FROM ROMANCE TO-- THE RITUAL OF RAPE?

(For the curious, the title of this essay is a perhaps strained pun on a classic book of myth/folklore analysis, Jesse Weston's FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE, which otherwise has nothing to do with the topic at hand)

In some comments to A. Sherman Barros here I mentioned that the question of rape in comic books had become a cultural taboo in America despite the fact that comic books, in my opinion, are essentially a medium directed at adults. However, in prose romance novels no such taboo seems to exist, and indeed the trope is so embraced that often the rape has been perpetrated on the victimized romance-heroine not by some slavering villain, but by the stalwart hero. I say "has been" because I have seen some articles that state that the "Golden Age of Rapine" (my term) took place in the 70s and 80s and that the trope is not nearly so popular in this millennium's romances.

I cannot refute this assertion inasmuch as I've read very few modern romance novels. However, I do have the impression that the trope still gets ample usage. In some essay or other I have mentioned that when I'm not busy savaging foul elitist scum (who are, as we all know, a superstititous and cowardly lot) I put food on the table as a library cataloguer. And though in this mild-mannered identity I don't *read* a lot of romances, I certainly *see* a lot of them, and many's the time that I've encountered a frontispiece reading something like:

'The lady Arabella Winread blanched at the bold remarks of cocky young Edgar Wagstaff. "But surely, young Lord," she stammered, "you understood that our marriage was to be in name only!"'
'Edgar smiled his devil's smile as he said--'

Actually that's usually about as far as I would usually read, so I can't give a good approximation as to what cocky young Edgar said, though I'm pretty sure it had something to do with taking his rights in the nuptial bed over her feeble protests-- which is to say, that he had every intention of raping her. The passages so excerpted generally capture much better than I can how Lady Arabella would surge with conflicting ladylike passions even as she professed horror at his threat, so just from those excerpts alone there's no question that the threat of rape is meant to titillate the reader, who is more likely than not of the female gender.

So rape, a heinous crime, becomes in fiction a source of titillation, at least when it's being perpetrated by a handsome swain. In itself this is no different than a host of similar dynamizations which fictional narrative makes possible. But having said that, is titillation all there is to the matter?

In THYMOS Parts 1 and 2 I spoke at length of some of the ways there might be some continuity between modern human readers, early humans and even non-humans with regard to how the males of a given community would compete with other males for females and thus for "reproductive rights." I was (for all the good it did me) careful to specify that I was speaking of the way social pressures are transformed into fictional narrative that has more to do with expressing fantasies than recording literal occurences. I also noted here an example of one 20th-century artist, the "King of Comics" himself, who had clearly internalized the myth of such conflict as natural to homo sapiens as he understood things.

But as many others have noted, even in the nonhuman world sexual selection is not confined to which male is the "alpha male." In some species the male seeks above all to impress the female with some sign of his excellence. Jack Kirby speaks of offering the female a "victory," but often the "victory" has nothing to do with a battle but with something closer to a male "beauty contest," in which the prize (the female) is won by (say) the male fiddler crab with the biggest claw, or cocky young Edgar the Peacock and his big ol' beautiful tail.

This pattern of sexual selection does not invalidate the more familiar examples of alpha-male dominated societies, such as the chimpanzee societies discussed earlier. There is certainly a reality to those struggles for sexual predominance: it's simply not the only pattern in existence. Given the fluidity of human beings, it should not surprise anyone if our species is capable of following in some cases the pattern of the alpha male and in others the pattern of the "male beauty contest."

Now, peahens and female fiddler crabs may have been hardwired from the start to go for the most extravagant male appurtenance (no matter how disadvantageous said appurtenance was for its owner in terms of pure survival). Or it may have been a chance assertion of nonhuman aesthetics that later became hardwired over time. We don't know and can never know. But aesthetics aren't the only factor, either.

One study (which I recall only by barest memory) noted that a pattern of behavior in a collection of farm-hens in which they would, before consenting to mate with the local cock-of-the-walk, would perform an examination of the rooster's wattles. The observer theorized that the hens, rather than being enthralled with the fascinating maleness of the wattles, were actually searching for signs of a certain disease which manifested in discolorations of that organ.

Thus it seems that among a variety of animals courting-rituals combine aspects of aesthetics and pragmatic realities which probably aren't as separate for the animals as they are for humans. Does the mare who forces the stallion to chase her do so because the chase stimulates her for mating? Or because the stallion's ability to overtake her proves his genetic fitness? Or both?

I would cautiously suggest that the prevalence of the scenario of "rape-by-the-good-guy" in romance novels (not to mention the related manifestation of the romance genre within the television soap opera; paging LUKE AND LAURA) might also combine elements of the pragmatic and the aesthetic. The threat of fantasy-rape may have some degree of its appeal rooted in the female desire to make certain that the desired male does, indeed, have the goods he advertises, without the onus of waiting for the sanctification rites of marriage.

Thus, the power to rape, if it does signify potency in these stories, also signifies that the rakish hero is worth the heroine's trouble. She would hardly want to bother "stooping to conquer" him otherwise.

I do not know, as stated earlier, much about current romance-novels. For all that I know, the teaser on the frontispiece, in which Cocky Edgar intimates his intention to rape Lady Arabella, may be *never* more than a "tease" these days. But even if this were the case, that does not erase the history of "the Golden Age of Rapine." A heavily-repeated trope such as this one, which flies in the face of common sense, clearly has deep roots in human psychology.

Note that I do not say "feminine psychology." I assume that the doctrinaire Freudian take on the romance-rape trope would be to prate about an inherent masochism in all women. I believe in this sort of "one sex" theorizing as much as I do Eve Sedgewick's nonsense about defining masculinity in terms of some trumped-up "incoherence." There are worthwhile distinctions to make about masculine and feminine psychologies, but anyone who constructs a theory that elevates one gender above the other is merely playing the time-worn games of the morally-bankrupt elitist. As to how both masculine and feminine psychologies might be imbricated in common fantasies of sex and violence, I'll be speaking more to that in THYMOS PART 3.