I read a romance recently that disappointed me in a particular way — it seemed to uphold views of women that are very negative, even misogynistic.

Before going further I want to preface this with a reflection on my career in philosophy (you’ll see why in a minute). As a new undergraduate I enrolled in a course called “Philosophy of Woman” with a textbook edited by Mary Mahowald of the same name. As a  philosophy major, I was excited to learn what the tradition said about my gender. The textbook took us from the Bible to the twentieth century, and — surprise! –  almost everything in it was derogatory. Then, as now, I was mostly interested in ethical theory, and from Aristotle’s claim that women cannot be virtuous due to their reason’s inability to control their emotions, to Kant’s claim that women know nothing of duty or obligation, to Hegel’s rejection of women’s access to the universal, except through males. Heck, even women in philosophy, like Simone de Beauvoir, seemed to claim that women can only achieve transcendence by essentially becoming men.

Overwhelmingly, the view of women in the western philosophical tradition is that they are lesser versions of men, with diminished mental capacities, and little self-control, who are vain, superficial, and shallow. As Nietzsche put it “One half of mankind is weak, chronically sick, changeable, shifty.”

This was a blow, but I did not give up my philosophy major. I did not give up reading and enjoying Aristotle, Hegel, or Kant. And I did not even give up reading and valuing the very texts from which the passages in Philosophy of Woman were excerpted. 20 years later, I am still studying and learning and teaching philosophy. The tradition is rife with misogyny — almost more so in what it leaves out than when it bothers to mention sex, which is rarely –  but sophisticated (feminist, deconstructing, heck, just careful) readings reveal nuances and tensions within even the most straightforward dismissal of women.

What does this have to do with romance?

Well, I’m going to talk about a recent read, and I want to compare my reaction to my relationship to the philosophical tradition. I have read and enjoyed books by this author, and will continue to do so. And even the book under discussion in this post gave me some moments of genuine enjoyment. In this post, I want to talk about something that really bothered me, but it doesn’t reflect my attitudes toward the book as a whole, other books by this author, or the author herself.

Loretta Chase’s Don’t Tempt Me was my 6th book of Ms. Chase’s after Lord of Scoundrels, the Carsington series, and Your Scandalous Ways. She’s an author I enjoy and will continue to read.

In Don’t Tempt Me, the heroine, Zoe, has just returned to London after being kidnapped and held captive in a harem for 12 years.

Her four sisters, or the “Four Harridans of the Apocalypse” as the hero, Lucien, refers to them, are the portrayed as shallow, narcissistic, stupid, vain, and selfish. Physically, they are ridiculed. They’re compared to dumb animals, a “quartet of crows”, and the two pregnant sisters’ large forms are frequently described in unflattering terms. And they act it, screaming, weeping, gesturing wildly. They don’t care about Zoe, but only their own reputations.

In an early scene, Zoe mentions that she escaped the harem with jewels. Her sisters freeze. Zoe thinks,

“When it came to jewelry, women the world over were the same. If her future and everything for which she’d risked her life had not been at stake, she’d have laughed, because her sisters behaved exactly like the harem women they scorned.”

When Zoe is presented at court, Lucien notes “some of the ladies compressing a little more tightly and edging away from Zoe, as though in fear of contamination”. He thinks of them as “stupid” and again they are described in unflattering animalistic terms — bobbing plumed headdresses — that Lucien fantasizes about knocking off. Zoe notices, too, and compares the women in attendance unflatteringly to the women in the harem. The harem women were “silly”, “like spiteful children”. To compare, Lucien is described by Zoe in animalistic terms as well, but flatteringly, “prowling” like a “tiger”.

Zoe later says, comparing her sisters to women in the harem, “In the harem, we had outbursts all the time, much worse than this. Women screaming, threatening, complaining, hysterical.”

Lucien has a mistress, Lady Tarling. In this scene, Lucien is explaining gently to her that he will need to take Zoe under his wing so she is accepted in the ton. He brings her jewels, and Lady Tarling, of course, “knows exactly what becomes her”.  Again, women are portrayed as superficial gossips, competitive cats, nasty beasts:

“Lord Tarling’s handsome young widow was not on the patronesses’ list. Lady Jersey had taken in her dislike.

‘I preferred you not learn about it from one of the cats who will be there,’ he said. ‘or from the newspapers. They were likely to give you the wrong impression altogether.’

‘It must be a curious impression, indeed, to result in such a gift.’ She gave a little laugh. Her silvery laugh was famous. It was gentler and prettier, many thought than Lady Jersey’s tinkling laughter. This was but one reason Lady Jersey loathed her.”

Lucien explains that he has taken Zoe under his wing, and then this…

“‘My goodness.’ She moved away from him to the nearest chair and sat down hard — but tightly clutching the box, he noted.”

Later, when Lucien calls upon his mistress to break it off with her, he gifts her with jewels again, and we are told, “For what small regret she might feel, the magnificent brooches were more than adequate consolation.”

Again, in these scenes, we are expected to understand that women are competitive, jealous, and more partial to jewelry than anything else.

Later, Zoe and Lucien have an argument, and we get this, in the narrator’s voice:

“Zoe expressed her disgust with him in the time-honored fashion of women everywhere, by shopping exhaustively.”

When Zoe is mad, rather than having a rational disagreement, she flounces off, suggestively, “Zoe stormed out of the vestibule, hips swaying, skirts swishing.”

When Zoe and Lucien become engaged, Harrison, Lucien’s house steward, (who has already noted that Zoe “had her hooks in” his master) explains to his underlings that “Everyone knows there’s little in ladies’ heads but fashion and scandal.”

Lucien’s friend Adderwood notes, “women change their minds. They’re famous for it.”

Besides Zoe, the only female character who is deemed to have any value is Lucien’s aunt, probably because she is crazy. She says things like, “My ankles, as you know, have inspired odes.”. She’s “colorful” — but not really anyone to take seriously.

Am I saying that there are no women who are vain, stupid, shallow, and selfish? Of course not! Meljean Brook, Sherry Thomas, Nora Roberts, Jo Beverly, and many, many other authors have gifted us with very flawed heroines. But it’s one thing to portray flawed women, and another to use broad stereotypes as a shorthand to character. I object to the latter on both aesthetic and moral grounds.

Compare Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Was there ever a more laughable crew than Elizabeth Bennet’s family, especially her mother and sisters? But I can describe each sister and her unique character in detail to you. Mary Bennet and Kitty Bennet are laughably funny, but in very different ways. They are ridiculous, but never ridiculed. And Mr. Bennet does not come away as merely the male victim of these crazy women. No, his role in the family dynamic — his lassitude, his shirking of responsibility, his blameworthiness for the situation in which the Bennet family finds itself — is carefully developed as well.

The negative attitude towards women that comes across in Don’t Tempt Me is not just a view held by one character. It permeates this book. Nearly every character, including the heroine, and even the narrator (with whom I do not confuse the flesh and blood author) has a low opinion of the mass of womenkind. Of all of the women in the text, Zoe alone is fully fleshed out and portrayed as an individual.

It reminded me of old school romances that never questioned the misogynistic hero’s attitude towards Women, merely it’s applicability to Our Heroine, aka, The Exception that Proves the Rule. Reading those old romances as a teen, of course I identified with the heroine, not those vain, shallow ninnies who were always trying to bring her down. But at what price?