Disclaimer: Some spoilers for a few popular films and books are ahead. You’ve been warned.
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We ask the age-old question: what is love? That is a hefty one to unpack. I’ve mostly left it up to greater thinkers and artists to tackle that topic with any sense of metaphysical gusto.
However, I have been interested in love from a philosophical, and more pointedly, ethical standpoint. I have been interested in how love and desire are represented in the commercial romance novel — and commercial fiction in general. My interest — nay, obsession — began last December when my husband and I went to see the most recent Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker. I had been excited to see how it would all end, but I was like many, mainly asking the question: do Kylo Ren and Rey finally get it on? Do they end up together? After the twists of Chapter VIII: The Last Jedi, I thought this was possible. Regardless of where you stand on whether The Last Jedi was a good or bad movie, you can’t deny it went in a direction none of us expected (and I, personally, thought that it was excellent from a writing standpoint).
Yet, it wasn’t meant to be: after bringing Rey back to life and sharing a kiss (which, kudos to the film’s cinematographer — that was hawt), Kylo/Ben is drained of his life force and becomes part of the invisible ether that is The Force. We don’t see the full gamut of Rey’s feelings after — whether she grieves, takes comfort in her friends, or what have you. However one would deal with grief in their personal manner. We see her return to her friends/makeshift family and later see her take on the name and mantle of the Skywalker family.
When the movie ended, my husband and I agreed that the film as a whole was bad; there was so much information packed into a three-hour film that even Peter Jackson would cast a critical eye. The overload made for a lot of great moments to get lost in the fray (my husband citing Lando Calrissian asking Jannah where her home is. And when she replies she doesn’t know, that he’ll help her find out — or even the inclusivity of two women kissing in the background, take yer pick).
But I couldn’t stop thinking of that scene between Kylo/Ben and Rey. Grief aside, I was put out by the fact that the main character of this last installment of films didn’t get a full, all bases covered, happy ending. Why? I couldn’t seem to put a reason to why I felt this almost indescribable anger that she couldn’t be with the man she wanted to be with — a person she had put so much of her energy and literal soul into. He was there one moment and gone the next.
A couple of months passed, and the anger I felt was shelved in the back of my head. I was writing my book, Virginia and the Vagabond, and reading a fair amount of science fiction, as well as a lot of romance novels. The happy endings in a lot of romance novels are not surprising. Sometimes I find they can even be a tad annoying. However, I put a pin in that and continued on with my life feeling slightly confused… Until my sister, a P.h.D student currently at McMaster in Hamilton, Ontario, came to visit me here in Seattle/Federal Way.
I told her of my frustration in what I had been reading and seeing in popular media and the strange, positive endings that were more commonly found in the romance genre. I told her I didn’t understand why I felt this conflicting sense that if an “epic narrative” like Star Wars had a happy ending, it seemed less believable. I told her that I didn’t understand why I found a lot of happy endings in romance novels I had read to seem unreal, and as such, corny and stupid.
“Well,” she told me, “the simple answer is that loss and suffering are encoded into the nature of women’s desires, and how she/they understand love.”
“Whoa,” I replied. “Unpack that. Please.”
We proceeded to have a three-hour conversation where some philosophical topics she studies were presented. However, I am distilling this conversation down to its bare bones for this posting. These words are not her literal words, but they get at the heart of what she was saying.
“It’s no big secret that women have to sacrifice a lot in a relationship,” she said. “Whether it’s to raise their kids, or giving up their time, or having to choose between their career or their relationship, it’s still all a form of sacrifice. And it comes in varying amounts.”
“I get that,” I replied.
“And when you represent the idea of a ‘strong female character,’ she usually is the one who makes ‘the hard choices’ or is ‘one of the guys.’ For all intents and purposes, she is essentially a man but doesn’t get the same treatment of character development that a man would get in her position.”
“Makes sense,” I followed.
“So, when you have an ‘epic narrative’ like Star Wars presented in our contemporary society, don’t you think it would reflect the fact that this is how we currently understand the concept of the ‘strong, independent’ woman? And by extension, how we understand her desires? In order to be considered as powerful and significant as any man, the female heroine loses her love interest and seems like a hardened shell because, in order to be a hero, she — and the audience — believes she has to lose something in return for her liberation, for her journey to come full circle.”
“Huh.”
So, to recap that: loss is encoded in female desire, and that concept is transferred to popular narratives. The idea that a woman ‘can’t have it all’ remains prevalent. It has been branded into our cultural mythology through narratives like Star Wars, classics like Thelma and Louise and Titanic, Marvel movies (RIP Black Widow) — even Avatar is guilty of this. And it’s not just restricted to movies. This is prevalent in books, art, and music.
This is to say that not all films and filmmakers are guilty. However, if you are to look up the 100 Most Popular Films of All Time, then you will find that most of them don’t feature women as lead characters. That, or you will find other common, problematic tropes such as the manic-pixie dreamgirl or using physical or sexual abuse as legitimate backstory/character development for a female role (which may be a topic for future blog posts).
Salt, starring Angelina Jolie is an interesting Jason Bourne-esque example that runs contrary in some ways (read it: some, not all) to what I’ve talked about so far — and that’s because the role was actually originally written for a man. In thinking over this blog post, I distinctly remember the scene where she makes the decision to let her husband drown in a hole in order not to blow her cover to a bunch of Russian agents. And right on the tips of her eyelashes you can see her discretely holding in her tears. Despite all of this, she manages to save the day and is this condemned agent who has to outrun government forces that are now chasing her.
So, words were finally put to the feelings I had been having for a few months. And I asked my sister how she so deftly managed to put together everything I had been feeling into a few coherent sentences.
“It’s simple,” she said. “There’s not a common and well-known language for understanding female desire. There are a lot of men who tend to think women are exactly the same as they are when it comes to issues of love, sex and body image.”
While that may sound like a blinding assertion, to a large degree, it is true. Yes, there are many metaphors and stories where men ask the question, ‘what do women want?’ claiming completely cluelessness. There is an entire history of literature of lost moments, crossed wires and so forth. Some of these stories are even written by women. However, there is just as much of a history of men in literature really not caring what women want, because the world already belongs to them (this is part of that lovely thing called patriarchy).
One of my favorite examples of this trope is Anna Karenina. The dual plotline shows how Anna’s desire is modeled on how she thinks her lovers and her husband perceive her desire. Likewise, Levin and Kitty are perpetually unhappy because Levin doesn’t bother to communicate — and in a sense can’t communicate because there is no common language to understand his wife’s concept of what love and desire mean to her. As you can guess, there are few happy endings in this novel.
Thus we arrive in interesting territory. The romance novel.
When you think about it, it seems so simple: books about women written by women at scale. From afar, it seems like the promised land. It honestly also seems like science fiction at times.
And as I’ve come to terms with my feelings and thoughts on this subject, the romance novel, I’ve determined, is speculative fiction at it’s best and yet are some of the most honest books I’ve read (this depends on the author). The romance novel is considered ‘fantasy,’ ‘escapist,’ and has to have an HEA (happily ever after) for many readers to even consider giving it the time of day. This actively rebels against the idea of women not ‘being able to have it all’ and still being ‘one of the guys’ ( — although I hate using this term to describe a female character. I’m just using it here for the sake of continuity).
A couple of authors who I believe write layered female characters that get their HEA’s are K.A. Tucker and Mariana Zapata. There is a balance to their work and the portrayal of modern relationships that I appreciate (and yes there are lots of authors out there, but I find them to be doing some of the best and incisive work of the contemporary/new adult romance genre). Sometimes we don’t need a space opera; there is an epic adventure awaiting in the small, banal moments of the everyday. I think they manage to capture that.
Kudos aside, my main problem here is the fact that the genre is often branded as fantasy and that there is an underpinning brush off that ‘none of this is real.’ And yes, while paranormal romance novels are not real, there is a lot portrayed in various romance novels that are based on real life. I believe that to make a novel in this genre more believable, it starts with how we, women, see ourselves and consider our desires valuable and worthy of being taken seriously.
This is the leading reason I wanted to start writing in a serious way. We are never going to have the perfect movie that equalizes everything. Nor will we ever have the perfect book. If it was perfect, I probably wouldn’t read it.
But, I do want to read books that show a woman’s desire and love in a multi-faceted light. I want her to have the potential to be all and do all and have all, while still maintaining an interesting plotline. I want her to mess up and be human, not subject to the false dichotomy of being a virgin or a whore archetype. I still want to be able to escape into a book and yet not be crushed by the fact that my desires and way I could possibly see myself are considered ‘fantastical.’
Maybe that means it will have a happy ending. Maybe it won’t. But the portrayal of love and desire women create for themselves matters. It perhaps requires more critical thought than we’ve given to the subject.
As such, you’ve probably noticed that this is just Part One…of how many, I’m not sure. In order to think about this subject more thoughtfully, I will be reading books that relate to this topic and then writing a new post for each new book.
The first book I’m going to be reading is bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions. It’s widely available if you would like to read along and share your thoughts.
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If you would like to see more posts like this, consider visiting my website: https://www.skylerfrey.com/blog
Previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: istockphoto.com
