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The hero of Owen Wister's The Virginian argues that the US Declaration of Independence's statement that "all men are created equal"

is a great big bluff. It's easy called. [...] Wait, and let me say what I mean." He had made an imperious gesture with his hand. "[...] I know a man that works hard and he's gettin' rich, and I know another that works hard and is gettin' poor. He says it is his luck. All right. Call it his luck. I look around and I see folks movin' up or movin' down, winners or losers everywhere. All luck, of course. But since folks can be born that different in their luck, where's your equality? No, seh! call your failure luck, or call it laziness, wander around the words, prospect all yu' mind to, and yu'll come out the same old trail of inequality." (Chapter 12)

The narratorial voice then takes up the theme, explaining that when all men were declared equal, what was truly meant was that all men were to be granted equality of opportunity so that all those who enjoyed economic success could henceforth be assumed to have done so on the basis of their own merit and, consequently, be deemed to be better than those who were unsuccessful:

we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. (The Virginian Chapter 13)

As William R. Handley notes, "Wister omits his belief that only Anglo-Saxon men need sign up for the contest" (68) but it is noticeable that in The Virginian a party of Native Americans and, later, a Hispanic, attempt to kill the Anglo-Saxon hero and fail: he triumphs and they either die or are confined to a reservation.

In Wister's hierarchical vision of humanity, inequality also arises from differences in intellectual abilities; the Virginian is ingenious and able to plan ahead whereas Shorty is easily tricked and resembles "a yellow dog that is lost, and fancies each newcomer in sight is going to turn out his master" (Chapter 14). Whereas the handsome Virginian "succeeds in climbing the ladder of social and economic mobility and winning the hand of the aristocratic but not-so-wealthy schoolmarm" (Stoeltje 249), Shorty is a dupe who loses his most prized possession, turns to crime and is eventually shot dead by someone he trusted.

I would like to suggest that "poor stupid Shorty" whose "honesty had not been proof against frontier temptations" (Chapter 30) is a character with what in those days would have been classified as a "feeble mind" and in ours would be said to have learning difficulties or an intellectual disability. The Virginian describes him as a "Poor fool!" (Chapter 23) and adds that "he will never get wise. It was too late for him to get wise when he was born" (Chapter 23).

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was thought that the feeble minded were prone to being led into criminality, as Shorty is. For instance, in 1886 Catharine Brown wrote that

we have not yet been able to strengthen the will nor develop the moral nature to a degree that can enable the great majority of the feeble-minded as they pass from our schools, to cope single-handed with the evil there is in the world. The man of weak intellect ... will deteriorate till his last state be worse than the first. Because he has been lifted up a little way he has more temptation, is the better fitted to become the tool of the designing, the cat's-paw of the criminal. (Trent 84)

This is exactly what happens to Shorty. He is initially sheltered to some extent by the Virginian: "it's me that has kept Shorty out of harm's way this long. If I had fired Trampas, he'd have worked Shorty into dissatisfaction that much sooner" (Chapter 23). Having been worked on by "the designing" Trampas, Shorty is destined, as the Virginian correctly predicts, to be

"[...] a handy tool some day."

"Not very handy," said Scipio.

"Well, Trampas is aimin' to train him. Yu' see, supposin' yu' were figuring to turn professional thief--yu'd be lookin' around for a nice young trustful accomplice to take all the punishment and let you take the rest." (Chapter 23)

Shorty will, in other words, become a feeble-minded "cat's paw of the criminal" as, indeed, he has been in the past:

when he was eighteen he got to be help to a grocery man. But a girl he ran with kept taking all his pay and teasing him for more, and so one day the grocery man caught Shorty robbing his till, and fired him. There wasn't no one to tell good-by to, for the girl had to go to the country to see her aunt, she said. So Shorty hung around the store and kissed the grocery cat good-by. He'd been used to feeding the cat, and she'd sit in his lap and purr, he told me. He sends money back to that girl now. (Chapter 31)

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Handley, William R. Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Stoeltje, Beverly J. "Making the Frontier Myth: Folklore Process in a Modern Nation." Western Folklore 46.4 (1987): 235-53.

Trent, James W. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.

Wister, Owen. The Virginian. 1902. University of Virginia. 2000.

In "Happily Ever After ... And After: Serialization and the Popular Romance Novel" An Goris takes a closer look at what happens after the "happily ever after" in series by Nora Roberts and J. R. Ward but since I haven't read them, I thought I'd excerpt some of An's more general comments about series and romance:

According to information provided by RWA, sixty-three percent of the top bestselling romances between 2007 and 2011 were part of a narrative series (Fry). Roughly eighty-five percent of the romance novels that appeared on the extended New York Times bestseller list in April 2013 similarly belong to a narrative series. Two of the most famous romance novels of the last decade, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2008) and E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), are likewise part of a narrative series.

As a narrative format, serialization is neither new nor rare. It is used frequently in a wide range of genres and media, including literature, film, television, radio, and comics. [...] Serialization’s status as an exceptionally effective commercial tool makes romance’s apparent historical reserve towards the form all the more remarkable [...] if romance is a genre that understands the commercial currents of the publishing industry better than most, what factors might explain its historical reserve towards the commercially successful serial format? (Goris)

I think it's important to distinguish between novels which contain an entire romance arc and which are linked to other such novels by an ongoing cast of characters and/or adventures (e.g. E. M. Hull's The Sheik and The Sons of the Sheik, Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades and Devil's Cub or Jo Beverley's Company of Rogues series) and series in which the central protagonists' relationship develops over a number of novels (as in the Twilight series).

An Goris describes the first kind of series thus:

The character-based romance series is structured around a group of recurring characters (siblings, colleagues, friends, inhabitants of a small town, etc.). Each installment in the series features the complete romance narrative of one member of the group. The narratives are connected to each other via the recurring characters and sometimes via non-romance subplots. The type’s defining serialization strategy is to locate the serial elements not in the romance plot but elsewhere in the narrative. This allows for the inclusion of the HEA in each individual installment in the series.

Harlequin/Mills & Boon almost always publish series of this kind. One of the earliest I know of is Mary Burchell's Warrender Saga: the first book was published in 1965 and the last in 1985. They have experimented with the second type of series but it presumably wasn't very successful because I could only think of one definite example: Lynne Graham's The Drakos Baby series. I have a vague recollection of a pair of novels in which the heroine of the first book died and her sister than married its hero in the second. If anyone can identify them, or think of other HM&B series of the second kind, please let me know!

I think the near-complete absence of type-2 series at HM&B might have something to do with the expectation that Harlequin/Mills & Boon romances will include a complete romance plot arc in every book. This may have been shaped not just by a desire to publish a homogenous product but also by the way in which the novels were sold: for much of the company's history category romances were novels which had short shelf lives. I imagine it would be intensely annoying for many readers to pick up what they thought was a romance, only to discover that the story arc had begun in a previous and now unavailable novel.

An Goris speculates that

Romance’s initial hesitation towards narrative serialization has to do [...] with the opposing narrative dynamics that drive the romance and the serial forms. Romance is a generic form predicated on achieving narrative closure (Capelle 145; Pearce, Romance Writing 146). It reaches this closure in the happy end to the love story that is its main focus. This happy end – known in the romance community by the acronym HEA, which stands for Happy Ever After – is not a coincidental element of the genre, but is universally recognized as one of the romance novel’s defining and distinguishing features (Regis 9). The serial, by contrast, is a narrative from defined by its lack of a definitive ending.

Were the Twilight and Fifty Shades series marketed as genre romance? I have a feeling that they weren't. And as far as I know, Diana Gabaldon has always insisted that her Outlander series is not romance. Lord Peter Wimsey may be a hero close to the hearts of many romance readers, but the novels in which he finds love with Harriet Vane are shelved as detective fiction. I think one could say something similar about Roarke in J. D. Robb's In Death series. Catherine Cookson wrote plenty of series, but her novels are usually classified as historical fiction, sagas or romantic fiction rather than as romance. This illustrates Goris's conclusion about this second type of series: it

takes up a peripheral position in the romance system. The generic identity of many novels in such romance-based series is fuzzy. It tends to oscillate between romance, urban fantasy, and mystery. The novels are often primarily advertised as belonging to a genre other than romance. In bookstores and libraries, for example, they are usually placed in the fantasy, mystery, or science fiction section, which implies an exclusion from the romance category that is shelved elsewhere in the same space.

Goris suggests that there is also a third type which

combines the strategies of the other two types. It is a narrative that is formally structured around a group of recurring characters with each installment focusing on the courtship plot of one member of the group (with another member or an outsider). Yet each installment also includes the narrative representation of substantial romantic events between at least one couple that is formally the romantic focus of another installment in the series.

I can't think of many examples but I have a feeling at least one of Suzanne Brockmann's series might fit this description.

One of the most important possibilities opened up by by series of the first and third kinds, and also by those in the second if the protagonists make a permanent commitment to each other part-way through the series rather than at its end, is that they can show what happens after the "happily ever after":

Traditionally, the HEA [...] functions more as a narrative promise than a narrative actuality. It implies romantic love, stability, and happiness for its protagonists, but it does not include extensive actual representations of this happiness.



This fundamentally changes in the serialized romance narrative in which the fictional universe must be extensively represented after the happy end of at least one (and often multiple) couple(s) has been reached.

Clearly this does offer interesting opportunities but I think it can be less than interesting, and indeed can make a series seem increasingly unrealistic, if it transpires that an entire social circle is falling into married bliss like dominoes, with each previous pairing making brief appearances in which they flaunt their ongoing bliss along with the increasing size of their family. By definition, I imagine this is a problem which is likely to be limited to series of the first and third kinds.

An concludes that

The boom of narrative serialization has the potential to be somewhat of a game changer for the romance genre. The incorporation of serial dynamics into the romance form is not only pushing the genre’s traditional narrative boundaries but also opening up a new narrative space in which the genre is articulating its core romantic fantasy to previously unprecedented extents.

This may well be true, but "the genre's traditional narrative boundaries" haven't been "traditional" for very long given that "the romance genre" emerged in its current Romance Writers of America defined form, only relatively recently. Romances (in the sense of stories featuring "a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending") have, of course, been around for centuries, but I don't think that they've constituted a recognised genre (i.e. a distinct marketing category) for very long (although, as a medievalist, my idea of what constitutes a short time is perhaps a little longer than some other people's). In any case, I don't think it ever has been understood that way in the UK, where "romance" has tended to be more broadly defined and used as a synonym for "romantic fiction."

I wonder if perhaps what's happening is that as "romance" in the US has acquired more sub-genres it's been increasingly influenced by the norms of those other genres (such as mystery and fantasy) in which series (of type 2) were more common. As long as these new romantic series continue to have romantic relationships at their cores, complete with happy-ever-afters, I'd see that as an expansion of "romance."

Some purists, however, would perhaps see the situation as one in which "romance" is being diluted by non-romance elements and in which the HEA loses some of its power when it is no longer the triumphant conclusion to the protagonists' story. Maybe that's why in 2012 it was announced that

the RITA, the academy award of romantic fiction, is discontinuing the Novel with Strong Romantic Elements category after this year. After much discussion both among themselves and with RWA, the Women’s Fiction chapter spearheaded by Therese Walsh will disband because of some wording in RWA’s bylaws: “…to advance the professional interests of career-focused romance writers through networking and advocacy…” (Flaherty)

It looks, however, as though the Women's Fiction Chapter of the RWA is still in existence.

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Flaherty, Liz. "The times they are a-changin’…" 6 December 2012.

Goris, An. "Happily Ever After ... And After: Serialization and the Popular Romance Novel." Americana 12.1 (2013).

It is known that "Scents can influence people’s attitudes and behavior [...]. The scent of chocolate, for instance, evokes pleasure and arousal for most consumers" (Doucé et al 3). What, then, would happen if a bookshop was filled with a smell of chocolate so subtle that "none of the customers spontaneously noticed the chocolate scent" (7)?

A team of Belgian researchers first "wanted to know to what extent people believe that chocolate corresponds to a certain book genre" (7) and perhaps unsurprisingly discovered "that the two genres most congruent with chocolate scent were Food & Drink (Cook) Books [...] and Romance Novels & Romantic Literature" (7).

Having exposed unsuspecting customers to the chocolate aroma, they found that, "when a chocolate scent was present, customers were 5.93 times more likely to buy congruent books than in the control condition" (11-12) and "compared with the control condition, in the scent condition sales for the congruent genres increased 40.07%, and sales for the incongruent genres increased only 22.19%" (12).

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Doucé, Lieve, Karolien Poels, Wim Janssens, and Charlotte De Backer, 2013. "Smelling the Books: the Effect of Chocolate Scent on Purchase-related Behavior in a Bookstore." Accepted for publication in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. [Abstract]

The image of the chocolate flavour room spray came from Amazon. As far as I know, it was not used in this experiment.

Ria Cheyne's "research focuses on representations of disability and illness in fiction, especially popular genres such as science fiction, romance, horror and crime" and she suggests that

science fiction offers a space where alternative conceptions of ‘ability’, ‘disability’ and what constitutes a ‘normal’ human body can be explored. [...] The story might be set on another planet, in an artificial environment like a spaceship, or on an Earth where conditions are radically changed from the way they are now.  What this means is that there’s a lot more potential to depict different environmental conditions than in most other types of fiction – including those in which the ‘normal’ human body is ill-adapted. [...] Alternatively, science fiction may depict environments that are enabling for those with bodily configurations or capabilities outwith the norm.

This resonated with me because I've recently read Lois McMaster Bujold's Falling Free (1988) in which most of the characters have an extra set of arms instead of a pair of legs. This is extremely useful in the zero-gravity conditions in which they live and to which they are much better suited than two-armed and two-legged humans. It also, though, made me think about Geoffrey Trease's Mandeville series, set mostly in England during the reign of Charles I, which I read this week and in which one of the recurring characters, Pietro Zorzi, is

Barely four feet high, he was in all respects quite naturally proportioned, as was the miniature violin on which he played.

He played excellently. But the applause he won was perfunctory, as though the Duke and his household had little appreciation of music and were merely amused that so small a being could produce it at all. (123-23)

This is historical fiction rather than science fiction but even so it contrives to depict a situation in which there is an environment to which "the 'normal' human body is ill-adapted." The Duke's dwarves are housed in a special set of apartments:

"Follow me," said Zorzi. "Mind your heads."

It was not too difficult, even for Anthony. It meant stooping, and flexing at the knees, and placing one's toes with unusual care on the narrow treads of the stairs. [...] This miniature suite had been built, decorated and furnished with an exquisite attention to detail. [...] If the painters and plasterers and other craftsmen had been of normal size, they must have worked in most cramped positions, squatting like miners. (152)

In the third book of the series a situation arises which is "enabling for those with bodily configurations or capabilities outwith the norm" inasmuch as Zorzi's size enables him to carry out a particular task which is crucial to foiling a plot.

I think it could be said of Trease's depiction of Zorzi, just as much as of the science fiction novels discussed by Cheyne, that the

transformations of impairment status that characters undergo in these novels – from non-impaired to impaired, or vice versa – though the body itself has not changed, demonstrates the extent to which impairment is created by features of the physical environment.  As Rosemarie Garland-Thomson writes, “Stairs disable people who need to use wheelchairs to get around, but ramps let them go places freely” (524).  As a tool for political change, the social model of disability insists that rather than being something inherent to the individual, disability is created by barriers in society which disable a person.  The disability is created by barriers in the environment – which can include attitudinal barriers as well as architectural ones.

Trease was a politically committed author and his novels often address "barriers in society":

As a writer, he started out as a passionate young socialist determined to overthrow the sentimental romanticism of historical fiction at the time. [...] He came to believe it was wrong "to press party politics on readers too immature to argue with him", though of course his books remained permeated with his own liberal values as he wrote [...]. Trease was also innovatory in introducing girls as co-partners in his stories. (Thwaite)

In Zorzi's case, the barriers relate primarily to his size but Anthony is restricted by his low social class and Amoret by her gender. Indeed, in the first book in the series Amoret is only able to participate in the adventure as a result of dressing as a boy. Thinking about these differing barriers in the light of the social model of disability reminded me of Aristotle's ideas about women:

To Aristotle, women were imperfect men, the result of something wrong with the conception that created them [...]; a woman was thus "a deformity, but one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature." Aristotle was not sure exactly why imperfect men were required in the natural scheme of things, but decided that it must be because they performed a function necessary for men, [...] he saw their primary function as procreation. (Weisner 18)

That, of course, suggests that bodies which are specially adapted may still be considered inferior, which took me back to the way that the "quaddies" are seen by some of the "normal" humans in Bujold's novel. Nonetheless, in both Bujold and Trease's novels there are scenes which

foreground the ways in which disability can be created by barriers in the environment.  [...] that encounter [...] is valuable because it encourages readers and viewers to reflect upon their own understanding of disability.  I’m not assuming a straightforward influence – read this book and your prejudices will disappear!  Rather, I’m talking about the potentials these works might have in terms of encouraging reflection upon beliefs and values that otherwise might not be questioned. (Cheyne)

In Bujold's novel Leo, one of the two-armed human characters, is shown to reflect and he concludes that

Men adapted to free fall, it was the going back that crippled them.

"I am a quaddie," Leo whispered in wonder. He regarded his hands, clenched and spread his fingers. "Just a quaddie with legs." He wasn't going back. (137)

Trease may not have taken his readers out of this world in order to encourage them to reflect "upon beliefs and values" but I think he nonetheless encouraged reflection on the ways in which the great majority of people might be said to be disabled by "attitudinal barriers" even if not also by "architectural ones."

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Bujold, Lois McMaster. Falling Free. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 1988.

Cheyne, Ria. "Disability in Science Fiction." DaDaFest.

Thwaite, Ann. "Obituary: Geoffrey Trease." The Independent. 30 Jan. 1998.

Trease, Geoffrey. Mandeville. London: Macmillan, 1980.

Weisner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

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The painting is Anthony Van Dyck's portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson. I found it at Wikimedia Commons. In an author's note Trease wrote that Sir Jeffrey Hudson was "the Queen's dwarf" (189).

My article about Georgette Heyer is out now in the latest issue of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies. It's called "Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch of Regency Romance" and it addresses a variety of issues, including Heyer's attention to historical detail, her didacticism, and her attitudes on matters relating to race and class.

I've identified a number of primary sources Heyer seems to have used in her research, including an engraving of the Dropping Well which is mentioned in The Nonesuch and the guidebook Corisande Stinchcombe's been reading in Lady of Quality. I also think I've pinned down the precise year in which The Nonesuch is set (it's the first of the two possibilities given in the "Heyer Novel Chronology").

I conclude that:

As with the Nonesuch’s gift of a “dissected map [...] all made of little pieces which fit into each other, to make a map of Europe” (190), “The impression given of ‘history’ in these novels can be summed up as an imaginative creation, a selective version of the past” (Hughes 139). The nineteenth-century dissected map, “born in the same workshops as its more formal sibling, the imperial map” (Norcia 5), offered children “narratives of power and authority which are incumbent in the business of building both nation and empire” (2). Such maps were not simply neutral depictions of the world: they were “often strategically colored or marked to catalog the resources and opportunities for imperial inscription; titles reflect the moving horizon of imperial ambitions” (10). Heyer’s historical romances are also shaped by ideologies which ensure that, despite the historical accuracy of many of their details, they will not be universally accepted as “quite unexceptionable.” Mrs Chartley cautioned Miss Trent that

Sir Waldo belongs to a certain set which is considered to be the very height of fashion. In fact, he is its leader […]. You must know, perhaps better than I do, that the manners and too often the conduct of those who are vulgarly called Top-of-the-Trees are not governed by quite the same principles which are the rule in more modest circles. (207)

Heyer is the Nonesuch of Regency romance: like Sir Waldo she led her “set,” conforming to such high standards of historical accuracy that she too can be considered a “paragon” (20). Nonetheless, neither Heyer nor Sir Waldo embodied “perfection” (20) and the manners and conduct endorsed by Heyer’s novels are not governed by quite the same principles as those which are the rule in many more modern circles. (11-12)

You can read the article on the JPRS website or download the pdf.

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Vivanco, Laura. "Georgette Heyer: The Nonesuch of Regency Romance." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 3.2 (2013).

Peter Dixon and Marisa Bortolussi believe that

we cannot identify the nature of a genre without an appreciation of what readers know about genre because popular genre such as science fiction, fantasy, and romance are what readers understand them to be. Because genres are dynamic, it becomes critical to understand how it is that readers develop and acquire the knowledge that mediates the use of genre labels. (545)

Given the number of times ill-informed generalisations are made about the romance genre, it will probably not come as a great surprise to romance readers to learn that when Dixon and Bortolussi asked a number of people "to write a short essay on what a genre label means to them" (548) they found that romance readers and non-romance readers have significantly different understandings of what romance fiction is about:

the results for romance suggest that the stereotypes available in the culture are insufficient for characterizing what is important for readers of that genre. [...] Although everyone may agree that romance concerns descriptions of romantic involvements, we theorize that actual readers of romance are less concerned with simply the narrative sequence that constitute that description and more concerned with the emotional interactions described in the works and emotions evoked in the reader. [...] For science fiction and fantasy, the cultural stereotypes may provide a largely accurate rendition of what is important for readers; for romance, there is a significant discrepancy between cultural expectations and what is important for readers. (568-69)

I wonder if the "cultural expectations" of romance, which focus on particular storylines and character types, make it difficult for non-romance-readers to understand how well romance can be combined with other genres. They might feel that, say, a science fiction romance could only ever be a traditional romance storyline dressed up in science fiction fancy-dress. According to Ella Drake this is an unfortunately common view of science fiction romance: "We’ve heard too many times that the Romance part of SFR means it’s inferior in some way. Or it’s not Science Fiction."

If, however, the inclusion of romance was viewed as a possible means to deepen the emotional aspects of a narrative, one might have a rather more positive view of the potential of science fiction romance. Cora Buhlert, for example, writes that

a lot of writers and readers in hybrid genres such as urban fantasy, paranormal romance, SF romance and romantic suspense [...] are often longtime SFF fans (or suspense fans for romantic suspense) and they like action, adventure and worldbuilding, but they also want a bit more emotion and yes, romance, than “pure” SF/fantasy/suspense tend to offer. I certainly count myself among those readers/writers. I was increasingly unhappy with speculative fiction devolving into emotionless big idea fiction on the one hand and increasingly grimdark macho fantasy with unpleasant characters on the other hand. Then one day, I became aware that there was a whole slew of subgenres such as futuristic romance, paranormal romance, time travel romance and fantasy romance, full of books written mostly by women, which promised the action and worldbuilding I had come to enjoy about SFF, but with more female characters, hopefully less needless violence against said female characters and characters and relationships that rang true to the experience of actual human beings.

Those who take a positive stance toward compound genres which include romance presumably value texts which evoke an emotional response in the reader. A forthcoming paper from Raymond A. Mar's lab suggests that readers who enjoy romance may differ from other readers.

The paper, written by Katrina Fong, Justin B. Mullin and Raymond A. Mar begins by noting that "Although theoretical accounts suggest that exposure to different genres of literature may impact readers in different ways [...], little empirical work has been done to explore this possibility. (3) In other words, so far studies have tended to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction. One study that did so found that "lifetime exposure to narrative fiction, but not expository non-fiction, was related to improved performance on measures of interpersonal sensitivity" (4).

Interpersonal sensitivity

can refer to both how well one “reads” other people and how appropriately one responds. Thus, it might be said that it is interpersonally sensitive to both recognize when one's spouse is sad and respond sympathetically. (Hall and Andrzejewski)

Fong, Mullin and Mar suspected that it would be fruitful to explore the differences between different types of fiction:

Since each fiction genre is likely to provide a distinctive conceptual framework through which readers construct meaning about the social world (Littlefair, 1992), we expect some variability in how exposure to each genre influences a reader’s social orientation. Unfortunately, since there is little empirical work on lifetime exposure to different genres, our hypotheses are necessarily tentative. (5)

They decided to concentrate on four genres: Domestic Fiction, Romance, Science-Fiction/Fantasy, Suspense/Thriller. Their results showed that:

• individuals who had more exposure to one genre also tended to have greater exposure to other genres as well. (8)
• Individuals who exhibited more exposure to Fiction tended to have greater interpersonal sensitivity while individuals who had been exposed to more Non-fiction did not show the same relationship. (8)
• exposure to Romance continued to be significantly associated with interpersonal sensitivity even after controlling for exposure to NonFiction, foil-checking, age and years of English fluency, gender, trait Openness, and trait Extraversion. Domestic fiction and Suspense were also related to interpersonal sensitivity, but these relations were weaker and less certain. When all genres were considered at once, only Romance was a unique predictor of interpersonal sensitivity. (11)

They speculate that

If it is the simulation of interpersonal experience in narrative fiction that best predicts greater performance on interpersonal tasks, then perhaps it is unsurprising that exposure to Romance — a genre of fiction that focuses on interpersonal relationships — is most strongly related to this benefit. (11)

Finally, it should be noted that

Because this study is correlational, it is not possible to draw causal conclusions with regard to the nature of exposure to various genres of narrative fiction. That is, we cannot infer that exposure to any specific genre causes greater or less interpersonal sensitivity. Given that narrative genre plays an important role in how and why readers select a narrative text (Dixon & Bortolussi, 2005), it is entirely possible that individual differences may shape both interpersonal sensitivity and selection and exposure to various literary genres. (12)

[EDITED on 1 July 2013 TO ADD:

The article by Fong, Mullin and Mar was discussed at OnFiction and I took the opportunity to ask some questions because I thought

It would be interesting to know a bit more about what type(s) of books were being read by the SF readers in the study who scored badly on interpersonal sensitivity. Were they readers who favoured "emotionless big idea fiction" and/or "increasingly grimdark macho fantasy"? And for the purposes of this study were SF romances (if listed) classified as "romance" or as "SF"?

Katrina Fong responded:

In response to your question regarding genre classification, hybrid genres are certainly an interesting question that requires more in-depth probing. With regard to our current study, the sci-fi/fantasy titles were not hybrid (they may be considered more "pure," as suggested in the quote in your post). SF romances were only included if the predominant theme in the author's work was romance; these authors would subsequently be categorized as romance. Future work could definitely begin to tease apart these subtleties.]

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Buhlert, Cora. "Invasion of the Girl Cooties." 2 June 2013.

Dixon, Peter, and Marisa Bortolussi. "Readers' Knowledge of Popular Genre." Discourse Processes: A Multidisciplinary Journal 46.6 (2009): 541-71. [Abstract]

Drake, Ella. "Science Fiction and Stereotypes." Contact-Infinite Futures. 7 June 2013.

Fong, Katrina, Justin B. Mullin, and Raymond A. Mar (in press). "What You Read Matters: The Role of Fiction Genres in Predicting Interpersonal Sensitivity." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. [The pdf can be downloaded from here but if you do, they'll assume you've agreed to limit your "use to personal academic purposes and not public dissemination."]

Hall, Judith A. and Susan A. Andrzejewski. "Interpersonal Sensitivity." Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Ed. Harry T. Reis and Susan Sprecher. SAGE.

The image came from Wikimedia Commons and was made available under a Gnu General Public License.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 has long been held as one of England's greatest military achievements. [...] The successful defence of the Kingdom against invasion on such an unprecedented scale boosted the prestige of England's Queen Elizabeth I and encouraged a sense of English pride and nationalism. In the speech [delivered by Queen Elizabeth to her troops who were assembled at Tilbury Camp], Elizabeth defends her strength as a female leader, saying "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too". (British Library)

Elizabeth I of England was an exceptional woman but her success, as formulated here, diminishes other women, who are described as merely "weak and feeble." I think Jane Tolmie has observed a similar dynamic at work in fiction when she argues of Middle English romances that there is a "price [to be] paid for female participation in these texts" (146) which feature a

romance heroine, often described as independent, strong, feisty, and passionate – ‘feisty and desiring’, in Cooper’s formulation –  [who] does not exist within a system in which all women are independent, strong, feisty and passionate (Cooper, 2004, p. 220). She must be exceptional to catch our attention, and that of the hero. She often picks the man she wants, eludes the (many) others, escapes rape, lives a life less ordinary. Behind her and all around her is the silent rank and file of women who do not choose, elude, or escape. (146)

Tolmie adds that the passage of several hundred years has apparently not given rise to

a radical new approach to the delineation of the female hero in contemporary fantasy fiction. The emphasis remains on the individual woman rising above a system that keeps her down – triumphing over it, reversing expectations – rather than in cultural revolution or innovation, and oppressive structures continue to provide the basis for representation. (147)

Quite a lot of romances also feature heroines who triumph because of their exceptional natures and I have to admit that I find this more disheartening than empowering. Can anyone recommend some novels (not necessarily romances) in which a fairly ordinary heroine finds a way to improve her society (without the assistance of friends with magical or military power)?

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Tolmie, Jane. "Medievalism and the Fantasy Heroine." Journal of Gender Studies 15.2 (2006): 145-58.

"[...] I'll die a man!...Give me my guns."

Silently she went into the house, to return with a heavy cartridge-belt and gun-filled sheath and a long rifle; these she handed to him, and as he buckled on the belt she stood before him in silent eloquence. (Grey)

In this passage from Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage it is clear that guns symbolise masculinity but, Jane Tompkins notes, "even though the gun is obviously a symbol for the penis, manhood, in this scenario, does not express itself sexually. Violence is what breaks out when men get guns" (33). Later she adds that, in Westerns, "the ultimate loss of [...] control takes place when one man puts holes in another man's body" (56). For obvious reasons, that state of affairs generally wouldn't be deemed wholly satisfactory in a romance novel.

That's why I found Ruth Jean Dale's use of gun symbolism particularly interesting. Legend! is a Western romance, and Dale seems well aware that the gun can function as a phallic symbol. I'll begin with a scene in which Rose, the heroine, tries to confiscate the hero's gun and instead receives a lesson in sexual desire:

Glaring into his face, she reached out with her left hand and pulled his pistol from its holster. The weight of it dragged her arm down to her side but she had it, she thought triumphantly. [...]

Yanking her hard against his chest, [...] holding her by the upper arms, he brought his mouth down on hers. Stunned, she felt the pressure of his chest against her breasts and the corded muscle of his thighs against her legs, and then she forgot all those peripheral distractions before the onslaught of sensations originating at that point where his mouth joined with hers.

It was a fast, hard kiss meant to punish, and in that it failed miserably. Too surprised to resist, Rose hung suspended like a rag doll. A devastating rush of excitement shot through her from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair and all points in between, leaving fire in its wake. This was a kiss? She'd had no idea! [...]

Boone leaned forward and slipped his pistol from Rose's numb grip. Flipping it over his hand, he settled it snugly into his holster. (84-85)

Replaying the scene in a dream, Rose transposes its location from the marshal's office to the local saloon, where the town whore plies her trade upstairs:

He stood at the foot of the stairs leading up to a second floor obscured by swirling smoke or fog - Rose couldn't be sure which. He did not move so much as a muscle, didn't lift his hand to beckon her, yet she felt his pull as strongly as if he'd dropped a loop over her shoulders and was hauling her in like a calf at roundup.

She had no choice. Or did she? His holster was empty; she held his pistol in her hand but this time it was light and warm to her touch, not heavy and cold and awkward as it had been in the marshal's office. She could do anything she wanted with it, she realized [...]. She held his fate ... and her own ... in her hands. [...]

She followed his lead willingly, anticipation surging through her as they ascended to ... what?

Rose sat bolt upright in her bed, trembling, her cotton nightgown clinging to a body damp with perspiration. Shame clogged her throat, shame at her own weakness - she'd succumbed to the man even in her sleep! But mixed with the shame was also fear, fear that she would never know what bliss might have awaited her at the top of those stairs. (90-91)

I don't think you need to be Freud to work out the symbolism of that warm pistol but if it still wasn't clear, there's a rather obvious clue in Boone's statement that "I never hired out my gun to the highest bidder. That to a man is like whorin' to a woman - the end of the line" (218).

Given Boone's reputation as a gunslinger it seems as though he may use his gun in Rose's service (literally and metaphorically), but not settle down to a permanent relationship with her.  Dale resolves the problem by having Boone relinquish his "gun belt and revolver. He has no further use for them in the new life we hope to build together" (279): only when the symbol of violent, destructive masculinity is relinquished can Boone adopt a new, sexual and reproductive, model of manhood of the kind celebrated in popular romance.

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Dale, Ruth Jean. Legend! 1993. Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon, 1997.

Grey, Zane. Riders of the Purple Sage. Project Gutenberg Australia.

Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Lives of Westerns. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.

The image of the gun and gunbelt slung round someone's waist was created by theexbrit who made it available at Flickr under a creative commons licence.

In the introduction to my For Love and Money I argued that many Harlequin Mills & Boon romances "are well-written, skilfully crafted works which can and do engage the minds as well as the emotions of their readers, and a few are small masterpieces—as I shall show" (15). However, as Jackie C. Horne points out in her review of my book,

as Vivanco never gives her readers a definition of just what constitutes "literary art," readers are ultimately left unable to judge whether or not any of the 147 books she discusses embody it, or which among those 147 are "small masterpieces."

I was using the words in a very basic sense. "Literature" can be defined as:

The result or product of literary activity; written works considered collectively; a body of literary works produced in a particular country or period, or of a particular genre. Also: such a body of works as a subject of study or examination (freq. with modifying word specifying the language, period, etc., of literature studied). (OED)

"Art" can be used to refer to "Any of various pursuits or occupations in which creative or imaginative skill is applied according to aesthetic principles" (OED), so one might use "literary art" to distinguish between written works and examples of the dramatic arts or the visual arts.

The Oxford English Dictionary's first definition of "art", though, refers to "Skill in doing something, esp. as the result of knowledge or practice" and, "With modifying word or words denoting skill in a particular craft, profession, or other sphere of activity." The "literary art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon romance" can be taken to mean the creative and imaginative skill (which is honed through practice and the acquisition of knowledge) required to produce a written work of romance fiction published by HM&B. To romance readers it may seem rather unambitious to claim that HM&B authors have some skill, but given the number of times words such as "churned", "mass-produced" and "formula" are invoked when HM&Bs are under discussion, it seemed to me that I had a job on my hands just trying to show that there's any skill at all required in their production.

Some authors are, of course, more skilled than others and a "masterpiece" is

A work of outstanding artistry or skill, spec. the greatest work of a particular artist, writer, etc.; a consummate example of some skill or other kind of excellence. Also: a piece of work produced by a craftsman in order to be admitted to a guild as an acknowledged master. (OED)

That refers to the medieval guild system, in which an individual would hope to work their way up from apprentice to master:

Apprentice - A Medieval Guild Apprentice was sent to work for a 'Master' during his early teens. The Apprenticeship lasted between 5 and 9 years depending on the trade. During this time the apprentice received no wages - just his board, lodging and training. An Apprentice was not allowed to marry until he reached the status of a Journeyman.



Journeyman - A Medieval Guild Journeyman was paid for his labour. During this time the Journeyman would create his 'Masterpiece', in his own time, which he would present to the Guild as evidence of his craftsmanship in the hope of being accepted as a 'Master'. It was difficult to reach the status of 'Master' and much depended on the Journeyman's standing and acceptance by the top members of the Guild



Master - A Medieval Guild Master craftsman could set up his own workshop and train his own apprentices. (The York Guild of Building)

There were a wide range of guilds, each with different skills and requirements, but it seems that in general

The middle of the thirteenth century brings us to the point when economic motives, group solidarity, and craftsmanly pride, no doubt combined in varying proportions from place to place, led some guilds to require a test of competence for mastery. [...] At first, the competence of would-be masters does not seem to have been formally tested, but by the middle of the fifteenth century, masterpieces were required in an increasing number of cities of north and central Europe.

The task imposed on painters was generally the execution of a panel of given dimensions; on sculptors, a statue; and on glaziers, a panel of stained glass. The subject is sometimes specified, along with the nature of the material to be used and the technical procedure to be followed. [...] The kind of skill to be demonstrated may be illustrated by the stipulation of the Strasbourg guild statutes of 1516, which call for the aspirant to make a picture of the Virgin or 'some other appropriate image with garments that are carved [which] he should paint, polish, gild, varnish, along with other decoration.' Such requirements may similarly be thought of as tests of standard skills, acquired in a period of apprenticeship during which the novice was by all accounts kept busy with the grinding of pigments, the preparation of grounds and similar technical procedures....[T]he documents only hint at the expectations of the jury through laconic phrases: the work must be 'well and suitably made,' 'in the appropriate manner and style,' and the like. (Walter Cahn, Masterpieces: Chapters on the History of an Idea, Princeton, 1979, as excerpted here, pp. 10-12)

So I was thinking of "masterpieces" as works which are outstanding because they showcase the various skills required to produce literature of the kind published by Harlequin/Mills & Boon i.e. relatively short novels which are tightly focused on the achievement of a happy long-term romantic relationship between the protagonists. Those skills would include an ability to match the register of the writing to the mimetic mode chosen, effective use of modal counterpoint, appropriate use of metaphor and perhaps additionally the ability to rework mythoi and/or use literary allusions and metafictional elements in ways which will delight rather than bore a frequent reader of HM&Bs.

Any such assessment will, of course, be somewhat subjective but I hope I have at least outlined some of the criteria on which one might base an assessment of the skill demonstrated in any given work and presented my readers with enough examples that, should they choose to read the novels in full, they might find at least some that they would consider to be "masterpieces".

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The image depicts Benjamin Franklin as a printer's apprentice and came from Wikimedia Commons.

"The good people in this world are very far from being satisfied with each other and my arms are the best peacemaker" - Samuel Colt

It has been argued that novels "are stories, narratives of culture, history, and our collective dreams of the future" (Spurgeon 4) and

From the end of the seventeenth century when early tales of Indian wars and captivity were among the first best-sellers, through the nineteenth-century fascination with bloody sagas of the western frontier and gothic thrillers about the cities, down to the violent gunfighters, private eyes, gangsters and gangbusters of twentieth-century film and television, the American public has made its legends of violence a primary article of domestic consumption, and of export. So potent and pervasive have been these American images of violence that it is through them that Americans have been imaginatively known to much of the rest of the world.

One puzzling thing is that, in spite of this penchant for imagined violence, Americans have traditionally thought of themselves as a nonviolent law-abiding people. Our rhetoric of manifest destiny in the nineteenth century taught that America was the great redeemer nation bringing peace, democracy, and the rule of law to all the world. Though much of this rhetoric is obsolescent and even seems, to some, obscene, the basic belief in America's role as a peace-bringer still retains its hold. (Cawelti 524)

Cawelti concludes that "Americans have a deep belief in the moral necessity of violence and that this belief accounts for the paradox of an ostensibly peace-loving and lawful people being so obsessed with violence" (525).

In a cultural context in which a peace-bringing nation is expected to resort to moral violence, it is perhaps not so surprising that a "pacifist" may be defined not as "a person who believes that war and violence are unjustifiable" (Oxford Dictionaries) but as someone who believes that they are justifiable in certain circumstances. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that, "Oddly enough, the term pacifism has occasionally been used to describe a pragmatic commitment to using war to create peace" and this kind of pacifism is

known as contingent pacifism. While absolute pacifism admits no exceptions to the rejection of war and violence, contingent pacifism is usually understood as a principled rejection of a particular war. A different version of contingent pacifism can also be understood to hold that pacifism is only an obligation for a particular group of individuals and not for everyone. Contingent pacifism can also be a principled rejection of a particular military system or set of military policies. Contingent pacifists may accept the permissibility or even necessity of war in some circumstances and reject it in others, while absolute pacifists will always and everywhere reject war and violence. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy)

Suzanne Brockmann is a romance author who is well known for writing about heroes (and plenty of heroines too) who are trained in the use of violence and I therefore suspect that when she calls herself a "pacifist" she means that to indicate a commitment to contingent rather than absolute pacifism. She has said that

I've always been — starting from back around when, I guess I was around 11, I became a World War II history buff, and so I'm fascinated by military history. I have an incredible respect for the servicemen and women who serve our country. I knew the research was going to be fascinating, and it said in this article at the time there were something like 2,874 active duty Navy SEALs in the Navy today, and I thought, “And I'll write a book for every one of them.



As somebody who has an incredible respect for people who will not quit, for people who have that incredible drive and incredible motivation and incredible willpower, I really felt like it was a really good match for me as a writer. And I'm also a pacifist. And so you combine that with the idea that Navy SEALs are very often used in place of conventional warfare, it just really worked for me. (Popular Romance Project)

Romances which endorse absolute pacifism are extremely rare; it is not uncommon, however, for romances to show the toll which violence takes on soldiers, their families, and other civilians. In an essay about US romances "in which one or both protagonists are combatants in some form of military or political conflict" (153) Jayashree Kamble concludes that

In the symbolic act that is each romance text lie conflicting narratives: on the one side is a systemic conviction in America's mission to protect capitalist democracy, freedom, human rights, and so on, and on the other, the concern that this mission means using good men as cannon fodder and punishing innocents [...]. In other words, warrior romances often contain the awareness that the conflation of concepts such as patriotism toward a civilized nation and the ruthless methods used to display that patriotism is untenable. This awareness shows itself in the text as the threat of the breakdown of the sanity and moral framework of the individuals that make up the nation's army, and also in the devastation it wreaks on family and the alleged foe. The warrior romance thus contains an unmistakable trace of affirmative culture and government-inspired propaganda, such as in its endorsement of America's need to confront the shadowy enemies of abstract noble causes. But it also contains an undercurrent of doubt and despair at the seemingly endless conflict that this engenders. (162)

Perhaps it's because Nora Roberts' First Impressions (1984) isn't a "warrior romance," and because the war under discussion was an internal one which pitted American against American rather than against an external enemy that Shane, her heroine, is able to be quite explicit about a feeling which, in a "warrior romance," might remain only an "undercurrent":

Vance shot her a curious look. "War really fascinates you, doesn't it?"

Shane looked out over the field. "It's the only true obscenity. The only time killing's glorified rather than condemned. Men become statistics. I wonder if there's anything more dehumanizing." Her voice became more thoughtful. "Haven't you ever found it odd that to kill one to one is considered man's ultimate crime, but the more a man kills during war, the more he's honored? [...]" (118)

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Cawelti, John G. "Myths of Violence in American Popular Culture." Critical Inquiry 1.3 (1975): 521-541.

Kamble, Jayashree. "Patriotism, Passion, and PTSD: The Critique of War in Popular Romance Fiction." New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays. Ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Eric Murphy Selinger. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 153-163.

Popular Romance Project. "Choosing SEALs." 18 December 2012.

Roberts, Nora. First Impressions. 1984. New York: Silhouette, 2008.

Spurgeon, Sara L. Exploding the Western: Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier. College Station: Texas A & M UP, 2005.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Pacifism."

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^{The image of the Colt "Peacemaker" came from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.}