The Heroine Is Being Beaten: Freud, Sadomasochism, and Reading the Romance
1995; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2374-6629
Autores Tópico(s)Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
ResumoIn 1972, though Avon Books reluctantly published Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower, its overwhelming popularity ushered in the current reading market in which popular romances comprise nearly fifty percent of all paperback sales.(1) Woodiwiss's novel follows the tempestuous love affair between a beautiful but hapless orphan who, while escaping the clutches of ruthless guardians and a repellent arranged husband-to-be (whom she kills in self defense), encounters a handsome and dangerous sea captain. He mistakes her for a prostitute - a common device in these early romances - and forces himself upon her. The following passage from The Flame and the Flower illuminates the dynamic of what came to be known in the industry as the saga: He pointed to her shift. Get that off. Heather swallowed hard. Her eyes flew down his body and widened even more. She was fast losing her innocence. Please - she gasped. I'm not a patient man, Heather, he said and his voice was very menacing. Her fingers shook as she untied the ribbons and unfastened the tiny buttons between her breasts. She caught the hem and raised it over her head. Her eyes lifted to his as she felt his fiery gaze upon her body. Now lie down, he ordered. . . . Please, she whimpered. Aren't you satisfied that you've taken the one thing that was only mine to give? Must you keep torturing me again and again? (41-42) Naturally, such feminist critics as Ann Barr Snitow, Tania Modleski, and Janice Radway were quick to point out the obvious dangers of such violent fantasies. In an article in the New Republic titled Soft-Porn Culture, Ann Douglas reads the rape saga as culture's insidious retribution for women's liberation, punishing women by offering them seemingly woman-centered stories that continually reinforce women's passivity and thralldom to exciting but domineering men. Douglas succinctly expresses the peril of such a fantasy: The Harlequin heroine guarantees the continuance of her initial youthful ignorance of life by her avid willingness to let the first chance at sexual bondage do the work experience is usually asked to accomplish. The idea of growing up, of maturation, is the one most taboo in porn, and this taboo constitutes one of its greatest attractions. (28) Worse, [T]he women who wouldn't thrill to male nudity in Playgirl are enjoying the titillation of seeing themselves, not necessarily as they are, but as some men would like to see them: illogical, innocent, magnetized by male sexuality and brutality. (26) Such fears and disapproval are well-founded, and pressure from both critics and avid readers has led to a great diminution in such brutal portrayals in more recent novels. Yet while this depiction has largely fallen out of favor with writers and readers recently, the dynamic still appears in some novels whose very reason for being is to provide a female-centered sexual and romantic fantasy. In a typical scenario, a strong-willed woman meets an equally strong-willed older man and both feel incredible antipathy - and attraction - toward each other. After a series of misunderstandings, he eventually loses control of his passions and physically assaults her, but the narrative operates in such a way that this assault appears as evidence of the hero's uncontrollable love of and attraction to the heroine. Once she recognizes this in him (and he recognizes it in himself) they call a truce and declare their true - loving - feelings for one another. These dynamics are evident in the titles of many novels, such as Sandra Bishop's Beloved Savage, Adrienne Day's A Gentle Taming, Rosemary Rogers's Sweet Savage Love, Katherine Kincaid's Beloved Bondage, and Linda Lael Miller's Taming Charlotte. The oxymorons in titles like Day's and Rogers's also underscore the tension that drives these depictions of love as simultaneously painful and beautiful, heroes as lovable yet savage, and sex as gentle yet fierce. …
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