There are two threads going on over at DearAuthor.com that fascinate me. One is False Advertising? and the other is The Changing Face of Romance . . .Or not?. They fascinate me because the arguments used by some of the posters sound reasonable and logical. So much so in fact that they make me want to revise my own opinions. Almost. Are they truly that reasonable, however? Don’t know. Still thinking about them.
Whatever, I just posted the following to the False Advertising thread and wanted to expand on it a little here:
I’e thought about this entire discussion over night and I’m curious about something fundamental here. A romance at it’s heart is a creation myth and that isn’t going to change, any time soon because it’s a story form that’s part of who we are as human beings.
So, here’s the question, if the hero and heroine don’t end up together at the end of the book, what exactly has been created?
I mean it sounds completely reasonable that any “living” thing will change over time. The same is true of literary genres, I’m sure. What we read now is definitely not the same thing published and read 100 years ago.
The problem is that there are limits, even to this type of change. Limits imposed, not by readers or even publishers, but by our own human natures. Do genres exist because we created them the way they are or do they exist because we exist and we need ways to explain that very existence to ourselves? The world around us changes, but we as human beings do not. Not that quickly, at any rate.
I also think it’s amazing that any discussion could make me realize that I could accept a love story ending tragically with one of the pair dying as a romance before I could accept one where the couple simply chose to happily go their separate ways as romance . . .
Of course, I’m still not completely sure I’d ever accept the first scenario either without pitching a major fit. ;p
What most don’t realize I think is that I’m very sincere when I ask the question about what is created if the couple choses to go their separate ways. I’m not ruling out that someone could actually convince me that “creation†could occur in that circumstance. In fact, I’m rather curious to see their arguments for it.
Hmmm, I’m intrigued by the idea 😉 First, I think I have been pretty clear about what a romance is to me – HEA and if someone dies, it better not be the hero or heroine. So yeah, I’m a huge stick in the mud about romance but I know what I want.
With that in mind, the question is what is ‘created’ if two people meet, love and then leave? I might not have the right idea here because some of you are using big words 😉
When I was a teen I remember reading a series about a bunch of girlfriends. Each book was about one of the girls and her ‘romance’. I remember one of the girls finally getting ‘the guy’ and they get together and have sex and stuff but, in the end, the guy was just guy and not the idol she had made him out to be. In the end, she did not end up with the guy but I thought it was because she had learned to look beyond the surface and see a person for who they really are. In this, I would suggest, that a teen relationship has created a woman of more knowledge.
Okay, let’s get to an adult relationship. I’m one of those who believe that people enter your life for a reason – good, bad, whatever. So regardless of how a relationship ends there has to be some sort of growth – hopefully. I mean, there are plenty of us who repeat our mistakes but then there are those of us who learn from each relationship.
I learned what love *wasn’t* with my first boyfriend and now that I’m married, my husband is the complete opposite of my first boyfriend. Without having gone through that relationship, I’m not sure I would understand or value the relationship I have now as much.
Okay, enough with the thinking – the smoke is getting bad in here.
Let me know if I’m blowing from my foghorn 😉
CindyS
But what is a romance novel then? Is it a story chronicling the moment when two “soul-mates” come together to live HEA, or is a novel chronicling a relationship between two people who aren’t necessarily “destined” to be together? I think that’s the main arguement between what construes a HEA in a romance novel.
Well, I never said myths weren’t influencial or don’t require in-depth study in lots of ways. Just that they’re basically pretty straightforward for all that. Kind of like a cigar is sometimes just a cigar and doesn’t need any more meaning than that. 😀 Sometimes the simplest things can be the most profound and evocative.
And welcome, Alau.
Actually, there’s been quite a number of studies pioneered by Joseph Campbell (“Hero of a Thousand Faces,” “The Power of Myth”) which draws upon theories of symbolism, Freudianism, religion, and psychology that has had a big influence in cultural and lit analysis.
Yes, I know, I’m a complete nerd.
Interesting blog! I’ll have to keep checking back!
I’d be more inclined to think of myths as very lowbrow. Primal even. Completely the opposite of highbrow, which tends to complicate ideas and bury them under lots and lots of words, some meaningful and some not. Myths, OTOH, can be extremely simplistic and uncomplicated, which is how they maintain their universal appeal and loose their critical sucess at the same time. I mean, at their heart, mysteries are puzzles. There are an infinite variety of types of puzzles found in mysteries, but they’re still simply puzzles. Most everyone loves puzzles but some are a lot more complicated than others.
As to whose fault it is that books get mislabeled, I’m undecided on that one. Yes, publishers and marketing departments own a lot of the blame but the discussion that was going on at DearAuthor wasn’t just about books being mislabeled at that publishing/marketing level but also about authors and readers wanting books to be called romances that the majority of romance readers would probably object to getting stuck with. That’s a completely different issue because those individuals don’t even seem willing to acknowledge that the books would then be mislabeled. They want those other endings to be part of what romance is.
That’s where my brain gets stuck and starts putting on the brakes, at most, and starts wanting more information and explanation, at least. I want to be fair and use the brakes sparingly but I’m also honest enough to admit that my instinct is to stomp on them. Hard.
IMO, slapping the ‘creation myth’ label on romances is too highbrow. For me, the HEA in romance is the standard & is held to be one of the ‘pillars.’ I do not say that in a perjorative way. IMO, it is simply the path this genre has evolved along. Romance is actually quite rigid & unforgiving in some ways.
If a story has no HEA & yet was categorized as a romance, the reader will be angry. Romance readers expect a romance to at least have the couple intact, if not committed & married at the end. Whose fault is the incorrect categorization? The publisher? The author? What happens if an author wants to break new ground & writes a different style yet gets shelved/sold under her old genre? Whose fault is that? The store? The publisher?
And it will be interesting to see just how far they can expand that particular horizon before they fall off the edge of the world, too. ;p
There is an interesting and insightful comment (#16) related to this discussion on the Smart Bitches thread about Accountability. Not sure, but I believe the individual is an editor, a perspective of these issues that we don’t hear nearly as much from as we probably should.
Maybe our little romance world is too insular, I’m wondering why we’re questioning the HEA in romance. If it doesn’t have a HEA it’s not a romance. It’s ficition, it’s chick lit, it’s suspense, it’s SF… it can be any other form of fiction, but it’s not romance.
Just because a publisher slaps the words “romance” on the spine doesn’t mean it’s a romance. At times I think we lose sight of what publishing is about, making money, the romance market is almost 55% of the mm paperback market. Publishers want us to expand our horizons, because they want to expand their bottom line.
What most don’t realize I think is that I’m very sincere when I ask the question about what is created if the couple choses to go their separate ways. I’m not ruling out that someone could actually convince me that “creation” could occur in that circumstance. In fact, I’m rather curious to see their arguments for it. 😉
The thing is that the same thing holds true for a love story ending in the death of one of the pair. I don’t rule out that one of those stories can actually be a creation myth, also. I’m still not sure I want to read about it but that’s a different matter entirely from admitting it fits the pattern. Besides all that, classic tragedies have a form all their own, one variation of which is the tragic love story, so there’s a great deal of overlap. Still doesn’t mean they’re the same thing, though, and the argument that the romance genre is changing doesn’t cut it.
Yeah, and a dog could evolve into a horse and then were would we be?
Give me a little more to go on, please, and I’ll listen. 😀
This is something I need to think about a bit before I comment, but I did want to say that I’ve read some books where one of the characters doesn’t make it in the end. And while I was saddened by it, I actually respected the author more for staying true to the story and NOT falling into the “HEA” ending than if she had. The book was actually very interesting and I enjoyed it immensely (sp??). Grace, from our Sanctuary site, still hates on that book, though. I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective, right?
That, and I think going into a book/movie knowing it isn’t going to end happily makes a difference, too. Like with Tristan and Isolde. I knew it was an epic romance that ended in tragedy, so I was prepared and didn’t hate the story for it. Does that makes sense?
I think it’s probably a perspective thing. With movies and all theatrical forms, we “see” the action played out from all points of view. Rarely does a theatre limit our viewpoint to a single individual. So, we can accept even tragic stories as much more valid.
Which is completely different from living inside a character’s head for an entire book in the way modern romances do and then having that person die . . .
The really ironic thing is that I love tragic movies. I almost hate it when a movie has a “hollywood” ending. I don’t understand why in books, I can’t stand it if a character dies or the couple breaks up, but in movies that is what I am rooting for. Like in Hero, if Jet Li’s character had lived, it would have ruined the whole story. The tragedy of the two lovers who fought each other but died together was so moving. In book, I would have thrown it across the room and then ran over to stomp on it. What is wrong with me?