There was a time when the heroines of romance novels let themselves die of despair, or entered a convent out of heartache. Today, they console themselves by having a drink with friends, and hoping that the prospect next will be the right one, while remaining very attentive to the gentle ticking of their biological clock.
This is somewhat the route that Jean-Philippe Warren and Marie-Pier Luneau trace in the essay love like a novel. The sentimental novel in Quebec, from yesterday to today, published by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal. In fact, it is almost a history of Quebec women that we guess implicitly in this analysis of sentimental novels. Because not only are women and have been the main authors and the main readers of romance novels through the ages, they are also mostly the heroines.
The authors studied a corpus of a hundred novels, published from the first half of the XIXand century until today, from works celebrating God and country before love to BDSM works (for domination-submission-sadomasochism), particularly popular with women, from the 21stand century.
By romance, they mean a novel in which love “triumphs”, not without, of course, having resolved the obstacles that opposed it. This is what justified in particular the exclusion of the body of works as Maria Chapdelaine Where Second-hand happinesswhere love is undone in the end.
However “triumphant” it may be in these novels, love is successively repressed for the benefit of God or the country, sublimated in death or in religion, domesticated in family life after the First World War, celebrated or serial , according to the times, as established by the authors in their approach. And it is especially women who suffer the consequences.
Love as the ultimate goal of life
Because, until very recently, women made love, at least in these novels, the ultimate goal of their lives. “For the elites of the turn of the XXand century, love is at the same time unsurpassable, unavoidable and universal. Women, especially, cannot resist Cupid’s calls. They overinvest in love, which becomes more than ever their business, unlike men called upon to overplay work, each gender finding themselves occupying a more or less sealed social and physical space which intersects the private and public spheres. »
The sentimental novel, which successively bears the terms, admittedly not very flattering, of romance in rose water or even of chicklit, is not, by definition, revolutionary. And no one hopes to find there the sources of inspiration for progress. Yet, say the authors, we must take an interest in them, if only because they are the books that generations of women have read before us. And their research is the first to look into the subject.
However, the experience of love, in the novels studied, is almost always accompanied by a social ascent for the heroine. And the dream of love, comparable to that of Prince Charming in children’s stories, is matched by that of a happy and comfortable life.
Even today, observes Marie-Pier Luneau, the heroines of so-called novels of chicklit, written from a “postfeminist” perspective, generally make less money than the men they lust after. And even the characters of homonovels, featuring non-heterosexual couples, respond to these traditional mechanisms.
” In the chicklitshe said in an interview, even if the heroine works and she is very well represented in her workplace, she still occupies a position where she makes less money than her future boyfriend. These reports of inequality continue. »
“She is capable of being alone, but something is missing if she remains solitary,” adds Jean-Philippe Warren.
In most cases, the prospect of remaining “old maid” is considered “the worst flaw”, or the worst scenario envisaged. “Even in the chicklitreaching your thirties is already losing value on the market,” observes Mme Juneau. “No more in the stories of the chicklit that in previous periods, spinsters cannot embody a satisfying future. »
Beauty as capital
In this context, notes Jean-Philippe Warren in an interview, the heroine only has, or at least had, her “beauty capital”, along with of course her domestic skills, to pull out of the game.
“The novels keep repeating it, one cannot be attracted to an ugly woman, write the authors in the chapter devoted to the period 1945-1965. If the housewife must be dapper and attractive, to prevent her husband from “looking away” and “jumping the fence”, the same applies, a fortiori, to the fiancée, who can be “robbed” its promised by a more enterprising woman. »
As for sexuality in love, it did not really become an issue until the 1960s. sexual intercourse”, they write, the female orgasm also appearing late in the writings. In this regard, the authors say they are “surprised” by the enthusiasm of female readers for the so-called BDSM novels of the 21st century.and century borrowing from the model of the famous 50 shades of gray by British novelist EL James.
“Rape and sequestration in the romantic novel have existed since the 1950s,” says Jean-Philippe Warren. It’s an old pattern that lives on. »
On this subject, he notes that a certain notion of “slavery” is present in that of love. “The bridegroom kneels down to make a marriage proposal, or the knight in wait tells his sweetheart he’s going to serve her,” he says. […] The enigma remains: why [le roman BDSM] please[-il] to millions of women? The mystery remains.
Six sentimental novels through six eras of Quebec history