(1) A semi-short positive review of this book, followed by (2) discussion of the rape of Kevin by Molly, and (3) the character of Lilly in the context of a feminist analysis of beauty culture
Audio note: I listened to this on audio (and then I immediately read it in paper), and it’s one of the best romance audio recordings I have ever heard. Anna Fields has narrated several SEP’s and she’s always fantastic. Highly recommended.
(1) Review
THOM (2001) is one of the Chicago Stars/Bonner books. Molly Somerville was the surly teenaged half-sister of Phoebe in It Had to Be You (1994). In THOM Molly is the author of a modestly successful series of children’s books based on the adventures of a fashion conscious, and conscientious, bunny named Daphne and a rowdy and sometimes thoughtless badger named Benny. Ordinarily a straight arrow and good girl, Molly is known to go off the rails every so often, in usually innocuous ways like setting off a fire alarm in college or dying her hair. In a move which is characterized alternately as crazy, and a mature and beneficent act, she gave away the 15 million dollar fortune left to her by her SOB father, and is barely getting by. She idolizes Phoebe and Dan’s marriage and family life, and wants that kind of love for herself, but pessimistically believes it will never happen and resigns herself to the idea of being a wonderful spinster auntie.
Molly’s had a crush on Stars QB Kevin Tucker, the model for Benny, but it’s tempered by her dislike of his selfish playboy ways — he has a habit of draping international models on his arm at all times — which Molly unfavorably compares to Dan’s. Molly respects Kevin’s football skills, but she doesn’t respect him as a person, which perhaps explains why she climbs into his bed one night and has sex with him without his consent. They are both horrified, but Molly becomes pregnant and, because this is Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ world, they get married, in part due to the intense moral suasion applied by Dan and Phoebe.
This all happens by page 90, and the next 300 pages deal with the aftermath. Kevin always saw Molly as a spoiled rich girl (he didn’t know about her divestment), and her sexual assault and the forced marriage (not at gunpoint, but at “football contract” point — Phoebe owns the team Kevin plays for, after all) hardly help. For his part, Kevin has some demons, especially his relationship with his estranged birth mother (he was adopted), and his inability to form close personal relationships. Football for Kevin has filled in the gaps where his personal development should have been.
Through a bizarre but pretty believable set of circumstances (another gift of SEP’s) Molly and Kevin end up together that summer running Wind Lake, a summer camp owned by Kevin’s late parents. There they meet the usual SEP cast of well drawn and often funny secondary characters, like the randy young couple who are supposed to be caretakers, but are too busy shagging each other — much to Molly and Kevin’s frustration, on many levels — to actually get any work done.
SEP is a master of contemporary romance. I am not sure I think she has an equal. Funny dialogue and situations, sexual tension, secondary romances — often, as in this case, with older couples — that actually enhance rather than detract from the main romance. And that’s balanced by moments of true heartbreak, all the worse because you have been laughing and lusting along with these characters. There was a scene in THOM that absolutely killed me – if you’ve read it you know I am referring to one that takes place on the road — and a few others after which I needed literary CPR. When I am reading an SEP, I just think “this is the complete package”.
This is not to say that everything worked perfectly for me. In particular, Molly’s bouts of insanity didn’t ring true to me. Her assault of Kevin, in the beginning of he novel, and later, near the end, when she nearly tanks the HEA, felt out of character, and not in a good way. I can see Molly really bugging readers who have less patience than I do. Like many contemporary authors, SEP laces the characters’ self-understanding with a psychology narrative, so Molly explains to the reader that it is family of origin issues that make her do these crazy things. It felt artificial. Kevin too, psychoanalyzes himself at the end, explaining what he was running from and why in language that could come straight from Dr. Phil. The whole HEA scene was off, come to think of it, but it didn’t detract in a major way from my enjoyment of the book as a whole.
But the pleasures of this book outweighed those irritations for me. Especially the humor. For example, every random person Molly meets says, “I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book”, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, Molly’s unconsciously writes sexually suggestive lines for the Daphne books as the sexual tension with Kevin ratchets up, and the sex advice Molly gets from a newlywed teen at the camp.
SPOILERS:
(2) Molly’s rape of Kevin. I know a lot of people stopped reading at this point, feeling that no couple can overcome such a violation. I’ve blogged about rape in romance, although my focus was on women as victims. My feeling about it, regardless of who is the victim, is that if a rape is portrayed in a titillating way, a way that is meant merely to arouse the reader, and a way that doesn’t take seriously the real life consequences — whatever they would be for that character, in that setting — I put the book down. In THOM, the rape was not portrayed in a titillating way — neither was sexually pleased by the experience (a real difference from when a hero rapes a heroine, I might add) — and the repercussions reverberated, at least for Kevin’s attitude towards Molly, for at least 3/4 of the book. Kevin calls it a rape, and it’s a major obstacle in their relationship, Kevin only forgiving Molly towards the end of the book. That they never tell Phoebe and Dan about it indicates the seriousness with which they take it. Molly’s actions were reprehensible, but they were out of character. Her rape of Kevin doesn’t reflect her pervasive anti-men attitudes, or a domineering personality.
You could argue that Kevin should have been more upset for longer. And you could argue in a society in which rape of men is not taken as seriously as it should be, Kevin’s quick recovery (or non-traumatic reaction) shores up pernicious rape myths about men (that men always want sex anyway so you can;t rape them.). But Kevin rejects those rape myths and Molly does eventually too. (Although many people do not think it possible to rape a man, so THOM is not as hopelessly regressive as it might have been.) all I can say is that the book overall worked for me. Narratively, one thing SEP did which was very smart was to have Molly miscarry, which makes her very sympathetic. It worked for me, but I can see why others feel differently.
(3) A major subplot is the arrival of Kevin;s birth mother, Lilly, to the summer camp. Kevin has a lot anger at Lilly, who went on to becomes a famous TV actress, for giving him up. His estrangement from her is the major developmental work his character must do, and it’s presented as the key to his ability to have loving relationships with other women, like Molly. Those psychoanalytic tones again!
Anyway, I have a very mixed reaction to SEP when it comes to my politics. She is not a feminist writer by any stretch, and is quite retrograde in many respects. I kind of go into an enjoyable fugue state when I read SEP, and later rile myself up by pointing out all the ways her books bug me politically. But the character of Lilly really crystallized the problem for me, and why I can continue to read SEP.
Lilly is an aging beauty. She was the Farah Fawcett of her day — the sexy star of an all female detective show with a famous poster which sold millions. She is a widow when we meet her, essentially retired from acting, and at loose ends over her estrangement from Kevin. She is also in a kind o recovery form her marriage, which was characterized by the dominating behavior of her late husband, who controlled her and her career, both.
At the camp, Lilly meets Liam, a reclusive ornery famous painter (naturally, you would have both a famous actress and a famous artist together at a summer camp in Illinois. (To her credit, SEP has Molly note how bizarre this situation is). Lilly feels washed up, like she’s no longer attractive because of her extra girth and wrinkles. But Liam wants to paint her naked. He finds her irresistible, and loves her all the more for her imperfections. The way Lilly is written, it’s almost entirely her own vanity — a personal character flaw — that leads her to think her value as a human being is diminished as she loses her looks. And it is a man who rescues her from this crazy idea.
In my world, it is patriarchy that leads women who are less than physically perfect to feel worthless and diminished. And they don’t just feel diminished: they are. To take just one example from my own profession, studies show that women who are thin and attractive get better student evaluations regardless of the quality of their teaching. And before you object the same is true for male profs … it isn’t. Female professors’ evaluations are much more strongly tied to how closely they hew to gender norms than are men’s. (there’s a lot more I could say here but I will stop now). From a feminist point of view, the problem isn’t that some woman are superficial and vain, although they are. It’s rather systemic, and patriarchy is a system that, on the whole, benefits men (and some women, especially the beautiful ones).
I liked Lilly and Liam’s story as I was reading it. And I really liked this book. But while the idea that a woman can just “shake off” beauty norms by “being strong” and finding a man who loves her “just as she is”, may make for fun reading, it’s bad politics.
This is my least favorite SEP, but I enjoyed it for many of the same reasons you did. I don’t know if I agree about Phillips being retrograde, or not feminist. These novels are hardly Harlequin Presents material. I’d need more evidence, I guess. And probably a refresher in fem theory.
I remember the Lilly storyline. It’s a stretch for me to try to interpret it in this fashion. Maybe because when I think about my own insecurities, the male gaze is not the lens through which I judge myself. More often, I am comparing myself to other women (model/actress/media image). Of course, it can be argued that patriarchy is responsible for our beauty standards. But I can’t credit that in all areas, such as the fashion industry. Don’t think men really like stick figures.
Anyway, interesting topic. I totally believe this:
“studies show that women who are thin and attractive get better student evaluations regardless of the quality of their teaching”
But I can’t match up my feelings about the Lilly character to this theory. IIRC, she didn’t shake off beauty norms, she simply found a man who made her feel beautiful.
You seem to be implying that Harlequin Presents are not feminist. However, quite a few of the authors who write for Harlequin Presents identify as feminists and include feminist issues in their novels.
Disclaimer: I’ve been a squeeing SEP fangrrrrl since I read Hot Shot way back in the day.
This is so not my favorite SEP that I forgot (and continue to) what the hell it’s about and who these people are. Molly Somerville? Blank. Kevin Tucker? Blank. Rape? WTF? Did I lose a good portion of my life? Cuz I so don’t remember that.
What I DO remember (although detached from the book, as if in a dream or a long-ago vacation or a movie I saw once) is the little campground place and the pastel gingerbread houses. *swoon*
I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy it (I must have because I don’t have a strong Hate-On for it), but because I never remember anything about it when I see the title, it goes into solid MEH territory for me.
Even for me, she’s a hit-or-meh.
Laura,
I was speaking in general terms. Isn’t the line famous for an uneven power dynamic between hero and heroine? I’ve read several with this theme, and enjoyed regardless, so I’m not knocking them.
I have a question about the patriarchy / personal self-esteem issue: Do you argue that there’s a causal relationship there? In other words, because people discriminate against non-conventionally attractive body and facial types (or, rather, they discriminate in favor of those who are “pretty,” “thin,” etc.) it is that discrimination that causes the non-pretty, non-fat to feel bad about themselves?
I have a problem with that. I suspect there’s some percentage of low self-esteem that is causally linked to societal prejudices. Lilly’s self-esteem may well fall into that category, as she worked for years in a notoriously judgmental and superficial profession. (My niece is about to graduate from the NYU Tisch School with an MA in acting. I gather she’s profoundly gifted, but her head shot — which she just posted as her profile pic on Facebook — is a HUGE deal and will have more to do with her success at auditions than her talent.)
I can see that young girls get bombarded with visual imagery of what is pretty and can work out what is not pretty and then choose to put themselves in one camp or the other. (And yes, I’ll agree all the advertising and images of too-thin actresses on TV are the result of patriarchy.)
But not every girl who thinks she’s fat at age 10 still thinks that at age 20. Genetics, neurosis, common sense, the messages from her family, and her own inclinations all play a part in her actual body size and facial features, and those themselves are only mostly responsible for her self-image. Body dysmorphia has to be really severe before it’s recognized; I suspect low-grade dysmorphia is prevalent in women, and I’m not sure how much of that is the result of societal messages impinging on them directly or through their parents (meaning the parents wouldn’t be critical of their daughter’s self-image if it weren’t for the way society portrays young women’s bodies in the media).
I’m not saying patriarchy isn’t part of all of this, but I suspect there’s more going on. Personal psychology, evolutionary biology, familial or generational patterns, etc. So, while I can see how the fact that female professors get evaluated on a more superficial basis than male professors is the result of patriarchy, does it follow that the personal assessment (assessment of self, assessment of female family members, assessment of friends, etc.) is also caused by the patriarchy?
As a fat woman, my experience has been that when people meet me, they meet my body size first, but that it doesn’t take too long for my personality to replace that first impression. Friends who might have thought, “Wow, she’s never going to get a date” when they first met me, ended up not understanding my own dating insecurities because they had refocused on me as a person. This phenomenon is wholly consistent with the prejudice of female professors’ bodies because there is, intentionally, a distance between the student and professor: they can get to know each other, but never without the labels. And not all students bother to know their professors as people.
So if the people who know us stop judging us on superficial levels, doesn’t that insulate us somewhat from the effects of the patriarchy when we come to assess our own worth? If my parents tell me I’m pretty, and the patriarchy tells me I’m not, might I not end up thinking I *might* be pretty? And if people whom I meet and like think I’m pretty, doesn’t that do more to reinforce the good messages than the patriarchy can do passively reinforcing its original message? So maybe for someone to believe against all the messages from family and friends that she is fat or ugly, more than the patriarchy has to be at work.
Guess what — I’m back to my “Nothing is ever simple” mug!
Great post, thanks.
THOM is not my least favorite SEP novels. Another one takes that title. But THOM is very close to having that title because of Molly’s rape on Kevin.
But the reason why SEP is one of my favorite authors—and I would say that SEP is my number one author when it comes to romance—is that in her books, she creates an immense emotional reaction in me. I either love her books. Or I don’t. And I will say that I love more of her books than disliking them, and SEP was the author I went to when I was writing my own contemporary romance. Her dialogue, her secondary characters, her humor, the angst . . . are all things that make me read and love her writing, even when some of the situations in the books drive me up the wall.
Like Jill, I wouldn’t call SEP non-feminist. I think she’s very much a traditionalist in her characters, especially when it comes to females. For example, the women are most cut off from community (whether it be family, or as a whole), they’re not financially independent (no money, even when they come from a super wealthy family), and if they’re beautiful or smart, it’s a curse. More often than not, it’s the heroine either making her own community and/or being accepted back into it with help from the hero. (Like Sugar Beth in Ain’t She Sweet, Rachel in Dream a Little Dream, Blue in Natural Born Charmer.) And part of SEP’s way to show that the heroine is a working member of society, with love from the hero, community, friends, etc., is to give her the “traditional” roles of feminity by impregnanting her in the book, or having the baby-filled happy epilogue, etc.
The reason I don’t think THOM was as successful in my eyes was because I don’t think the rape was addressed as successfully as you do. Molly, in my opinion, never recognizes, “repents,” or even apologizes for what she did to Kevin. I think Robin at DA (and forgive me if I have the DA reviewer wrong) recently wrote an article about mores, or something along those lines, and provided a little snippet from THOM where Kevin tells Molly what she did was rape and her reaction didn’t even accept that from him. I keep thinking that if the situations had been reversed. Had a heroine, who’d been raped by the hero, told him: You raped me, and the hero never acknowledged that and the hero/heroine ended up together, there would be an uproar with many romance readers. Part of my frustration with THOM is that because Molly is female and Kevin is male that he can’t be “raped” because he’s male, which is the biggest crock of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life.
This is getting long, so I apologize for that. I’m very big on consent in my romance novels, and I never could fully believe or accept THOM’s HEA because of the rape and how it was not treated in the novel.
I’ve never read an SEP book. Doesn’t that make me an odd duck? Once I realized that I should, I had no good idea where to start. This book probably isn’t the right one; like Elyssa, consent is very important to me, Also, while I can handle “we have to get married” in historical romance, in contemporary it really makes me gag.
The feminist angle is always interesting. I agree that societal norms, while in existence for both sexes, are generally harder on straight women than on straight men (I think GLBT people have a harder time than straight folks, but that’s not relevant here). I think Madgalen has a point that sometimes it works that way (that a woman’s self-image triumphs over those societal norms because of those who love her and see past that crap), but Jessica’s larger point is still valid — the fact that some of us (even many of us) manage to get past it in our personal lives doesn’t make it right in a political sense. It shouldn’t be that hard, or that unbalanced, and part of the feminist fight is to keep working to improve that aspect of our culture.
That’s the way I feel about a lot of contemporary romance: yes, it is that way, but it doesn’t have to be.
@SonomaLass: SEP is famous for doing marriage of convience stories in her romances. And for the most part, they work. If I could figure out how to do it myself, I would because MOC stories are some of my faves. But the problem is . . . the one time I tried doing one, present day, I couldn’t stop thinking: these characters are stupid. So until I can suspend enough disbelief, MOC is out for me.
If you’re looking for a place to start, my fave is Dream a Little Dream. But I think that SEP usually recommends Match Me If You Can to new-to-her readers.
IMO, women don’t dress for men. They dress for other women.
I haven’t yet met a male who finds a runway-model-type physique attractive, nor do I think that attraction works IRL the way it’s portrayed in media and elsewhere (rendering the whole construct moot).
I know where Magdalen’s coming from (a lifetime of experience here), and once I open my mouth, my weight (overabundance of) ceases to matter.
This book was the beginning of the end for me and SEP. I didn’t like it at all, went on to read two more and then I had enough of her. While I enjoyed her earlier books, I just wasn’t liking the direction she seemed to be taking as far as heroines went. If I don’t like the heroine or find something redeeming in her, I won’t like the book.
Kristiej says it all. THOM was the beginning of the end as well. It’s been a while since I read this book, but I remember being irritated with the constant mention of designer brands.
My biggest issue with THOM was not the rape (how it was handled was crap, I felt), but with the fact it wasn’t quite a romance. If anything, it was a poor example of contemporary women’s fiction and a poor example of contemporary romance.
In fairness, I had anticipated Kevin’s story for a long time (he made appearances in earlier CS books), so I was a tad annoyed when I learnt he’d be paired with Molly. Meanwhile I read and disliked First Lady. With both in mind, I was still mildly annoyed when I read this story.
Regardless, my SEP affair finally ended after reading (or tried to) Breathing Room. From, I think, Dream a Little Dream to Breathing Room, there was a growing sense of New Age or Putney-style self-help element in her stories. It came across strongly in Breathing Room. Haven’t touched any of her books since.
I felt SEP, even with her early CS novels, was at heart a contemporary women’s fiction author who happened to have a strong romantic element and traditional values – mostly embraced by the romance genre – in her stories. I think if I went into THOM with zero expectations and a belief it was a contemporary women’s fiction novel, I’d probably enjoyed it.
Either way, THOM is listed at the bottom of my SEP list along with DALD and First Lady.
@Maili:
She started out writing women’s fiction. Why she went the way she did I don’t know, because I agree that her strength is WF.
See Hot Shot. Classic.
@SonomaLass: I’m not at all a fan of SEP, but in Ain’t She Sweet I did come to find Sugar Beth an interesting character and I’m glad to have caught a glimpse of why people love the author. That said, I’m still very much not a fan–of either her apparent politics or her writing.
@Moriah Jovan: I’ve noticed that SEP is definitely returning to more WF roots in her books of late. I thought What I Did for Love was pretty much WF since we never really got inside Bram’s head. And it feels like Ted’s book is headed that way, too, imo.
I’ll disagree with you about Hot Shot; that never worked for me, or her WF’s-leaning books. I like when she does more straight contemp romances.
@Maili: One of the reasons why DALD works so well for me is because I think it speaks on the universal level of faith and issues that go along with that, at least for me. I think, in many ways, I identified or connected with DALD (and Carl Sagan’s Contact) because it does question/address what is faith/beliefs/etc, and that’s something I always seem to be questioning myself about. (Though I do agree that at the end where Rachel can “heal” things with her touch felt a little too hokey for me.)
I kind of go into an enjoyable fugue state when I read SEP, and later rile myself up by pointing out all the ways her books bug me politically.
I have this effect with a lot of books. I be loving the story and then when I try to write it up I can almost convince myself that it was awful.
@Elyssa Papa:
It’s occurred to me in the last year or so that I rather prefer WF w/ romance over contemp romance–and always have, apparently (she says after she reconstructs her reading list retroactively). As SEP gets farther away from WF I like her work less.
@Jill Sorenson:
@Elyssa Papa: I think you both are right that SEP often writes a very traditional relationship. My own view is that many of our traditions are problematic, i.e. not feminist, so this may be one area where we disagree!
@Magdalen: In the post, I indicated that some women just are vain and narcissistic, so I agree with you 100%. But every woman who emerged as an adult with a health body image had to overcome something, as @SonomaLasssays.
I’ll just add two things here. First, there are two kinds of assertions human resist. One, that they are oppressed, and two that they are members of a privileged elite. But the former is a much stronger resistance. So it never surprises me when women, even women who have been victimized the most, but especially women who are successful, refuse to accept a feminist analysis of their situation. In fact, it is easier in my experience to get men to reflect on their placement in patriarchy than it is to get women to reflect on theirs.
I have to think through different lenses. When you are doing feminist theory, you have left the phenomenology of every day experience, in which you make decisions and you act for your own reasons. You still include the elements of every day experience (intentions and action) but in a 3rd person way. It’s like the duck rabbit picture: it’s one drawing but you can’t look at it as both at once.
And 2nd, I want to make it clear since I didn’t in the post… that the beauty culture is not just about patriarchy. When we discuss whitewashing covers, for example, I think we have to accept part of that is the publishers putting a more attractive woman on the cover (that’s what they mean when they speak in code, using words like “appealing”), and that in their minds she is white. Also, it’s about capitalism: the beauty culture is a multibillion dollar a year industry, which is why you see more and more men targeted: finally someone realized they were missing out on half the human population.
@KristieJ: I agree with you that Molly is hard to like. Especially at the end, when, for no reason, when Kevin is declaring his love for her in the most gallant way possible (by throwing out his career, or so he thinks) she brushed him off, “the test him”. WTH? the only book in this series I haven;t read is Natural Born Charmer. I think I’ll have to read that one, even though reviews are mixed at best.
@Maili:
Yes. I tried to convey this in the review. Both Molly, who had psychotherapy, and Kevin had this. Now, many peopel are in therapy, and that’s great, so I am happy to see characters in therapy because it reflects real life. But (a) Kevin never had therapy, so why does he talk like that?, and (b) even people who have had years of CBT make what they have learned their own and put it in their own vernacular.
I did not know SEP started in WF. I have read Breathing Room which was billed as WF, and I felt it difficult to distinguish from other SEP books billed as romance, so this is helpful. I agree with your assessment.
@Nicola O.: Isn’t that funny? I think writing reviews quickly helps keep the memory of reading fresh, but I tend to wait, and then I am not sure my review reflects my reading experience at all.
@Moriah Jovan: I think that when we say women dress for other women, that fits in quite well with a feminist analysis of the beauty culture. On a feminist analysis, patriarchy pits women against each other for the attention of men. It;s more complicated than that, of course, but that’s the idea.
I wonder why you prefer WF to contemp romance?
One last point — and thank you everyone for helping me to understand this book better in SEP’s body of work — is that it has always seemed odd to me that a series about the NFL never featured a black hero, nor even significant black secondary characters (IIRC). Yet the NFL is 70% black.
Now I remember a heated discussion DA Robin and I had about baby-filled epilogues. I believe she was saying that traditional endings are anti-feminist, a position I don’t agree with/understand. I get that marriage + baby doesn’t always = true happiness, but I don’t see anything *offensive* about that outcome. If one of my books ends this way, am I oppressing women?
About SEP: I can think of several ways her heroines subvert traditional romance stereotypes. Pheobe is the mogul. Molly rapes Kevin. Jane steals Cal’s sperm. Sugar Beth lies about hero, damaging his career. In many of these instances, the woman wrongs the man, and must atone for her actions. In a typical HP-type story, it’s the other way around.
I see the truth in this. Thank you for explaining. Very interesting topic.
Jessica, we discussed some related research a couple of years ago. If Aaker et al.’s findings apply to literature as well as to video, our memories may be least accurate (and least intense) for the least classifiable literature–the books that create the most friction in our minds. Given that I find those books interesting, and like some friction in my thinking, it’s a bit depressing to think that I may come to consistently underrate those books in retrospect.
I’ve never read this SEP but heard of it many times. Molly rapes Kevin? I never knew!
Have you read Heaven, Texas? That book is one of my favorites by SEP even though the hero is one of the biggest jerks in all of contemporary romance I’ve ever read.
@Jill Sorenson:
I hope I didn’t give the impression that I believe that a traditional ending is offensive per se, or that such book oppresses women. It’s not what I believe.
On the other hand, I hear all the time that book reviewing is subjective. Most authors seem to agree that readers bring an interpretive lens, or many of them, to their reading, and that books and readers interact in interesting ways to create unique encounters.
My interpretive lens is feminist, because (some version of) a feminist world view is what I accept, and is how I orient my life. I believe that as a reader and reviewer I am just as entitled to bring my life into my reading as other readers are to bring theirs.
I interpret most of these very differently than I suspect you do. Again, we just disagree in our readerly interpretations.
@katiebabs: Oh God, Katie. Heaven Texas is on my list of all time most hated romances, although as par for the course with me and SEP, she sucked me right in with it!
@RfP: Thanks for the link!
As it happens, I’ve just started reading WHAT I DID FOR LOVE. Reading it in E and I’m wondering if it’s the format or the writing, but I think, sadly, SEP and I are going to part company after this. I haven’t even bothered to get Glitter Baby and after this book, that’s the only one I haven’t read.
Really, I partly think it’s the format. Reading E might be the great leveler. I’m not getting as caught up in the story–but again, I don’t know if that’s the story’s fault or not. OTOH, I’ve noticed quite a few language gaffes-not-typos. Maybe it feels TOO familiar (i.e., like all the last few SEPs, not because of its Brangelina/Jennifer Aniston spin, which I am barely conversant with anyway).
I don’t know, but I think SEP is going to be library-only for me from now on.
@Jill Sorenson:
Hm, I don’t see it, to be honest. It seems to me that – bear it with me for a bit – the woman still gets the blame or being held responsible.
Traditionally, if the hero did wrong, it’s the heroine usually gets the blame – for being too sexy, too innocent, too nice, being too near the hero, or whatnot – and is likely to atone for his actions. Educate him, coddle him, pander to him, keep trying until he could say three little magic words. And his misdeeds are largely forgotten.
(Her apparent misdeeds tend to vanish in a puff of smoke the moment the hero learnt she was a virgin, of course.
Even so, there is still his misdeeds for her to sort out.)
As you say – in most SEP books, if the heroine did wrong, she must atone for her actions. However, SEP hero is rarely if ever held responsible for her actions. A typical SEP hero is usually a jerk, but he’s soooo loveable that we can’t help but forgive him. Hee hee. But the heroine? Oh, she must make an atonement even though she’s likeable and sometimes, ditsy.
So I don’t see that much of a difference in this in mind. My view is probably a bit off (or completely nonsensical) but there you go.
I also think readers (including me) are just as bad. I mean:
Molly rapes Kevin?
We have a crowd with flame torches and hay forks on one side and a crowd of riot cards on the other side.
Kevin rapes Molly?
Cue a potentially long debate on whether it was a forced seduction, rape, or just a piece of shag-me-hard fun.
To be honest — excuse me for going off track a bit – I don’t think heroes as a whole have truly atoned for their actions. Their actions were either dismissed – especially after he admitted to love – or let it slide. It’s rare for a romance to make the hero really atone his actions and work hard to win her trust. Suzanne Robinson’s Lady Gallant is one rare example: the hero’s actions basically destroy heroine’s trust and growing love. He really has to work hard to get back into her good books.
It’s not about how much he ‘grovels’, it’s about making hero recoginise his moral responsibility and accountability. I rarely see this in most romances these days. Accountability is probably the most neglected area of romantic fiction.
I really have no idea why so many authors shy from making heroes *fully* responsible / accountable for their actions. It’s same with real life, to be honest. Such as Moriah Jovan’s earlier mention of Brangelina. Jolie was branded a home-wrecker, a whore, etc – while Pitt was rarely called names and such. Apparently, he was just a boy who didn’t know any better. It was scary how some women went for, figuratively speaking, her jugular vein. It’s as if she was a bogey-man that represented their secret fears.
Hm. I digressed, didn’t I? Where was I? Oh, yeah – not making heroes fully accountable to their actions is something I’ll never understand.
Sorry for being mostly incoherent, random and long-winded.
Jessica, I wonder if/how you’d relate this reading experience to your posts on Roberts and “junk fiction,” where he classifies different types of readers/reading in ways you’ve already critiqued. It’s interesting that you essentially read this novel in two ways (first for pleasure? “fugue state” and then more critically). Your post made me wonder if we’re more likely to read genre fiction in that way–to be able to turn off the critical mind.
On the other hand, I can think of classics I’ve read in both ways (I am perfectly capable of recognizing racist/sexist attitudes in 19th-century novels but remaining unbothered by them–I mean, not letting them disrupt my reading pleasure–but then turn around and discuss them critically in class). Or, on a more basic level, sometimes I read them with conscious attention to literary technique, sometimes not.
Maybe it isn’t anything to do with the text itself but with the situation of reading: that is, why we’re reading and what expectations we bring. At different times, we might approach the same text with a different mind. And that’s what Roberts’ dumb charts missed.
Not at all! I don’t even think Robin meant that, and it was her interpretation I was referring to.
Of course you are. I meant to add to the conversation, not stifle it.
Sometimes I wonder whether it isn’t a generational kind of thing.
I remember reading somewhere that SEP had her children in the early-mid 70s, which would make her about my mom’s age.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the first two books SEP wrote were historicals. And her contemps often make me think that they are disguised historicals, i.e., the forced marriages, etc., etc. (Really, when was the last time a professional athlete married just because he knocked a girl up?)
I am an SEP fan, but as I said on this blog some other time, it was only after I’d reassured myself that SEP isn’t some cleverly camouflaged reactionary that I allowed myself to really become a fan.
@Elyssa Papa:
I think it would not have made sense for Molly to recognize it then, because part of the reason she could not see it as rape was her assumption that Kevin, the oversexed superficial jock, was always ready for sex with anyone, even while asleep — a version of a rape myth with which women are all too familiar.
It was not until Molly saw Kevin as a real human being, with feelings other than the drive to win at football and the drive to seduce hot models, that she could acknowledge the harm she did him.
I agree that if the situation had been reversed it would be a different story, and I agree the rape was not treated as seriously as it might have been.
@Liz: @Liz:
This is a great point. I totally agree. We are not only different kinds of readers with different books, but when we reread the same book. For me, I think the fact that the first pass was audio helped me to gloss over some problems. Audio is forward motion. You don’t pause and rewind unless you want to lose your place. But on the page, you can linger and reflect.
@Jill Sorenson: You didn’t stifle it — your comment generated a great long comment from Maili, with which I agree for the most part.
@Sherry Thomas:
This is such an interesting point. This thread has helped me understand SEP’s body of work so much more clearly.