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Summary Relation between genre and gender: romantic novels
- Établissement
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
Relation between genre and gender: romantic novels Insights of Anne Snitow, Tania Modleski and Janice Radway
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Gender les 9 27/11/15Relation between genre and gender
Ladlit?
Review in Guardian; Where is the literature ladlit section? => begin of use
of the term
With the advent of 19th century realist novel, the status of the novel
started to rise.
Modernism in the beginning of the 20th century: traditional plotted novel
written by Dickens and so on dissapeared: novels had to find other ways to
address consciousness. => middle brow (shift of literary values and critcal
paradigsms and aesthetic criteria).
Media and marketing => toledo
Romance novels
- Romantic plots
- Misunderstanding and happy end
- Focus on love relationship
- Erotic charge
- Clichés: heroine being passive and submissive
- Sells very well: large part of the book industry
- Distinction between single titel romances: whereby the author is
given a prominent place in the book as opposed to books where the
author doesn’t figure => a series
- Heoric quest and courtly love
- 18th century: romance was used for sentimental novels but equally
for gothic stories and ghost novels
- Approach: Try to see it as an empowering form, they would see more
empowering possibilities for women
Anne Snitow:
These romance novels reveal a lot about that culture: reveal the
omnipresence of the binary gender logic: one of the key essences in
romance is the difference between the hero and the heroine (passive,
submissive). Glorification of gender difference in these novels, but espite
of these differences they get together in the end. Pornography for women?
There is an erotic charge but shows that it’s not just the sexual element
but combined with romantic love; pornography in a different way.
Tania Modleski:
She positions hersef against other readings of these romances; she wants
to do something different. In what way?
She just looks at the texts. She uses a psychoanalytic framework in order
to try to show what these novels tell us about the fears and desires and
problems of women; reflect on women’s position in society. She tries to
, read these novels as something that enables women to deal with their
agency.
Structures in the plots: both have to do with reading => ~ Snitow:
romances enforce gender binaries; men and women become alien. How
can you read the other? Based on the reading of the hero who underneath
this exterior wants to show his love for the heroine.
Another reading problem: there is a link to the reader who is always a step
in front of the heroine because of the familiarity with which the plots
unfold, but the heroine has to be read correctly by the hero: genuinly kind
and submissive and good. The greatest fault is appearing only to be after a
husband.
Conclusion
Final verdict about these romances: by reading about these violent men
who after all may have true feelings it’s almost as if you accept these
characteristics of men, because it’s simply a part of who they are. You
don’t have to blame the romances but the society in which they are
portrayed. (The idea is that if there is a better society, you shouldn’t need
these books).
Radway
She outlines how her approach is differnt from the previous ones. She
wants to do away with the feminst dismissal of these genres. Positive
trend in romances.
Why do readers read romances?
- To have some me time
- To learn (better than watching tv)
- Identify with a heroine who is completly loved and taken care of:
psychological explanation
- For pleasure: enjoy reading these books
- Paradox: abusive and dominant heroes in these novels but they read
it wiht pleasure: solution to this paradox: novels which are too
exagerated are dismissed.
- She introduces same idea of reading and interpreting
She acknowledges that this whole process is another way of making
women accept their behaviour; reactionary in that sense. But then she has
other arguments: reading activity itself has positive effects because of the
pleasure and relief it brings. ~ catharisis: reader experiences same
frustrations unable of understanding male behaviour
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