My Hero, My Yard Man

There are a million reasons women read romances. Here’s another: In romances, heroes do all the rotten, complicated, difficult, and annoying chores that heroines put off for lack of funds, lack of strength, or lack of will. And heroes do them Without Being Asked. Oh, boy, that’s a big one. Sitting as I am currently with a broken ankle and very limited mobility, I have to ask my own home hero for lots of help all day long. And just as with parenting issues, I have learned to make a stand--bad phrase--to persevere only about the important ones. After all, nobody else can do everything you need to do yourself. Even if, for the moment, you can’t do anything at all. Real life is filled with mundane chores and vexatious decisions, and, for most of us, lack of ability to resolve them all. We don’t live perfect lives. Everybody has a long list of repairs and improvements needed around the house, or to the car, or whatever. Reasonable women know that their loved ones can’t do them all. But they keep hoping. Hence, the infamous HoneyDo list. Real men chafe at this list, because it is a challenge to their free time and to their free will. But romance heroes fix stuff and solve problems Without Being Asked. The romance hero saves the heroine from all the mundane work of life. If her car breaks down, not only does he rescue her, but he has someone else drive it to the service station. And then bring it to her home. If he moves in, she suddenly finds that, Without Being Asked, he fixes all her broken latches and poked-out screens, tunes up and oils all her rusting power tools, and, again, Without Being Asked, trims the bushes that no one has touched in months or years. If she lives in a tumbledown shack, he either shores it up or takes her to live on his ranch or in his mansion or up in his 24th story city penthouse. He handles all the picayune details of life’s little troubles. And big ones, too, like fighting off murderers and terrorists and soul-sucking relatives. The romance hero does it all, and again, Without Being Asked. A lot of women don’t do yard work, so in romances, the hero typically does some manly outdoor chore. Sure, sometimes he cooks a great dinner, too. Multitasking. But we can always call for takeout; a nice meal is thoughtful, but only impressive to the woman who doesn’t cook or who is too busy to cook. But we can’t always find someone to fix that wobbly step down from the porch. And the application of strong manly muscles to some impressively difficult outdoor task—well, that’s a thrill to see. Photos of some handsome hunks are sprinkled throughout this page. I wonder if any of them ever performs heroic mundane chores? Probably. Hopefully, bare-chested. Yep, that’s my current romance fantasy. Right about now, I could use a man with movie-star muscles and romance hero initiative, a manly man who would like to mow my lawn, Without Being Asked.

On a Marriage, Finally

I don’t usually comment on celebrity doings on this blog. Or much of anywhere else, for that matter, because, really who cares? But a recent event got me thinking about a classic romance situation: David Letterman finally married the woman he’s been living with for over 20 years, Regina Lasko, a woman who bore him a child five years ago. A woman who used to work for him and who does not have either a significant fortune or career, or as far as I know, any independent life aside from him. Maybe this woman is a strong, self-respecting person who does not need a marriage certificate to be confident in her man’s love for her and for her child. Maybe he has been asking her and asking her, and she finally agreed. But I don’t think the power dynamic works that way. Not when the man is very famous and rich, and the woman is not. No, the power has been entirely in his hands. I don’t consider this a happy romantic situation. I consider it a depressing story that at best metes out justice to the wronged woman. How can I be a card-carrying feminist and still talk about a wronged woman? Aren’t women independent and capable and so on? Of course. But I am a realist, and men still hold most of the power in our society, as they do in most other cultures. Letterman by his own account was the one who has held out and held out. Which means that there is a good chance that she’s just another doormat, who has waited and waited to be officially valued, like Patient Griselda. Never heard of Patient Griselda? The tale is from Boccaccio, and before him, Petrarch. An aristocrat marries a girl of lesser status (sound familiar?), and treats her like dirt for years, heaping more and more indignities upon her, and even taking her children away from her. She does nothing. (Well, realistically, what can she do? He has all the power.) She doesn’t complain. Finally, after many years of this, he rewards her by at last acknowledging that all of his tests of her have proven her merit, and he gives her the status their marriage entitles her to. Granted, there is something about being a martyr to which most women are conditioned to respond. I’ve talked about it before. The martyr story is some kind of working out of women’s inferior strength or power vis-a-vis men. It’s weakness taken to the nth degree, until weakness itself becomes a strength. Many men have been baffled and defeated by women’s weakness, by our ability to take it and take it, and survive anyway. Even so, when I see it played out as a modern, real-life story, I am not happy. Marriage is a public commitment. Between a man and a woman, it's a public proclamation of the man’s respect for the woman. And it’s an acknowledgment that she is actually a major part of his life and not just some convenience for his sexual or procreative urges. A woman who lives with a man and has a child by him and has no other career has already made her commitment. Marrying him is not a major leap for her. It’s a major deal for him. And that’s why, call me old-fashioned if you will, I believe that marriage is essential between men and women. Because, given that the woman is already committed, so the man should be also. If a man doesn’t value you enough to marry you, why be with him? And what kind of message does it send to a child when the father won’t even marry the mother? Yeah, yeah, so maybe they took secret vows before a Buddhist shrine 20 years ago. Or they went to a park and stood under a tree and recited promises they’d made up. It’s not the same as saying it in public for the whole community to know. It’s not the same as making it legal, which still has significance if one person is ill or injured, and the other person needs access or decision-making authority. And there is the matter of inheritance, too, although with Americans spending more than we earn, maybe many people won’t have much to leave as estates. Letterman will. Regardless, a spouse has rights that a non-spouse does not. Why else are gays struggling to gain the right to marry? They know that being married is better than not being married. Unlike a lot of people in our culture who are in denial. So, I’m happy that David Letterman finally did right by the woman he apparently loves, and the son he very publicly loves. Now, would the rest of you who are in long-term, seriously committed relationships please get married? I promise you, I won’t ask when you’re going to have babies, or why the wife isn’t changing her last name to the husband’s, or why one of you isn’t converting to the other’s religion. Or any of the other awkward questions from strangers and the demands from family that get put upon people who do marry. I’ll just congratulate you.

Believe in Me

Okay, here’s a silly romance plot: The heroine is found asleep in the wrong man’s bed. She’s a sleepwalker, thus not responsible for her behavior. But the hero, her fiancé, does not know that, so he thinks she has betrayed him. She doesn’t know she’s a sleepwalker either, so she’s utterly confused. But she knows she didn’t betray the man she loves. She tries to convince the hero of her faithfulness. He rejects her, based entirely on the circumstantial evidence. He even plans to marry another woman that very day. But wait. The other man declares her innocence. And then the poor heroine, exhausted and brokenhearted from trying to convince her fiancé of her chastity, falls asleep and sleepwalks again. The hero sees and finally believes. He wakes her up, says he’s sorry, and they get married after all. (You’ve guessed it. I just described the plot of La Sonnambula, a 19th century opera currently being sung by two hot—and talented—singers at the Met, Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez.) Isn’t this a classic, old-style romantic situation? Circumstances make the heroine seem bad, lots of suffering ensues, and then finally, her good name is restored and the hero takes her back. In our culture today, we reject that romance dynamic. Oh, maybe teenagers, who live in the claustrophobic equivalent of a 19th century village, still make their decisions based on gossip and externals. But adults mostly don’t in our society. A woman is supposed to be valued for who she is, not her reputation in the community for virginity. Moreover, a man is supposed to believe in the heroine, and not get caught up in external valuations of her to such a degree that he can’t see her true worth. Still, this old-fashioned dynamic is alive and well in many other countries today, and, arguably, in any small, rigid community that still exists in our own. And we have to ask, well, what happens to this woman in five years, if people gossip about the mailman staying too long at the house? In what does the hero really place his faith? Not in the heroine, alas. Lucky us, though. We’re not living in tiny 19th century villages where corrosive gossip can ruin our lives. And because romance novels mirror current romance ideals and standards, we expect a lively give-and-take between the heroine and the hero in our romance novels today, not a tragic melodrama of misunderstandings. Our romance characters act out—sometimes very strongly—behaviors associated with the principles of free will. The proof is visible on the covers of the popular urban fantasy novels of today, in which strong-willed and eerily-talented, feisty, independent women (whew!) fend off impending calamities and fight outsize battles that decide the fate of the universe. While also developing romantic relationships with vampires, demons, werewolves, or whoever. These heroines are not worrying about their reputations; they’ve got mort important things to do. Yet it wasn’t so long ago that the conviction-by-circumstance situation was a common romance plot, and heroines were a bit more passive. Or passive aggressive. And this kind of story still is being published. Considering that in its more melodramatic versions, it often required rather dramatic proof of virginity, we wonder, why would we put up with them? For some reason, a very old Harlequin Romance by Anne Mather, Lord of Zaracus, published in 1972, sticks in my mind. This one is laid out as a clash in cultures. The heroine, an American or a Brit, I forget which, visits Mexico and butts up against the prejudices of an autocratic, aristocratic, and melodramatic (!) hero. He assumes that she has the low morals of someone from a trashy American movie, and he listens to the poisonous lies of a catty Mexican girl in his household. Our poor heroine is too prideful to defend herself well. Or maybe just at a loss for words when everybody behaves so badly. Eventually, after various melodramatic events, the guy decides she’s a good girl after all. Thanks for nothing, fellow. But there’s something about the sinned-against heroine plot that is appealing. Because even though it’s a story about circumstantial evidence, it’s also a story about trust and respect. And though such plots aren't as common as they used to be, they're still around. In La Sonnambula, the hero hurts the heroine with his lack of belief in her side of the story. She’s not judgmental; she doesn’t despise him for lacking faith in her. She’s wounded. Of course, he’s wounded, too, or he wouldn’t lash out. But he’s also not listening to her and hearing the truth. He's not respecting or trusting her. Neither one of them is happy, and they can’t fix things because the problem is circumstantial and was never of their own making to begin with. Some other person or event has to provide the proof that will make them happy again. Here’s one possibility to account for the seeming incongruity of these kinds of stories still being around long after our society has appeared to give women an equal place. For a lot of women, there is still the feeling that we are not valued in the world as we deserve to be. It hurts. Living through a version of this in fiction, and then being rescued from the misery and brought to a place of honor, or restored to it (and especially by a man who is romantically in love, which makes it very personal), is a kind of salve to the wound of being not-quite-equal in a supposedly equal society. Not sufficiently respected. Not listened to. Not believed. Fighting fictional demons may be the answer for some female personality types. But for others, the answer is the hero who finally realizes he has made a mistake—however that realization is brought about—and says he is sorry. That now, he believes.