[Angela Toscano]

Did anyone read the article on Erica Jong's Fear of Flying in the June issue of the Journal of Popular Culture? Even though the novel is not technically romance the article talked a lot about the romance novel and how Jong both goes against it's narrative structures and conforms to them simultaneously in Fear of Flying. I read this article last night and it brought up several different issues. I was just wondering if anyone else had read it?

[Laura Vivanco]

Angela Toscano, on 13 July 2009 - 04:26 PM, said:

Did anyone read the article on Erica Jong's Fear of Flying in the June issue of the Journal of Popular Culture? Even though the novel is not technically romance the article talked a lot about the romance novel and how Jong both goes against it's narrative structures and conforms to them simultaneously in Fear of Flying. I read this article last night and it brought up several different issues. I was just wondering if anyone else had read it?

I've gone and taken a look at it, so this is very much a stream of consciousness response to the article, and I've focused on the bits which refer to the romance genre.

It seems to me that the article doesn't challenge any of the cliches that exist about the romance genre and romance readers. Rather, it refers to Janice Radway eg. the author states that Isadora's

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experience conforms rather closely to the picture of romance readers offered by Janice Radway in her sociological/literary analysis, Reading the Romance. On a basic level, romance novels help their readers, generally housewives, escape from their mundane existence and enter a fictional world of danger, intrigue, and passion. But, of course, as Radway notes, this is also a supremely formulaic and predictable world, and in the typical romance novel the erotic adventure becomes a marriage plot, which ultimately contains the sexual desires it depicts, giving them a legitimate form, validating, and even policing the conservative lifestyle of its consumers. Romance novels are, however, still capable of offering a critique of traditional marriage; they depict heroines whose every longing is satisfied by a man, and illuminate, by contrast, the inadequacies of the reader’s own marriage. (423)

So, romance readers are being presented as being "generally housewives" who wish to "escape from their mundane existence" and whose reading matter may make them aware of "the inadequacies of the reader's own marriage." This may have been Jong's opinion of romance readers, and since Fear of Flying was published in 1973, it's understandable that Timothy Aubry, the author of the article, should have sought out a secondary text which expresses the widely held opinions that existed about the genre and its readers in roughly the period in which Jong was writing her text.

The trouble is that it may also be Aubry's view, and Aubry doesn't seem to make any attempt to analyse if this view of the romance genre and of its readers was true then, or is valid now. If it wasn't correct at the time, then Jong was basing her work on stereotypes. This would, of course, be consistent with the fact that Jong's protagonist, Isadora Wing "delivers an impressive barrage of cliche´s here [this refers to an earlier passage]—and everywhere else in the book" (421). But if it wasn't true then, how did it affect how romance readers would have related to the novel at the time, and does it affect how modern readers (particularly modern romance readers) relate to the work? This latter question is relevant because the author touches briefly on the contemporary reception/interpretation/marketing of the text.

It is not clear if Aubry concurs with Radway's opinions of romance readers but a little later we seem to have some indication of Aubry's opinions of the genre itself, and they don't seem particularly favourable:

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A hybrid, conflicted text, Fear of Flying both conforms to and deviates from romance fiction’s conventions in crucial ways. Her language features, conspicuously, the cliche´s, sexual euphemisms, and steamy seduction scenes that tend to characterize the genre. Even more importantly, the plot is totally powered by a woman’s obsession with and emotional dependence upon men, and it even features a good boy and a bad boy, between whom the hapless heroine must choose. She ends up, tellingly, with the good boy, but only after the bad boy deserts her, precipitating a near emotional breakdown, which sends her desperately back to the protection of her dependable husband. Thus, even the ending, in its reaffirmation of Isadora’s marriage, adheres to the normative structure of the conventional romance novel. At the same time, Jong stages various kinds of rebellion against this form. (424)

Here Aubry himself seems to be accepting the idea that the romance genre, both then and now, is full of "cliche´s, sexual euphemisms, and steamy seduction scenes." There doesn't seem to be much nuance in the Aubry's knowledge about the genre. I also don't understand why it is "Even more importantly" distinctive that this scenario occurs in Fear of Flying. Does the author mistakenly believe that all romance heroines have to choose between two men? And there aren't many romances which end with an adulterous heroine returning to her husband, so I'm not sure how the ending "adheres to the normative structure of the conventional romance novel."

Here's another passage in the article which refers to romance readers:

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the typical mass-market romance fantasy functions by excluding from the site of erotic attraction precisely those who consume this fantasy, even while it solicits identification with a protagonist possessing all of the sexual allure the reader lacks. The fat lady’s crime, Wing implies, the cause of her banishment from the realm of erotic attraction delineated by romance fiction, is, ironically, her habit of reading romance fiction. Isadora establishes a link between the novel the fat woman reads and the rotting food she eats; the two are placed together in a bag, leading the reader to believe that it is precisely her excessive consumption, of both food and fiction, which renders her ineligible to participate in the sexual encounters her fiction depicts.(426)

This again seems to depend on, and leave unchallenged, the idea that romance readers are bon-bon-eating, sexually frustrated women, and it seems to suggest that it is the reading of romances which causes women to become unattractive, not merely that unattractive women turn to romance. This is presented as being the opinion of Isadora Wing (Jong's protagonist), though, not necessarily that of Jong herself. As the article goes on to explain, Wing seems to loathe her "excess flesh" (427). Nonetheless, the sentence which states that "the typical mass-market romance fantasy functions by excluding from the site of erotic attraction precisely those who consume this fantasy, even while it solicits identification with a protagonist possessing all of the sexual allure the reader lacks" seems to offer Aubry's opinion of the genre, not Jong or Wing's. The article goes on to explore reader identification with Isadora. Has Aubry come to identify himself with Isadora Wing's opinions of the romance genre and of romance readers?

I rather liked the bit in which the author takes a look at the rules of "good writing":

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I have described the overvaluation of spare writing in the twentieth century as a form of linguistic anorexia in order to suggest the covert gender politics involved in this trend, to suggest a resonance between the imperatives of textual and bodily economy—both of which, according to Wing, demand a denial of femininity from women if they want to succeed in traditionally male-dominated realms.(433)

It comes in the section of the article about the body and food, but I wonder if it could also be helpfully applied back to some of the statements about the writing in the romance genre?

Finally, I was interested to see that the author, Timothy Aubry "is currently finishing a manuscript devoted to contemporary fiction and the therapeutic paradigm." I know some IASPR members and members of the Romance Scholar listserv have been thinking about the ways in which reading romances might affect mood/emotions, for example Eric Selinger wrote that "My hunch, which I plan to test across the next few months, is that romance novels are often primers in positive psychology, in ways that measure up quite well against current research." I had a quick look at Aubry's webpage, though, and it appears that he won't be discussing the romance genre in his forthcoming book: "he is currently working on a project devoted to the role of Oprah Winfrey’s book club in shaping the production and reception of fiction within contemporary society."

[Angela Toscano]

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It seems to me that the article doesn't challenge any of the cliches that exist about the romance genre and romance readers. Rather, it refers to Janice Radway eg. the author states that Isadora's

That's the first thing I noticed. I was particularly interested in how the cliched romance reader appeared in the zipless fuck scene. It did irk me that Aubry made no attempt, like you pointed out, to analyze the romance genre, but this may be simply because Jong's interpretation of it within the novel is based upon a cliched construction of romance and romantic narrative rather than what we consider a more accurate representation of the genre.

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If it wasn't correct at the time, then Jong was basing her work on stereotypes. This would, of course, be consistent with the fact that Jong's protagonist, Isadora Wing "delivers an impressive barrage of cliche´s here [this refers to an earlier passage]—and everywhere else in the book" (421). But if it wasn't true then, how did it affect how romance readers would have related to the novel at the time, and does it affect how modern readers (particularly modern romance readers) relate to the work? This latter question is relevant because the author touches briefly on the contemporary reception/interpretation/marketing of the text.

I had a similar question when reading the article because Aubry takes the position that it is the identification of the reader with Isadora Wing that gives the conscious-raising feminist novel its power and that this identification is something that continues to inhabit the interaction between reader and narrator in middlebrow/Oprah book type fiction. It seems to me that Fear of Flyinghas more in common with chick lit narrative structures than with romance narrative structures. This may be what Aubry means by middlebrow fiction. I'm not sure.

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This again seems to depend on, and leave unchallenged, the idea that romance readers are bon-bon-eating, sexually frustrated women, and it seems to suggest that it is the reading of romances which causes women to become unattractive, not merely that unattractive women turn to romance. This is presented as being the opinion of Isadora Wing (Jong's protagonist), though, not necessarily that of Jong herself. As the article goes on to explain, Wing seems to loathe her "excess flesh" (427). Nonetheless, the sentence which states that "the typical mass-market romance fantasy functions by excluding from the site of erotic attraction precisely those who consume this fantasy, even while it solicits identification with a protagonist possessing all of the sexual allure the reader lacks" seems to offer Aubry's opinion of the genre, not Jong or Wing's. The article goes on to explore reader identification with Isadora. Has Aubry come to identify himself with Isadora Wing's opinions of the romance genre and of romance readers?

The identification with Isadora Wing also brought up another question for me that is related to how romance readers would have come to the novel both at the time and in the present. That is I wonder how much women of my generation (1977 to 1985-ish)can really identify with Isadora Wing? For myself, I don't at all. The experience of femaleness and femninity that that book describes is not unfamiliar but it isn't something that I would read and say "Oh yes, this is sooo my life" which I think is the reaction at the core of that identification Aubry is talking about and particular both to the novels of the time (CR novels as he refers to them) and to their later progeny, chick lit and women's fiction. To my mind, Fear of Flying is not really a commentary about romance novels but rather a commentary about one woman's inablity to have a satisfying romantic life. Though Aubry's article and Wing's narration suggest that it is the cliche quality of pulp romances and popular conceptions of love that lead to this dissatisfaction, I would argue that it is more that Wing believes that love is tragic and that a woman's personal success is mutually exclusive from romantic success. It is almost as if the stunted nature of her literary ambitions mirrors the stunted nature of her romances. It seems to me that Isadora Wing is more of a sexually frustrated, bon-bon eating housewife than the typical romance reader. In some ways, she inhabits that role more than the women that Janice Radway interviewed.

The part I thought was the most interesting was the section on the relationship between the female body, the textual body and food, but I haven't organized my thoughts on it enough to say much of anything at the moment.

This article made me question how the experience of women reading romance has changed over the years, how women's experience reading literature in general and attempting to write literatue has changed? Has the consumer culture of America gearing itself more towards both sexes affected a change in women's expectations of romance and career? That is, are women more comfortable navigating that ambiguous space between desire for individual success and relationships? Is marriage, is love a trap or is it something that enhances life?

[Laura Vivanco]

Angela Toscano, on 13 July 2009 - 08:41 PM, said:

It seems to me that Fear of Flyinghas more in common with chick lit narrative structures than with romance narrative structures. This may be what Aubry means by middlebrow fiction. I'm not sure.

As I haven't read Fear of Flying, and I haven't read much chick lit, I probably shouldn't comment on this, but judging from Aubry's description of FoF and the little chick lit I have read, I think you may be right about this. Quite a high proportion of the chick lit novels I've read had heroines who had to choose between two men. But perhaps that's not what you were referring to when you made the comparison?

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I wonder how much women of my generation (1977 to 1985-ish) can really identify with Isadora Wing? For myself, I don't at all. The experience of femaleness and femninity that that book describes is not unfamiliar but it isn't something that I would read and say "Oh yes, this is sooo my life" which I think is the reaction at the core of that identification Aubry is talking about and particular both to the novels of the time (CR novels as he refers to them) and to their later progeny, chick lit and women's fiction.

Personally, I've yet to come across any novel which makes me think "Oh yes, this is sooo my life" but I don't think this has much to do with my age. It probably has a lot more to do with the fact that my life wouldn't make for very interesting fiction (and I'm very grateful for that and I hope my life remains un-fiction-worthy for a very, very long time). People in fiction tend to have interesting conflicts to deal with and/or massive changes going on in their lives, and/or quite a bit of angst/pain/issues they need to deal with (I'm assuming that "CR" refers to "consciousness raising" which would tend to suggest that the protagonist has to deal with particular issues, so as to raise the readers' consciousness of them). Not that my life is perfect, uneventful and issue-free, by any means, but I don't think it's imperfect and/or eventful enough to be very interesting to other people.

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Is marriage, is love a trap or is it something that enhances life?

I think that depends on the individual in question, what she/he wants out of life, her/his personality, the personality of her/his partner/spouse/beloved and their beliefs about marriage and love.

[Angela Toscano]

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Quite a high proportion of the chick lit novels I've read had heroines who had to choose between two men. But perhaps that's not what you were referring to when you made the comparison?

That is what I was referring to and also the fact that chick lit tends to emphasize the heroine's journey and not so much the relationship with the guy. That's usually only tangential and not really primary.

I really think reader identification in the sense that Aubry is discussing it (in terms of middlebrow literature and the Oprah Book Club) does come down to a very visceral sense of sameness between the reader and the narrator/heroine and it is that trop of being an Everywoman, Jane Who's-It in whom the readers can see themselves, some aspect of their charcter or interactions with others, that speaks to that identification. I think that is why both CR novels, chick lit and women's fiction have a tendency towards first-person narration because it simulates the confessional, girl-friend-across-the-table atmosphere that forms a relationship, an intimacy between the character and the reader. So that the whole narrative play becomes conversational and because of that I wonder if Fear of Flying is dated enough now that the typical reader feels less like she is having a conversation with her girlfiend and more like she is having a conversation with her mother. Have the changes in feminism and what constitutes being a feminist had a change on the way that female readers relate to a character like Isadora Wing or someone comparable to her? Or is there a generation divide in which we can't really imagine ourselves doing those things or feeling that way? I guess my question is, is the female experience related in Fear of Flying something that still rings true as universal or has it become dated? And did Fear of Flying ever typify female experience or was it an of-the-moment book that captured a zeitgeist rather than a realistic depiction of mid-twentieth century womanhood?

[Laura Vivanco]

Angela Toscano, on 13 July 2009 - 10:54 PM, said:

did Fear of Flying ever typify female experience or was it an of-the-moment book that captured a zeitgeist rather than a realistic depiction of mid-twentieth century womanhood?

I've not read much of it, but my impression is that chick lit isn't generally a realistic depiction of late-twentieth-century/early twenty-first-century womanhood. Maybe the genre tends to depict the lives of a very small group of women which whom I don't tend to come into close contact?

[Angela Toscano]

Laura Vivanco, on 13 July 2009 - 05:26 PM, said:

I've not read much of it, but my impression is that chick lit isn't generally a realistic depiction of late-twentieth-century/early twenty-first-century womanhood. Maybe the genre tends to depict the lives of a very small group of women which whom I don't tend to come into close contact?

That's what I was thinking. Maybe I'm not middlebrow enough. I think I just switch between lowbrow and highbrow and jump right over the middle, both in art and apparently people I meet.

[Laura Vivanco]

Angela Toscano, on 13 July 2009 - 11:37 PM, said:

I think I just switch between lowbrow and highbrow and jump right over the middle, both in art and apparently people I meet.

But have you ever met anyone who's like a romance hero or heroine? I haven't. Even if I exclude the aristocrats, billionaires and paranormal creatures in the genre, I still can't think of any characters in romances who really remind me of people I know. The more I think about this, the more I feel that on the whole real life can't be portrayed very easily or interestingly in fiction.

[Jennifer Crowley]

Laura Vivanco, on 13 July 2009 - 07:00 PM, said:

But have you ever met anyone who's like a romance hero or heroine? I haven't. Even if I exclude the aristocrats, billionaires and paranormal creatures in the genre, I still can't think of any characters in romances who really remind me of people I know. The more I think about this, the more I feel that on the whole real life can't be portrayed very easily or interestingly in fiction.

I'd disagree. Maybe it's the people I know or the books I read. Not every romance hero/heroine is like a person I would meet in real life, and not every person I meet in real life I would think of as a romance character, but sometimes I meet people who I think, they have the traits of a well-written romance character.

I think well-written romances have characters that have imperfections, but they also have redeeming characteristics. Take for example one of my house-mates. He's a volunteer firefighter (classic romance hero job). He's not the typical alpha hero, but he could definitely fit into the beta hero. He's charismatic and disorganized. He's stubborn in a quiet way, in that you'll tell him to do something and he won't argue, but he'll also go and do whatever he was planning on doing in the first place. He's smart, hardworking, and goal oriented, but also rather oblivious to details. He has a good sense when people have something going on in their lives, and listens well.

Perhaps he's not the typical romance hero, but he could easily, I think, appear in a romance novel.

[Angela Toscano]

Jennifer Crowley, on 14 July 2009 - 10:08 AM, said:

I'd disagree. Maybe it's the people I know or the books I read. Not every romance hero/heroine is like a person I would meet in real life, and not every person I meet in real life I would think of as a romance character, but sometimes I meet people who I think, they have the traits of a well-written romance character.

I think well-written romances have characters that have imperfections, but they also have redeeming characteristics. Take for example one of my house-mates. He's a volunteer firefighter (classic romance hero job). He's not the typical alpha hero, but he could definitely fit into the beta hero. He's charismatic and disorganized. He's stubborn in a quiet way, in that you'll tell him to do something and he won't argue, but he'll also go and do whatever he was planning on doing in the first place. He's smart, hardworking, and goal oriented, but also rather oblivious to details. He has a good sense when people have something going on in their lives, and listens well.

Perhaps he's not the typical romance hero, but he could easily, I think, appear in a romance novel.

I was going to say something similar. I haven't known anyone who is exactly like a character from a book but I've
known plenty of people who share similar traits or who could be characters in a book. Now, granted I have a very eccentric circle of friends but still, when I sit down to write I tend to base character traits, little quirks and ways of speaking on these people.

I have known people who, after reading a book, say "This is so me" or "That's it exactly". Maybe it's like the old Square One skit "Mathnet" the people are false but the problems are real.

[Laura Vivanco]

Jennifer Crowley, on 14 July 2009 - 10:08 AM, said:

I'd disagree. Maybe it's the people I know or the books I read. Not every romance hero/heroine is like a person I would meet in real life, and not every person I meet in real life I would think of as a romance character, but sometimes I meet people who I think, they have the traits of a well-written romance character.

Angela Toscano, on 14 July 2009 - 05:28 PM, said:

I was going to say something similar. I haven't known anyone who is exactly like a character from a book but I've known plenty of people who share similar traits or who could be characters in a book.

So why don't you have the same response to characters in chick lit, Angela? And Jennifer, do you feel you know people who resemble romance characters, but not chick lit characters? If so, what is it that makes the difference?

[Jennifer Crowley]

Laura Vivanco, on 14 July 2009 - 02:05 PM, said:

So why don't you have the same response to characters in chick lit, Angela? And Jennifer, do you feel you know people who resemble romance characters, but not chick lit characters? If so, what is it that makes the difference?

I have a few responses, but with a caveat: I don't read much chick lit.

My first response would be, I don't know many people in chick lit mostly because the characters in chick lit often are people I wouldn't associate with in real life. I can't relate to the characters, but I also can't relate that well to most people I know who read chick lit. The characters/people typically featured in chick lit just don't push my empathy buttons.

I would also say that there are characters in romance novels that don't resemble real people (or at least people I know). Some of those non-real characters work, and some of them utterly fail. So I'm not giving a value judgment to chick lit, because I know of people who relate to those stories very well, it just doesn't work for me.

On a side note, I don't consider myself a very outright feminine girl. Most of the girls I know who read chick lit are girls that tend to be much more concerned with their image and with style. Is that the experience of others? Who do you know that reads chick lit? I think we all agree that chick lit is different from romance, but what makes it different? What is the appeal of chick lit that romance novels don't give?

Just curious.