The year 2000 began without the widely predicted computer disasters, but for fans of the romance novel, a decidedly calamitous event was the publication on March 20th of that year of Paul Gray’s Time magazine article “Passion on the Pages.” Gray charged the romance novel in general and Nora Roberts’ Carolina Moon in particular with being both formulaic and morally simplistic.
Gray, who wrote the article with the assistance of Andrea Sachs, ostensibly sets out to explain why romance novels made up 40% of all fiction sales despite what he claims is their invariably poor reputation among literary critics. He quickly answers his own question – women want morally simplistic, formulaic, escapist entertainment; and the romance novel is uniquely designed to fill that need.
Gray uses a definition of the romance novel originated by Linda Barlow and Jayne Ann Krentz as the basis for his attack. “The reader trusts the writer to create and re-create for her a vision of a fictional world that is free of moral ambiguity, a larger-than-life domain in which such ideals as courage, justice, honor, loyalty and love are challenged and upheld,” they wrote in the 1992 essay,“The Hidden Codes of Romance.”
Focusing on the concept of the romance novel’s avoidance of moral ambiguity, Gray comments, “So much, then, for Homer, Shakespeare and Austen. And so much for the other popular genres, in which good and evil are allowed to mingle.”
Gray devotes half his article to a discussion of one single romance writer, Nora Roberts, and to her book, Carolina Moon (2000), which he says “is a romance tooled to attract readers of popular fiction who may not think, or know, that they like romances.” Such “tooling,” according to Gray, includes Carollina Moon's increased length, its large cast of characters, its addition of a secondary romance storyline and its use of paranormal events. In actuality, Roberts had included all these elements in earlier works as well.
Gray sees Carolina Moon as maintaining the moral simplicity that he views as typical of the romance novel. Even supposedly evil characters like Faith Lavelle are soon found to be basically good. “Faith Lavelle, the dead twin's grown sister, seems to mean Tory no good,” he writes. “But then her veterinarian boyfriend gives her a puppy, and the evil twin becomes a wonderful woman.”
All About Romance, a website that promotes discussion of romance novels, provided a much different answer to the question with which Gray began his article, “What, Freud famously wondered, does a woman want?” All About Romance responded, “Women read romance novels because they are written for women by women (primarily), who understand that although we all live in the real world where bad things happen to good people, where people lie, steal, cheat, and die, it’s nice to visit, for a while, a place where there are happy endings.”
Another All About Romance contributor took Gray to task for the “tone of incredulity” with which he discussed popularity of the romance novel. “But I say, there's no great mystery here, Mr. Gray,” she commented. “Nothing to wonder at. The well-written love story has everything the best the written word offers: humor, adventure, pathos, intrigue, and triumph of the human spirit.”
So perhaps the romance novel is not as distinct from literary fiction as Gray believes.
For more information:
Nora Roberts quoted in Time’s 2010 list of ’100 most influential people’
Nora Roberts’ Harlequin publishers report rising sales despite recession
Nora Roberts spoke on ’Women Who Win’ at 2003 Romance Writers of America conference
Nora Roberts’ defense of category romance
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