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walkitoutFor whatever reason, I’ve been really annoyed again about font size, so I poked around in the accessibility settings and also in the Safari specific settings.
I am so much happier now. I may be old, and my vision is doing what old people vision does, but I am so much happier now.
ETA:
I also moved the lamp I bought for using by the lego storage furniture over to the chair I like to read in. I now have a decent setup for reading paper books after dark. I wanted to read some more of _Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women_.
The intro posits that women who read and write romance fully recognize that romance is a fantasy and don’t have any trouble keeping it straight from reality, and also that they are feminists, altho that word means different things to different people and readers of romance are largely aware of that, too. There is some discussion of reader identification, Krentz’s conception of the hero of the romance as being simultaneously hero and villain / antagonist. It also summarizes the various themes that appear in the essays to follow.
The first essay is a brief overview of the market.
The next essay, by Linda Barlow and Krentz, addresses the language and writing style of romance novels. Some of this involves evoking other books / earlier myths / legends / tales, part of it has to do with how language evokes and depicts emotions. There is stuff about repartee / wit. But most interesting is this:
“Is it possible that accepted literary standards of excellence are essentially patriarchal in nature? We propose this as a matter for further debate and discussion. [ Reference made again to gender differences, and then prevalent style guidelines about getting rid of adjectives and shorter sentences. ] … But why, for example, must we show and not tell. Women enjoy the telling. We value the exploration of emotion in verbal terms. We are not as interested in action as we are in depth of emotion. And we like the emotion to be clear and authoritative, not vague or overly subtle the way it often seems to be in male discourse.”
The book dates from 1992, and women’s studies, feminism, gender studies and studies of sex and gender differences were … different than they are, holy shit, almost 30 years later. I think we can still explore the idea that a piece of fiction writing which is _primarily_ about the emotional relationship developing between two people is likely going to be a bit heavy on the figurative language, shared cultural references for feeling states, and explicit descriptions of emotion and emoting. Trying to do this all by mentioning what kind of car someone drives or what watch they wear or whatever is just not going to get it done. A silent nod of acknowledgment is not going to advance the plot adequately. Really, using a sardonically lifted eyebrow or a saucy wink is downright subtle, given what’s going on here.
Next up: Laura Kinsale. The second sentence of the first paragraph is “Accusations directed at the genre, such as Marion Zimmer Brandley’s (1990) polemic against romance, typically assume without further examination that a female reader must identify with the female lead and so is in danger of modeling her own life after a character who might be submissive, passive, or obsessed only with romantic love and maintaining her virginity.”
So — Sorry Laura Kinsale — that led me down a rabbit hole. Obviously, there was No Way In Hell I was going to go buy a copy of Sword and Sorceress IV to read the introduction in question, because we’re 7 years past the 2014 revelations of Moira Greyland. My efforts to find a pdf of whatever MZB had to say in that introduction failed miserably. I’m a terrible pirate, apparently.
Moving on!
Kinsale makes the case that readers are there for the hero, and they don’t identify with the heroine other than as a placeholder. It’s interesting, and is surely true for some, likely true some of the time for many. However, all that said, in addition to the MZB reference, and … a bunch of other stuff, Kinsale wraps up with this:
“But I would like to point out one salient fact. During the height of the reading experience — the romantic climax — … when Rhett [me: NOT A ROMANCE NOVEL! Also, really you had to bring that up here and now do we have to talk about Kinsale and racism] says … when Clayton Westmoreland shatters the brandy glass in his hand in Judith McNaught’s _Whitney My Love_ [Me: yeah, in the early 1990s, a lot of people still could read that without recoiling at the rapiness. I have no explanation. I wasn’t one of the readers.]; when Slade in Nora Roberts’s _A Matter of Choice_ growls, “I love you, damn it. I’d like to choke you for it”
OKAY REALLY NOW HOW MUCH MORE OF A RED FLAG DO WE NEED HERE ANYWAY
Ahem
“Who, may I ask, is the reader at that moment? [Para] Not the heroine, basking in female revenge or bonding triumph. [Para] Oh no. She’s the hero.”
And people wonder why Kinsale isn’t having any new books published.
I am so much happier now. I may be old, and my vision is doing what old people vision does, but I am so much happier now.
ETA:
I also moved the lamp I bought for using by the lego storage furniture over to the chair I like to read in. I now have a decent setup for reading paper books after dark. I wanted to read some more of _Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women_.
The intro posits that women who read and write romance fully recognize that romance is a fantasy and don’t have any trouble keeping it straight from reality, and also that they are feminists, altho that word means different things to different people and readers of romance are largely aware of that, too. There is some discussion of reader identification, Krentz’s conception of the hero of the romance as being simultaneously hero and villain / antagonist. It also summarizes the various themes that appear in the essays to follow.
The first essay is a brief overview of the market.
The next essay, by Linda Barlow and Krentz, addresses the language and writing style of romance novels. Some of this involves evoking other books / earlier myths / legends / tales, part of it has to do with how language evokes and depicts emotions. There is stuff about repartee / wit. But most interesting is this:
“Is it possible that accepted literary standards of excellence are essentially patriarchal in nature? We propose this as a matter for further debate and discussion. [ Reference made again to gender differences, and then prevalent style guidelines about getting rid of adjectives and shorter sentences. ] … But why, for example, must we show and not tell. Women enjoy the telling. We value the exploration of emotion in verbal terms. We are not as interested in action as we are in depth of emotion. And we like the emotion to be clear and authoritative, not vague or overly subtle the way it often seems to be in male discourse.”
The book dates from 1992, and women’s studies, feminism, gender studies and studies of sex and gender differences were … different than they are, holy shit, almost 30 years later. I think we can still explore the idea that a piece of fiction writing which is _primarily_ about the emotional relationship developing between two people is likely going to be a bit heavy on the figurative language, shared cultural references for feeling states, and explicit descriptions of emotion and emoting. Trying to do this all by mentioning what kind of car someone drives or what watch they wear or whatever is just not going to get it done. A silent nod of acknowledgment is not going to advance the plot adequately. Really, using a sardonically lifted eyebrow or a saucy wink is downright subtle, given what’s going on here.
Next up: Laura Kinsale. The second sentence of the first paragraph is “Accusations directed at the genre, such as Marion Zimmer Brandley’s (1990) polemic against romance, typically assume without further examination that a female reader must identify with the female lead and so is in danger of modeling her own life after a character who might be submissive, passive, or obsessed only with romantic love and maintaining her virginity.”
So — Sorry Laura Kinsale — that led me down a rabbit hole. Obviously, there was No Way In Hell I was going to go buy a copy of Sword and Sorceress IV to read the introduction in question, because we’re 7 years past the 2014 revelations of Moira Greyland. My efforts to find a pdf of whatever MZB had to say in that introduction failed miserably. I’m a terrible pirate, apparently.
Moving on!
Kinsale makes the case that readers are there for the hero, and they don’t identify with the heroine other than as a placeholder. It’s interesting, and is surely true for some, likely true some of the time for many. However, all that said, in addition to the MZB reference, and … a bunch of other stuff, Kinsale wraps up with this:
“But I would like to point out one salient fact. During the height of the reading experience — the romantic climax — … when Rhett [me: NOT A ROMANCE NOVEL! Also, really you had to bring that up here and now do we have to talk about Kinsale and racism] says … when Clayton Westmoreland shatters the brandy glass in his hand in Judith McNaught’s _Whitney My Love_ [Me: yeah, in the early 1990s, a lot of people still could read that without recoiling at the rapiness. I have no explanation. I wasn’t one of the readers.]; when Slade in Nora Roberts’s _A Matter of Choice_ growls, “I love you, damn it. I’d like to choke you for it”
OKAY REALLY NOW HOW MUCH MORE OF A RED FLAG DO WE NEED HERE ANYWAY
Ahem
“Who, may I ask, is the reader at that moment? [Para] Not the heroine, basking in female revenge or bonding triumph. [Para] Oh no. She’s the hero.”
And people wonder why Kinsale isn’t having any new books published.