Modern women, historical settings
Jun. 3rd, 2005 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsI've bitched about the state of the modern romance before, more than once, but this post of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tamnonlinear's has given me more to say. Namely, that I think this whole idea of how we women must want to read about modern women in any setting is bogus. Not to mention patronizing.
Tammon's post is about how the latest version of Pride and Prejudice is calling the heroine a modern woman, and she isn't. True. But it's equally true and highly annoying to me that in all too many historically-based romances, a modern woman is somehow airlifted out of the 21st century and dropped into whatever time period the book is set. Oh, she may use their words and wear their clothes, but she has modern sensibilities which she often spends much of the book getting everyone around her to admire.
Because everyone knows that there were no interesting, much less strong or powerful, women in the world before Ms Magazine got published.
The movie Titanic was a classic example of this - Kate Winslet is perfectly capable of playing a character who is unconventional while being historically accurate; Sense and Sensibility proved it. But although the rest of Titanic was as accurate as possible to the period, "Rose" was a jarring note throughout - too forward thinking, too politically correct, too brash, and way too fast. (Mr "King of the World"? If you wanted people to study the movie as history - and you said you did - ya think maybe the love scene and the nude scenes were gratuitious? What, the story of the Titanic itself isn't interesting until you add tits?)
The Dodd romances I bashed earlier add an even more offensive wrinkle. The heroine is a "modern" woman in that she is convinced of sexual equality and that her efforts and brains are more important than her beauty... but eventually, inevitably, she's going to throw it all away for primal passionate lust for the one guy who finally proves to be "man enough" to overpower her. She may continue to snip and snap and he'll love her for it (to presumably prove that he's not a misogynist neanderthal) but we all know the real score. The happy ending means she has to acknowledge his manly ability to override her.
It's not just Dodd, either. I stopped giving a damn about Scarlett well before Rhett did, for example.
What's even more annoying is that now all the ballsy, brainy, bitchy broads have been shoved through a time warp, what are we left as the modern heroine, the girl we supposedly want to vicariously live through? The neurotic Bridget Joneses and Jaine Austens. Liza and her author - neither one a candidate for Doormat Of The Year or decades of therapy - have been replaced with cute collections of compulsive quirks, characters whose theme song is "I'm just a gal who can't say no." Can't say no to the people who impose, can't say no to the overspending and the bad food, can't say no whatever impulse next crosses their empty brains. If the heroines aren't neurotic, they're certifiable nutcases - just look at the Meg Ryan school of "see, want, stalk, have" romantic movies a la "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Kate and Leopold."
How ironic that Liza is being called a modern heroine when most modern heroines are modeled on Lydia!
Fortunately, there are some shining examples of getting it right. Pride and Prejudice itself for one; it wouldn't have lasted this long if women didn't continue to find something in the characters that they liked even as the times change. Ditto Jane Eyre. Rhys Bowen's "Molly Murphy" is a fantastic historical character - a strong, smart woman who is very much a product of her time. I just reviewed a book for Once Written that has a really nice and overdue twist on the neurotic modern heroine - the heroine has just come off a bad divorce and her confidence in herself and her abilities is shaken. (It's a very "Working Girl" kind of a plot.) That makes so much more sense to me than the twitchy "gotta getta man" mindset. And Mary Janice Davidson's wonderful Betsy Taylor admits she's vacuous - but she also has no trouble taking on and taking out anyone who crosses her moral code.
Now if only there were more women like them in romances!
tamnonlinear's has given me more to say. Namely, that I think this whole idea of how we women must want to read about modern women in any setting is bogus. Not to mention patronizing.Tammon's post is about how the latest version of Pride and Prejudice is calling the heroine a modern woman, and she isn't. True. But it's equally true and highly annoying to me that in all too many historically-based romances, a modern woman is somehow airlifted out of the 21st century and dropped into whatever time period the book is set. Oh, she may use their words and wear their clothes, but she has modern sensibilities which she often spends much of the book getting everyone around her to admire.
Because everyone knows that there were no interesting, much less strong or powerful, women in the world before Ms Magazine got published.
The movie Titanic was a classic example of this - Kate Winslet is perfectly capable of playing a character who is unconventional while being historically accurate; Sense and Sensibility proved it. But although the rest of Titanic was as accurate as possible to the period, "Rose" was a jarring note throughout - too forward thinking, too politically correct, too brash, and way too fast. (Mr "King of the World"? If you wanted people to study the movie as history - and you said you did - ya think maybe the love scene and the nude scenes were gratuitious? What, the story of the Titanic itself isn't interesting until you add tits?)
The Dodd romances I bashed earlier add an even more offensive wrinkle. The heroine is a "modern" woman in that she is convinced of sexual equality and that her efforts and brains are more important than her beauty... but eventually, inevitably, she's going to throw it all away for primal passionate lust for the one guy who finally proves to be "man enough" to overpower her. She may continue to snip and snap and he'll love her for it (to presumably prove that he's not a misogynist neanderthal) but we all know the real score. The happy ending means she has to acknowledge his manly ability to override her.
It's not just Dodd, either. I stopped giving a damn about Scarlett well before Rhett did, for example.
What's even more annoying is that now all the ballsy, brainy, bitchy broads have been shoved through a time warp, what are we left as the modern heroine, the girl we supposedly want to vicariously live through? The neurotic Bridget Joneses and Jaine Austens. Liza and her author - neither one a candidate for Doormat Of The Year or decades of therapy - have been replaced with cute collections of compulsive quirks, characters whose theme song is "I'm just a gal who can't say no." Can't say no to the people who impose, can't say no to the overspending and the bad food, can't say no whatever impulse next crosses their empty brains. If the heroines aren't neurotic, they're certifiable nutcases - just look at the Meg Ryan school of "see, want, stalk, have" romantic movies a la "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Kate and Leopold."
How ironic that Liza is being called a modern heroine when most modern heroines are modeled on Lydia!
Fortunately, there are some shining examples of getting it right. Pride and Prejudice itself for one; it wouldn't have lasted this long if women didn't continue to find something in the characters that they liked even as the times change. Ditto Jane Eyre. Rhys Bowen's "Molly Murphy" is a fantastic historical character - a strong, smart woman who is very much a product of her time. I just reviewed a book for Once Written that has a really nice and overdue twist on the neurotic modern heroine - the heroine has just come off a bad divorce and her confidence in herself and her abilities is shaken. (It's a very "Working Girl" kind of a plot.) That makes so much more sense to me than the twitchy "gotta getta man" mindset. And Mary Janice Davidson's wonderful Betsy Taylor admits she's vacuous - but she also has no trouble taking on and taking out anyone who crosses her moral code.
Now if only there were more women like them in romances!
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-03 02:49 pm (UTC)The nice thing about sci-fi and fantasy is you can do whatever the f you want. If you want to write historical fantasy, write historical fantasy. Just acknowledge it for what it is. But stop thinking that the real Medieval era was happy fun time.