I’ve noticed a convention in the racier kind of romance novel: The hero has been a highly successful womanizer all his life until meeting the heroine. He has had carnal relations with literally hundreds of women, and has never had a long-term relationship, or at any rate very few. (However, he has never, by modern moral standards, really done a woman wrong – knocked her up, or callously broken her heart – because a romance hero, even a “bad boy,” must be admirable.) The heroine is the first woman he has ever cared about enough to make him want to go monogamous. So she can have her cake and eat it. One of the most desirable, desired, and sexually experienced hunks on two legs, and now he’s hers, all hers!
Is this something women really fantasize about? And can it ever be a realistic fantasy? ISTM a man with that kind of history before marriage will find fidelity a challenge afterwards, however deeply he loves his wife. If fidelity is important to you, wouldn’t you do better with a guy whose history includes a few long-term relationships and very few one-night stands?
I’m not even going to ask you how you discovered this “romance novel convention”.
As for it being true… yeah, it can be. I know of exactly one time when it was. The guy was a womanizer, he specialized in married women. He finally met one that he kept. She divorced her husband and they’ve been married for about 37 years now. I can’t say for sure that he never cheated on her, but I doubt that he did.
I’ve been reading romance novels for the past year – I was never much interested in them before (my fave fiction genres are SF and historical), but I decided as a public librarian I should learn something about a genre that accounts for more than a third of all fiction sold in the U.S. and Canada.
One thing is very clear: These novels are written for (and, for the most part, by) women. I have encountered none that appear to be aimed at male readers.
Well, I must admit there is some appeal to the thought that you were the one woman for him, the one that changed him.
Which is sad, because there are far far too many women who stick with a guy thinking they can change him, despite him cheating on her etc. I must admit, I fell for it when I was more naive. I’m not so naive now.
Not that I’ve done a large sample analysis, but there seem to be women out there who LOVE the “tame the savage beast” notion.
“The savage beast” comes in a lot of forms. . .promiscuity, drinking, drugging, wild life, etc.
The “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale, is clearly based on this notion.
The ugly brute whose beauty only shines through when he meets the woman of his dreams can also be found more loosely in tales like Phantom of the Opera, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Days of Thunder.
Personally, I don’t think it’s wise to expect the leopard to change its spots, whether that’s the player type or the wounded person who “just needs the right love to heal” or whatever else. There are these weird “With my love everything will change” fantasies shot off in all kinds of directions. In the real world, not so much – it happens, but I’m not putting money on it.
Other people have rescuer complexes, or think they’re just so wonderful that they can compel a difference. And I think the romance novel thing plays to both – the “Oh, he’s caught in a loveless life, you can tell by the way he’s never settled down, but the right love will heal that emptiness inside!” and the “I’m so special I can completely change someone’s life” smugness.
This type of premise is exactly why I don’t read romance novels. They never seem to reflect my beliefs/opinions/feelings about relationships. Personally, I like the reliable-type guy, and so have always been more attracted to those who have had a few long-term relationships, rather than the run-around types. When I read books that are written from the female perspective, I like to have heroines that I can relate to on some level, and not only do I like the reliable-type guy, I tend to be the realistic-type gal. So, heroines who have wild flights of fantasy that they can “tame” a guy are not my cup of tea.
As to the OP - I’ve known plenty of women who get involved with a “bad boy” type, because they think that they have the power to open their eyes to the beauty of monogamy. I guess it must work sometimes, but I’ve never seen it happen. My friends who always date “fixer-uppers”, as I like to call them, complain to me that after the relationship ends, the guys tend to find true love in the next relationship, often getting married.
I don’t fantasize about reforming bad boys. I like a man who is exactly what he seems to be, and who doesn’t need me to teach him love and respect.
I have become the “stockperson of choice” at my part-time Borders job whenever the new slew of romance novels come in, and while this is not my favorite genre either, I cannot help but notice that for the most part, what we sell in this genre is thinly-veiled porn for ladies, and not even so thinly veiled in many cases. It is the equivalent of Playboy or Penthouse magazine, leaning more heavily to Penthouse & specifically the Forum, dressed up in a few overworked “romantic” cliches and some lovely, easily-rippable satin garments. The current popular “Beauty and the Beast” retelling features a male vampire who lusts after human women and eventually “settles down” with one of them, giving up his superior “undead” status (or roughly something equivalent to it) to be in her life. With lots and lots of sex thrown in.
So yes, these are stories for women by women, to be read while SO peruses Penthouse next to you on the sofa late at night. Even the writing style is similar, by which I mean mostly abysmal (not speaking of the Playboy articles here, which are coherent, but the Letters section in both mags). Only you don’t have to purchase these books in brown wrap behind a counter…just don’t let this little secret out to the teenage male population at large. I can only imagine the repercussions.
Who cares about the terrible male-female cliches? It’s all about the SEX, baby.
I definitely don’t like the idea of being with a womanizer. I find the idea of sex without any emotional attachment to be rather disturbing, and I don’t have much faith that most people are truly willing/capable of changing their nature so dramatically.
However, it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of women do find that idea appealing, especially women in bad relationships with abusers, convicts, and the like who want to believe that love can change a man.
I would vastly prefer to be with a guy who had demonstrated some self control and emotional attachment in his prior relationships with women.
In the convention that I fantasize about, I’m a prairie schoolmarm in the 1850’s. I wear long gingham dresses and a linen undershift. My hair is blonde and long, and it shines when the sun hits it. My eyes are dark blue, and my mouth is a rosebud.
I’m drawing water at the well in preparation for the school day when I look up and see an Apache warrior, sitting on his horse, staring at me. His cheekbones could cut steel, his hair is black with a few tasteful feathers interwoven in it, and the muscles under his smooth skin ripple like the wind.
When I lived in Salt Lake City, I once dated an LDS lass, who pointed out to me the contents of romance novels, and couldn’t believe that they sold them at Deseret Book, the Church bookstore. Obviously the male buyers weren’t reading them (and any female buyers weren’t telling)
IMO, even the most erotic romance novels are not good whacking material. When I want porn in prose form I’ll read Penthouse Letters. Romance novels are more in the nature of, well . . . emotional porn.
With a difference: In Penthouse Letters, the story rarely ends in marriage. In romance novels, it always ends with the lovers agreeing to marry. To end it any other way would be as unthinkable as ending a mystery novel without revealing whodunit.
