Genre writers around the world have been contemplating the
announcement that HarperCollins (specifically, their parent company News Corp.)
has made a bid to purchase Harlequin.
You can read all about the financial ramifications outlined at Dear Author
here or Smart Bitches Trashy Books
here. I’m not here to rehash anything that much smarter people have already
said.
I’m here to gripe about the dismissive
coverage that screamed headlines like this “News Corp. buys “bodice ripper”
publisher Harlequin”. Bodice ripper? Really? Even romance writers don’t call
their novels “bodice rippers.” If any one of those feature writers had taken
even five minutes to check out the romance lines that Harlequin produces,
they’d notice the distinct lack of bodices and their being ripped. You’d likely
find a Duke or a Navy Seal with ripped abdominals but that’s another
story.
I’m not trying to be overly
sensitive but the time is long past when popular romantic fiction involved any
questionable plot line where forcible violence against women is acceptable. But
it’s easier to take the lazy way out and drag outdated biases into the
narrative. Forget about the fact that Harlequin had LONG been the money maker
for TorStar (thus making it a viable asset for an entity in need of equity
and/or cash) and that romance is a billion dollar industry. Yes I said billion,
outstripping all other genre fiction including inspirational, mystery, science
fiction/fantasy and classic literary, according to sources like Business of
Consumer Book Publishing 2013 and Simba Information estimates. Somewhere out
there, many men and women who discount “romance” novels owe their livelihoods
to those same books being denigrated.
In a program at my local library, I
discussed how romance and romantic threads throughout many works, both classics
and popular, shape the narrative and add interest to their storylines. Imagine
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol written without the heartfelt pathos of Scrooge when
the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him what he gave up when he exchanged Belle’s
affections for his pursuit of money. Who would want to read Edgar Rice
Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes if John Clayton, Lord Greystoke aka Tarzan hadn’t
sacrificed his own happiness so that Jane Porter could live the life she’d been
born to? What about George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones without Ned Stark’s
love for Catelyn or Khal Drogo’s love for Daenerys Targaryen? Maybe John
Scalzi’s Old Man’s War without John Perry and his love for Kathy manifesting
itself in Jane Sagan? I could go on but the question remains--how are these tales
changed without their threads of love and affection? Why are they considered
literary whereas stories with predominant romantic themes are considered less
than or low brow fiction?
My ire isn’t confined to literary or book reviewers but also
movie reviewers. Why you ask? I’ll tell you. The Amma Assante directed movie
Belle is out in theaters now, based upon the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle.
Dido was the mixed race daughter of an aristocratic naval captain and an
enslaved African woman. The
interesting part of Dido’s tale begins when her father takes her to live with
his uncle, the Earl of Mansfield at Kenwood House in Hampstead and asks that
she be raised as if she were a daughter of the household. But I’m getting ahead
of myself. Yes, Dido Elizabeth Belle lived and her true story was surely more
fascinating than anything a writer living more than two hundred years later
could concoct. But like all history, we don’t have the ones who were actually
there to tell us about it, even if diary entries or journal accounts were left.
With Dido, we have that beautiful painting of her and her cousin, Lady
Elizabeth Murray.
What we do know of Dido, the film conveys to the audience
and fills in the blanks beautifully.
Bruce Ingram from the Chicago Sun Times is
mostly complimentary in his two and a half star review but leads his editorial
with the dismay that Dido’s tale had been turned into “standard-issue romantic
piffle.” Again, I say, what’s wrong with romance? Dido did indeed marry John
Davinier and have children before she died young. Her husband also remarried
and had more children which was considered his right and his duty. You know
what women’s rights and duties consisted of in eighteenth and nineteenth
century England? Getting married and having children, not going out into the
world by going to college and getting jobs. Sons inherited estates, daughters
had to marry to secure their places.The
NewYorker offers a glowing review and makes a comparison of Austen's Elizabeth and Jane Bennet to Dido and her cousin Elizabeth. But the
Boston Globe offers subtle and not so subtle disdain for the
state of things even making comparisons to Merchant/Ivory in the way the storyline is
constructed. Personally what I love most about Austen is that she shined a
light on the all the ridiculous rules society placed upon women during her
time. Yes, her novels are primers in what was correct but you’ll see that
almost all her heroines are guilty of stepping outside those boundaries.
Oh, sometimes it goes badly for them
and how it might affect their families but she shows that even then, they
didn’t
want to be limited to
embroidering cushions, playing the pianoforte and planting flowers. But that’s
what their life was like and I can’t understand why some of the movie reviews
seem to hold that against the filmmaker instead of accepting it as truth of the
matter.
I saw Belle with some other lovely Janeites and we all loved
it. The landscapes were lush and beautifully filmed. The dialogue was crisp
and the actors all played their parts incredibly well. I thought the film, and
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, showed the conflicting emotions that might’ve coursed through
Dido. The loneliness and ostracism caused by her inability to sit at dinner
with her family, the apprehension when she encounters the London house servants
and finds one of them to be a freed Black woman (since it appears the Kenwood
House servants didn’t include any people of color) and the sadness at her
treatment by the Ashfords and the others of the
haute ton who viewed her
as a curiosity. I also loved the way Assante planted the seed that Dido didn't want to be painted alongside her cousin Lady Elizabeth because of the way people of color had been portrayed in the art of her time. If you want a really wonderful visual of the way people of color are depicted in art, take a look at the tumblr blog
MedievalPOC.
I’m going to
see the film again, mainly because I’m on a one-woman crusade to see it stay in the
theaters because we need films that show the diverse world in which we live and also because I love a good romance. Why not focus on the uplifting
portion of Dido Elizabeth Belle’s life instead of acting like it didn’t happen
or didn’t have the chance to happen that way?
Join my rant and tell me of books or movies that would be
much less spectacular if their romantic thread were removed.
My historical spinoff that started as a novella with a character who was only mentioned in my time slip series now has a full novel devoted to him and his POC lady love and their happily ever after. Who knew? Does anyone else have characters that go in directions that you never planned? Only me? Okay. Well, this wastrel second son decides that a wealthy and titled young lady who doesn't want to get married, just like he doesn't, is the perfect partner for his scheme to evade getting the banns read. Of course, things don't go as planned. Actually, there are full on shenanigans and did I mention that the charming, beautiful aristocratic lady was a woman of color? Yep. And to be clear, there were PLENTY of non-white people in Regency England because they were there long before then. Anyway, you didn't come out for a history lesson. Feel free to enjoy the photo of Queen Charlotte Sofia, reputed to be mixed-raced. I named another character in this book Sofia as an homage to her majesty.