I haven’t made you work in while, have I? Grab some coffee, gingko biloba, Adderall (kidding!) or do your pranayama cleansing breath, because we are going to do some philosophy today.
I gave a paper recently, the theme of which was “What is the Good?”. My contribution focused on the connection between health and the good. But on the ride home, as I was listening to my audio of Jo Goodman’s Everything I Ever Wanted (a Compass Club book — South’s story, with the actress India Parr. Review coming.) I started to think about whether there is a take or a vision of the good life that pervades the genre.
In part A of this post, I give you some background on philosophical approaches to well-being. In part B, I talk about the view of the good life found in the romance genre. If you’re pressed for time or not feeling very philosophical today, I think skipping to part B will work just fine.
A. In philosophy, there are three basic types of theories about the good life, or well-being:
1. Hedonism — a hedonist thinks there is but one thing that determines how well your life is going, and that’s pleasure. As Jeremy Bentham wrote, in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do’. Bentham tended to think of pleasure as a kind of sensation that pervades all different kinds of things we enjoy, and believed that the more pleasure we could experience, the better our lives would be.It didn’t matter much what the pleasure was. Or, as Bentham put it, “pushpin is as good as poetry.”
There are a number of problems with this view, the first being that it doesn’t feel the same when we experience different kinds of pleasurable activities. Another problem is that it seems to lead to the conclusion that the beings with the simplest lives will have the best lives, such that if you could change places with a lower life form that — say, a clam — you should.
One solution is to claim, as John Stuart Mill did, that not all pleasures are equal. The best life is really the one with the most higher pleasures, by which he meant pleasures of the intellect. It is not true, Mill said, that people would consent to be changed into a clam or a swine, even if they knew the clam or swine had a more contented life, because most people prefer a life with the kinds of pleasures only humans an experience, like friendship, love, reading, great food, spirituality, walking, music, fulfilling work, etc. If our pursuit of the higher pleasures means we get frustrated more, or have less overall contentment, so be it. It is still a better life from a hedonist’s point of view because the pleasures we do get outweigh those elementary pleasures a swine enjoys.
Whether Mill’s version is really still hedonism is something philosophers argue about.
2. Desire theories are motivated by a seemingly insurmountable problem with hedonism, which is that if hedonism is true, it looks like you could be put into an “experience machine”, which simulated any of the experiences that give you pleasure (including the higher pleasures of which Mill wrote) and that would have to count as equally good as actually experiencing those things. That is, if your well-being is determined solely by how you feel, inside, and not by the causes of the those feelings (i.e. really writing a great novel, versus being hooked up to a virtual reality machine that makes you feel just the same) then we have no way to say the person who spends her life in an experience machine is worse off than the person who really has all those great experiences. And we want to say that, I think.
So maybe it’s not the pleasure, but the satisfaction of the desire. And the only thing that will really satisfy your desire to be a great author is writing a great book. Taking a pill or getting into a machine that simulates the feeling will not satisfy the desire.
Desire theories say your life is going well is your desires are satisfied. A really simple version won’t work, though, because we all have desires that should not be satisfied if we really want to be happy. So, for example, satisfying the desire to punch someone in the face, or grab a stranger’s butt, or do something rash or downright tragic — like an adolescent suicide — is not a desire that should be satisfied.
So desire theorists modify the theory to say that your desires should be informed (you wouldn’t really desire that dangerous drug if you knew how addicting/harmful it is, for example, or you wouldn’t desire to go out with that cue guy if you knew he was a serial killer. Still, though, if you really hols this theory about well-being, you have to accept that any informed desire contributes to someone’s well-being, even a really odd one, like a brilliant mathematician who is not mentally ill choosing to count blades of grass all day, every day.
For a desire theory to work, the person has to desire the thing for it to contribute to her well-being. So if the brilliant mathematician is informed, and not mentally ill, and desires the grass counting, then that’s the good life for her, and there’s nothing we can say about it. We might think that her working as a mathematician would better contribute to her well-being than sitting outside the math lab counting blades of grass, buy if SHE doesn’t desire work as a mathematician, then it doesn’t contribute to her well-being, no matter what others might think.
This kind of situation makes many people question “desire theories”. And it points to a seemingly deeper problem: if I want to be a great novelist, what I think is good about that is the great novel, not my desire to write one. My feeling good at having the desire satisfied is a result of the fact that I have created or done something good. What’s “good” isn’t that my desire is satisfied. These theories view the satisfaction of the desire as what’s “good”, but for many people, what’s “good” is independent of our desires … it’s the desired thing or state of affairs itself.
3. Taking off from that insight, we have what are often called “objective list” theories. As the name implies, these theories say that our well-being consists in a list of things, and that these things are independently, objectively good, such that if someone doesn’t desire them, no matter — they still contribute to that person;s well-being.
Parenting involves a lot of objective list making. I know that eating their vegetables and brushing their teeth and limiting their time on the computer is good for my kids, regardless of what they think, prefer, or desire. These things contribute to their good, period, so I enforce them. Think also of loved ones or friends you may have thought of as making a mistake: marrying the wrong person, taking illicit drugs, quitting school, etc. They are satisfying their own preferences and fulfilling their desires, but you try to convince them that their choices will not be good for them. Maybe you make arguments and give reasons. In such cases, you are acting like a person who believes in an objective list theory of the good.
A lot of people have a very negative reaction to this kind of theory of well-being. they say that everybody decides for themselves what contributes to their own well-being — it’s totally subjective. And besides, how can one theory fit all humans? We are all so different!
One response is that while objective list theories tend to be paint in broad strokes. You might have a list that includes things like health, friendship, justice, and happiness, but individuals can specify for themselves exactly how each good contributes to their own well-being.
Take “health”, for example: what is it? Is a gifted young runner with a progressive disease who will lose her leg eventually, who asks for an early amputation and a prosthetic so she can start training for the Olympics making a healthful decision? We have to figure this out. And autonomy is on most objective lists. So, for example, when my kids become adults, it will be a part of their well-being to feel in control of their lives, free from the undue interference of their meddling mother. To go back to the health example, respect for autonomy is why we let patients make their own health care decisions, even those that might compromise their health. Yes, health is a value, but so is directing your own life. Finding the balance between respecting your kids’ autonomy and protecting them is one of the challenges in parenting.
Now, what goes on the list? How do we know? Well, there are a few different approaches one might take. One approach I am sympathetic to is championed by Martha Nussbaum. It’s called the capabilities approach, and it begins by asking the kind of question Aristotle would ask: what activities typically performed by human beings are so central that they seem definitive of a truly human life?
In answer to this question, she ends up with a list that includes: a life of normal human length, bodily health and integrity, senses, imagination and thought, practical reason, affiliation, getting along with living plants and animals, and autonomy (control over your environment, both political and material). The reason she uses the term “capabilities” is to allow that some people might not choose to actualize all of these possibilities, but they should at least have the chance to. So, for example, someone can choose as an adult to never use her imagination, but a society that actively discouraged, or even failed to encourage (for example by cutting all funding for art and literature in schools and elsewhere), citizens to use their imaginations would be thwarting a basic condition of human well-being.
But, in general, the way you come up with an account of the good is via intuition, reflection, and conversation. It’s not written in the stars. And I don’t think anyone can get through life without reflecting at least occasionally on whether their life is going well. To ask yourself if your life is going well is to presuppose some account of the good. I think this asking this question about our lives is a unique and vital human capacity.
B. The vision of the good in romance novels
I’m just going to make some suggestions here, with minimal argument, and I invite you to add to them, or disagree with me.
I think, in general, we get an objective list account of the good in romance novels. Think of all those rakes that need reforming — this is not hedonism. I could be persuaded that a sophisticated desire theory fits, but the commitment to love and marriage is so strong that I can hardly think of a happily single character in romance fiction. It’s never enough that the heroine and hero end up with an HEA: we have secondary romances, and sequel after sequel in which all the brothers and sisters and cousins and friends get married. EVERYONE must be happily in love.
So, I think an objective list account fits, and I think that romance novels portray a world in which romantic love is a necessary condition for the good life. But not just fleeting romantic love: it has to be enduring, part of a very deep emotional, supportive bond. Not only that, but it has to include fantastic sex. So, it’s a very robust conception of romantic love. Love in romance novels is not just a feeling (“I’m in love love loooooove”), but a way of life.
I also think material welfare is a key component of most romance novels. And not just material comfort, but significant wealth. Pretty much the entire subgenre of historical romance is confined to the peerage (and if one partner isn’t, then s/he is either (a) elevated by the end (she was a duchess all along!), or (b) marries up. I’ve never read historical wherein the poor partner drags the rich partner down to the gutter with her. And then there’s those Harlequin Presents with all the sheiks and billionaires.
Of course, you do have the contemps, especially single titles, but also Blazes, Superromance, and other Harlequin lines, that have middle class couples. And urban fantasy tends to be populated with scavenging nothing-but-her-dagger-and-tramp-stamp-to-her-name heroines. (Someone should write a paper on the economic landscape of UF romance). But in the main, middle class (by which I mean salaried, home/condo and car owning, not pay check to paycheck living) and up is where most heroes and heroines end up.
Another key component is physical and mental health. Theoretically, this needs to be distinguished from freedom from disability, because disability can coincide with otherwise excellent health. But in practice, most heroes and heroines live both healthful and disability-free lives. Sometimes, it’s a major part of the story to bring the hero and heroine back to a state of complete health, whether it’s getting over PTSD, addiction, battle wounds, smallpox, a curse, etc. I can think of a few books in which disability persists to the last page, but none in which disease or general ill health do.
While physical beauty is not part of health in my opinion (indeed, the things we do to achieve physical beauty often have deleterious effects on our health), I’ll stick it in here, because the hero and heroine are usually good looking. At worst, they are “plain” at the start and their beauty grows in their lover’s eyes as the book progresses. But even in those cases, the reader is usually cued in to the fact that the character was good looking from the start, but the hero or heroine was unable to see it (for example, the contemporary hero usually prefers statuesque blonds, and the heroine is a curvy redhead. The reader knows that curvy redheads — and this one in particular — are quite attractive, but the hero doesn’t see it at first.
Affiliation is another one. Most heroes and heroines have loved ones, whether they are family or friends or fellow members of the Bortherhood. It’s a key component of many romances that broken relationships, especially with family, such as parents, are repaired.
Autonomy — I think this one is crucial, especially for the heroine. She may end up in quite a traditional feminine role, but it’s always presented as an informed choice — which also happens to be in her best interests.
Integrity — can you think of a hero or heroine who utterly lacks integrity? At worst, they come to have it in the end. Of course, it depends a bit on how you define integrity, but think of it as standing for something, not being a will o the wisp when it comes to your values and sense of self.
Moral virtue — There’s a bit of a debate in philosophy over whether one can have moral integrity without virtue. For example, would a person whose only goal is the accumulation of wealth, who lets no friendship, regard for justice, or anything else to get in his way, really be a person of integrity? Luckily, we don’t have to worry too much about integrity and moral virtue coming apart in romance novels because I think we almost always have both. And by moral virtue, I don’t mean sexual purity (although there is often that with regard to the heroine), but rather a good character, described as honest, just, unselfish, etc.
I can think of a few things, such as spirituality, that would be on many people’s lists of what is necessarily for their well-being which are mostly absent in romance (except the Inspiration romances, of course). And there’s little concern for the environment or nonhuman animals (the occasional domesticated pet nothwithstanding). Also, political autonomy, i.e. active democratic participation, is pretty nonexistent.
So what do you think?
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I view hedonism as basically anarchism of the body. Not particularly meaningful – especially as one grows older and the physical body fails. So…there must be something more lasting. Love, devotion, mutual support – you’ll notice that in many romance novels, the hero and heroine imagine growing old together. Or, in a paranormal romance you might have an eternal who searches for that one mortal soul he or she connected with at some point in the past.
I do view the romance genre as seeking the good or the ideal – from my perspective, that’s one man one woman. Perhaps for others, it’s one man one man, or one woman one woman – but in the end, I think a good romance (and hedonism is not romance) promotes a deep inner and outer commitment and connection between two people.
I’d already blogged about points of connection between what you have to say here and what Catherine Roach wrote in her article for JPRS when I started to see an overlap between this post and the essay I co-wrote for JPRS. Maybe this just goes to show that I’ve spent so much time reading issue 1.1 that it’s embedded in my brain and I can’t think of anything else, but I hope it’s actually because we’re all looking at the same genre, and starting with the same basic facts, even if we come at them from different academic perspectives.
Anyway, as I read your post, I was struck anew by how ableist the genre sounded, and after mulling this over for a bit, I think it connects with what Kyra and I discuss: in general, in romance novels, the bodies of the protagonists aren’t just two random bodies that two people happen to have, they’re also objects which convey, or symbolise, social ideals/beliefs. So although someone who was older, or less healthy, or less beautiful (by society’s standards) or non-white could find lasting love, have many affiliations, and possess integrity, moral virtue and autonomy, they’re less likely to appear in the genre, because in our society they’re less likely to be accepted as a symbol of the “good life.”
First of all, thank you, Jessica, for giving my mind a workout. My job is rather tedious and, although it calls for attention to detail and accuracy, it rarely requires heavy thinking.
I lean toward the objective list view.
Integrity and Moral Virtue: While amoral hedonism will show up in historicals (think of the Hellfire Club and all its variations), the goal is always to move the H/H relationship as far from it as they can get.
Long -Term Romantic Love: Growing old together is certainly an objective in historicals. The epilogue of Sherry Thomas’s Not Quite a Husband comes to mind. Leo makes it a point to always include in his bio details about Bryony, underscoring how complete his life is with her in it.
Affiliation: Meredith Duran’s Bound by Your Touch demonstrates the idea of familial affiliation by being mildly subversive. Lydia hopes to someday be at ease with both her sisters, and she’s coming to terms with being able to love her father without respecting everything he’s done. It’s not a done deal at the end of the book, which serves to point out how common the extended-family HEA is.
Autonomy: In Jennifer Ashley’s Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage, Mac has always made assumptions about Isabella’s feelings and usurped her decision-making. Once Isabella realizes that this is their stumbling block and Mac acknowledges it, they have their HEA.
Physical and Mental Health: So many choices here. For the physical, how about Elizabeth Hoyt’s To Beguile a Beast, in which Helen sees beyond Alistair’s scars. In Anna Campbell’s Captive of Sin, Gideon’s PTSD is so severe, he can’t bear to be touched. Love restores him and he’s able to move beyond the memories of his torture in India.
I’m going to be thinking of other examples/exceptions for the rest of the day, but that tedious day job is calling.
I don’t know if I can be articulate about this, but . . . what struck me most was your last paragraph, the list of things that aren’t usually included. Granted, these days spirtuality is often something merely private and individual, but setting that aside, I’d see all those things–faith, care for the environment, politics–as connecting an individual to a larger community, imposing responsibility for/to more than oneself and a chosen, closely affiliated few (sequel-bait siblings, elite brotherhoods of various kinds, beloved partners and children). There is often very little sense of a larger world in romance (e.g. Regency dukes who don’t spend any time on estate work). Yes, there are exceptions. I tend to love those I’ve read (Kristan Higgins’ latest strikes me as one example, where heroine is clearly enmeshed in a larger community, and concerned for it).
So, important as I think romantic love is to a good life, and complex as I think the romance genre’s view of it is, there also seems to me something a little shallow? lacking? hedonistic? in this good life populated by at least reasonably well-off, reasonably attractive, romantically bonded pairs. Even though procreation, and thus a link to future generations, is most often a part of romantic love, it is presented in rather ego-centered ways (the hero loves seeing “his” baby in his woman’s arms, or seeing her belly grow and knowing he did that, etc.). It’s just like these two people gazing into each other’s navels and never looking up.
Maybe it is totally unreasonable for me to expect a genre focused on courtship and achievement of an HEA, and one which many readers turn to for “escape” from their real lives, to do more. Maybe this just reflects my private concern that my own life (happily married, middle class, reasonably healthy, etc.) is selfish and I should be doing or being more.
On the other hand, as a Victorianist, I am thinking of all the 19th-century domestic/social-problem novels which have a central romance woven within a larger social tapestry, so that the personal satisfactions of love and family are one thread in a good life, and attention to shared, common good is another. It is harder to find all those kinds of satisfaction in one book these days, I think. (Unsurprisingly, TV adaptations of these 19th-century novels, and certainly their reception by audiences, often play up the romance at the expense of the other elements).
Thanks for a very thought-provoking post.
@Liz: It would be extremely egotistical of me to detail the ways that my own books weave social issues intimately with the romantic relationship (and since they’re (a) m/m and (b) fantasy, mostly, they probably don’t count in your eyes) but I will say that I agree with you completely. (I’ll just chuck Kei’s Gift and Going Down out there as examples.)
I don’t see why social issues and community can’t be dealt with in a romance novel – I’m sure you were thinking of books like North and South – and more than that, I’m impatient with my fellow writers when they miss opportunities to do so, even from the purely selfish point of view.
I recently wrote an article regarding characters with disability in science fiction, and it seems to me that by dodging the harder questions, avoiding characters and settings which mean the author and readers have to confront the difficulties that many people face in their lives, the author is actually limiting her palette quite ridiculously. It’s not harder to write good, plotty books if you take account of real world issues – it’s easier. There’s so much to talk about, so much to give your characters to react to (and you don’t need to be preachy about it either.)
Even though I’m an atheist, I think the role of spiritual belief in people’s lives and as a motivation for behaviour, is sadly underused – at least it is in my genre. My take on it is that while I don’t believe in any god, many people do, and it’s that belief, and the moral system they base upon it, which is significant, and often a force for good (sadly often a force for evil too.) You can’t ignore it, and I’ve found that exploring it and the different ways devout people react to situations, has been a rich vein to mine.
@Ann Somerville: Why wouldn’t m/m count? I haven’t read a lot of it (I am politically conflicted about my own readership here–am I like a straight guy watching “lesbian” porn? Um . . . ). But it seems to me (sadly) a genre ripe for exploring political questions related to love. In fact one wonders how m/m writers can dodge these questions entirely; real gay people sure can’t. I wouldn’t discount fantasy/speculative fiction, either. Just because the communities, politics, religion may be imagined does not mean that a novel cannot explore what the “good life” means in that culture–and in ways that reflect our culture.
You are right that North and South is the ur example I was thinking of, both because I worked on it in my previous academic life and because of the way it was adapted for TV and received (love for it in Romancelandia-I do not mean to belittle KristieJ and her Crusaders here ). I enjoyed the adaptation, and I am in the “Richard Armitage is hot” camp, but it leached most of the politics from the novel, in which the romance is largely, in my view, about the mutual political education of the lovers. I think it is telling that the two most squeed-about and romantic scenes in the adaptation are not in the novel.
On faith, yeah, I’d like to see more than inspirationals deal with it now and then. Especially in historicals, it ought to matter more to more characters.
@Liz: “Why wouldn’t m/m count?”
Some Romance readers don’t really consider it real romance, that’s all.
“In fact one wonders how m/m writers can dodge these questions entirely”
And yet many manage it very well
I honestly don’t know how anyone can write a real world historical and ignore the role of religion. People in modern American possibly think religion dominates their world rather too much, but before the 19th century, pretty much everywhere, the entire society would be steeped in it and the role and importance of faith taken for granted. I may not agree with it but it’s a historical fact. I’d have to defer to others though on whether historical romances take any account of it. I’ve seen little of it in m/m, but then I barely read m/m historical because I truly loathe most of the books in that subgenre.
Reading this great thought provoker, I wondered if the ‘good’ in the romance genre is solely connection with another? If it is then you have to be ‘active’ in some way to get this connection happening, eg. we talk about the heroine’s journey. It also seems to me that this sense of action being possible requires some sense of power or the capacity to have the power to act being present, so that is represented as a good through wealth and titles or being a UF paranormal heroine – so it doesn’t matter that she only has dagger and a tramp stamp – who she innately is gives her this power. I was also thinking about the concept of affiliation which is very present in historicals and contemporaries. I know it exists in UF and PNR as well but I always think of UF and PNR as having a stronger sense of place, of the communities being defined through territorial instincts and so the language of connection and relationship is much more possessive than it is in other romances settings. I also think UF and PNR are therefore more linked to the outer world/community around them than historical and contemporary romances.
@Julia Rachel Barrett: Great points, and I agree that hedonism is not the general outlook of romance.
@Laura Vivanco:
A great point. I can;t wait to sit down and work through your article and the others. And thank you for posting and linking to this one.
@Karenmc: You are welcome! and thank YOU fro giving great concrete examples. As a philosopher, I constantly veer away from the particular.
@Liz:
Yeah, add this to Laura’s comment — I agree with both. I was trying not to be critical in this post.
@Ann Somerville: Ann, thanks for your comments. And the link. I agree with you and Liz that many readers are hungry for more complex stories that deal head on with these real life issues. On the other hand, so many people would prefer fantasy to be fantasy: escape into a world where none of these things really matter. Can romance be realistic and be escape?
And your point about historicals and religion (and Liz’a points) are exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote the bit about spirituality in the post. In Regency England, the Church of England was an incredibly powerful political and social force, and yet is never mentioned!
@Merrian:
I wondered about this too. Is there one “ultimate good” (we call is the sonum bonum in the biz), love, and then everything else is a means to it (while perhaps being ends in themselves too)?
Your points about UF and PNR are very thought provoking. I am not sure I agree. I feel that the influence of society — whether it is the ton in a Regency or society in general in contemporaries, is often pretty strong. But maybe I’ve misunderstood your point?
I think I was contrasting affiliation (with others) with communities created by place – the phsycial environment occupied at a point in time. UF and PNR heroines are very often patrolling neighbourhoods, defending cities from the dark so their connections grow from this function/geographic place. This also links the h/h with a wider range of people than in historicals or contemporary where the personal networks of people are more closed. That is what I was thinking anyway.. Hope it makes sense.
As I read through your post, I kept thinking “but what about…?” books that might be exceptions to the norms you list above. I’m not going to do a laundry list of romances that break the rules, but there are a few I wanted to mention:
First, I think that a number of Victoria Dahl’s books balk at the “Material Welfare” component, and it’s added a lot to her work. “One Week As Lovers” (spoiler alert) is a historical that ends with the hero having to work because he chose the heroine over someone with money. “Lead me On” also has money and class as a central conflict, and I thought that how those things are tied to what we consider attractive was really interesting.
Second, I think that the environmental issues and spiritual issues addressed in Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changling series might be why those books speak so deeply to a lot of people. If I spent some time thinking about it, I could probably come up with a pretty good argument that urban fantasy and paranormal romance in general tend to speak to spirituality while avoiding traditional Christian tropes. My mind isn’t that functional today, though, so I’ll leave it alone.
Factinating topic, as always.
Excellent and thought provoking, as always. I’ve been saving up reading this post for a quiet moment.
The ‘missing’ aspects of the good life are indeed notable in romance (with a few exceptions) and the comment above about the H/H being totally immersed navel-gazers resonated with me. However, I think there is a sort of logic to this which is about that core aspiration/fantasy at the heart of romance novels i.e. the eternal bond the protagonists find; the idea that the hero(ine) is going to provide everything the other hero(ine) will ever need. If the characters need to look outside the relationship to find satisfaction in any sphere, is there a feeling (amongst authors, readers, the industry?) that this undermines the completeness of the HEA? Possibly.
I think the HEA is also significant. Most romances end of a note of finality and settlement. A sense of a happy and unending status quo. The things you mention the protagonists attaining/keeping (wealth, health, beauty) might equally be seen as them being worry-free in this unendingly happy future. It’s almost as though the author tries to provide them with everything they could possibly need before she leaves them.
@Tumperkin:
Now I am thinking of Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 22, which is a much nicer image than that of two people gazing into each other’s navels:
When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point,–what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
Rather on earth, Beloved,–where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
Maybe I’ve been reading romance too exclusively of late, and that is why I feel frustrated with it for not doing more.
@Merrian: I see. This is a great point, and something I never considered!
@Jocelyn Z.: I really need to read One Week as Lovers. And I had never thought of Singh’s books that way — very interesting. As for counterexamples, of course, they are there. But it’s like saying dogs aren’t four legged creatures because you saw a 3 legged dog on the road
@Tumperkin:
Yes, I think this is a very plausible explanation. Thank you!
@Liz: It;s such a pleasure when poetry shows up in my day unexpectedly. Thank you!