Comments on: Innocence and Experience: Be My Baby Now, Part I

By: Be My Baby Now, Part II | Passions and Provocations

Be My Baby Now, Part II | Passions and Provocations — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:20:20 +0000

[...] had to leave off this argument to go post at the Hoydens about Sex and the Historical Sensibility. But I promised to come back and [...]

By: Sex and (the historical) Sensibility | Passions and Provocations

Sex and (the historical) Sensibility | Passions and Provocations — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:21:51 +0000

[...] no, I haven’t deserted the books-and-babies theme. Sometime next week, I hope, for Part II. Written by Pam on September 12, 2009 at 7:21 am and [...]

By: “Soul Mates” & the Mental Click « Tracy Grant – Novelist

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:02:20 +0000

[...] by heroines who (in Stephanie’s apt description) are “pure as the driven snow.” A fascinating post by Pam Rosenthal on her blog and and the follow-up discussion got me thinking more along the same [...]

By: Pam

Pam — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:30:32 +0000

Yeah, it’s that re prefix, as in “reformed” (or “redeemed”) that accompanies the double meanings of dangerous/domestic in romance. Often, I think (and wish I had world and time to study, expand upon it in depth).

By: Laura Vivanco

Laura Vivanco — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:08:35 +0000

Lutz does say that the two can be found in combination:

Contrary to all expectation, the dangerous subject appears in this form of didactic fiction. As we move back into our history, we will see this construction again and again: the hero set up as dangerous only to then be reformed in the end, brought from the outside into the domestic life of the heterosexual couple. (3)

By: Pam

Pam — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:44:12 +0000

Gotta go back and review the Lutz book in light of more recent thoughts and discussions — but one of my own axioms of our genre in our time is that its remarkable resiliency and durability lies in its ability to reconcile seeming unreconcilables. Which I attribute at least in part to its roots in religion as a belief in the victory over death (hence, I think, Pamela Regis’ symbolic death, which I think is often a successful trip to the underworld and back).

And which, in my own writerly imagination I always take as a call to believing child beneath the secular adult (very much as Dominique Aury/Pauline Reage did when she had the wild fantasies that led to Story of O. This means WAR! my imagination shouts, and then I know I’m onto something, times when I’m lucky enough to feel I’m onto something.

By: Laura Vivanco

Laura Vivanco — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:50:45 +0000

“What gives?”

I’m not sure that being “escapist” necessarily means that the work promotes sensual enjoyment. It really depends what the reader wants to “escape” into, I’d have thought.

Lutz suggests that there are two strands in the romance genre:

In her study of early romance genres (from 1674 to 1740), Ros Ballaster creates two categories of use here: didactic love fiction and amatory
fiction. [...] didactic love fiction—romance [...] has a didactic project, is future-directed, and attempts to represent a moral way of living, a “just” kind of love (depending on what constitutes the “morals” of the particular time period in question). [...] Amatory fiction cannot be, generally speaking, recuperated morally, nor does it play out in a socially sanctioned realm. (Lutz 2)

By: Pam

Pam — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:17:20 +0000

Laura mentions a certain kind of romance’s suspicion of the “constant pursuit of pleasure.” Isn’t this a strange thing for a genre that proudly proclaims itself as escapist?

What gives?

By: Tracy Grant

Tracy Grant — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:01:36 +0000

What a wonderful discussion!

Laura, yes, absolutely, plenty of parents don’t grow up and certainly one can grow up without having children. But I do think being a good parent necessitates a certain amount of growing. And I think you’re spot on about how women who chose to remain child-free are often cast in an unflattering light. The sin & redemption post on Teach me Tonight is fascinating.

Pam, I’m totally with you on the secular, ironic bit .

By: Pam

Pam — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:49:25 +0000

There are so many strands here... I'm with Tracy, about how parenthood makes you grow up -- but then, I've always felt a debt to Secrets of a Lady/Daughter of the Game, for giving me permission to do a great many things. (and also, as I said in response to Tracy's current post over at History Hoydens, because I always look for the secular, ironic solutions to these problems in my romance fiction) But that doesn't mean that I don't think that the roots of the genre aren't deeply religious. I do. And I got a lot out of the sin and redemption post you linked to above, Laura (note to self: check in more regularly at Teach Me Tonight). It's just my particular way to bang my secular, ironic head up against it again and again (another reason, I think, that Tracy and I love the late Georgian and Regency period, as an age of revolution). Note also the religious provenance of one of my master texts, Story of O, as I traced it in another essay a million years ago.