic sensibilities that there are books out there that women write, read, and enjoy that have happy endings for couples and not just for women as solitary actors.
#4 by Maili on February 10, 2010 - 9:01 pm
But ok, fine. Is heroine isolation categorically true? I can attest this is patently false in both the Harlequins and single title romances I read here in the States. Laura Vivanco opined it is not true with respect to the Mills & Boons she reads. What do you think?
I do think so, but isn’t that the norm across genres, though? A crime novel features a P.I. as (usually) a loner. A YA novel features a male or female teenager as a socially isolated teen. A fantasy novel – another loner who happens to have a team of aides. A Gothic romance – an orphaned heroine. Classic novels – Great Expectations, Bleak House, and blah blah.
It’s a long-standing tradition, surely? Quite a few fairy tales feature orphaned or neglected hero/ines, or from broken homes (Cinderella, Nicht Nought Nothing, Beast and the Beauty, Red Riding Hood, The Bee and the Orange Tree, Jack and the Beanstalk, The White Dove, and so on).
Does chick lit provide a critique of these often costly and painful processes? Do the women of chick lit toss out their flat irons, tweezer, and Jimmy Choo’s, walking barefoot, unibrowed, and frizzy into their smug married futures?
I do think there is a major difference between category romances and chick lit novels in this aspect: we readers are ‘allowed’ to see heroines’ phsyical flaws and their attempts to beautify themselves in chick lit novels while heroines’ flaws are hidden or not mentioned in category romances.
When their flaws are mentioned, it’s usually tied to one of two major camps: disability (facial scar, lame leg, birth mark, blindness, deafness, wheelchair, and so on), or self-esteem issues (they think themselves plain-looking when they aren’t).
I disagree with Hurst, though; *both* chick lit and romance novels are usually about the pursuit of love. What sets them apart are heroine’s perspective and priorities. For example: in a romance, the heroine is preoccupied with the question whether the hero loves her. In a chick lit novel, the heroine is preoccupied with the question whether the hero is the One.
Also, in a romance, there is only one romantic interest and that is the hero. In a chick lit, there is a line of potential suitors. It’s usually half-way through the story we figure out which of these potential suitors is the romantic interest.
Basically, romance and chick lit have similar goals (a search for the ultimate happiness in context of love), but different directions and scopes. Romance is usually a lot more restrictive, heroine-wise.
I think I understand what Hurst was getting at, but judging by these examples in your post, she didn’t seem to handle it well. Plus, I think it’s dull and lazy to put one genre down in favour of another genre.
And Emma Darcy? Bad call.
one thing we discussed, without coming to a conclusion, was whether we (or I) had any responsibility to do more than feel angry and blog about it. What do you think?
It depends on what you mean by ‘do more’.
Disclaimer: I’m bleary-eyed and half-awake (but happy I’m nearly finishing coding a template! *cough*). So, please excuse typos, English hic-cups and blah blah.
#5 by Janice on February 10, 2010 - 10:10 pm
Wow. That is sloppy and misleading writing and argumentation in Hurst’s article. Good for you and Laura in catching so many of the lazy tricks she’s taken to producing her article because that really does more than anything else to undermine her argument. Cherry-picking with a twist so many times is damning!
#6 by Sarah Frantz on February 10, 2010 - 10:32 pm
“To get your remarks picked up by Google Scholar would require your getting a review piece published by another scholarly publication with an e-edition that is indexed by Google.” Hmm, I wonder where you could do THAT?
The thing that really chaps my chops is that there has been romance criticism in the 2000s, but apparently not according to Hurst. To be using 30 year old criticism disingenuously as she does is just as suspect to me as to misquote the sources she does use.
But those misquotes are unbelievable! Sticking “[invariably]” into the middle of the Jones quote is way above and beyond acceptable. How could she think she could DO that?
Thanks for this, Jessica. Brilliantly done.
#7 by Carolyn Crane on February 10, 2010 - 10:44 pm
Wow, this is so fascinating. First, Maili, I am loving your tidy summation of the differences between romance and chick lit.
Thank you for that.
Also, this post is very thought provoking, and it has made me think about how my reading habits intersect with my public life – work, family and friends. And the more secure and powerful I feel, the more likely I am to be open about my love of romance, even in the business world, though there are certain client situations where I might still not tell about it if the subject came up, because people might not take me seriously then.
And I think that in my personal ideal feminist world, I would be as open about reading romance as men are about the Sunday football game, and that honesty wouldn’t detract from a client’s perception of my ability to do my job as well or better than the guys I compete with. And, critiques and misrepresentations of the genre and scholarship about the genre – like Hurst’s here! – are not at ALL helping matters.
And I agree, you’d think a person would at least poke around in the original text to see what surrounds the quotes. Is there some way where the majority of scholars are so generally assumed to be on board about the pathetic nature of romance that you don’t need to strive to check sources, as you would if you were attacking a more formidable target? Is is okay for scholars to use romance as a blank screen upon which to project assumptions and demons and choose texts to support all that?
I think these misrepresentations do need to be addressed.
#8 by Ann Somerville on February 10, 2010 - 11:04 pm
Ugh. Lazy telephone scholarship, and even lazier identification of feminist principles.
I is so glad I is not a skolar.
#9 by RfP on February 11, 2010 - 1:15 am
Given that the article is in a journal in your field, I think a letter to the editor (either for publication or not) is appropriate. I wouldn’t hesitate to do that in my own field over matters of interpretation, much less demonstrably shallow scholarship. A good editor should welcome your catching reviewing blunders of that magnitude; perhaps it would be a wake-up call that the journal doesn’t have an adequate network of pop culture scholars as reviewers.
#10 by Victoria Janssen on February 11, 2010 - 10:36 am
WTFBBQ?!
Lovely critique.
#11 by Janet W on February 11, 2010 - 10:47 am
RfP … your last sentence. Does the editor not also have to take some responsibility? Should not he or she take this “teachable moment” to get some adequate pop culture scholars on as peer review editors?
Actually, I haz a question: who is ultimately responsible for content in a publication? The editor, publisher, writer, institution (if it’s an academic journal) … all of the above?
#12 by Sarah Frantz on February 11, 2010 - 11:21 am
@Janet W: I’d say the writer and the editor for academic journals. Don’t know actual LEGAL answer, though. The editor relies on his/her peer reviewers, though, so there’s pretty universal fail through all of this.
@RfP: This ISN’T Jessica’s field.
Just the edges. But as an editor, I’d be mortified to receive an email like this, but also, in the end, very thankful.
#13 by Lynn Spencer on February 11, 2010 - 11:44 am
Very interesting article. I usually get frustrated with the “romances are bad for women” articles because they fail to recognize how diverse the genre is. Getting a look behind the research methods on this one was something I found very illuminating and helpful as a reader. Bravo to both of you!
Re: your final question – I’m not in academia, but in my own field, if I got misquoted somewhere, I’d really appreciate a heads up. And if I were an editor and I’d published an article drawing conclusions based on shaky methodology, I’d also appreciate the email because it would (one would hope) help make the editing/fact-checking process work better in future.
#14 by Eric on February 11, 2010 - 11:47 am
So, as the editor of a journal, I’d say three things:
1) I think this post, or some version of it, really needs to be sent to the editor of Australian Feminist Studies. It shows a real flaw in their peer-reviewing system–namely, the peer reviewers who vetted this piece did not do a tough enough job, perhaps because they themselves did not know the scholarship or the field–and that flaw needs to be set right.
2) The author herself should be very embarrassed. This means that she may well lash out at you and Laura and anyone else who backs up your close reading of the piece, and ask her editor at AFS to back her up. Just fair warning–I’ve seen this happen before. This could get loud.
3) If AFS refuses to act on the information you’re offering here, I’d be very happy to find a place for some more official version of this post at JPRS. Sloppy scholarship needs to be addressed, especially in an emerging field.
#15 by An on February 11, 2010 - 12:37 pm
First, fabuluous job, Jessica and Laura!
Second, I completely agree with everything Eric said. I really think you should send a link to or version of this post to the Journal’s editors. You have demonstrated a serious problem in their peer-reveiw process and that in itself is a major academic fail that should be addressed – if not in/by the journal itself, in another journal (like JPRS) so that this fab analysis is officially published somewhere (not to devlaue your blog, but I really think some version of this aught to be published more formally).
As someone above already suggested, I would also contact the authors whose quotes have been misused, so they know these things are out there.
Finally, contact the original author (either yourself, or suggest the journal do it) and at least give her a fair chance of responding to this. Your analysis seems sound to me and I don’t expect her to be able to explain all this away, but in all fairness she should be given the chance (either in publication or in a guest-blog here or at TMT).
#16 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on February 11, 2010 - 1:34 pm
The thing that frosts my cookies the most is the continued belief that every romance novel is the same as every other one, that they have no relation to literary tradition, to other texts (like I Promessi Sposi or Jane Eyre), that they can be looked at as a phenomena and taken like a census poll. All this rather than engage with one individual text at a close-reading level. Because merely being genre-ed renders the individuality and uniqueness of the text moot.
On top of all the other bad scholarship, it seems to me unfair to structure an argument around a comparison between a single text or two texts (Bridget Jone’s and it’s sequel) to a slew of examples in what Hurst imagines is a repetitive and represenative genre, rather than making a comparison between the BJ books and some other specific texts. But I suppose since her thesis is that romance fails feminism is dependent on romance being a singular, monolithic entity like Borg and its Queen, then any specific comparison would undermine the thesis statement. I mean, this is where literary criticism just becomes badly executed sociology.
#17 by RfP on February 11, 2010 - 2:04 pm
That’s exactly my point. And in line with that, Eric’s and Sarah’s responses correspond with what I’ve seen from journal editors in my field.
Whoops, you’re right.
I don’t think either of these last two suggestions is necessary. There’s a peer review system in place that’s meant to filter out most instances of sloppy scholarship; there’s an editorial process; there’s a letter-to-the-editor process; there’s a variety of ways that the editor can respond. For example, one common approach is for the journal to print the critical letter-to-the-editor alongside the original article’s author’s response. That’s a direct, public, official way to address the issue–and it puts the controversy in the official archives (and search results) for the journal. Online responses and going around the editorial system can’t do that.
#18 by Eric on February 11, 2010 - 2:12 pm
I agree with @RfP about having this be a public process. Two years ago I published an essay-review (not peer-reviewed) that made a couple of mistakes: not this sort of thing, but a screwed up close reading that distorted my judgment of a poem’s quality. There was a flurry of private emailing afterward, but It was much more useful to me, and to future critics, to have a formal exchange of letters to the editor at the journal: a brilliant one taking me to task, and my own chance to give a point by point response.
#19 by Jessica on February 11, 2010 - 2:28 pm
Thanks everyone for your comments. Three of the Racy family, including, unfortunately, me, are comatose on three couches with three buckets nearby today. Ugh. I think I plan to write a letter to the editor focusing on the misattribution issue, and hinting at other issues. I’ll get in touch with Laura. Since this really isn’t my field (yet), It would be great if I had a cosigner who is a romance scholar.
#20 by jay Dixon on February 12, 2010 - 4:37 am
Great review, Jessica! But then I would say that, as I am one of the authors you defend so ably! Seriously, tho’, thank you for bringing this article to my attention. I am appalled at being so badly misrepresnted and I will be writing to the editor of the journal concerned.
jay
#21 by Sunita on February 12, 2010 - 9:11 am
I agree this is a failure of the peer-review process. The editor is also culpable, but in an interdisciplinary journal it’s very difficult for an editor to know the full range of possible reviewers for every article. However, if you look at the long list of names on the advisory board, it’s surprising the editor couldn’t get (or didn’t ask for) help in finding appropriate reviewers.
I don’t know if this journal has a letter-to-the-editor format (lots of journals in my field don’t), but it definitely publishes responses, so if Jessica and Laura are up for it they could write a short response. They’ve done more than half the work in this blog post as it is. If there isn’t a letters section in the journal, the editor is likely to suggest a response anyway.
This article (and Jessica and Laura’s critique of it) would be a great example to use in teaching how *not* to cite other authors. The use of [invariably], as Sarah pointed out, is not just annoying, it’s egregiously misleading; brackets are to smooth the grammar, not to change the meaning. And citing Dixon through Makinen (whether getting it right or wrong) is Citation No-No 101.
I am sure both of you have about 100 things to do that take precedence over this, but if the two of you could summarize this in a response, it would be great. That way it would show up in Google Scholar and everywhere else along with the original article, and it’s good to have the corrections in the same place as the errors (i.e., in the original journal).
#22 by Janet W on February 12, 2010 - 12:07 pm
Number 3 is just flat out bogus!! What about those three sisters in the Nora Roberts book set on a ranch: they had to live together for a year to inherit. The one sister was complete devoid of any feminine processes until the other two took her in hand. I could cite a ton more!! Like The First Snowdrop by Mary Balogh: a Regency makeover book if ever I read one! I hate sweeping statements and this one was a real sweep*er*reeto!!
Her quote/Jessica’s quote starts here: Feminising processes such as depilation, cosmetic application and exercise are entirely absent from the mass-market romance. The heroine’s exaggeratedly feminine physique is an apparently natural manifestation of her gender.
Ok, first of all, one could well argue that it’s no improvement, from the perspective of a feminist critique of the beauty myth, to have chick lit heroines constantly getting waxed and tweezed. Does chick lit provide a critique of these often costly and painful processes? Do the women of chick lit toss out their flat irons, tweezer, and Jimmy Choo’s, walking barefoot, uni-browed, and frizzy into their smug married futures?
#23 by RfP on February 13, 2010 - 12:01 am
To first address the idea that romances don’t discuss makeup or other “feminising processes”…. It’s fairly easy to find romance novels with strong beautification themes. Just google “Ugly Duckling romance novel”. The first search result is an All About Romance Novels review of The Real Deal. There’s also an Ugly Duckling category in the RomanceWiki, as well as a Makeover category.
Searching for “Cinderella romance novel” works too. It isn’t an exact match thematically, but does find a number of romances that emphasize beautification. For example, Laura has discussed the detailed description of the heroine’s cosmetics in Hometown Cinderella. (She also discusses romance makeovers here.)
And here’s a bibliography of Cinderella-themed romances, some of which involve cosmetic transformations.
Backing up a step, however, I’m with Jessica:
… especially given that it may be questionable whether the character has really been beautified or simply homogenized. I also think it’s important to reflect on Laura’s remark that in Hometown Cinderella,
For me, there’s no easy categorization of cosmetics, or of fictional characters’ beauty rituals, as feminist or anti-feminist. However, the combination of makeup and chick lit references in the Hurst article reminds me of some of the reaction to the first Sex and the City film as a “girl power” film or a demonstration of being both feminine/fashionable and strong. S&tC stands alongside Bridget Jones’ Diary as an urtext of chick lit, so I think that’s a reasonable connection.
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#24 by Merrian on February 14, 2010 - 4:52 am
I love this blog for the thoughtfulness and commitment so ably demosntrated by jessica and Laura. I hope that the journal and author accept the critique in the spirit Eric suggested. In reading the quotes and analysis of the article I had a creeping thought about class. Is chick lit acceptable because it is about middle class life and romance not because in it’s dreams and fantasies of bilionaires and dukes it is seen as working class and we working class women always need our consciousness raised by those women who know better….? Just a thought. I also think she ignores the representation of women in romance as doing a whole range of paid and community work, except may be in the categories?
Coincidently, my romance readers book group read an Emma Darcy earlier this year and we all hated it. Finding it old fashioned and not representative of good categories or romance in general.
#25 by BevBB on February 14, 2010 - 9:49 am
@Merrian:
I’ve said many times in the past that the distinction for me is in the attitude found in the books – not the actions. Which explains why I never could get all that worked up over the discussions centering around forced seductions, unless I’d actually read the story in question and the attitude within struck me as wrong.
Not the actions.
And the Darcy books are an excellent example of holdover attitudes that people want to believe are gone from romance novels. Well, yeah, they are. From most of them. But there are certain lines, one in particular and we all know which one it is, that aren’t simply reprinting the same books over again. They’re continuing to create new books with many of those same attitudes in them.
I’m just not sure who the target audience for that line of books are any more.
So, we can talk about romances having this feminist undercurrent all we want to but even back in the 70s, 80s and even 90s, I’d seen this thread of something that stunk suspiciously of a counter-influence present in some of the stories. I remember thinking way back years ago that a woman couldn’t have written some of the books I was reading and that’s why I stopped reading some of the lines. That is not an insult to male writers. That was simply a suspicion about the attitudes I was seeing in the books.
So to see someone base even a line of an academic paper about feminism in romance on one of those very authors is more than simply disturbing to me as a longtime romance reader. Misleading would not even be the half of it to me.
Either learn about the books, all the books, or stop talking about them as if they know anything about them at all. Then I might be able to respect what they have to say.
#26 by Robin on February 14, 2010 - 2:19 pm
The one feminist scholar who seems to have been forgotten but who I think is incredibly relevant here is Luce Irigaray (http://www.iep.utm.edu/irigaray/), whose rejection of Freudian and Lacanian phallocentrism is IMO so useful when talking about Romance fiction. Even though I tend to reject her essentialist leanings, I think it’s worth engaging with some of her work in Romance scholarship. Which for me means I need to reacquaint myself with her work, since it’s been years since I read her.
#27 by Jane Halsall on February 15, 2010 - 5:08 pm
Very interesting reading. And here is poor old humble librarian me who just loves the sci-fi romance of Lois McMasters Bujold and Linnea Sinclair where the protagonists are on equal enough footing professionally, emotionally, and intellectually. And I love Peter Whimsey/Harriet Vane and Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell , the love of a more wise Sherlock Holmes – who just proves someone’s famous remark about mysteries being the thinking woman’s romance.
And because ultimately it’s about what moves you as a reader about a couple, what books you go backand reread, who you remember and want to be like or want to meet someone like the men they meet. I’ve just been blow away lately by Joanna Bourne’s The Spymaster’s Lady that had a cover that appears to be advertising the virtues of a highly conditioned male chest – a cover that hid one of the best times I’ve had with a historical fiction romance in many a year. Talk about your unexpected heroine! And yes, this is about scholarship but it is also about great reads.
#28 by Jessica on February 16, 2010 - 2:06 pm
I always think of Irigaray when I read “will it fit?” when the heroine sees the hero’s penis for the first time. I have been meaning to do a post on it for ages.
ironically that awful Excstasy book I reviewed had the hero wondering “will it fit?” and the heroine, a nurses, saying “of course it will. babies fir through there.” It was the only lick of sense in that dreadful book.
I love Irigaray, even though French psychoanalytic feminism is so 1980s.I’m glad I still get to engage with her by teaching it.
#29 by Merrian on February 17, 2010 - 1:09 am
I’ve been off computors for a couple of days and just wanted to add another thought. She contrasts chick lit as being about the hunt for the one and romance as the desire for relationship. Isn’t the chick lit then about the commodication of the other? He is just another thing to add to the consumerist collection the chick is making. Where for me relationship and love are about he desire for connection. So we have thought base versus feeling base and I always thinking of thought base as more true to the m ale approach to relationships….
#30 by Gail D. on February 27, 2010 - 12:27 pm
I’d be very interested in hearing about follow-ups to this.
#31 by Jessica on February 27, 2010 - 1:04 pm
@Gail D.: Thanks Gail. I am on spring break beginning Monday and plan to send an email to the editor early next week. Will keep you updated.