Posted on by rebeccajduncan20

New Romance for a New Woman

How to Best a Marquess

A friend once told me that she would never allow her teenage daughter to read romance novels because they would lead her to have unrealistic expectations about love and sex. I congratulated her on her sound parenting, all the while laughing uncontrollably in my head that she thought her daughter wasn’t binge reading YA smut.

I’ve thought of her statement a lot over the years. I grew up reading romance novels and while I don’t think they gave me unrealistic expectations. I do think early romance novels relied heavily on unhealthy power dynamics and reinforced gender roles in dangerous ways. The formula was simple, young virgin needs rescuing by powerful but damaged older man. They fall in love and live happily ever after.

The irony is that these novels were almost all written by women. Women romance writers were reinforcing the sexist and sometimes misogynistic tropes to millions of readers for decades. Until now.

The new generation of romance novels today no longer focus on the damsel in distress awaiting rescue. Instead these damsels are living life on their own terms, searching for independence and often battling for equality and rights for others. It’s exhausting! But what is a heroine to do?

Jana MacGregor’s latest offering How to Best a Marquess is an attempt at the new incarnation of the romance novel, the historical early feminist. Her heroine Beth had been disappointed in love and then married off by her guardian brother to a bigamist. She has lost her dowry and her standing in society, but with the bigamists death and ensuing scandal she has gained her freedom. All she needs now is to recover her lost dowry and ensure equality for all women. Sounds very simple and easy.

Through the novel Beth makes her intentions to never marry again very clear. To marry would require her to give up her freedom and identity, and most importantly to risk her heart again. MacGregor carefully crafts scenes to demonstrate Beth’s internal struggle to remain independent, but at times the repetition become monotonous and the reader is ready to move along. There are several historical inaccuracies in the novel, but nothing too serious to ruin the pleasure of reading. My main concern was that I didn’t feel a connection to either of the characters. I wasn’t invested in their story. MacGregor put the right words into their mouths but didn’t give them the depth of character to make those words impactful.

While MacGregor’s latest novel isn’t the best example of this new romance, I like the direction the genre is taking. Usually the characters are more complex and demonstrate more dimension than the cliched damsel in distress. Often they focus on positive female friendships, the desire to follow your passions and inspire a healthy view of sexuality, not often found in romance novels of the past.

If my friend and I were having the same conversation again, instead of laughing in my head I would hope that she would read a few of the new romances and see the direction the genre is moving towards. I think she would be pleasantly surprised. I’m sure her daughter could loan her a few.

Posted on by rebeccajduncan20

Go Put a Lip On

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Last week I read a disturbing headline about a public service announcement in Malaysia encouraging women to refrain from being sarcastic if they asked for help with household chores during these concerning times. Women were also encouraged to dress up and wear make-up, apparently to make their presence more tolerable to spouses. As you could assume the internet went bat-shit over these sexist comments and soon the Malaysian government apologized for the tone deaf messages. But was that enough?

Reading those headlines and the social media backlash to the comments reminded me of a fabulous piece written by Gemma Hartley in 2017. The piece was entitled “Women Aren’t Nags–We’re Just Fed Up” and was about the emotional labor that women are expected to perform. Hartley is brilliant in the piece and if you haven’t read it I truly urge you to use the link and prepare yourself to be impressed with her writing and pissed off by her message. In the article Hartley describes the herculean task of trying to explain to her husband the concept of emotional labor without hurting his feelings or as the title suggests–coming off as a nag. A brief description of emotional labor in case you aren’t familiar with the term is all the shit that is swirling around in your head at any given moment. Doctor’s appointments, birthday parties, gifts that need to be bought. What size shoes do the kids wear. What’s for dinner. All that shit is emotional labor, and it almost always falls on the shoulders of women. Now throw in a pandemic and self-isolating and that emotional labor increases exponentially because now you are worried about not just what’s for dinner, but if you are going to get sick and die from going to the store to pick up milk, if they have any, because no one else thought to pick up milk or even seems to realize that milk is used in the house and runs out and isn’t brought and refilled by fairies.

The most disturbing aspect of the Malaysian incident was the realization that we haven’t progressed as far as we think we have and it is startling. These public service announcements were made with the intention of “maintaining positive relationships among family members,” by reminding women that it’s their job to control other’s emotions? I don’t think so. Why are we asking for help with household chores? Why are we keeping the peace by stroking egos and making ourselves pleasing to look at? Why must we still make ourselves smaller to survive?