At the Corner of Strong Women and Responsible Writing: A Guest Post and a Giveaway
Unless your head is buried in the proverbial sand (or real sand if you’re attempting to get in touch with your inner ostrich), you can’t possibly have missed the outpouring of strength that is the #MeToo movement. Celebrities and soccer moms have met through a simple hashtag to form an unlikely alliance and create a revolution. In ever increasing numbers women are choosing to break the silence and find their voices. I have to be honest, this is an amazing time to be a woman. The strength we’ve always known we possess is now brightly and beautifully on display.
But what the heck does that have to do with romance novels?
While reading is definitely an escape from the harshness of the world and the depression that is the nightly news, the fictional world isn’t free from a burden of responsibility. Yes, we want to read our Prince Charming who whisks his everyday gal off to tropical locales and shower her with sparkly baubles and shopping sprees. All things that, for most of us, are not part of our reality.
Something I love to see right along with those excessively indulgent heroes is a strong heroine. Romance authors such as Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, Tessa Dare, the divine “Miss Bev” (Beverly Jenkins), and numerous others have taken the simpering leading ladies of old (i.e. romances novels from the 70’s and beyond) who only offer questionable consent and transformed them into the kind of woman we want our daughters to be. Vivacious, outspoken, and determined.
For those who love alpha males, I want to be clear (because I love good leading men alpha, beta, or that newest cinnamon roll label) making a female character that knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go for it doesn’t mean she can’t be paired with an equally assertive male. Two alphas creating a relationship? Holy cannoli, someone pass me the water bottle. That takes heat to a whole new, and wonderful, level. Just as in the real world, elevating the woman does not mean we need to minimize the man.
Reading about heroines who initiate sex, who take charge of their birth control options, who aren’t ashamed of their sexuality elevates the story to a place that is empowering to me. And I’ve gotta admit, nothing is hotter than a man who checks in and seeks emphatic consent, not simply a “yeah, okay, I guess.”
To all those kickass romance authors out there proving an alpha male doesn’t need to be an alpha asshole, cinnamon rolls are just as delicious as the leading men as they are in the breakfast pastry, and women are more powerful than can ever be quantified, I raise my glass to you.
To my fellow romance readers, let’s support these writers not just through buying their books, but also by leaving them reviews or contacting them directly to share just how much it means to see strong women highlighted on the page just as they should be in daily life.
by Amelia Foster
One thing that turns me off (in contemporaries or historical) is when a heroine is loud, swears a lot, calls the hero an “a$$hole” (or similar term), throws things, etc.,—and this is meant to indicate that she is “strong,” whereas the message I receive is that she has little forethought or impulse control. One of the reasons I read very few historical these days is because I was encountering these sort of heroines with more and more frequency and the just didn’t do it for me. A woman is not weak because she considers her responses or thinks about what the consequences of her actions will be. Courage and strength isn’t necessarily a physical or outward thing, it can be making and living with difficult moral choices or doing the right thing even when that’s not popular. How I miss Edith Layton. Her heroines weren’t always fortunate, but they always had intelligence and courage.
Yes, DiscoDollyDeb, dear Edith Layton! And Barbara Metzger, Judith A Lansdowne, Marjorie Farrell, Jo Beverley and Mary Jo Putney. Those women wrote fabulous HR with strong, believable leading characters, great secondary characters including servants and animals (Barbara M), and dealt with serious issues often with a very light touch and set within excellent contextual parameters. Fortunately Mary Balogh and Carla Kelly are still writing.
Do not forget Mary Jo Putney!
oooh Carla Kelly!!! yes!
I agree that physicality and domineering intimidation should not be defining traits of a strong woman, but I often see kickass heroines depicted this way. What may seem strong to some comes across as bullying or immature, bratty behavior to me.
Conversely, I recognize many older books had their problems, too. I recently picked up a novel written in the early 90s , and the heroine slaps the hero when he delivers some bad news. That representation of the ‘hysterical female’ is equally hard to take and I’m glad it’s faded away.
I had to research “cinnamon roll” hero as I’d never come across it before. I’ve encountered plenty of them over the years in my reading but I wonder if the term is a bit denigrating or even insulting?
I don’t think so. I’ve always taken it to mean a lovable beta hero.
It really feels like stretching my “imagination muscles” to see relationships in romance that show us different women, not just in diversity, but also personality and assertiveness. I love it and enjoy it in contemporaries, or in SF and fantasy, even if sometimes I think “I would not dare do that”. Authors like Val Roberts (Valmont Contingency series), Helen Hoang, Alyssa Cole, Dani Collins (in her non series), Thea Harrison’s newest book, Racheline Maltese& Erin McRae, Sandra Antonelli, Wen Spencer all do that. Show me a different way to be a woman, while still delivering super hot romance, adventure, fun. I am so happy with that!.
Where I have difficulty is historical romance. There were amazingly strong women in history, but they were not strong in today’s image of independent, moving about alone and having access to all rights and possibilities because that was not there. And many good men respected women, but differently. That was the reality of the times, for millenia. Showing that is apparently so hard to do, that most authors create a fantasy setting they call “historical”. That drives me away from the genre.
I am preferring to read old historicals, than to read the strange mish mash that comes out from trying to transplant current attitudes into a historical setting. Or go to alternative worlds, as many excellent authors do, whether in romance (Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Ilona Andrews…) or in Fantasy/SF (Sherwood Smith, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Lois McMaster Bujold, Tanya Huff, Kristine Smith, Gayle Greeno, Carol Berg..)
But yeah, heads up to the new romances taking up a new womanhood and new themes for all of us!
I’d say Meredith Duran is placing strong women in historical romance well. But it is interesting to think about why we want our HRs to accurately represent the time they portray. (shakes head at the absurd number of Dukes there are in Regency romance)
I’ve never been a stickler for period piece correctness in my HR. If an author creates a sense of place/time that takes me in and supports believable characters, well, that’s good enough for me. But I know AAR has many readers that see this differently.
Nodding my head yes to everything Lieselotte said about historical romances being published today. I can suspend belief up to a point, especially if I can relate to the characters and themes, but I’m mostly thrown out of the story by lazy characterization, too much insta-love or mental lusting, or authors standing on their soapbox to lecture readers on issues. Too many characters that are labeled strong by today’s standards have shown me nothing to earn it, and that is something I need to be shown in the story and not told over and over again or beaten over the head with.
God, yes. I am utterly over virtue signalling in romance.
I agree with both Liesolette and Eggletina about putting 21st century #metoo women in corsets. For me, it just does not work. Yes, there were strong women in the past, creative, successful, real alpha ladies. (Do see the new BBC One series currently airing, “Gentleman Jack” based on the diaries of Anne Lister and set in the 1830s.) But, these women existed within their own timeframe, not ours, and should they suddenly find themselves in 2019, I am willing to bet they’d be found very much wanting in terms of modern feminism and we would mock and perhaps despise them. And so this sort of thing drives me straight away from a story, no matter how clever, funny, etc. using this sort of trope.
I just recently finished Tessa Dare’s The Duchess Deal (I commented on it here a few days ago), and to me it exemplifies the concept of putting modern women in historical settings and using humour and graphic sex to say “how clever is my wonderful alpha kick-ass historical heroine” but this succeeds in driving the character completely away from the context and setting. I don’t demand 100% accuracy in an historical romance but I’d rather see these “screwball” historicals classified into a new genre – perhaps historical fantasy or something else. Any other ideas out there?
Another person who writes strong women in HR believably and whose grasp of history is phenomenal is Elizabeth Kingston.
Yes – new name for that category would help a lot:
historical fantasy is pretty accurate, I like it!
Jumping in to say that yes, I agree completely with what you’re all saying about historicals. Elaine makes a superb point in reference to Anne Lister/Gentleman Jack which would .likely apply to many of those trailblazing women who broke the mold – put them in 2019 and they’d probably be found wanting. Another problem – piggybacking onto what Dabney says about dukes – is that many of the authors attempting to write such characters means that we’re in as much danger of being overrun by them as we are by dukes; writers, please learn from that mistake!
To my mind though, this new direction is the easy way out for many of the… shall we say, less talented writers of HR out there. The real skill lies in crafting a story and characters that feel “of their time” while having something, if not unique, then special to offer – and there aren’t many authors of HR who are capable of doing that; I can think of maybe half a dozen off the top of my head.
I’ve always had a special fondness for romance writing, but over the past couple of years, I’ve been especially pleased by the women writers who are stepping up to tack important issues women have always faced. There has been a demonstrable shift not only in content but also from readers who are demanding social enlightenment from romance writers. And I think very importantly, as you note, men are not lessened by being in an intimate relationship with a women who demands equality and respect. I view the heroes of today’s fiction as emotionally intelligence in addition to the all of the conventional attributes of a a romance hero. I think this is an exciting time to be a romance reader.