Romance Writer's Revenge

The more I read romances, the less I read them. And it’s not because I don’t enjoy reading the same story archetype (beauty and the beast, wallflower and the rake, et al), because I do. I’m the person who upon seeing yet another romantic comedy being offered on the big screen, will gleefully fork over $6 (matinee, you know) to see it. 9 times out of 10, I’ll even buy the movie. It’s not the repetitive nature of how love is presented to me that annoys me.

It’s the dukes.

No offense to duke lovers out there—they do cut a fine figure in their clothes and on horseback—but I simply cannot stand to read about another one of them. Especially any who happen to live in circa 1815. Why? Because there were a small finite number of dukes in England/Scotland, but there are like a million (only a slight exaggeration) literary dukes. It’s not possible. And none of them are related to the King; how is that even possible? It’s not. One of these guys has to be…. *waves hand* I just can’t stand it. And I can’t stand when they send these dukes—FIRST sons—off to fight in wars or spy for their country or the 101 other new and exciting ways to endanger their lives when it was so imperative they keep the line going. No, no, no.

I’m told time and again this is not the point. After all, you don’t read a historical novel for the history (what a weird concept!) but for the fantasy of pretending you’re being romanced by Mr. Darcy. Who you’ll notice was not a duke.

Whatever. If the fantasy is not the historical aspect, what is it then? It can’t be the duke aspect. That’s completely ridiculous. I mean, Prince Charles is the Duke of Cornwall—do you fantasize about him? No, you don’t. And he’s not going to spy for his country, you can bet on it. He does play a mean round of polo—now if I could get a historical novel about a duke obsessed with polo, that I’d believe!

Okay, okay, back on track. I think I may have figured it out. I believe the duke is simply a stereotype for the stuffy Brit we all have pictured in our heads who is reserved to the point of painful. Some say the historical setting sets the books far enough away from reality that we can forget about what life is really like. Back in the good old days before epidurals and flushing toilets. Whatever. Some readers need that separation, I suppose. Me, I’m with Jane Austen. Jane was not writing historicals when she created her novels. She was writing about the contemporary quirks of her day. And then she inserted a man into the midst who suffered foot and mouth disease, a bumbling, uncharming boy next door who paled next to shinier charming men like Wickham. She gave us the guy we’ve been imitating ever since: the Hero with the Inability to Communicate.

Honestly that was what was so perfect about Darcy. He is every inch a man. A flawed, flawed man. Now Eliza Bennet is rather flawed herself, which is how we prefer our heroines. (And I rather enjoy the fact that I don’t remember her once staring in a mirror and making a mental list of her attributes. Brilliant girl.)

It’s the Hero with the Inability to Communicate that is the heart and soul of every romance novel. Not the dukes. Not the knights. Not the FBI agent. That’s just the hair color on the Ken doll. The fantasy is simple: you take a man who is not able to communicate with a woman and by the end of a book, he is able to communicate with her.

It’s like every love story is essentially The Miracle Worker, with the Annie Sullivan character played by the heroine. And honestly it’s a miracle the heroine doesn’t smother the dumb bastard in his sleep before we get to the end of the book. I mean, how hard is it to listen and ask thoughtful questions? How hard is it to do the one thing we asked? Yes, yes, I want you to call me every flipping day, all right. 

Of course, there is the flipside to that coin. Why are all these smart, innovative heroines picking these dumb bastards to begin with? Every last jack of them has the Nice Guy Friend who they don’t give the time of day to, but the Hero Who Can’t Communicate is the one they keep making out in corners with. I must spend 2/3rds of every book, going, “Why is this bright, intelligent, clever, witty girl acting like an idiot over this guy who cannot say what she so desperately needs to hear?”

Perhaps that’s the one truth that all romance novels keep honest: love doesn’t make anyone particularly bright.

But still, romance novels resolve nicely, do they not? Yes, he’s a dumb bastard; yes, her intelligence is questionable; yes, the village idiot would have caught on by now and told the heroine what she needed to hear—but in the end, our fantasy is fulfilled. Mr. Hoof and Mouth Disease finally gets the big epiphany. He finally says the right thing—and best of all, he means it. And if he’s a truly remarkable, deserving hero, he shows her all the right things, because as every writer will tell you: you show, don’t tell.

And maybe that’s the lesson women learn in every romance novel. We want to read about a hero who says the right thing—the sappy Edward Cullen thing—because men never do it in real life, and yet, at the end of novels, heroines learn it’s not what the hero said that matters, it’s how he shows her he loves her that’s the real proof.

What fantasy (or truth) do you look for your romances to provide? Does the duke thing bother anyone else whatsoever? At all? (I don’t have this problem with earls or viscounts, just dukes.)  Does anyone else find it ironic that Jane Austen wrote contemporaries, but we write historicals to imitate her? Me, I’m off to find a historical about an earl…wish me luck there are any earls to fall in love with.