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Originally Posted by Gwen Morse
For example, wouldn't a romance novel's message be: no matter how independent (or not) a woman may be, marrying some guy and having his babies is the only way to true fulfillment? I guess I should add something about being "in love" in there, but really the books aren't about love. They're about sex and marital harmony.
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Well no, to me this is not a message, although in most cases I agree it's sort of the foundation on which the book is built. The author is not trying to brain-wash her readers into thinking they are nothing without a male relationship. She is responding to what she, and her editor, believe her readers expect in this kind of book. Of course, it certainly has a reinforcing effect on what the readers believe and expect, with the interesting result that within a mostly female world (writer and reader at least, though I don't know about the editors and publishers), there is a feedback loop reinforcing male-centered stereotypes. But hey, this is the world we live in.
A very, very interesting study on this feedback loop is Susan Faludi's book Backlash. It's old but still extremely relevant I think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwen Morse
I think every fiction book has a message.
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I guess we'll never agree on this, since we don't have the same definition of a message
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gwen Morse
I think in some sense all readers have gotten used to the idea that female characters can be subordinate to male characters (not in a relationship sense, but in how they shape the development of the story). It's not "shocking" for anyone to read books where female characters are props for the male characters. But it's incredibly rare to switch the roles and have the males as peripheral characters while the entire story revolves around the social and sexual politics of the females.
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