The Hermetically Sealed Heroine, Can We Let Her Go?

There's a lot of positive buzz for Sarah MacLean's new book Eleven Scandals to Start to Win A Duke's Heart so I picked up the first two books in the trilogy. After making my way through the perfectly serviceable and often enjoyable Ten Ways To Be Adored When Landing A Lord and Nine Rules to Break When Romancing A Rake I had strong opinions about elements of both.  On reflection I realized that my problem wasn't with her work  (MacLean breaks as many molds as she's upholds) so much as it was with a need to retire some genre conventions.

When I started in romance, the heroine was commonly 16 - 18. Sometimes she was even younger, sometimes she was a few years older, but that was the average. Over the years heroines have aged as a result of consumer preferences. Now that we can't imagine a 16 year old making a solid choice for a spouse, many heroines are in their late twenties or into their thirties. (Forty appears to still be unacceptable except in side characters.) Both of MacLean's first two heroines are, by genre convention, older heroines. One is a wallflower, the other is stuck on a country estate trying to make ends meet. In return, they are paired with a rake (in the non rapist genre sense, which I liken more to a slut-boy than a historical rake) and his more discriminating brother. In both cases, the men have lived a life of companionship (for good or ill) and sexual experience.

The women have not. This bothers me. When the heroines were 16 and paired off with a 37 or 45 year old man of the town, you understood their lack of experience and hoped he hadn't picked up any interesting diseases. For a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, it is absurd to have them hermetically sealed for his protection. Beyond the issue of virginity (which is understandable in it's existence but then dispensed with laughably fast when the opportunity presents) these women have never been kissed. The typical lack of sexual agency in the romance heroine of the 70's and 80's is preserved in these older heroines. Why? It's almost offensive to find these women, presented as capable and multidimensional, possibly self pleasuring, certainly ready for a physical relationship, have never had even a pre-teen lip lock with a servant. It's a bit ridiculous, really. So why is it still important?

We complain about all manner of things in the genre. Was it historically accurate, does it line up with our own image of what the character would do, does it line up with our image of what we would do? What does it say about women or relationships? Why do we not complain when a woman falls in love with the first man she kisses? Does she have the tools for a relationship and understanding of her own needs? Can the older heroine adequately judge that which she has no frame of reference for? Why is such extreme purity even desired in books written primarily for women and by women? A book can open with a man sliding out of a devalued women (because any women the hero is physically involved with is inevitably less than fully human when compared to the heroine) and dismissing her as nothing, only to find us rooting for his involvement with a woman who has never kissed.

I don't know what this says about our self image, about power dynamics, about any of the things academics get paid to dissect and discuss. I do know that I find myself tired of it. There's a scene in a recent Boyle book where the heroine and the discarded mistress find themselves in a room having a rational conversation. It was refreshing. Two women, on equal footing, in different places in their lives.  But Boyle's heroine had certainly been kissed before. I can't understand why, when we have discarded so many things that devalued women from our fiction, we hold so tightly to these two truths. Women with physical experience are whores. Women with astonishing levels of physical purity are desired.

Review For Two: Heat Wave by Donald Bogle & Blue Smoke by Roger House

I've already raved this week about R. A. Lawson's Jim Crow's Counterculture. I read it as part of a trio of books over the last few weeks. Heat Wave and Blue Smoke take very different paths to the same result, a definitive look at an artist and their time period.

Donald Bogle is well known for his exhaustive research and meticulous detailing. Heat Wave is no exception. Things get off to a slow start as he explains the background behind what begins to seem like every person Ethel Waters ever met or could meet. Once he gets rolling, however, he offers a comprehensive look at this pioneering artist that is refreshingly free of rose colored glasses. Perhaps it's fitting that Waters, certainly not an easy woman, is so well documented in what is not an easy book. Heat Wave is worth the time, and it will reward the reader willing to explore not just Ethel Waters but the world she lived in. Ethel has largely been forgotten, but Bogle respects both her place in history and her absolute talent. Here she is in a clip from a film intended for black audiences only, with a very young Sammy Davis Jr as the President. I chose this clip because it illustrates the difference in the artist when she is not beholden to please a white ticket buyer. Instead of the cotton picker of her 1929 recording of this song, an elegant woman takes the stage before expounding on the power of Harlem life and completely refuting cotton as a profession.

Blue Smoke has a different aim. Rather than a comprehensive exploration of the times and people that made the artist, Roger House uses the art to explore the man. Taking Broonzy's discography to tell the story of his life, House quote his lyrics before expanding on the times in which he wrote them. It makes for an instantly accessible and compelling read. House writes as economically as Broonzy sang.

Unlike Ethel Waters, Bill Broonzy did not find his fortune with his guitar. It certainly led him to many experiences he would not otherwise have had, but it never allowed him to fully leave manual labor behind. as with other artists of the time his interaction with the Lomax family both gained him a wider audience and a minstrel version of himself to perform for the white blues enthusiasts. House details his work bringing other musicians to be interviewed by Alan Lomax, stressing that we have to view those tapes through the lens of Lomax's own bias. Broonzy knew what Lomax was looking for and he delivered it. We can't therefore take those words as a full and accurate representation of Bill Broonzy himself. In the music House finds a fuller picture of the man and through that man the era in which he worked. LSU Press has great pricing on Blue Smoke, both in paperback and ebook.  I think it is definitely worth your time. Since it's only fair, let me follow that look at Ethel Waters with a look at Big Bill Broonzy, a guitarist that should be familiar to everyone. The effects of his popularity in Europe are certainly seen in the work of the European musicians that followed.

Review: Sons of the Revolution by Shana Galen

Shana Galen is one of those authors that I tend to forget about. When I look at her publication list, I realize I've read all of her books.  Although I can't recall a single detail, it's an overall positive impression. That's the case with the Sons of the Revolution series as well. On your left, a young orphan working as a governess is forced into life as a spy, where she discovers she is destined to be a Duchess. On your right, a young orphan is forced into life as a governess where... ok, that's not exactly fair. But that's the thing about a Shana Galen book. It's easy to fault them on the details.

The strongest section of both books is the prologue. When Julien and Armand are escaping the siege of their home the events are immediate, cinematic and relatable. Those sections of the book are up there with Joanna Bourne's work. In both cases, she has set up an excellent canvas. The eldest and his young mother escape the mob, leaving her husband and younger sons behind to face certain death. Awesome! (Ok, maybe not awesome, exactly... but c'mon! One kid wakes up to flickering lights on the ceiling. It's like riding Pirates of the Caribbean at Disney, but with actual terror!) Afterward, established in London and rich again, Julien's mom seems kind of sad. All the time. Those are the emotional stakes of the subsequent action. Sure, Julien keeps slipping in and out of France looking for his brothers. But the emotional repercussions of their experiences are not deep and traumatic. This is not angsty romance. Armand, who spent a decade in a solitary confinement, goes from mute and feral to resentful sibling fairly quickly.  At one point Armand challenges Julien "You treat me like I am an idiot!" Dude. You've been refusing to speak, wear shoes, or handle utensils. You wanted he should give you a medal, maybe? Julien responds that Armand has no idea what it cost Julien to keep searching for him. I guess Armand thought Julien found his way to France and infiltrated a prison on a lark, because Armand is all hmm, good point.

Of course, as easy as strolling in and out of the prison is, perhaps Armand can be forgiven his error. By the time it's his turn, he heads off to his former cell (guess he forgot his toothbrush) with less thought than I use to walk up to the corner for milk. (Here's another easy swipe - a spy in England knows where Armand is being held, but everyone in the prison has no idea who he is and all the people looking for him on the outside have no idea where he is, and the criminal element in France has no idea where he is... how does the spy guy figure it out? If Armand is mute, who told his jailers the name Armand?)  I could easily break these books down by missed opportunities, but it would miss the point. I enjoyed them. Do I think Shana Galen could really write something astonishing? I don't know. She has some great characters, she has some great situations, but the execution of them is enjoyably rote. The genre equivalent of the popcorn movie. You can see everything coming long before it hits, the clues to future events are clubs with kleig lights attached. It's the getting there that's the fun. You can settle down, have a read, and enjoy it. You don't need the collectors dvd afterward, it's just Tuesday night and something to do.

I will probably read everything Shana Galen ever writes. I expect to forget who she is at least three more times in my life, but I will still have that good impression. She's a fun evening, but not the girl I want to marry.

Review: Trial By Desire by Courtney Milan

You know when that band who put out that really great album that made them your favorite band ever put out their second album and you were so excited until it wasn't the first album which made you so sad but then time passed and you realized you liked the new album too?

Yea.

Trial By Desire is like that.

No wait! It's not! Actually, there are two copies of Trial By Desire being reviewed. Some reviewers got an ARC of the unfinished book. While it was interesting to look at the editing process, it does Courtney Milan no favors to have a rough draft used to review the polished gem. Family drama. Super awesome courtroom sequence. Happy ending! Buy it. Read it. Love Courtney Milan if you're new to this author. Wait - why are you new to Courtney Milan? Do you hate reading? What's going on here?

Oh right. back to the book. Ned finished Proof By Seduction on the edge of a forced marriage with Kate. Kate is completely awesome. She marries Ned, has Ned do that whole "It's not you, it's me, I'll be finding myself" thing and moves on with her life. Being male, he thinks he's done her a favor. What he's really done is make her life a great deal more complex than it needed to be. While she waits for Ned to grow up, Kate works to secretly free abused women from their situations. Ned returns and slowly (again, he's male) discovers that Kate really doesn't trust him anymore. Why should she? He didn't make their marriage (or her) a priority in the past.

Ned's effort to regain Kate's trust plays out beautifully. There are no Big Misunderstandings, no Failure To Express The Heart, none of the standard shortcuts to a relationship on the edge of ending. Ned and Kate's communication issues are ones of assumption and fear. "If I show you who I really am, will you leave me?" I fell for Ned and Kate completely. If you missed this title, go back and take a look at it. Courtney Milan is one of my favorite authors.

Review: Good Girls Don't Get Fat by Robyn Silverman

Are you a girl?
Are you the parent, grandparent, friend, teacher or caregiver of a girl?
Do you know any girls?

Go ahead and buy Good Girls Don't Get Fat. (You might even couple it with another fairly recent release, The Hundred Year Diet by Susan Yager.) Reading Dr. Silverman's guide on helping children avoid eating disorders is like a window into your own damaging programming. In America, we do equate size with value. In a human, the lowest possible volume has the highest value. It's good to be hungry, it's good to be unhealthy if you can show the right silhouette. Good Girls Don't Get Fat points out how this message is turned into self hatred by young women every day. Nothing tastes as good as chasing the approval of others is supposed to feel.

Dr. Silverman points out things the average person might not consider. If a father praises a stepmother with a different figure than the mother, a child sharing that body type hears that she is unattractive. In her mind, her mother's appearance and her own are tied together. Her stepmother's physical type replaces her mother's as an ideal to strive for. If a mother talks about her own weight concerns, the child adopts those as her own as well. An unthinking comment about outgrown clothing can be twisted into a message that the child needs to lose weight. Even the natural weight gains of puberty, the puppy fat years, are made undesirable by the increase in images of undersized tween starlets.

Dr. Silverman's book is easy to use, practical and so very important to understanding how our attempts to foster a positive body image can occasionally be the cause of the child forming a negative one. Really, the only thing Dr. Silverman does not cover is how to model healthy body image if a parent is morbidly obese. Not every parent reading will be able to model body acceptance or healthy weight control.

Reading Good Girls Don't Get Fat reminded me of The Hundred Year Diet in that both deal with artificial media images causing real health concerns. For the former, it's beauty images. For the latter it's scare tactics. Every diet under the sun has it's roots in an earlier diet that didn't really work for that generation either. Long before America actually had a weight crisis, it believed it had one and manufactured chemical food substitutes to answer a weight concerned market. Without fad dieting, there is no diet cola. While Good Girls Don't Get Fat has only a minor flaw, The Hundred Year Diet is a less perfect read. It's information is also compact and usefully categorized, but it fails to feel as vital. Taken together they're the perfect tools helping your tween understand how the diet industry teaches her to hate her body.

Review: Passions of a Wicked Earl by Lorraine Heath

Since Lorraine Heath left westerns behind I've become a tremendous fan of hers. This double publishing event (Passions of a Wicked Earl is followed the next month by Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman) looked like the best thing to happen to October since Halloween. Then I got scared. The basic set up for Passions is that Morgan finds Claire in the arms of Morgan's brother (Stephen from Pleasures) and while threesomes may be popular in romance fiction right now, it's not what Morgan had in mind for his wedding night. Morgan, understandably upset, banishes Claire to the proverbial country estate, never to be thought of again while he sets about sleeping with any woman who is not Claire. Here's where the fear comes in. The advance ad copy reads "she... has returned to London with one goal in mind: the seduction of her notorious husband."

Really? That's her entire goal? I know from checking out the Amazon forums that I'm not the only reader who came to a full stop at that set up. There's a high ewwww factor in tearing a man who has been ignoring you from another woman's bed and begging Mr. Patriarch to condescend. Lorraine Heath has been delivering original reads packed full of emotional punch and deep character motivations. "He sleeps with everyone, everyone but her!" isn't what I want. Cracking the cover, I find the hero in bed with another woman. Great. It's not a treat, it's a trick. Like Morgan, I jumped to conclusions. Unlike Morgan, I stuck around for more than five minutes to find out what was really going on. Turns out Claire's goal is a wee bit more complicated than the cover let on. (I shouldn't judge books by their covers. Look at this cover - I'd assume Morgan runs about naked all day. Plus, there seems to be an extra leg in there. Either Claire has a hidden friend or it's a really long way to her knee.) Claire's arrival turns everything upside down. What we have here is a complex story of two young kids who caused themselves a decade of pain by failing to communicate. (Sound familiar? That's just me? Really? Um, ok.)

With a brief nod to the characters of her last series to let you know you're in the same world, Heath sets up a man who has trouble expressing his emotions and therefore failed to court the woman he wants. Morgan expects her to fulfill his needs without giving her any indication that her own are important to him. (Ok, that has to ring some bells. Anyone?) Refreshingly, Claire is willing to call him out on what he's done wrong without using it as an excuse for her own poor judgement. Morgan and Claire are at the end of their marriage, with Morgan considering Claire's replacement. (Is it too late for them to repair the hurt of the past and learn to live in the future?) Passions of a Wicked Earl is a fantastic tale of a marriage on the brink of ending. Lorraine Heath folds in a brilliant subplot with a smaller triangle between Morgan's mother, a painter several years her junior, and a lover lost to her forever.

(I did have a problem with the late appearance of a murderous figure. Did a memo go out that near death experiences bring the romance? Because I neither got that memo nor want it. Like Claire and Morgan, I can forgive. This is a super tasty book that more than makes up for a few pieces of licorice and a toothbrush in the candy bag.)

Passions of a Wicked Earl is a must buy for October. It's not just a great read in it's own right, it sets up  Pleasures of a Notorious Gentleman which is one of my top five books for 2010. It's that good. Whether you look at Passions as a prequel, as a great read on it's own, or as a challenge to the rest of the field to step up their romance game, Lorraine Heath is delivering a major treat.