by Maya Rodale
Independent publishing also made it possible for a whole new variety of books to find an audience. Because traditional publishers have to convince a buyer at a mass merchandise account, whose main consideration is what will sell without offending anyone, it’s a bigger risk for them to try an author, genre or subject matter that isn’t tried and true. Therefore some books couldn’t find a market.
“There were also books that weren’t being published by regular print publishers,” Milan says. One example of this is erotica, which would be a hard sell to traditional distributors like Walmart. “Ellora’s Cave and Samhain came along and started getting into the e-book thing even before Amazon came up with the Kindle. That meant there were a handful of early adopters in romance.”
Because romance readers weren’t having their needs met in traditional markets, they gravitated toward new ones. And romance authors, with their close connection to their readership, were able to join them there. Stigmas about the respectability of indie publishing weren’t much of a consideration—romance didn’t have much respectability anyway. A financial model in which they publish many books instead of laboring over one for years meant that it could make financial sense to publish quickly, cheaply, and often on their own and forgo an advance from a traditional publisher. The conditions were just right for them to capitalize on this new opportunity.
FOR LOVE AND MONEY
WOMEN WRITING FOR MONEY ABOUT WOMEN MARRYING FOR LOVE
There was an audible gasp in the ballroom at a New Jersey romance conference when a bestselling author stood up to address the crowd and confessed, “My name is Eloisa James and I write for money.”
Writers aren’t supposed to be motivated by something as basic as money, and they’re certainly not supposed to talk about it if they are. We are supposed to be starving artists, nobly scratching out manuscripts in cold attics while subsisting on bread and water (or more likely, coffee, wine, and chocolate) just for the love of it. But the long history of Lady Authors shows that many were motivated to write for financial reasons, and not only to have some extra pin money for a cute hat, but simply to survive. This mix of women and money had an effect on how the genre was perceived.
Writing for money
“Many are offended when writers talk about money,” author Shannon Hale writes in a blog post entitled The nitty gritty on authors, signings, and filthy lucre.[71] “Art and commerce shouldn’t mix! Authors are artists and shouldn’t make decisions based on dirty filthy lucre!” When there is a discussion taking into account a book’s salability before writing it, or about whether to mail a free copy to a fan, or if an author should quit the day job, it’s a reminder that authors live in the world and need to eat; as such, they are just as likely to answer to the market as to some divine inspiration. This practicality can be a startling contrast when one writes aspirational fiction, often about heroines who are heiresses themselves or catch rich husbands; in other words, women who don’t have to worry about money. For a lady author to talk of money is, for a moment, to pull the veil back on the fantasy.
When women write for money, it’s particularly troubling. As I’ve mentioned before, writing was one of the only semi-respectable professions for women that they could do from home; this marked some of their first steps into the marketplace. Giving women money also changed the dynamics in personal relationships and altered who had the power to make decisions and call the shots in the household. In an era such as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which the household is supposed to be the microcosm for the entire culture at large, a wife making money can be philosophically troubling or annoying if you’re a man who wants to spend the money on gin instead of food.
In order to feel better about women writing for money, “we were glad to think that the money went to relieve the necessitous, and we pictured to ourselves lonely women struggling for a maintenance,” George Eliot writes in her essay Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, “or wives and daughters devoting themselves to the production of ‘copy’ out of pure heroism, perhaps to pay their husband’s debts, or to purchase luxuries for a sick father.”[72] Indeed, many wrote out of a desperate need.
The other truth not often talked about is that the money a woman earns from writing romance fiction is often not enough.
In his book Women Writing about Money: Women’s Fiction in England 1790–1820, Edward Copeland does the math on how much popular nineteenth century lady novelists made over the course of their lifetimes. It’s not great:
The highly touted successes of Burney and More, or Maria Edgeworth and Susan Ferrier...must be put in terms of lifetime earnings to become significant...Charlotte Smith’s earnings over a 19-year period of constant production and desperate labor come to only £4,500 or £5,000 total, most of it consumed as soon as it was received. Jane Austen’s records of profit in her publishing history read as a series of unfortunate misjudgments of the business.[73]
Even today, for every E. L. James, Nora Roberts, Sylvia Day, or self-published author pulling in six figures a month, there are thousands more who won’t turn a profit on their writing, or at least not for a long while. In the documentary on the romance genre, Love Between the Covers,[74] more than a few authors mention stories of selling their first book and getting a small advance, only to have their husband say it’s not enough and they still need to have dinner on the table on time. Writing brought in much needed money, but it was often insufficient. Nevertheless, it was something.
While Eliot actually claims that many Lady Authors didn’t write out of need at all (though it was true in many cases), she notes that this perception that they did had an interesting effect on the critical reception of the lady novel: “Under these impressions we shrank from criticizing a lady’s novel: Her English might be faulty, but, we said to ourselves, her motives are irreproachable; her imagination may be uninventive, but her patience is untiring.” By not wanting to diminish the efforts of noble women making an attempt at an honorable living, they weren’t held to a higher standard—the standard, presumably, of well-educated men’s writing—and the entire genre of women’s fiction was done a disservice. Without being challenged, authors were allowed to get by doing well enough. By not having experts determine what is well executed and what is rubbish—after actually reading it—these women presumably had no idea how to improve their writing. While the genre of romance has not received much review attention then or now, I don’t think this is the only reason.
While the prospect of women writing may have been troubling to society and while it may not have brought it enough money all of the time, it still set a precedent of women earning money from their own brains instead of their bodies and having some measure of freedom and independence or authority in their household.
“Look back at what Jane Austen started,” Eloisa James says. “What she did with Pride and Prejudice was start something that allowed hundreds of thousands of women after her to make a living, to run families, to make more than their husbands, to not have a husband. She provided a road for all these women to become entrepreneurs in their own right.”
Women marrying for love
One of the first things that we learn about Mr. Darcy, the quintessential romance hero, is that he has ten thousand a year. At which point, Mrs. Bennett’s eyes nearly bug out of her head because, oh my lord, if one of her girls could land him, then all their problems would be solved and their futures would be certain. Money = security. For a long time the only way for women to gain security was through an advantageous marriage.
Women’s fiction was a way to negotiate these tensions and anxieties between two sometimes conflicting expectations: that a woman should marry for love and that she must also marry someone who could support her financially.
In Pride and Prejudice (1813), Elizabeth Bennett famously refuses Darcy’s first proposal because it is delivered without respect and received without love. Austen writes, “In spite of her deeply rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a
man’s affection.”[75] The significance of her refusal of such an eligible and wealthy bachelor is heightened because the Bennett women are facing a future of gentile poverty if Mr. Bennett dies before one of them weds well.
Though the proposal may appeal to the head (or purse), it is repulsive to the heart and shockingly, that alone can be considered reason enough to refuse (though not to Mrs. Bennett). Elizabeth is not oblivious to her family’s situation, either. Here we see the tension not only between love and money, but also between the individual and the group. In refusing Darcy, Elizabeth is prioritizing her own happiness over the comforts and security of her family. Love has a high price.
However, Darcy finds love a compelling reason to overlook other practical considerations in the selection of a spouse. “His sense of her inferiority, of its being a degradation, of the family obstacles…”[76] all pale in significance to a love he tried to, but could not, suppress. In the end, when Darcy proposes a second time, the reader and Elizabeth know it is based on love and admiration, not merely a reluctant physical attraction, or because she needed the money. She can accept with her head and heart. Lucky for her, she doesn’t have to choose between the heart and the pocketbook. That is the fantasy.
Not every heroine had to sit around, minding her manners, waiting for a suitable proposal. Many novels of the time featured heroines who worked. In his book on women writers and money, Copeland looks extensively at how these authors wrote about heroines and employment during this time period. The message changed depending on the type of work or the publisher—and the intended audience. “In a pointed distinction to a writer like Austen, Minerva [Press] writers refuse to rescue their heroines from the experience of employment. They give their heroine the usual prerequisites at the conclusion, of course, a husband with utopian virtues and large estates, but not until after the heroine has tested the waters of employment and triumphed.”
There are a variety of paths for heroines take on the way to her happy-ever-after. A novel is a powerful way for a woman to get a glimpse of alternate realities—work, not working, what it feels like to refuse a man with ten thousand a year. I know my reaction to that refusal changed with subsequent readings—as I became more financially secure myself, I thought Lizzie was less mad.
Even today, when heroines and real life women can and do support themselves, we still see a diversity of heroine experiences—some conveniently fall for and land billionaires and some make their own damn money. Some are heiresses who marry impoverished heroes. The range of experiences offers a telling clue to what is vexing an author about the time the story is written.
While it’s not polite to talk about money, romance provides a way for women to think about it, talk about it, and examine how much it matters in their lives. The romance genre has empowered untold numbers of women to earn their own money so they can afford to marry for love.
ROMANCE VERSUS REALISM
YOU DON’T REALLY BELIEVE THAT, DO YOU?
One of the most frequent critiques of romance novels is that they are unrealistic and women are at dire risk of basing their lives on silly ideas they read about in some cheap book. Echoing fears articulated in an 1855 article “What is the Harm of Novel-Reading?”[77] the author details the downward spiral of a novel reader, led astray by her expectations of a gentleman’s love and fortune. Not only were her expectations outrageous, but she was also duped by the “gentleman” who “abused her credulity” before abandoning her. Poor, stupid, foolish girl. If only someone had told her that the books were unrealistic!
When I asked nonromance readers to describe a romance novel, a majority of respondents wrote in “unrealistic.”
People tend to be quite vague about what, exactly, is unrealistic about a romance novel—especially in comparison to a comic book or science-fiction work. But they “just know” that romance novels are fluffy fantasy books that delude women.
Some readers might point out that, at no point in time, was the romance shelved in the nonfiction section. Others might question what is so unrealistic about love? But that is missing the point.
Why have romance novels been singled out as unrealistic?
Why romance is unrealistic but science fiction is not
Of all the literary forms, it is romance novels that are so often decried as unrealistic—not science fiction, fantasy, murder mysteries or comic books, for example. Each of these forms depicts emotions that are recognizable to humans, and they often resolve in an emotionally just way (similarly to the happy ending in romance). But they also defy laws of science, logic and statistical probability (every murder mystery is solved, every battle is won by the good guys). These genres are obviously unrealistic but no one slams them for it precisely because they are obviously so.
Even though romance novels feature human emotions, emotionally just conclusions and as many men in tights as comic books, they are singled out as implausible. This claim is not just reserved for the obviously unrealistic stories featuring vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, and other worlds, but the historicals, the contemporaries, the ones we could fact check.
It seems there is a line of “too real” and romance novels cross it, while still being fantasy and fictional. It’s a lot like the Uncanny Valley, a term coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori:
As the appearance of a robot is made more human, some human observers’ emotional response to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the robot’s appearance continues to become less distinguishable from that of a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels. This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely human” and “fully human” entity is called the uncanny valley.[78]
In a science fiction novel, comic book or cartoon, the depictions of the actors are so outrageous and obviously fictional that there is almost no way an adult would mistake them for real life. They are the robot that is obviously a robot. But a romance novel, which acrobatically walks a fine line between fantasy and absolutely plausible, realistic but idealized, is like the robot that is too human.
“We will accept a synthetic human that looks and moves realistically... but only up to a point; our satisfaction drops precipitately once the resemblance becomes close enough to nearly—but not quite—fool us,” Margaret Talbot writes in an article on the Uncanny Valley in the New Yorker. The descriptions of most heroes, for example, portray larger than life (cartoonish?) versions of masculinity. They are well over six feet tall, with eight-pack abs, broad shoulders, and legs like tree trunks. Many a heroine, particularly in the old school romances, has a waist so slim the hero’s hands span around it. There are a ridiculous number of heroines with violet eyes and hair that never needs to be brushed. They talk like humans, they feel like humans, they act like humans...but they don’t look like any humans that mere mortal readers know. Perhaps the fantastic physical descriptions with the all too human emotions just make some people uncomfortable.
In the same article, the author goes on to write about that “which felt emotionally human yet didn’t pretend to be human.”[79] Romance authors and readers prize emotional relatability in their characters. We may not know anyone in our day-to-day lives who looks like these paper people, we may not have traveled to the small towns in Texas or Scottish castles or wherever else these books are set, and we may not have had the same life experiences. What matters is if the emotions ring true.
Why we’re afraid women won’t know the difference
Hand in hand with the claim that romance novels are unrealistic is the fear that women won’t know the difference. A lady reader might feel terrible that she does not have violet eyes, or she might refuse a perfectly good suitor because he is not the extreme paragon of masculinity described in the pages of a romance. A lady might live her real life as if the stuff of fiction was true. She
might—gasp—dare to expect an egalitarian relationship where both people are free to be their true selves. Or she might refuse to work, expecting to suddenly inherit a fortune or land a duke. She might be duped by a rogue masquerading as a “gentleman.” There can be real life consequences to the reading of fiction.
This is ridiculous—now. Mostly. But in the nineteenth century, this was a very real fear. The novel, and the idea that it should realistically portray the world, was just gaining prominence. Romance was traditional understood to mean a fantastic, extravagant tale. Indeed, that is the primary definition in the dictionaries today.
While the terms romance and novel have often been held in opposition to each other, over time they have been “confounded together”[80] and merged to become the romance novel as many understand it today. In fact, the traditional definition of the terms romance and novel directly contradict each other.
But that hasn’t stopped them from being used interchangeably. Below, in a list from a nineteenth century newspaper article, we can see how the traditional elements from a gothic romance can be easily paralleled in what we might term a courtship novel:
For the transmutation of a romance to a novel. Where you find…
A castle…Put a house
A blood-stain’d dagger…Put a fan
A heroine…Versatile enough not to be changed
Assassins…Put killing glances
A monk…Put an old steward
A witch…Put an old housekeeper
A midnight murder…Put a marriage
Thus, the trappings and the props are distinct to each narrative type but are easily translated, suggesting more similarities in story arc, plot, and characters (particularly the heroine). However, this table also reinforces the premise that novels are more realistic than romances. Castles do exist, but houses are more prevalent. Housekeepers with witchlike qualities are probably encountered with more frequency than witches. Clara Reeves provides a very succinct definition in The Progress of Romance: “The Romance…describes what never happened nor is likely to happen.”[81] But the novel is supposed to represent real life as we know it.
