Reading Romance Literature

As an author, Georgette Heyer does not so much fit the genre of Romance Literature, as define it. If Austen holds the ultimate adulatory status, then Heyer comes a distinguished second. Perhaps, as I'm sure many self-proclaimed intellectuals would argue, that is not particularly notable in a field of literature which at its best is patronized by the public and its worse, relentlessly mocked. And, of course, there are some examples of execrable prose and plot among romance novels, the way there are many among any genre. However, romance novels are women's literature and thus inferior to any other form of textual production. In the literary climate of Modern America (as well as every other place/time), women can either write to be read by men or eschew all claims to "literary merit."

Heyer and Austen write for women (though Austen at least has now found a wide-spread, if unwilling, male readership in progressive high school classes). They write about the female experience in society, embracing female characters who seek to preserve their own identityand human integrity by actively pursuing (relatively) safe marriages based on affection and financial security. They write narratives whose trajectories end in happiness and are thus dismissed as "light" and unrealistic. However, in many ways, Heyer and Austen are the most "realistic" of novelists. In an age when Keith Gesson can publish a critically acclaimed book dealing with the ephemeral travails of being a young man in our society and be considered an intellectual writer, there should be no stigma assigned with Heyer or Austen or any other woman writing narratives of young women trying to find themselves. Yes, they associate finding their identities with finding men. However, few young men coming of age do so in a fictional world devoid of women. Perhaps, for male readers of such books (both the involuntary and the potentially nonexistent willing ones), the true unreality comes from these female authors' assertion that it is love for which their characters seek. Sex on the other hand, seems a much more realistic and laudatory goal.

Heyer and Austen write of women trapped in penury, legally owned by their fathers, forced to live lives constrained by the minutiae of social detail. And yet, they are transcendent characters, recasting the inevitable trajectory of their lives into a context of choice and will. Romance novels give both their characters and readers a vision of female intentionality and decision. Still, they never forget to also tender the reassurance that such "unfeminine" agency does not need inevitably to result in a context of loneliness and alienation. Heyer and Austen assert that there are lucky women who find exceptional men who allow them to maintain the integrity of their characters and their agency without sacrificing the love and companionship for which all people, both men and women, yearn. Is that unrealistic? Too idealistic to qualify as the focus of a serious genre of literature? Well maybe...but judging from the amount of readership which romance literature achieves, the intellectual community might eventually want to get around to examining, instead of merely denigrating, such "female" concerns in its literature and scholarship.

The Drama of Narrative and Life in "The Group"

When confronted by a book like Mary McCarthy's The Group, following the lives of eight Vassar graduates, it is perhaps a natural response for the reader to try to identify with individual characters. Perhaps one might see some of Libby in onself, or rather Lakey, or on the contrary, feel a revulsion towards Kay, or Priss or Norine. We see each woman through her own eyes for such a short time and then we are reduced to once again seeing her through the cloudy lens of others' opinion. We wish as readers to judge, to quantify, to feel as if we might sum up a character and shelve her; confronted by eight, perhaps this is the only way to procede. And yet, McCarthy seems to both intuit our impulse and to deny it. She leaves us with each woman's internal humanity, her fright and joy and the sheer drama which each person's life holds for themselves. And then, once we feel that we might just see the soul, the essence, the uniqueness of that woman, McCarthy again drops the curtain. Because of course, every person is the whole world in their own eyes...and something much less to even their friends and lovers, let alone to the general populace.

One might even say that it is to some extent those interactions with others, almost always men, which define these women's life moments as dramatic enough to witness. Thus, Dottie Renfrew is worth looking at while losing her virginity to a man all the readers know is bad news. She willingly forfeits her dramatic, narrative potential when deciding to marry that man Brook from Arizona. In a classic role reversal, Dottie's mother begs her to throw away security for "love," for the one moment of transgressive, rule-breaking passion of Dottie's life. She feels disappointed in Dottie when Dottie refuses, let down by Dottie's very practicality and sense (pg. 229). Dottie has thrown away her chance for drama and centrality in the narrative. She could have married the weak, immoral man and remained a central figure, like Kay. And yet, instead Dottie chooses to close that curtain of reader interest herself. She chooses happiness and security over passion. Perhaps a model person, but certainly not a model character, as McCarthy herself concludes by passing over her for the rest of her book. Apparently, there is no drama, and thus no rasion de lire once a Vassar girl goes to Arizona.

The truly dramatic women, with whom we are meant to emotionally connect, tend to be the ones who inhabit constantly emotionally-searing landscapes. In particular, I think Kay and Polly remain the most truly dramatic and ergo the most heavily developed characters of the novel. Kay, whose story bookends the entire novel, seems inevitably destined for despair. Polly in contrast, beginning in poverty seems designed for an equally inevitable, Horatio Alger-ish rise to happiness. These characters are created on a trajectory; it is unclear whether it is their lives that lend themselves to a dramatic narrative or vice versa, but either way, they lack the stagnant security which to McCarthy signals a life lacking in both conflict and significance. When wondering which characters to empathize with and focus on, the reader of The Group might keep in mind the narrative blandness of contentment and the lure of a falling/rising star.