readers

Here's another statement about why it's important to study the stories we read:

One of the most significant developments in narrative studies has been the recognition that humans are “storied selves” (Eakin, 1999, p. 99) living in a “story-shaped world” (Sarbin, 1993, p. 63). In this view, we make meaning of our own lives and others' through narrative; we tell stories to make sense of experience and understand the world around us. We are, in the phrase coined by Fisher (1984), Homo narrans.

[...] For literary critics the centrality of narrative comes as no surprise, but work remains to be done theorizing the complex relationships between fictional stories, which are ubiquitous in human culture, and the myriad stories we tell about ourselves and our world. How do the form and content of fictional narratives shape the stories individuals perceive and construct about their own lives? How does the emplotment of events in the lives of fictional characters influence readers' understanding of the possible and permissible plotlines in their own lives? (Harrison 112)

Harrison adds that

Psychologist Jerome Bruner (2004) [...] acknowledged the powerful role of culture in shaping life stories, which “reflect the prevailing theories about ‘possible lives’ that are part of one's culture.” To “construct their own life narratives,” individuals within a culture can draw upon its “stock of canonical life narratives” (Bruner, 2004, p. 694) and combine and recombine elements of cultural narratives in order to construct their own. Thus, individuals do not merely become their own autobiographical stories; they become “variants of the culture's canonical forms” (Bruner, 2004, p. 694). Conversely, a culture can be understood through the array of life stories its members can tell. Together, contemporary and historical life stories and the cultural narratives that shape them help us understand a culture's values, possibilities, and preoccupations. (112-13)

Her article focuses on stories featuring "the marriage plot" so it's of particular interest to those of us who study, read and/or write popular romance fiction. It's also currently available in full for free.

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Harrison, Mary Catherine. "Reading the Marriage Plot." Journal of Family Theory & Review 6.1 (2014): 112-131.

It is known that "Scents can influence people’s attitudes and behavior [...]. The scent of chocolate, for instance, evokes pleasure and arousal for most consumers" (Doucé et al 3). What, then, would happen if a bookshop was filled with a smell of chocolate so subtle that "none of the customers spontaneously noticed the chocolate scent" (7)?

A team of Belgian researchers first "wanted to know to what extent people believe that chocolate corresponds to a certain book genre" (7) and perhaps unsurprisingly discovered "that the two genres most congruent with chocolate scent were Food & Drink (Cook) Books [...] and Romance Novels & Romantic Literature" (7).

Having exposed unsuspecting customers to the chocolate aroma, they found that, "when a chocolate scent was present, customers were 5.93 times more likely to buy congruent books than in the control condition" (11-12) and "compared with the control condition, in the scent condition sales for the congruent genres increased 40.07%, and sales for the incongruent genres increased only 22.19%" (12).

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Doucé, Lieve, Karolien Poels, Wim Janssens, and Charlotte De Backer, 2013. "Smelling the Books: the Effect of Chocolate Scent on Purchase-related Behavior in a Bookstore." Accepted for publication in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. [Abstract]

The image of the chocolate flavour room spray came from Amazon. As far as I know, it was not used in this experiment.

Peter Dixon and Marisa Bortolussi believe that

we cannot identify the nature of a genre without an appreciation of what readers know about genre because popular genre such as science fiction, fantasy, and romance are what readers understand them to be. Because genres are dynamic, it becomes critical to understand how it is that readers develop and acquire the knowledge that mediates the use of genre labels. (545)

Given the number of times ill-informed generalisations are made about the romance genre, it will probably not come as a great surprise to romance readers to learn that when Dixon and Bortolussi asked a number of people "to write a short essay on what a genre label means to them" (548) they found that romance readers and non-romance readers have significantly different understandings of what romance fiction is about:

the results for romance suggest that the stereotypes available in the culture are insufficient for characterizing what is important for readers of that genre. [...] Although everyone may agree that romance concerns descriptions of romantic involvements, we theorize that actual readers of romance are less concerned with simply the narrative sequence that constitute that description and more concerned with the emotional interactions described in the works and emotions evoked in the reader. [...] For science fiction and fantasy, the cultural stereotypes may provide a largely accurate rendition of what is important for readers; for romance, there is a significant discrepancy between cultural expectations and what is important for readers. (568-69)

I wonder if the "cultural expectations" of romance, which focus on particular storylines and character types, make it difficult for non-romance-readers to understand how well romance can be combined with other genres. They might feel that, say, a science fiction romance could only ever be a traditional romance storyline dressed up in science fiction fancy-dress. According to Ella Drake this is an unfortunately common view of science fiction romance: "We’ve heard too many times that the Romance part of SFR means it’s inferior in some way. Or it’s not Science Fiction."

If, however, the inclusion of romance was viewed as a possible means to deepen the emotional aspects of a narrative, one might have a rather more positive view of the potential of science fiction romance. Cora Buhlert, for example, writes that

a lot of writers and readers in hybrid genres such as urban fantasy, paranormal romance, SF romance and romantic suspense [...] are often longtime SFF fans (or suspense fans for romantic suspense) and they like action, adventure and worldbuilding, but they also want a bit more emotion and yes, romance, than “pure” SF/fantasy/suspense tend to offer. I certainly count myself among those readers/writers. I was increasingly unhappy with speculative fiction devolving into emotionless big idea fiction on the one hand and increasingly grimdark macho fantasy with unpleasant characters on the other hand. Then one day, I became aware that there was a whole slew of subgenres such as futuristic romance, paranormal romance, time travel romance and fantasy romance, full of books written mostly by women, which promised the action and worldbuilding I had come to enjoy about SFF, but with more female characters, hopefully less needless violence against said female characters and characters and relationships that rang true to the experience of actual human beings.

Those who take a positive stance toward compound genres which include romance presumably value texts which evoke an emotional response in the reader. A forthcoming paper from Raymond A. Mar's lab suggests that readers who enjoy romance may differ from other readers.

The paper, written by Katrina Fong, Justin B. Mullin and Raymond A. Mar begins by noting that "Although theoretical accounts suggest that exposure to different genres of literature may impact readers in different ways [...], little empirical work has been done to explore this possibility. (3) In other words, so far studies have tended to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction. One study that did so found that "lifetime exposure to narrative fiction, but not expository non-fiction, was related to improved performance on measures of interpersonal sensitivity" (4).

Interpersonal sensitivity

can refer to both how well one “reads” other people and how appropriately one responds. Thus, it might be said that it is interpersonally sensitive to both recognize when one's spouse is sad and respond sympathetically. (Hall and Andrzejewski)

Fong, Mullin and Mar suspected that it would be fruitful to explore the differences between different types of fiction:

Since each fiction genre is likely to provide a distinctive conceptual framework through which readers construct meaning about the social world (Littlefair, 1992), we expect some variability in how exposure to each genre influences a reader’s social orientation. Unfortunately, since there is little empirical work on lifetime exposure to different genres, our hypotheses are necessarily tentative. (5)

They decided to concentrate on four genres: Domestic Fiction, Romance, Science-Fiction/Fantasy, Suspense/Thriller. Their results showed that:

• individuals who had more exposure to one genre also tended to have greater exposure to other genres as well. (8)
• Individuals who exhibited more exposure to Fiction tended to have greater interpersonal sensitivity while individuals who had been exposed to more Non-fiction did not show the same relationship. (8)
• exposure to Romance continued to be significantly associated with interpersonal sensitivity even after controlling for exposure to NonFiction, foil-checking, age and years of English fluency, gender, trait Openness, and trait Extraversion. Domestic fiction and Suspense were also related to interpersonal sensitivity, but these relations were weaker and less certain. When all genres were considered at once, only Romance was a unique predictor of interpersonal sensitivity. (11)

They speculate that

If it is the simulation of interpersonal experience in narrative fiction that best predicts greater performance on interpersonal tasks, then perhaps it is unsurprising that exposure to Romance — a genre of fiction that focuses on interpersonal relationships — is most strongly related to this benefit. (11)

Finally, it should be noted that

Because this study is correlational, it is not possible to draw causal conclusions with regard to the nature of exposure to various genres of narrative fiction. That is, we cannot infer that exposure to any specific genre causes greater or less interpersonal sensitivity. Given that narrative genre plays an important role in how and why readers select a narrative text (Dixon & Bortolussi, 2005), it is entirely possible that individual differences may shape both interpersonal sensitivity and selection and exposure to various literary genres. (12)

[EDITED on 1 July 2013 TO ADD:

The article by Fong, Mullin and Mar was discussed at OnFiction and I took the opportunity to ask some questions because I thought

It would be interesting to know a bit more about what type(s) of books were being read by the SF readers in the study who scored badly on interpersonal sensitivity. Were they readers who favoured "emotionless big idea fiction" and/or "increasingly grimdark macho fantasy"? And for the purposes of this study were SF romances (if listed) classified as "romance" or as "SF"?

Katrina Fong responded:

In response to your question regarding genre classification, hybrid genres are certainly an interesting question that requires more in-depth probing. With regard to our current study, the sci-fi/fantasy titles were not hybrid (they may be considered more "pure," as suggested in the quote in your post). SF romances were only included if the predominant theme in the author's work was romance; these authors would subsequently be categorized as romance. Future work could definitely begin to tease apart these subtleties.]

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Buhlert, Cora. "Invasion of the Girl Cooties." 2 June 2013.

Dixon, Peter, and Marisa Bortolussi. "Readers' Knowledge of Popular Genre." Discourse Processes: A Multidisciplinary Journal 46.6 (2009): 541-71. [Abstract]

Drake, Ella. "Science Fiction and Stereotypes." Contact-Infinite Futures. 7 June 2013.

Fong, Katrina, Justin B. Mullin, and Raymond A. Mar (in press). "What You Read Matters: The Role of Fiction Genres in Predicting Interpersonal Sensitivity." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. [The pdf can be downloaded from here but if you do, they'll assume you've agreed to limit your "use to personal academic purposes and not public dissemination."]

Hall, Judith A. and Susan A. Andrzejewski. "Interpersonal Sensitivity." Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Ed. Harry T. Reis and Susan Sprecher. SAGE.

The image came from Wikimedia Commons and was made available under a Gnu General Public License.

I'm really pleased that I've finally been able to get hold of Mairead Owen's Women's Reading of Popular Romantic Fiction: A Case Study in the Mass Media, A Key to the Ideology of Women (1990). Given that Owen prefaces her analysis with the statement that

It seems essential to add to the literary critic's close reading of the text and to psychoanalytic theories, actual empirical data. It is not enough to speculate that women read to compensate for maternal deprivation or as part of rape fantasies or revenge fantasies. It is necessary, as in any science, to see if these theories really are operating. (20)

I think it can be seen as a British response to Janice A. Radway's much more well-known Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature (1984) and Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (1982) and it is, I think, in response to their psychoanalytic analyses of readers that Owen states that, "To offer explanations couched only in psychoanalytic terms, is not only intellectually inconsistent, but also can perpetuate the disadvantaged situation of women and perhaps thereby we become 'the servants of power' " (337).

Owen "felt [...] that in Britain I had the ideal, and obvious, setting in which to encounter readers - the public libraries" (37) and she chose "libraries set in areas of varying social class, areas of prosperity and poverty, new estates and established centres" (37). The "main survey was done by putting questionnaires into [...] ten libraries over two weeks in October, 1987" (41-42).

As for her most important term of reference:

The definition of 'romantic fiction' I deliberately left to the librarians who, interestingly, considered it unproblematic. Romantic fiction consisted of those books shelved under romantic fiction or sent by the publishers or the library wholesalers as romantic fiction. There were occasional divergences of opinion as can be readily understood. Indeed Catherine Cookson (1988), one of the most widely-read authors and the author put at the top of the list of their most favourite authors of romantic fiction by my readers, wrote to me, 'You see, I do not consider myself to be a romantic writer in the sense in which the word is used today. It is only since Granada Television filmed The Mallens that this word was applied to my writing; and the paperback firm, solely for the purpose of appealing to the public, continued it from there.' (42)

"Romantic fiction" is a much broader category than "romance" since it includes novels in which the romantic element may not be as central to the plot as in a "romance". In addition, happy endings are not guaranteed. Nonetheless, Owen concludes that "The publishers are right to insist on the happy ending as far as my sample were concerned. It was mentioned again and again for the ideal romantic novel" (184).

In addition to depending on the judgement and cooperation of librarians, Owen spoke to and/or corresponded with authors, readers and publishers of romantic fiction.

AUTHORS: Owen gathered  "information from fifteen authors through the survey, plus information from [...] four interviews" (89) with a further four authors. With regards to feminism, "Many of the authors who answered the questionnaire subscribed to feminist views[...] and felt that these could be incorporated in the romance formula. [...] On the other hand, some of the authors specifically rejected the values of feminism" (306).

She notes that

seventeen of my respondents were married at the time and the other two had been widowed. So much for the stereotype of frustrated spinsters creating their compensatory fantasies. They were also untypical of the general population, where one marriage in three ends in divorce, in that most marriages were, or had been, unusually stable and long lasting. Divorces were unusual in the sample. The question on marital staus [sic] asked about present status and not about any previous divorces but from correspondence and publicity material and interviews it seemed that only three or four had been involved in divorce. (90)

One author told Owen that "'Romantic fiction can play out a drama for the reader without the necessity of risk, can teach emotional truths without hurt" (108) and "distancing from the 'ideal of true love', was rare in the authors" (109). I wonder if a group who've mostly found their "happy ever after" are more likely than the general population to feel that although the characters in romance are often richer, more beautiful etc than most people, romances contain "emotional truths."

On a related note, Owen herself questions the perception that romantic fiction is "escapist":

In one sense there is escape in romantic fiction, though I would suggest only to the extent that to partake in any fictional entertainment, to read any novel, to watch any play or television or film, is to enter another world. However, I would query how real this aspect of escape is in the sense that people are leaving their own world behind. It is the only popular genre where people try to escape from their own lives into more of the same. Women turn from problems involving male partners or the desire to gain a male partner into books which deal with just that sphere of life. (127)

READERS: "One hundred and thirty-seven completed surveys were returned" (156) to Owen by readers and she notes that  although "The stereotype of the reader of romantic fiction rarely includes any high estimate of their intelligence [...] my sample both from the surveys and the interviews gave a picture of very lively and intelligent women" (165). Although they all read romantic fiction

The readers did not read romantic fiction only. Ninety-six per cent of the respondents read other sorts of books as well. The range of interest was extremely wide. Some of it was genre reading. Detective fiction was particular popular [...]. Non-fiction played a great part and the range of interests represented was staggering - archaeology, religion, travel, biography, local history, politics, art. [...] Respected contemporary writers such as Margaret Drabble and Iris Murdoch, Allan Sillitoe, Joseph Heller, were accompanied by Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen, Steinbeck. (171-72)

In their reading of romantic fiction

Catherine Cookson [...]  headed the list of favourite authors, [...] followed by Danielle Steel. Following these two were Penny Jordan, Janet Dailey, Anne Mather and Jilly Cooper, Barbara Taylor Bradord, Jean Plaidy, as well as her alter ego, Victoria Holt, Georgette Heyer, Ann Hampson, Betty Neels, (who writes doctor/nurse romances and was also mentioned as an author who is least liked), Jessica Steele, Charlotte Lamb. (176)

Owen spoke in depth to a smaller number of readers: "Forty seemed to me a number large enough to throw up patterns of behaviour and ideas" (206). She found that although the widely held "view of the audience is of people who are not active, not in control, with no feeling that they could control or change their circumstances" (214-15), all but two of her

interviewees, while showing varying degrees of interest in formal politics, were confident that they could and would act to effect change in society. This might involve just writing letters, organising petitions or the like. Their interests ranged far and wide. (216)

As for the texts themselves, Owen felt that

because the texts are simple, the readers can project on to them, like Rorsach ink blots, the shapes that they desire and that arise out of their own feelings and needs. This leads to intriguing contradictions, where readers draw messages and pleasures from the texts which are diametrically opposed to those that other readers draw. The texts can be all things to all women. (217)

Also,

Readers developed in their reading as they got older. At school age they were using the books to explore ideas about marriage, love, sexuality, men. [...] The nineteen to twenty-four-year-olds also were thinking themselves forward into possible scenarios that might happen though predictably as their experience of the real world increased, the detachment and the wry amusement at the books and themselves grew. (220)

Readers varied in how they perceived the novels:

Many readers saw the books as echoing real life and also, more importantly, holding out lessons for real life. 'Because they can be so true to real life.' 'Typical of real life situations.' 'They can relate to own life.' On the other hand, 'A fantasy world, away from reality.' (182)

And so while "Perhaps it will surprise the cynical that many of the older readers said they enjoyed the books because they told a story of which they had once been the heroine" (181), "True to the romance's function as being all things to all women, the opposite view also came across equally, 'It's the only romance I get.' " (181).

Owen summarises her conclusions as follows:

It is rather daunting to sum up all the hours of talk and all the shades of opinion in a sentence but, except for a very small minority, neither in their homes nor in the wider society did my readers experience a really equal society. And in this [...] I think they were representative of women generally. In reading the books they take the reality of their life chances and refashion them into a possible answer. (337)

This refashioning involves

taking the circumstances of their lives and [...] shaking up the kaleidoscope into a pattern which pleases them [...]. By separating themselves from those lives rather than meeting the difficulties head on they are ironic, distanced, living in the interstices. It may be that it is something of a suspicion of this practice which leads the men in their lives and indeed the wider society to be so dismissive of the books on the one hand, so suspicious and uneasy on the other. Every aspect of their reading, from the act itself which leads them to withdraw from their supportive, attentive role to the type of fiction they read, takes the lives which society prescribes and turns them to a sort of benefit. (339)

PUBLISHERS: Owen "drew on information from seven different publishers of romantic fiction" (34). She observed that

The men who publish the books, especially the soft romances, I did feel, in spite of denials, had a patronising attitude to their readers. They are women's books and I felt that it was merely a marketing exercise indeed analogous to the selling of soap [...]. It is only a subjective impression but I did gather a feeling of giving a not very highly rated consumer what she wanted.

Editors were leading relatively 'feminist' lives, with independent and well-paid work and in their replies, they disassociated themselves from the readers while at the same time defending the readers' right to read what they wished. But they did not see the readers as women like themselves. 'I do occasionally think of people, like, I don't know, the average reader and I do bear them in mind. My mother or something. And I just talk to as many people as I can.' (305)

LIBRARIANS: Apparently

The majority of the librarians did seem to share an assumption that romances come at the bottom of a hierarchy of 'good' writing. [...] Starting from this basic assumption, the attitude of the librarians to the huge poplarity [sic] of romantic fiction seemed to split into two very distinct categories. Some librarians had a 'Reithian' attitude to romance. In earlier days of the BBC, broadcasters felt that their mission was to educate and inform as well as to entertain, that it was their duty to lead their listeners and viewers to an appreciation of all that was best in our culture. Similarly some of the librarians felt that it was their duty to lead their readers to good literature. On the other hand the 'libertarian' attitude suggested that borrowers had a right to read what they wished and it was the duty of the library to provide. (79-80)

She adds that "It is significant that the librarians did not, on the whole, read romance themselves" (81). One

librarian talked to me about the way in which readers would come to her desk with ten or more romances to take out. 'I don't know why they bother,' she said. 'They're only like the stories you tell yourself at bedtime to make you fall off to sleep.' (310)

You can download your own copy of Owen's thesis free of charge by creating an account with EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) at the British Library. Here's the page from which the thesis can be obtained.

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Owen, Mairead. Women's Reading of Popular Romantic Fiction: A Case Study in the Mass Media, A Key to the Ideology of Women. PhD Thesis. University of Liverpool. 1990.

As you may have deduced from my recent posts, I've been slowly working my way through Belinda Jack's The Woman Reader, which

tells a story never told before: the complete history of women readers and the controversies their reading has inspired since the beginning of the written word. The book travels from the Cro-Magnon cave to the digital bookstores of our time, exploring how and what women have read through the ages and across cultures and civilizations.

Belinda Jack traces a history marked by persistent efforts to prevent women from gaining literacy and to censor their reading. She also recounts the counterefforts of remarkable women – and some men – who have fought back and battled for the educational enfranchisement of girls. (Yale Books)

You can read more about the book here, there's an excerpt here, and reviews at The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The Irish Times, The Sydney Morning Herald,  The Telegraph, The Times Higher Education and The Times Literary Supplement. Given the existence of all that commentary, I don't think I need to state my own opinion in any detail. My overall impression of The Woman Reader is rather similar to the one I have when watching the video which compresses "500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art" into 2:53 minutes: I know that in order to cover so much ground in a short space of time one has to be concise, but moving so speedily from one woman and topic to the next means I have only a blurred recollection of any of them.

Noah Berlatsky at The Atlantic takes issue with Jack's statement that "Women have always resisted reading material they have not wanted to read, and have withstood being persuaded by it" (11). This, he writes,

seems an awfully sweeping contention, and one which also perhaps misses the point. As Modleski and Benedikt suggest, it's often the things we want to read—the romance novels, the baby books (or for men the superhero comics)—that most persuade us. And that persuasion is not necessarily subversive or freeing. (The Atlantic)

I take Berlatsky's point because at times I have been persuaded by novels (emotionally, even if not intellectually) of things which are neither subversive nor freeing.  Some romances, for example, have left me with a residual feeling that to be a success as a woman, a wife, and a mother, I should have many children and joyfully and frequently bake cookies for them (preferably while living with them and my husband in a house which it is my responsibility and delight to make into a "home").

I'm not sure, however, that Jack was trying to argue that all women "have always resisted reading material they have not wanted to read" or that all of us, at all times, "have withstood being persuaded by it." She certainly mentions Cornelia, daughter of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior, famous above all for his victory over Hannibal" (36), who can be considered

an exemplary case of the acceptance of a woman reader in ancient Rome. Her reading is presented as having formed her moral training (her commitment to her husband and then her sons), shaped her approach to her maternal duties (as the carer and teacher of her children, particularly her sons), and as providing evidence of her social status. Nowhere is it suggested that her reading did anything other than to encourage her to be the kind of woman advocated by male-dominated Roman society. (37)

Jack may, then, just have wanted to make the point that, at all times in the history of women readers, there have been some women who have gone against the grain of their society by resisting "reading material they have not wanted to read, and have withstood being persuaded by it."

Secondly, earlier in the article Berlatsky asked

isn't it possible that in certain times and at certain places reading might actually serve to control women rather than to free them? Tania Modleski, in her classic 1982 study Loving With a Vengeance, argued, for example, that Harlequin romances, Gothic romances, and soap operas addressed women's anxieties and concerns—not in the interest of freedom, but rather in the interest of reconciling them to their lot in patriarchy. "In Harlequin Romances," Modleski concludes, "the need of women to find meaning and pleasure in activities which are not wholly male-centered...is generally scoffed at."

Given that Berlatsky does not question this assessment of "Harlequin Romances," I suspect he is thinking of the popular romance novel as a type of literature which, while admittedly enticing to some women, is not "subversive or freeing." If that's the case then Berlatsky would himself be making a "sweeping contention" about the contents of romance novels and suggesting that there is only one way in which they can be read. That, in turn, brings me back to something that Jack states in her introduction, and which is as true of "the woman reader" in general as it is of "the romance reader" in particular:

The woman reader is not a single type but distinguished by her individual experience, her social and economic position, and so much more. [...] But the woman reader is not only a reality. She is also a striking invention of the male imagination, a crucial aspect of men's desire to worship or condemn the mysteries of the 'opposite sex'.  (12)

Part of what has made

women's literacy and access to written material so controversial [...] has to do with the ultimate secrecy of reading: no-one outside the reader can know what is going on in the reader's mind, or indeed body, and no-one can know what difference the reading experience may make to his or her thoughts or behaviour. [...]

Nor can one really force someone to read in a particular way. One cannot ensure that someone, simply by reading, will take seriously material in which they do not believe or do not want to believe. This makes the history of reading a complex one and distinct from other related areas such as the histories of the book, libraries, printing and publishing, education, and so on. (6-7)

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Berlatsky, Noah. "Does Reading Really Set Women Free?" The Atlantic. 12 June 2012.

Jack, Belinda. The Woman Reader. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012.

In my last post I quoted from a romance set in Greece; this made me think I should mention that Greece is a place with an extremely long connection with romance thanks to the texts which Margaret Williamson terms "Greek romances": "The romances of which we have complete texts were all written by and for the Greek-speaking population of the eastern Roman Empire, in the first, second and third centuries AD" (25).

Elizabeth Archibald notes that

There is no discussion of romance as a genre by literary critics or rhetoricians in antiquity; indeed there is very little comment of any kind about romance in ancient writers, either approving or disapproving. Until recently there was very little comment on it by modern classical scholars either; the few surviving Greek and Latin texts included under the umbrella term "romance" were thought to be minor works, of limited literary interest to both ancient and modern readers. (10)

Given the romance's current status as a genre assumed to be written for women and also assumed to be of little or no literary merit, it's perhaps unsurprising to find that "Greek romances" of the ancient world have also been assumed to be fodder for women's voracious (reading) appetites:

By the second century, romances started to appear to feed the growing market for women's reading, and this kind of fiction may have been read by a range of women across the social classes. Novels like Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon, Longus's Daphnis and Chloe, and Heliodorus's Aethiopica - fast-paced love stories full of twists and turns, shifting in tone from tragic to comic, optimistic to pessimistic, religious to gently erotic, and arousing a helter-skelter of emotions - may have appealed particularly to women. It is even possible that the readership of the novel in the ancient world consisted mostly of women. But some of the arguments offered to support this line seem to issue from prejudice and snobbery; novels that are considered unoriginal and crudely imitative of other writings, or highly sentimental, have been construed as appropriate only, or at least mainly, to a female readership. The implication is that any 'discerning' reader - that is, the male reader - would have been uninterested. More sophisticated claims for a female readership have been made, based on an analysis of the various representations of strong and sexually powerful women in these books, which, it has been argued, would have appealed to women readers' fantasies about female emotional and erotic omnipotence. (Jack 43)

Although "tantalizing fragments of what seem to be romances predate the five complete romances" (Archibald 10), the extant complete texts are:

• Chariton's Chaireas and Callirhoe (synopsis here)
• Xenophon of Ephesus's An Ephesian Tale [of Anthia and Habrocomes] (synopsis here and general assessment of the tale here)
• Longus's Daphnis and Chloe (synopsis here, translation by Professor Wm. Blake Tyrrell here and translation by Rev. Rowland Smith here).
• Achilles Tatius's Clitophon and Leucippe (synopsis here and a translated version by the Rev. Rowland Smith (published with Daphnis and Chloe and the Aethiopica) can be found here).
• Heliodorus's An Ethiopian Romance or Aethiopica or Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclea (synopsis here and English translations here and here).

In these ancient romances:

1. "It is desire, not its realisation, which is the subject of the narrative, and this requires that the lovers be separated – whether by scruple, physical absence, or divine edict – throughout the story" (Williamson 29).

2. "love itself is more like rape than anything else – a violent event which assails them [the characters in these novels] from outside and utterly overpowers them" (Williamson 32).

3.

Love is presented as an automatic and irresistible reaction to beauty, which accounts for the way in which the faultless looks of hero and heroine strew the pages with conquests. The meeting of Habrocomes and Anthia is typical: Anthia ‘caught the beauty of Habrocomes, which flowed into her eyes’, and Habrocomes, who has declared himself immune to love, is at once ‘the god’s bound prisoner’. Achilles Tatius, who is particularly fond of physico-psychological digressions, devotes several to love, which is always an optical rather than a spiritual event:

The pleasure which comes from vision enters by the eyes and makes its home in the breast; bearing with it ever the image of the beloved, it impresses it upon the mirror of the soul and leaves there its image; the emanation given off by beauty travels by invisible rays to the lovesick heart and imprints upon it its form. (Williamson 31, quoting from Achilles Tatius, 263)

In this they followed Greek literary tradition, for as Helen Morales has observed,

Greek literature has always been ocularcentric. The Homeric epics provide abundant attestation to the power of vision. [...] When the Iliadic hero is repeatedly displayed as ‘a wonder to behold’, thauma idesthai, or when Priam calls Helen, that iconic beauty, to witness with him the great spectacle of war fought over her, ‘we the audience become’, as Segal says, ‘spectators of the power of vision itself’. Helen’s lust-lure dazzles throughout Greek literature. The sight of her transfixes and destroys. [...] This most displaced and displayed female, with her inescapable force-field of desirability, shines through in the portrayals of Leucippe and the heroines of the other Greek novels. (8-9)

4. "The lovers’ supreme virtue, their fidelity, has parallel consequences as regards the possibility of moral choice. Their unswerving loyalty to each other, proof against any torture, is devalued by the fact that it is arbitrary: the hero’s passion for the heroine is distinguished from that of (usually) innumerable other men only by its arbitrary legitimacy. Since this legitimacy is conferred by the author, albeit in the name of Eros, and not chosen by the protagonists, no real value can attach to it" (Williamson 30).

5. "obstacles of various kinds divide the protagonists, but eventually love triumphs: enemies are overcome, ordeals are endured, identities are established, and the young lovers settle down to happily married life (in the complete texts, at least)" (Archibald 10).

Modern popular romances differ from these ancient texts, of course, but it's interesting to see how much they have in common. Williamson's observation about the "arbitrary legitimacy" of a love which is "not chosen by the protagonists" could perhaps also be applied to some of the more recent texts which depict "fated mates" and although not all modern romances feature heroes and heroines with "faultless looks," there are certainly a great many which do.

I'll let Elizabeth Archibald have the last word:

Romance has often been sneered at as an unsophisticated genre. it used to be said rather dismissively that the Greek romances were intended for a female readership, but that is no longer the accepted view. It has been pointed out that the five complete romances show great interest in literature and rhetoric, with many philosophical and literary allusions, and sophisticated techniques such as ekphrasis (elaborate description of a work of art). When the romances were rediscovered in the Renaissance, they certainly found favor with sophisticated writers and readers [...]. Shakespeare assumed that some of his audience would recognize a reference to a moment of crisis for the heroine of the Ethiopica when he made Orsino contemplate killing his beloved Cesario/Viola: "Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, / Like to th'Egyptian thief at point of death, / Kill what I love?" (Twelfth Night, V.i.115-17). Racine loved the Ethiopica so much that after the sacristan at his Jansenist school had confiscated and burned two copies, he obtained a third and learned it off by heart before dutifully relinquishing it [...]. (16)

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Archibald, Elizabeth. "Ancient Romance." A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary. Ed. Corinne Saunders. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. 10-25.

Jack, Belinda. The Woman Reader. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012.

Morales, Helen. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. [Excerpt here.]

Williamson, Margaret. “The Greek Romance.” The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction, Ed. Jean Radford. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. 23-45.

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The statue of Daphnis and Chloe was created by "Jean-Pierre Cortot (French, 1787–1843)" and was photographed by Jastrow, who made it available at Wikimedia Commons.

'[...] you aren’t going to let me out of it.’

‘Like Pearl White tied to the railway lines?’ He gave his rather grating laugh. ‘Always at the last moment she is released from bondage, eh? I may not be a hero in a white stetson, moiya, but I’m not altogether a villain – won’t you believe that?’ (Winspear 65)

Romance heroes certainly can't all be classified as "villains" but there's no shortage of those who, to put it mildly, could be described as "not altogether a villain": such a hero may use a heroine as a pawn in a subtle plan to gain revenge, he may be an assassin or a morally ambiguous paranormal creature, he may rape or "forcibly seduce" the heroine. So why would a reader be drawn to such a character? Richard Keen, Monica L. McCoy, Elizabeth Powell have some theories about why

rooting for the bad guy is not as difficult to understand as it appeared at first glance. There are a plethora of reasons among psychological theories to explain why normal people occasionally find themselves rooting for the villain instead of the hero. (144)

1) The fundamental attribution error:

If a mysterious stranger appears from out of nowhere and attacks a character we know and love, it is likely that we will make the fundamental attribution error. We will assume that he is a bad man. However, the villains we root for are generally not strangers to us; we know a great deal about them—from narration, from flashbacks, or because they talk to themselves and we get to listen. [...] We know a great deal about how the situation is influencing him. It allows us to be as kind to him as we generally are to ourselves. (131)

Given that it's common to find romances in which the reader is expected to be "kind" to the hero, but relatively few in which the heroine has the same villainous tendencies, I wonder if female authors and readers are actually "kinder" when thinking about the actions of heroes than we are to ourselves. Some of the theories outlined later in the essay may help to explain this imbalance.

2) Mere exposure effect:

According to the mere exposure effect, the more often you are exposed to a stimulus, the more you like it (Zajonc 2). This is true for everything from what letters we prefer to our perceptions of other people. [...] Especially relevant to the question at hand, Bukoff and Elman (134) reported that photos that were rated as likeable, neutral, or unlikable, and linked with either positive or negative trait descriptors all received more positive evaluations after participants had been exposed to them repeatedly. Therefore, the original stimulus did not need to be positive for repeated exposure to make the image more appealing. Repeated exposure increased the ratings of all stimuli – even those that were rated as unlikable originally. We would then predict that a villain who becomes familiar to us through repeated exposure would be seen as more favorable. (134)

I can see this effect being a greater influence on the perception of characters in long-running series. The authors give Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as an illustration of how these two effects might work together.

3) What is Beautiful is Good:

The repeated use of physically attractive people to play the role of the villain taps into another basic human tendency—the association of what is beautiful with what is good. In numerous studies, beautiful persons have been given higher ratings on measures of social desirability, intelligence, success, happiness, persuasiveness, and potency, than their less attractive counterparts (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 285; Gross and Crofton 85; Kassin, Fein and Markus 346). In a study by Hoffner and Cantor (66), physical attractiveness, along with strength and humor, was one of the best predictors of which characters were liked.

In traditional media, the protagonist is portrayed as more physically attractive than the antagonist, leading audiences to prefer him (Sanders 147). In current media, the protagonist of the story is also often the bad guy, such as in the popular Godfather trilogy and the Ocean’s movies. Thus, when attractive villains are cast, we assume they possess more positive qualities than the less attractive good guys in the show, so, unsurprisingly, we prefer them. (135)

To put this in the terms Kyra Kramer and I used in our article about bodies in romance fiction: "As humans, we understand that we have a body; our consciousness is embodied in a physical self. This is the individual body, an 'expectant canvas of human flesh' [...]. Social beliefs are inscribed on the 'expectant canvas' of the body."

The authors add that:

According to a meta-analysis by Eagly et al. (119), physical attractiveness was most strongly related to ratings of social competence, adjustment, potency, and intellectual competence. On the other hand, it was not related to integrity or concern for others. This works out well for the bad guys we root for. Their good looks lead viewers to think of them as smart, socially skilled, and powerful while not necessarily expecting them to be nice. (135-36)

Given that "concern for others" is a common feature of romance heroines (see Vivanco and Kramer for heroines' nurturing behaviours), while intelligence and power are more commonly coded as "masculine" attributes, it would seem likely that beauty would more strongly benefit villainous heroes than villainous heroines. Indeed, quite a lot of "Other Women" in romances are beautiful and their beauty seems to be used to underscore their shallowness, vanity and/or promiscuity. The latter, thanks to the double standard, is judged negatively in women but, depending on the context, may in men be considered an indication of virility.

4) Schemas:

Schemas may have some influence on why we root for bad guys. In most movies, the protagonist is the good guy and usually good prevails in the end. When we have repeated exposure to this type of storyline, we will start to form a schema of this. The schema can then influence future movie experiences due to certain expectations deduced from the schema. Thus, if the good guys are usually the protagonists, then we should root for the protagonist. (136)

It's easy to see how schemas could affect frequent readers of romance novels. We know that the heroine is going to fall in love with the hero and they are going to have a happy ending, so even if a hero initially behaves like a villain, the schema of the romance form encourages us to "root for" him.

5) Aggresive Tendencies:

We propose, at least according to Freud’s approach, that vicariously experiencing aggression and violence in movies, television, and books may serve as an outlet for our aggressive tendencies (i.e., catharsis). In fact, since many violent movies also have sex scenes, you may be meeting both aggressive and sexual needs. (137)

6) Revenge:

Many of the bad guys we love are motivated in one way or another by revenge. [...] Revenge seems to be a stronger motivator for men than for women. [...] Taken together, these studies illustrate why we like bad guys who are seeking revenge. In part, we may identify with and understand their motivation. (138-39)

Romance heroines, on the other hand, seem to have a tendency to make martyrs of themselves and they often readily forgive those who have treated them badly. If revenge is not only "a stronger motivator for men than for women" but also one more closely associated with men, a villainous hero's revenge may make him seem more manly whereas a heroine who acted in the same way might be more likely to be considered devious and lacking in compassion.

7) Bad Boy/Nice Guy:

studies have shown that women seeking long term relationships valued niceness as the most salient characteristic, but niceness was devalued and other characteristics, such as physical attractiveness, became more important if the women were seeking more casual, sexual relationships [...]. The bad guys we root for in movies and on TV are almost universally attractive. Further, most (sane) people probably do not consider fictional characters when making long-term relationship plans. Thus it is easy to see how the driving force behind a fantasy “fling” with a bad guy is his attractiveness and swagger, rather than his niceness. (140)

8) Psychological Reactance

Psychological reactance is an emotional response to restricting rules and regulations. In general, psychological reactance results in increased desirability once that object/person becomes unobtainable. For example, [...] psychological reactance is observed if parents tell their daughter not to date a certain boy, a prohibition which results in the daughter fi nding that boy more attractive.

Psychological reactance can be easily applied to rooting for the bad guy. If, by societal standards, we are not supposed to root for the bad guy, then your freedom to choose whom to root for is constrained by others. Thus, by the definition of psychological reactance, one would find the bad guy more desirable. (140-41)

This presumably means that the more romance readers are criticised for liking to read about romance heroes who are nasty, brutish and anti-feminist, the more those heroes will become a "guilty pleasure."

9) Media Villains Versus Real Villains:

Before closing, we also want to stress that the villains we see in popular culture are often not reflective of real-life villains. Media villains tend to be good looking, intelligent, witty, and sexy. If you ever watch real-life villains on the news or on court television, you will be struck by the fact that they tend not to be at all attractive or charming. In fact, when a real-life villain is appealing, it is almost always given a great deal of media attention because it is an anomaly. It has also been pointed out that the villain in many romance novels and movies attracts the female with their swagger and dangerous persona, only to morph into devoted loving husbands and fathers by the end of the story. Therefore, the woman gets both the excitement of the bad boy and the security of a good man (Pelusi 58). In other words, many of the popular culture villains are more like misunderstood good guys than truly bad guys. (143)

Here, as in 7), the point is made that there is a difference between fiction and reality: it would be unwise to assume that a reader's preferences with regards to romance heroes are an exact match for her preferences outside the pages of a novel.

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Keen, Richard, Monica L. McCoy, and Elizabeth Powell. "Rooting for the Bad Guy: Psychological Perspectives." Studies in Popular Culture 34.2 (2012): 129-148.

Vivanco, Laura and Kyra Kramer. "There Are Six Bodies In This Relationship: An Anthropological Approach to the Romance Genre." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1 (2010).

Winspear, Violet. Bride's Lace. London: Mills & Boon, 1984.

The black hat was "Made in the USA by Resistol" and the photograph was provided by Miller Hats under a Creative Commons licence. It features a "3/8" diamond back rattlesnake band with buckle."