Things I Like and Dislike About the Romance Genre

This Long And Short Reviews prompt almost slipped away from me--the post is late. But I want to complete the challenge of posting about these topics all year, so here we go:

What I like about the romance genre is that it can include everything. As the late blogger known as Ozarque (who did not write romances) observed, you can say anything in a romance, and that may be your best chance of getting the message out to mainstream women readers. 

Too many men writing under girly-sounding names have used romance novels as a platform to preach the message, "Be a complete fool for 'love' of Mr. Wrong and at least you might have a few good nights with him before the babies come in and he goes out." Urgh. Ick. 

And women writers haven't always helped. What exactly is the message of Wuthering Heights supposed to be? "Marry someone else for money, but continue to hound the man you really want while living, then die young, come back as a ghost, and haunt him until he joins you in an untimely death"? I'm sorry. Jane Eyre is a novel with a romance in it, and a fine one. Shirley is a novel with a romance in it, and a fine one. But I think Wuthering Heights is a fever dream, and if poor little Emily Bronte had been destined to live to a reasonable age, she would have at least revised it drastically, more likely burned it.

But lovely things can be done with the romance genre. Shirley actually took an interest in the working class. Louisa May Alcott's Old-Fashioned Girl rescued her rich relations from despair when they lost their money. Gone with the Wind annoys modern readers because it tells the story and summarizes the plight of the Southern States, as of the 1930s, better than anything else ever did. Jubilee is much more history than romance, but the romance it does contain brings tears to my eyes. Headspace is much more speculation than romance, but the romance it does contain sizzles--and raises serious questions for those who want to think about them.

Ozarque proposed a plot for a romance she never bothered to write--a big sweeping epic romance, or a series of short linked ones, that would manage to work in information about how to nourish the fetal and infant brain in such a way that any poor single mother could raise a "gifted" child. It was an interesting prompt, though I never got beyond an outline for the novel either. Somebody out there wants to write that novel. Either a heroic nurse presenting the pertinent information to poor single mothers in the inner city, or one of those poor single mothers, could be the heroine. She might be tempted by the man who offered her a cushy job in a rich neighborhood, but hold out for her career as a nurse in the poor neighborhood and a man who appreciates her dedication to that career. She might struggle with hostility toward the man who abandoned her and the baby and the men who harass and discriminate against her, then eventually meet a man who was worthy of her and the baby too. She might be a good Hindu working in Calcutta, finding romance within an arranged marriage. She might be a Seventh-Day Adventist who leaves a fishing village in Zambia and faces the human tragedy that is Lusaka and finds True Love with a man from a different village who's done the same. There are all kinds of ways this novel could be written. Someone really ought to write it. Maybe, considering the importance of prenatal and perinatal care in shaping children's lives, different people ought to write all the different versions set in different countries.

What I don't like about the romance genre is the predictability. When it's a freestanding novel that's not published under a "romance" label, the writer has some room to add something interesting to the general idea that two people attracted to each other, but then separate, and then get together at the end. When it's one of those genre romances that used to be sold on rotating racks in supermarkets, you used to know on which page to look for the first kiss, the really torrid kiss, the quarrel, and the explicit bedroom scene if it was one of the labels that guaranteed one of those.

The only originality allowed (those novels were all basically written about trendy "romantic" places, anyway, not about characters) was the characters' names. What stands out in memory was a novel in which the characters were called Race and Jinx. I don't think anyone's ever topped that, although this web site did review a British romance in which the author got away with bashing the Nice Girl stereotype by calling her protagonist "Lady Hel" (short for Helena, of course). Inspired by Race and Jinx and Lady Hel, I once ghost-wrote a novel that started out to feature some confusion between brothers called Ray and Roy, but the client wouldn't allow it. I rewrote it, called them Richard and Raymond (with a brother Godfrey), and made them different men who married different women for different reasons. It was a better story that way but I still think Ray and Roy were funnier.

It's a mistake to take the romance genre seriously. Romances work best, for me, when the author expects and encourages me to laugh.