I assigned an article called “Unsavory Seduction” by Eric Cave (Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2009) 12:235–245, quotations protected under Fair Use) to my students in Contemporary Moral Problems. We have a unit on sexual ethics, and I thought it would be interesting to consider the question of problematic seduction.
Cave says that while know that regular seduction is morally ok, and that rape is morally bad, there is a middle category of “provisionally immoral” seduction, which he calls “unsavory seduction”, the unsavoriness of which is actually hard to explain. He gives some examples of what he means:
- The Vicomte de Valmont unsavorily seduces Madame de Tourvel (Dangerous Liaisons)
- Faust’s seduction of Gretchen
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dr. Frankenfurter unsavorily seduces Brad and Janet
- Films like The Pick Up Artist, with Robert Downey Jr., and Hitch, starring Will Smith both revolve around unsavory seductions
Since there is so much discussion among romance readers about forced seduction, which also seems to function as a sort of middle moral category, I thought I would share with readers a synopsis of Cave’s argument. Of course, my interpretation is subject to flaws, so if you are interested in this topic, I encourage you to get a copy of the article. It is not long and does not presuppose much background in philosophy (two of the reasons I assigned it to 100 level students).
Cave begins by defining the genus, seduction, of which forced seduction is a species. He starts with: “Sexual seduction can be minimally characterized as one person’s purposeful attempt to get another, initially unwilling, to have sex.” (236) Unlike rape, a seduction involves bringing a person from unwillingness to willingness, psychologically, without using force. And it has to be sexual willingness. So, for example, if Nate offers Ann a million bucks to have sex, and she finds him repulsive, but does it for the money (let’s assume Ann is not impoverished enough to create a consent problem here. Think of Ann as having a comfortable middle class life.), Nate has gotten willingness, but not sexual willingness. So sexual willingness is, “willingness to have sex based on sexual desire”, which is “a motivation, conscious or unconscious, to experience a certain sort of sui generis pleasure.” (237). (When analytic philosophers use sui generis, it means of its own kind, irreducible, cannot be included in a wider concept.)
Now, the seducer has to do this by some means other than sound arguments, a method we might call, not seduction, but “rational sexual persuasion.” [It's not clear why this restriction is necessary. There are some people in the world who probably could get very turned on by the right kind of elegant argument in favor of sex, philosophers being prime suspects. But this hardly seems "unsavory", so calling it seduction would create a counterexample.]
The author then makes a comment that might be of particular interest to romance readers. In the process of sketching a defense of the claim that this definition of seduction includes a range of things, from garden variety seduction to rape, he notes that “impersonating a target’s lover” would be an example of the latter. I asked folks on Twitter, and it did not take long to come up with a couple of examples. @JanetNorCal wrote that in Mary Balogh’s Truly and Daring Masquerade, the heroines slept with X thinking — thanks to Y’s deliberate misleading – they are sleeping with Y. And @vi_dao suggested Eloisa James’ The Taming of the Duke.
Ok, so what is manipulative, exactly, about unsavory seduction? Unlike reasoning, which aims at the target’s concerns (concerns being motivations of which she is conscious, and to which she assigns value, whether positive or negative), “motive manipulation … bypass[es] her existing concerns to engage motives of which she is unaware or towards which she is indifferent, her non-concern motives. … Pulling these strands together, we have it that unsavory seduction is one person’s purposeful attempt to get another to engage in sex by bypassing her concerns to induce changes in her motives sufficient to convert initial sexual unwillingness to willingness to have sex based on sexual desire.” (237-8)
“So described, unsavory seduction includes such things as stoking a latent and unconscious sexual desire and engaging unconscious or unvalued non-sexual motives so as to generate, amplify, or unblock conscious or unconscious sexual desire. It does not include such things as stoking a conscious, valued sexual desire, or engaging an agent’s concerns so as to generate, amplify, or unblock conscious or unconscious sexual desire. Generally speaking, what sets unsavory seducers apart from garden-variety sexual seducers is that they accomplish a conversion to sexual willingness by managing the motives of those they target in a way that bypasses their consciously-held, motivationally-charged valuations.”(238)
Now that we know what it is, what is wrong with unsavory seduction? The author rejects harm, corruption, and nonconsent, because there could be cases in which unsavory seduction neither harms nor corrupts, and cases in which it is consensual, yet we would still want to say it is wrong. He ends up claiming the unsavory seduction undermines the target’s autonomy by doing things which undermine her ability to reflect on and manage her own motivations. Autonomy is very important in moral philosophy, and these days philosophers think of it not in terms of certain substantive decisions a person might make (for example,” a woman with a career is autonomous but a SAHM is not”) but in terms of the procedure used to make that choice, the history of her motives (so a woman who chooses a career might lack autonomy depending on how that choice was made). When a person chooses autonomously, she is at once realizing a key ethical value, and also making decisions for which she can be held responsible, for good or for ill. Autonomy is also closely related to integrity.
Unsavory seduction is only provisionally morally wrong, unlike rape, which is categorically morally wrong. And what’s the provision? That the unsavory seduction does not realize some more important moral goal. The author does not suggest what that more important goal might be.
Some things I will discuss with my students include:
–I wonder, does this boil down in some sense to a consent theory? Except that instead of straight consent, it is higher order consent. The target has to want to want to have sex with the seducer in order for the seduction to be savory, i.e. consented.
–Is there a subtle aligning of conscious/endorsed/morally good motives, and conversely, of unconscious/unendorsed/bad motives, and does it hold up? So, for example, what is wrong with stoking or unblocking an unconscious sexual desire? So much of the romance genre involves doing just that! Suppose I have an unconscious desire to leave philosophy and become a romance writer. Why isn;t it good for me to have someone stoke that desire? It’s only bad if we have already decided there is something wrong with being a romance writer.
–Cave discusses Kierkegaard’s example of Johannes’s seduction of Cordelia in Kierkegaard’s Diary of A Seducer ( published as a novella, it is actually part of the Danish philosopher’s epic Either/Or)Cave claims that what makes Johannes’s seduction of Cordelia morally problematic is that he messes with her psychologically, getting her to reject middle class norms of sexual propriety and want to have sex with him. But in this kind of seduction, as well as in Valmont’s, it seems to me that deception is a large moral issue. After all, there are a lot of social norms that are oppressive of feminine sexuality, and should really be rejected.
But I guess Cave would say the deception is just a tool for the enacting of the moral wrong, which is that Johannes and Valmont have ensured that the way Cordelia and Madame de Tourvel come to reject their values (“good motives” in Cave’s language) — undermines their autonomy.
And that brings me to forced seduction in romance. Maybe one of the reasons it works for many readers is that it is often not “unsavory” in the sense Cave defines. That is, the forced seduction is not, ultimately, autonomy undermining, but autonomy enhancing (although I hasten to add it is often autonomy restricting and worse).
And, even if it is unsavory, it can serve a larger moral good — the development of an everlasting love which is fulfilling and respectful and egalitarian. I always wanted Valmont and de Tourvel to ride off into the sunset. He thought he was lying through his teeth when he asked her to help him be a better person, but he wasn’t, and she did. What do you think?
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Let me see if I got this right: unsavoury seduction (apart from sounding like a really rich chocolate cake) seems to be conditioned on the intention of the seducer? If Valmont had really only been interested in de Tourvel, it would have been “ordinary” seduction, i.e. morally acceptable? Because if this is the case, then I can see how this relates in a major way to the “forced seductions” of romance: they become morally acceptable because the heroes, in general, really honestly want to seduce their heroines, and are — sometimes, at least — simply… well, dumb as to how to go about it.
And this is connected, in my mind at least, with the reason why so many readers find rape in romance somehow acceptable. Because romance rape is not about power, the way RL rape is; in romance, it really is about sex and desire for one specific person. (I’m not excusing romance rape here, just trying to follow the logic.)
Now I think about it, that could explain at least partially why Gaffney’s THTH got such strong reactions, too. Because the first sex there is about power a lot more than it is about sex. Um, I might need to ponder some more on that…
@Milena:
This is a really good question. Actually, Cave doesn’t seem to care what the intention of the seducer is. The problem is the way the seducer gets what he wants (the sexual willingness of the target).
And yet, all his examples are of seducers whose intentions are not good. I think we need to ask whether the method seems unsavory because the intentions are.
Perhaps there are seductions in the romance literature in which the intentions are excellent, the outcome is excellent, yet the seduction remains autonomy diminishing because the hero is messing with the heroine;s motivations in a way that makes her powerless. Are they still provisionally immoral?
Hmm, I was already thinking about this subject because of the Iron Duke conversation. I’m not so sure it makes any difference if the hero has good intentions ultimately since many times we can infer that initially his intention is more about getting off rather than showing/experiencing love for the heroine.
I remember some of the old skool romances where it was out and out rape. Then there were those romances where the author played with the heroine’s body is definitely willing but her mind protests. The thing about some of the new style forced seductions is that I do believe it is most definitely about power and the readers excuse the hero’s behavior because he honestly desires the heroine so much and the heroine desires him.
I’ll be honest here, there were many times when I didn’t question whether or not it was rape vs. forced seduction vs. a really well written erotic scene but I had a stalking incident with someone who turned out to be a level-three sex offender who was in my writing group (looked like a harmless grandpa. Well-spoken, educated and even charming initially). Anyway, after the incident and in-depth investigation into “who” this guy was, I started thinking about motivation and how his “rapes” would like from his point-of-view vs. a typical hero in a forced seduction and I have to be honest they were pretty close to the same. The only difference was that the hero was redeemed by love and/or this only happened with “the one.”
It’s definitely a muddling of the waters, especially when one starts talking date rape in real life and how ugly society’s outlook on the female tends to be.
Anyway, in the cases that are popping into my head regarding forced seductions (tropes: blackmail, fated mates, etc.), the whole story (not just the forced seduction) is about power (in a sense the story of Persephone all over again) even though the hero appears to cede some of that power by finally admitting his “love” for the heroine or by the author saying everything is okay because the hero really loves the heroine.
I do sometimes think there’s an aspect of wanting to explore a sexual fantasy and somehow making that sexual fantasy okay because it wasn’t really rape. I also think that sometimes it’s about getting that emotional response at the end of the story where the hero grovels and/or the reader gets to experience the power of the hero falling or admitting his transgressions. Some times if we were to pick this apart, real life or even story logic wouldn’t hold up nevertheless the emotional response of the reader is very real ****edited to add*** and in a sense the author has done their job, prompting much needed discussion and/or insight. My issue with it sometimes is that the forced seduction is sometimes just consumed without any thought at all. How many times would one need to consume a story like this without thought before it inadvertently affects you in real life. I ask this of myself because it’s those little things that I consume without thinking from the community around me that I find most difficult to counteract. I sometimes find myself saying where the hell did I pick that up from after I’ve stopped and examined it. Have I used the word sometimes enough?****
Oy! I’m not making a solid argument here just trying to get a few thoughts on paper. Feel free to tear them apart.
Look forward to the discussion.
All right, I’ll go back to the Valmont example, because I think it offers the possibility of interpretation. If Valmont had been honest (no deception) in his method of seduction (i.e., if he really did want de Tourvel to help him become a better person), would his seduction — which wouldn’t have changed in any significant way — have been moral? It would still bring de Tourvel to a point where she would have to choose between retaining her moral values or “following her heart”. But if there were no deception in Valmont’s presentation of the situation, would it still have been wrong to have asked that of her?
I can’t think of an example right now, so I’ll just have to invent one (sorry for the abundance of examples, but I find it easier to think that way.) Say a hero is in love with heroine, and wants to win her love in return. (Those are our excellent intentions, right?) Yet, he chooses to “get” her by, let’s say, putting her in a compromising situation, where she can’t do anything but marry him or lose her social position (there’s more than one old skool romance where I’ve seen this, blanking out on the titles here.) — which, of course, also gets the heroine into his bed. That’s seriously autonomy diminishing. The outcome will be excellent, of course, as the h/h realise they love each other and live HEA. Would that still be provisionally immoral? I would say yes, definitely.
I had one more thought. Rather than only looking at character motivation or reader response, do we also need to look at authorial intent?
e.g., writing a dangerous erotic scene vs. hero redemption vs. societal norms vs. whatever
Is there a comparable example of forced seduction with male characters that have nothing to do with romance or even necessarily sex?
Edited to add: I believe that seduction regardless of intentions is always ultimately about power.
While I was reading this post my first thought went to, not the hero as the seductor but the heroine. Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s This Heart of Mine has Molly (let’s call it ) “seduct” a sleeping Kevin who thought she was someone else. There was no consent, autonomy was diminished, he was rendered powerless. She hadn’t even given him her real name at that stage. There are some wonderful aspects to this book but a major stumbling block for me was the heroine’s immoral actions and the hero’s powerlessness. And it’s certainly a plot device that SEP likes to use.
Gwen Fairfax’s Lover in Disguise and Lori Copeland’s A Winning Combination both are about the hero pretending to be someone that he isn’t to the extent where they both use their middle name not their preferred name. In both books it is the uncovered truth (after the seduction) that is the stumbling block that the h/h need to overcome. And in true romance fashion, they do but as a reader it puts the novel into the category of “suspension of belief” rather than plausible romance.
SEP’s book, for me, crosses the moral boundary due to the non-consensual sex whereas the other two books may be have had “impersonators” but both partners were sexually willing.
How strange that Cave’s analysis seems to focus almost exclusively on the person being seduced (the woman) and not at all on the seducer. It seems to me that the motive for the unsavory seduction makes a difference to, as does whether the seducer’s motive is abandoned or transformed in the process.
In Romance, the male seducer is transformed by his seduction, perhaps even more than the object of his desire/revenge/what have you. The seducee (?!) can have power, too, you know. A great deal of romance is about exactly that.
I just can’t get around being offended by Cave’s omission in his analysis of seduction.
Think two movies –
Excalibur, 1981, starring Nicol Williamson as Merlin. He disguises Gabriel Byrne – Uther Pendragon, as Igrayne’s husband Cornwall, so Uther can essentially rape the woman he so obsessively desires, thus impregnating her with Arthur – while her true husband dies in battle. Uther then marries the widow and it becomes, or so legend tells us, a love match. Even in oral history, unsavory seduction is at the heart of the Arthurian legend.
Cruel Intentions with Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe – deliberate attempt at unsavory seduction that morphs into true love and tragedy.
Two thoughts – I think if I have to boil down the difference between unsavory seduction and… savory seduction? it would be around an element that isn’t mentioned at all here: deception. Unsavory seduction hinges on the “seducee” being deliberately led to believe in intentions or motivations on the part of the seducer that are patently not true, at least at the time that they are advanced.
Which leads me to the second thought around “harm”:
I don’t know if I buy this. Perhaps its that the intention of harm, whether it truly results or not, makes it unsavory to me.
Eg, in RHPS, the seduction is at least partly to debase Brad and Jane, for the amusement of the seducers. It’s not from a genuine belief that the couple will be more enlightened and happier for it in the end.
I think that’s as deep as I can get before lunchtime.
Aside:
I don’t think I ever perceived that as a love match. Hmmm.
Nicola – I guess I perceived it as ultimately becoming a successful marriage according to the times, if not a love match. The details are left rather vague, but it’s sort of a King David/Bathsheba story – fill in the blank, write your own ending. The goal of the story is to explain Arthur’s birth. Uther married the widow, which leaves me to assume he wanted her. My claim isn’t that Uther did right – he didn’t IMO – just pointing out a couple of examples in popular culture.
Or if we have decided that cognitive processes are the most savory. (Which could spin off in some entertaining directions – thought as umami, etc.)
Or that influencing someone’s volition is a violation of the self, regardless of the outcome. I say ‘regardless of the outcome’ because I think your near-last point on autonomy can work on two levels, one of which is a significant step back from forced seduction: there’s altering one’s volition/choice/autonomy in principle, and there’s altering one’s *actions*. There are lots of romance heroines, and some heroes, who feel shame over their thoughts (especially thoughts about sex) even when their actions are in line with their espoused intent.
@Vassiliki
I agree that this crosses boundaries and call it rape. The disturbing thing in the book is that this is never acknowledged.
@Nicola O
I really agree with this and the harm does include the deliberate compromise of the seducee’s personal autonomy – at a simple level her/his capacity to give informed consent. Just because there are things that benefit the seducee doesn’t undo the initial intention. The consequences of that intention were via the rape/dubious consent/unsavoury seduction a deliberate choice on the seducer’s part to violate the seducee’s autonomy.
In Iron Duke, I don’t think Trahearn’s intentions were to compromise Mina’s autonomy even if that was an outcome of their first sexual encounter. It is his ‘savoury’ intentions that mean there is a basis for reparation. We know he want’s Mina and his alpha-nature pushes him close to the edge but he thinks about her, her feelings and how they have been formed and responds to that. He really ‘sees’ her as an autonomous person as an “other” that he should respect.
For me, failing to see the other person’s right to autonomy is most often the thing that makes seduction unsavoury. This brings me to another aspect that isn’t touched on in Cave’s analysis. It is the seducee who ultimately defines or decides what the meaning of the ‘seduction’ is. This is because they experience its impact and consequences as something that shapes their personhood, their sense of themselves from that point on. This is also where romancelandia probably kicks in with the happy ever after, by changing how the seducee defines that original experience. I do wonder whether actual trust between partners is really possible in an ongoing way for a relationship formed after these types of events.
@Julia Rachel Barrett:
Cruel Intentions is a remake/update/cover of Dangerous Liaisons, which is the English version of Les Liaisons dangereuses, a French play.
Ryan Phillipe is the Valmont character referenced in the post.
@Julia Rachel Barrett:
No, I agree, I’m not even sure that counts as a seduction, just a … non-rape, or something.
I only disagree that it’s a common interpretation that it ended as a love match. I can’t remember ever actually reading anything about Igraine’s desires or preferences. She’s a bit player.
@Marianne:
Yes, exactly! well said.
The discussion above reminded me about Lois McMaster Bujold’s book ‘A Civil Campaign’ which is about Miles’ courtship with Ekaterin. There isn’t an unsavoury seduction but there is a campaign on Miles part that has the effect of impacting on Ekaterin’s sense of autonomy, something that is a huge issue for her with her personal history – something that Miles knows about and failed to respect because he wanted what he wanted. In the end there is major grovelling and a HEA but Miles letter to Ekaterin in which he apologises and asks for nothing which leaves all the choices in response in her hands also acknowledges that ‘he tried to be the thief of you’ and in doing that he took away the capacity that she had to make a gift of herself in their relationship. I haven’t read it for a while but I think that is the gist of it.
So I come back to the notion of autonomy versus the intention to control. An unsavoury seduction isn’t about swaying another person it is always about us, our needs and wants projected onto the other. It is about not being open to the other person, it is about unwillingness to be vulnerable.
In Mary Balogh’s very first book, A Masked Deception, the heroine disguises herself as the hero’s first love. Well, it’s complicated — because she is his first love [they met at a costume ball] but she was the one that got away. And they sleep together — and the husband is very torn, between his joy at being reunited with this special woman and his growing love for his demure, sweet and loving wife. He “sleeps” with both of them but true to Balogh’s style of show not tell, the way they are together is very indicative of the state of their relationship. He’s rather cold blooded with the wife and tender and emotional with his lady love. He’s very upset at the end of the book (before the HEA) at the deception that he feels is practiced on him. His wife points out that well you were stepping out on me. How does that fly? It’s interesting, especially since this is a real reversal of the typical “unsavory seduction”. Reading the last comment, I would agree that the unsavory side of the seduction comes from the wife being unwilling to reveal herself as the hero’s true love: she is afraid perhaps to take that risk? So there is a massive deception.
The second example, Balogh’s A Gentle Conquest, has a husband sleeping with an opera dancer — to gain experience — not knowing (it’s very dark) that’s she’s really his wife. You have to suspend your disbelief a bit! In this story, he’s not sleeping with his wife, just the opera dancer. It sounds silly when I write it but it’s unusual to find a hero divided between his growing affection for a woman he doesn’t know at all, except in the flesh, and his real love for his wife. Only Balogh! This is a very sweet story about a young, rather naive couple — the more forceful wife determines that she will show her husband the ropes, so to speak. Neither of them has any experience but she is very strong-minded. They just don’t really know how to communicate particularly well.
@Janet W:
Well, you know, there’s a one-hit wonder based on this whole premise: If you like pina coladas and gettin’ caught in the rain…
Where is this discussion/s on the forced seduction in The Iron Duke taking place? I need it for research purposes.
Thanks.
@Angela/Lazaraspaste: Here: http://www.readreactreview.com/2010/10/27/a-nice-surprise-a-dnf-and-an-iron-duke/
@AQ:
This must have been a very scary experience, and I am glad you escaped serious harm. I do not want to short circuit anything here, but in the post, I am really staying within the text. I agree that the author of the article is moving back and forth between fiction and RL without reflecting on that (which I find problamatic, but this is how philosophers often use literature).
I am not asking “how can readers like this”, “does this make readers more forgiving of rape” or those questions — which are important. I am looking at the characters as if they are real people, and trying to think about moral judgments that are made of them by readers.
you write a lot of other important things, but I just returned for a lecture and dinner on Hegel and art, so I want to say something about this. The speaker contended that real art makes us think. It pushes boundaries and may be uncomfortable. Implied in these comments, I think was the idea that art that entertains is not art. We talked about classical music stations that promise “soothing music”, fit for background, but that will not disturb the listener as she works, or does something else. I don’t know if I agree with this thesis (it belongs to Hegel, Adorno, many others). I tend to think not, because it has the unfortunate consequence of making 95% of the art that 95% of the people experience not count as art. But anyway, I reject the assumption that entertaining forms of art, like romance novels, are not challenging to readers in the same way that, say Kara Walker (the artist whose work was the subject of the talk) is. No, not always, not even often, but sometimes, romance can be challenging and uncomfortable. And the rape stuff is one example of that.
@Milena:
Agreed. The question is whether the good outcome overrides the immorality of the means.
@AQ:
Well, I am being a real ostrich and ONLY looking at character motivation, but sure, authorial intent may be a factor in a different kind of analysis.
Agreed on seduction and power. But not all power is bad. Parents have power over children, for example. And should.
@Vassiliki: Yes, THOM counts as rape under Cave’s definition. Not just nonconsensual due to sleep, but heroine allowing hero to think he is sleeping with a specific other person.
@Carolyn Jewel:
Agreed. This is why I love Dangerous Liaisons, and a lot of romance.
About intentions being important, I agree. In all of these cases, the intentions are bad. I am much less inclined to think a seduction is morally unsavory, even if it undercuts autonomy, if I know the intentions are good (added to that, the genre constraint that the seducer is RIGHT, and it will all be for the best. I have noticed I forgive more and more as I read more romance, because I am so comfortable with my expectation of an HEA.).
When I discussed this with my students in class yesterday, they kept going back to the deception that is a part of the unsavory seductions. they — and I — found the deception to be the biggest problem, morally. We can connect deception and autonomy by invoking Kant. His analysis of deception was that it is always an attempt to get the deceived to act or not act in a certain way, to get them under your power in a sense, even if temporarily, and thus it hampers their autonomy. they are not acting with full information, relevant information, and you are deliberately preventing them form getting that full information.
@Julia Rachel Barrett: Great examples. CI is a remake of DL. I like CI, actually. And a lot of my students have seen it. — as Mojo says below…
In class, it hit me like a thunderbolt that a recent film is a perfect example of unsavory seduction: An Education.
@Nicola O.: It is deep enough for me. I agree completely.
@RfP:
I feel like Cave assumes this.
@RfP:
I know. Maybe there is a “citadel” definition of moral integrity working here. Certainly, it is more concerned with the way relationships can thwart autonomy than enhance it. I was thinking of the phenomenon of “intervention” for addicts. as I read the article.
@Merrian:
The SEP apologist is coming out… but I do sort of think it is acknowledged.
@Merrian:
I agree. I think what this shows is that there is much more than consent that matter morally.
@Merrian:
Yes, but how do we square this with our insistence that it is the intentions of the seducer that determine the morality of the seduction?
@Merrian:
I am glad you mention trust, because to me the greatest harm in the unsavory seductions Cave discusses — and, pace Cave, there is harm in all of them, although it may be outweighed by eventual goods — is the betrayal of trust.
@Moriah Jovan: Yes. Of course, DL is far superior, but CI got an unnecessarily bad rap.
@Merrian:
I love this. Beautifully put. And that’s why the transformations of characters like Valmont are so pleasing to the viewer/reader. Because, despite himself, he has become vulnerable.
@Janet W:
Wow. This book sounds fantastic! I must see if I can Kindle it.
@Moriah Jovan: Way to drag the conversation into the gutter, LIZ!!
*snarf*
I find this of utmost interest. I can’t really articulate WHY, but it’s kind of me thinking, “Yeah, she’s getting it.”
Re the SEP in question: I have been an SEP fangirl for years (although I recently broke up with her), and I have to tell you: I don’t remember ANYTHING about that book except Molly’s name and she’s a bit of a 7th grader. That’s it. Rape? Semen stealer? I don’t remember. I don’t know if that’s SEP’s failing or mine.
I think that both of these things are true at once. I also think that in the end how both of these things come together it isn’t either/or. May be we could say that it is how the intentions of the seducer are understood/framed by the seducee that influence how the seducee defines the outcomes. I think that this is what happens in romancelandia.
In ‘This Heart of Mine’ Molly’s rape of Kevin has to be re-defined as something else by him. That re-defining is probably shaped by the fact that it can’t be acknowledged as rape because how can a man be raped…. also the unfair pressures placed by how he earns his livelihood and Molly’s relationship with Kevin’s bosses is classic ‘power over’ which also mean that it is difficult for the real nature of Molly’s actions to be named. As I type this I am sitting here wanting to get Kevin a good therapist and a lawyer!
Here in Australia, we have had a spate of footballer’s raping women who were sleeping/drunk and unable to consent. No one has a problem calling this for what it is although there has been lots of community backing for the boys (of the ‘if she went home with home she should have known it was going to involve sex’ type). That double standard has also been widely acknowledged and attacked.
Molly’s intentions are unsavoury and about projecting her wants onto Kevin. Even if Kevin in these circumstances has chosen not to call it rape her original intentions and her actions mean that it is still rape. Your student’s picked up on the issue of deception as being the critical thing that determines the unsavouriness of the seduction and Molly and Kevin’s story really illustrates this.
I don’t think I have answered your question Jessica! The seducee’s framing of the ‘seduction’ is driven by many things from personal history to social and economic pressures. It is about what they can live with as much as it is about the events.
Might the second half of Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold (THATH) portray an example of “unsavory seduction” with a well-intentioned seducer? I refer to the sexual relationship of Rachel as Sebastian’s “kept woman/mistress” in Chapter 11 on, not the multiple rapes of Rachel by Sebastian in Chapters 8 and 9.
By Chapter 11, Gaffney portrays Rachel as sexually willing and attracted to Sebastian (the earlier multiple rapes and month-long taunting/degrading treatment by Sebastian apparently forgotten/forgiven). However, had Rachel been in a healthy emotional/mental state, her principles would have prevented her from agreeing to be the mistress of man who did not love her. Yet, because she is in so needy and victimized a state, the kindness and sexual gentleness that Sebastian offers meets deep emotional needs, and she agrees to the ongoing sexual relationship although it is not in alignment with her conscious principles. (Does this not meet the definition of “unsavory seduction”?) Repeatedly during this period, Rachel reflects that she is living in “the unprincipled moment”, acknowledging that the need to avoid loneliness outweighs the motivations of her principles. She reflects she often saw this kind of relationship in jail, with lonely prisoners forming attachments to their jailors.
The crises point in the relationship comes when Rachel has grown strong enough to assert that the need to adhere to her principles are stronger than the need to assuage her loneliness. Her conscious principles are that a sexual relationship with a man is only “right” for her if there is at least love between them. Sebastian has been unable to acknowledge that he loves Rachel, he never speaks of commitment, and he laughs at the suggestion of marrying her to make her safe from threat of re-arrest. This triggers Rachel to end the relationship. She writes to him: “It’s opened my eyes, and helped me to understand that in so many ways I can’t keep ignoring, I’m still my parents’ child – middle-class and conventional, the last woman on earth you should have taken for a lover…. If you could’ve loved me, perhaps I wouldn’t have these scruples.” (Chapter 19)
Regardless of whether you find the “reformed” Sebastian believable (I’m afraid I do not though I respect the opinion of the many romance readers who do), Gaffney clearly portrays Sebastian’s motivations in the second half of the book as attempts at atonement. He is attempting to “heal” Rachel. However, he gives no thought to the fact that Rachel in her vulnerable state (victim of horrible sexual abuse and 10 years treatment as an imprisoned animal) cannot not make the autonomous choices of an emotionally-strong adult. Gaffney has stressed from the beginning that Rachel has to relearn how to make decisions, given that during the past ten years the freedom to make choices was denied her.
IMO, Sebastian is at this point too self-centered to be capable of understanding Rachel’s emotional state. He genuinely thinks that his decision to take control over Rachel’s sexuality (his resolve to bring her to orgasm) is an act of atonement. Thus, while I think the master/mistress relationship is “unsavory” (given it would not be Rachel’s autonomous choice had she been emotionally healthy), the seduction was well-intentioned on the seducer’s part. Sebastian (for what ever reason) does not understand that Rachel’s yearning need for the dignity of respectability is just as great (if not greater?) than the need for orgasm. Keeping Rachel as a mistress (in mid-Victorian, conservative country town society) puts that respectability seemingly out of reach. (This is why I find the scenes with the acts of friendship of Anne Morrell that publicly grant Rachel respectability before the inhabitants of Wycherley particularly moving, BTW).
If one can accept the premise of a woman learning to love her rapist/past-tormentor, I think one might view the ultimate HEA of THATH as the ‘greater good’ that justifies the ‘temporary evil’ of the loss of Rachel’s autonomy in her agreement-out-of-emotional-need to be the mistress of a man she does not think loves her. Gaffney certainly portrays the relationship of “atonement-seeking” master healing his ”victimized” mistress as what ultimately “heals” both seducer and seduced.
My apologies for so long a post! I truly enjoy your thought-provoking blog!
@Harriet S: What a great meditation. My apologies that it had taken me so long to acknowldge your wonderful contribution.
Yes, you make a convincing argument that THATH offers a case of unsavory seduction that has to be explained the way that Cave explains the phenomenon, and cannot be rolled into “bad intentions”, “deceit” or other moral wrongs.
I suppose in Sebastien’s defense, one could argue that it is not he who has thwarted her autonomy — it was never there to begin with. but if we think that lovers should enhance each other’s autonomy, that won’t wash.
As you point out, of course, many readers read these scenes AS autonomy enhancing, so there is nothing unsavory about the later (and perhaps earlier) “seductions”. And such a reading would fit in with the emphasis placed on sexual fulfillment as a sign of personal autonomy in the genre.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your perspective.