I have been disdainful of romance and erotic romance, and yet it is undeniable that it brings a huge number of women, and no small number of men, joy. These people are not idiots. They are not intellectual midgets who cannot cope with writing that reflects the harsher realities of the human condition. The sheer number of romance readers puts lie to the myth [1. Wendel, S. & Tan, C. Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels. 2009, Touchstone]
I owe a debt of gratitude to Sarah Frantz, of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance for setting me a scholarly and intellectual challenge: to write about the functions of the ‘happily ever after’ ending in erotic romance and erotic fiction. She encouraged me to look at the conventions of romance – not as an inhibition to creativity – but as instruments that perform their functions so precisely that romance outsells all other genres by orders of magnitude.
This challenge has entailed reading a lot of romantic erotica, a lot of academic writing on the romance novel and delving back into the literary theorists to see if I could some new ways to frame the discourse.
Umberto Eco would say, without a doubt, that a HEA ending is an almost pristine example of a closed text. What he meant by a closed text was one in which the reader was left in no doubt as to the meaning. There is very little room for alternate interpretations of the text. He insisted that such a text would be the least rewarding. And yet we know that romance readers feel enormously rewarded.[2. Eco, U. The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. 1979. Indiana University Press.]
However, I have found that Wolfgang Iser proposed an almost diametrically opposed opinion.. He believes that literature is not reality, nor is it read as reality. The text and the reader share a liminal space in which things which are normally taken to be obvious and understood – i.e. a state of happlily ever afterness – are “taken out of their pragmatic frame of reference” and destabilized in the fictional space. “… the result is to reveal aspects (e.g. of social norms) which had remained hidden as long as the frame of reference remained intact.” [3. Iser, W. The act of reading: a theory of aesthetic response. 1980. Johns Hopkins University Press].
So, perhaps, what we understand to mean ‘happily ever after’ in fiction simply doesn’t mean the same thing as we understand it to mean in the real world. The social ideal of love that ends in marriage is a pragmatic ideal. But maybe, for the reader of an erotic romance an HEA has other, hidden aspects. I propose that it does.
In erotic fiction – not erotic romance – there really is not any such thing as a happily ever after ending. There is only ever happily for now. And this is only possible if the characters are prepared to be in love and be happy. Seldom is there much valuation put on monogamy. Often the story doesn’t focus on love at all, but desire. In erotic fiction, desire is always only satiated for the now. The reader understands that it is a storm that can be calmed for a time, satisfied for the moment, but the power of desire itself is always an essentially open text because it has, ultimately only the temporary experience of satiation. And the lover who fulfills the desire is seldom represented with a character arc whose final goal is love and marriage, but the ephemeral meeting of minds and desires. Seldom is the goal love. More often it is self-revelation. And we can never really understand ourselves or each other completely. There is never, really, absolute closure. [4. Hardy, S. (2001) More Black Lace: Women, Eroticism and Subjecthood. Sexualities. November 2001 4: 435-453, ]
In erotic romance, however, the happily ever after ending is a trope that serves as an agreement between the text and the reader, says Guntrum. Even before the reader opens the book, they already know, if it is sold under the erotic romance genre, that it will have a happy ending for the lovers. [5. Guntrum, S. (1992). Happily Ever After: The Ending As Beginning. In: Krentz, J. Dangerous men & adventurous women. USA: University of Pennsylvania Press.]
If the literary book ends of a fairy tale begin with ‘Once upon a time’ and end with ‘and they all lived happily ever after’, then the book ends of a romance begin with something like Jane Austen’s famous opening line in Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” and culminate with some kind of assurance to the reader that the lovers are in love, and will stay in love forever.
The function of these literary book ends in a fairytale may very well be to indicate to the reader that they are about to enter a fantastical reality. A place where people don’t act the way they do in everyday life. A place of magic and chaos, of outrageous drama, supreme heroism and the most villainous acts. If you actually think about fairytales, they are often hideously violent, cruel and bloody. Think about a story like Hansel and Gretel. Children abandoned by their father in favour of a new wife. Left to starve in the woods. Taken in and plumped up by a cannibalistic granny who not only eats children, but forces Gretel to help in the preparation of her brother as food. The happily ever after function in a fairytale serves to let the reader know that we are closing the page on that extraordinary world. It acts, in fact, like the soft landing after the rollercoaster ride of outrageous fiction. [6. Bettelheim, B. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1976. Knopf]
I wish I could say that, in my delving into what seems like an endless number of erotic romance eBooks, I found much gritty realism. Both the heroes and the heroines of the vast majority of stories behaved in astoundingly unrealistic ways. The emotions of the heroine were often quite realistic, but their actions were often inexplicable. There are chains of the most improbable events which precipitate wholly astounding reactions. Circumstances never cease to conspire. Sex acts often start out as the precipitators of crises and end as proof of the lovers bona fides towards each other. Very often the dominant lover will cause the protagonist amazing amounts pain, generate hyperbolic levels of fear.
If you took the wands and swords out of fantasy fiction, switched dragons for chauffeurs who drive BMWs and turned the quests into sex acts, you would have a contemporary erotic romance on your hands.
How is it possible then that the protagonist could ever find these deeds forgivable? Love. And how could the protagonist possibly love someone who has put them through so much terror and pain? It is very often a sequence of seemingly inexplicable kindnesses on the part of the lover. The purchase of pretty clothes. The public acknowledgement of the relationship. The nursing of the protagonist through a sickness. The solving of a financial disaster with the stroke of a pen on a cheque.
These are not the sorts of acts that, in the real world, would cause you to be in love with a person who treated you so badly. But in erotic romance, this is the key to the lover’s heart. And it is the final path onto which the lovers step on the road to ‘happily ever after’.
In the case of erotic romance, ‘happily ever after’ is the absolution of all the sins that have come before it.
Your thoughts?
I wonder about the lover’s acts of kindness towards the protagonist. If the lover’s acts of cruelty are in fact acts of love, something done for the protagonist’s complex masochistic pleasure rather than a selfish fulfilment of the lover’s sadistic desires, then surely that love should need no proof. If there is a meeting of minds then the sexual scene is its vehicle and its symbolic representation. But if the protagonist has need of a guarantee of the lover’s tender feelings, in a show of kindness, then is the emotional closure of the HEA ending so certain? It seems that the closure is subverted by a destabilising uncertainty about the lover’s true intentions. The lover is never completely transfigured from his/her status as the Other.
It’s interesting that you bring this up. In the few BDSM erotic romances I’ve read, the cruel acts of love are exactly that and taken for that. The cruelty in those romances is usually abandonment in some form.
You have brought up some very good points, Jim. I’m going to have to ponder on that. To be honest, the cruelty I encountered in the acts of the ‘hero’ were VERY destabilising to me (but I’m not really a romance cognoscenti). The acts are often explained as being born out of a fundamental misunderstanding of some kind (?) which, I must admit, did sorely tax my suspension of disbelief.
In a way, I wonder if that is partially what the HEA functions as – a signal to the reader to begin their suspension of disbelief dramatically and just ‘go with it’.
I think it’s possible to ‘over academise’ this.
Erotic Romance, or indeed any other HEA/HFN literature, exists because the author and reader have an implicit contract: the reader is to be entertained by the author. It’s escapism, fun; can anybody remember fun? Readers read these because they want to feel good at the end of them, they feel short-changed if the author doesn’t deliver on that implicit contract by the end.
If, however, the reader is warned up-front that what they’re reading probably doesn’t have a ‘feel-good’ ending, they won’t feel short-changed in this manner. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they’ll simply skip over it because of that, but still, at least the author won’t have failed to meet their expectations.
It’s why people go to see films like “Love, Actually” in huge numbers, while films withOUT such feel-good endings are few and far between. I suppose “Nine Songs” fits the bill, but that was notorious for other reasons. 😉
Personally I view “Erotic Romance” as a subset of “Erotic Fiction”, rather than an entirely separate genre. Provided it’s well written, of course. Otherwise, I simply view it as trash! 😉
Steve – when you’re writing a paper for presentation at an academic conference or for publication in a journal, it’s not possible to ‘over academise’. Promise. And this post is nothing but a mild flirtation with an academically acceptable piece of writing.
I would actually strongly disagree that erotic romance is a sub-genre of erotic fiction. And the more I read on this, the more I am convinced of it. They have fundamentally different reader expectations, different foci and different goals. Erotic romance is, in my view, a sub-genre of romance. It rigidly obeys all the the conventions of the romantic novel AND there is sex. But the focus of the story is a developing love which culminates in HEA.
The focus of an erotic fiction story is the desire and the quest to satiate it. Should love come out of this, it is a byproduct, not the goal. The goal is the satisfaction of desire. Which may or may not be satisfied in the story because there is no comparable reader contract with the text.
I had minor disagreements, too trivial to compel me to mention them. But I had to write to agree with your logic. The HEA is a required component for romance, erotic or otherwise. Romance (and not just erotic romance) is arguably my favorite of all literature, despite not liking the bulk of it. The fault is mine, I do not denigrate. The hero making the grand gesture which erases all past sins, is not as disturbing to me, as is the implication that this bold act will also obliterate any and all future errors and wrongs. Like I said, it’s just me. I can easily believe that the tiny hobbit can overcome vast armies of monsters to save the day by destroying the evil ring. Erotic romance must be a sub-genre of romance, because as you stated the HEA is a requirement, and erotica only demands the resolve of the desire, however that plays out. When I read an incredible romance: with believable characters behaving in a realistic manner; sex being as powerful a force as it actually is, and a related but separate component of love; and the main focus of the story is on the love, and the emotion triumphs, even if the protaganist does not, then I often find that I’m reading what others term a tragedy. For me, Romeo and Juliet is a romance, and a perfectly written romance. But I’m sure everyone will disagree with me from a technical point of view if nothing else, you would almost have to. Yes, it is a tragedy. But the focus on the emotion of love, the love reigning supreme, the feeling of the tale, that is more than a love story, that is romance in all its classic glory. If it had a happy ending, it would be deemed romance, so the HEA is important to the definition, and that sets erotic romance squarely in the court of romance, not erotica.
Hee!
That’s because you’re coming at this from a direction at SQRT(-1) to me. I think “Fiction -> Fiction with erotic content -> Romantic fiction with erotic content”, where you think in terms of the more traditional subsets.
If I took my novel “Equal Shares” which ends with a HEA/HFN triangular relationship, and took it on a few years, I easily envisage a breakup of the main characters. If I write that ending instead, does that turn what is currently quite a romantic novel, if not a traditional romance, into “Erotic Fiction”? Perhaps it would be “Erotic Tragedy” instead? I don’t think so. I believe the packaging of works into one box or another is incorrect, that there are shades, not boundaries.
Steve, as a writer, looking at an individual work, I would agree with you. It is much more helpful to took at shades rather than boundaries. But as far as publishers are concerned, were you to change your HEA ending, it would cease to be a work they would consider publishable under the heading of erotic romance. A lot of erotic fiction IS very romantic and does contain characters who fall in love, but they aren’t considered romance if the conventions are there.
In these days when 40% of all marriages (in the US) end in divorce, a realistic view is that a HEA ending is only a temporary thing, anyway. However, for romance readers, this doesn’t enter into the equation. The HEA provides, fictionally, for a perfect resolution to the story.
I loved this line:
If you took the wands and swords out of fantasy fiction, switched dragons for chauffeurs who drive BMWs and turned the quests into sex acts, you would have a contemporary erotic romance on your hands.
And while I haven’t done the same research as you, I can’t help wondering if the same requirements for HEA apply. When I pick up a fantasy/science fiction novel, I know the hero will triumph in the end. It may be a costly victory, but there’s never any doubt thanks to genre convention that the hero will win. There’s something emotionally satisfying about that and the few novels I’ve read where the hero didn’t win have left me unsatisfied, even if they were brilliantly written.
So I always assumed that the HEA in romance was the woman’s “win.”
In the erotic romance stories I’ve written, the HEA ending is validation of the hero’s growth. He can’t get the woman until he gets his act together and stops his self-destructive behavior. It could easily be a HFN ending, because I don’t sweat the difference between HFN and HEA. The point is, I never considered these erotic romance novels until it was pointed out to me that they fit the genre. They were simply personal growth stories where sex was the catalyst for the growth itself and a HFN/HEA ending seemed like a great way to have the denouement.
You make a very good point about the expectation of triumph over evil in the fantasy genre. And I’m wondering if one of the reasons for ‘speculative fiction’ was for writers to be able to liberate themselves from that obligation.
With regards to hero’s growth in romance, I honestly wonder whether ‘heroes’ are actually any kind of a representation of a male. Honestly, I’m wondering if they don’t stand for something else.
Regarding the difference between HEA and HFN, I think that even the significance of this is different in romance from erotic fiction. HFN in erotic fiction is most definitely accepted as a temporary – not eternal state of affairs. Because desire (in erotic fiction) can never be permanently satiated. Where as love (in romance) can be eternal. It’s like the place where you can exit a much longer story. In romance, even HFN is really read, I suspect, as HEA.
Oh, I think speculative fiction is clearly intended to liberate writers from the genre conventions, of which triumph over evil is one.
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying about heroes and males. With one exception, what I write that qualifies as “erotic romance” has a hetero male protagonist. It’s part of why I don’t really fit in the genre (the other part being that my stories really aren’t about love).
I agree that in romance HFN would be read as HEA emotionally. The reader knows from the words that that’s not necessarily so, but it doesn’t carry the same emotional clarity as HFN in erotic fiction.
Well, Sarah Frantz is in the middle of a very long study of ‘Alpha Males’ in romance. I’ve seen a few glimpses of her thinking on this and I’m really quite looking forward to seeing where she goes with it. But she has some very compelling ideas on the function being played by the Alpha Male. We’ll see.
One of the reasons I’ve felt detached from your ongoing examination of erotic romance and erotic fiction is your view of HEA and its role in erotic romance.
I read a lot of erotic romance (erotic fiction, too). I don’t read erotic romance because I think sex is only acceptable within the framework of love and marriage (like that’s a HEA?). I’m perfectly well aware that there are many aspects of my life, many choices I’ve made, that are the result of thousands of years of Judeo-Christian patriarchal cultural conditioning. My liking for erotic romance does not happen to be one of them, despite the belief of others who tell me that, yes, I like erotic romance because I’ve been conditioned to like it.
I don’t read them because they validate anything about reality – anyone who has any common sense realizes that reality and romance do not belong in the same sentence. As you point out:
“Both the heroes and the heroines of the vast majority of stories behaved in astoundingly unrealistic ways. The emotions of the heroine were often quite realistic, but their actions were often inexplicable. There are chains of the most improbable events which precipitate wholly astounding reactions. Circumstances never cease to conspire. Sex acts often start out as the precipitators of crises and end as proof of the lovers bona fides towards each other. Very often the dominant lover will cause the protagonist amazing amounts pain, generate hyperbolic levels of fear.”
It’s reasonable to conclude from this, I think, that HEA – as they relate to erotic romance, anyway – are not meant to be realistic, either in detail or desirability. They are fantasy endings to fantasy stories.
I read erotic romances because they are fantasies, ones which are predictable in form, if not in content. Again, as you point out, if you pick up an erotic romance, or any romance, you are assured that it will follow a traditional story arc and are likewise assured that it will end in a particular way. Romances, erotic or otherwise, are formulaic.
I find a certain comfort in structure and predictability. I don’t always need or want a book to excite deep self-examination, or lead me to question precepts I’ve always held, or cause me to rail at the vagaries of human nature. My life may be chaos, but I know that between the covers of this book, the events will unfold in a certain way, all chaos will have been ordered by the closing scene. What I don’t expect is that this is, in any way, an accurate reflection of what happens in real life.
I happen to agree with your fundamental position – that erotic fiction is distinct from erotic romance – and even with saying that the presence or absence of HEA endings is one of the distinguishing characteristics. What I haven’t agreed with is what you call your disdain for the reasons readers do choose to read erotic romance.
Long comment – sorry! I’m glad you I’m glad that you made the effort to rise to the challenge. I think it’s helped round out your arguments vis a vis the differences in genres.
Ah, I think you have misunderstood me. I’ve offered various reasons for the mechanism of HEA. One is the same function it serves in a fairy tale – to allow the reader scope for escapism and fantasy and, in a way, a broad permission to suspend disbelief. And that structure includes the book end of HEA.
The second reason I gave what that it acts as absolution for the characters. I didn’t say it acted as absolution for the readers. Hehe. Although, actually, for some readers, I think it does.
The HEA is the delivery of a promise implied from the beginning in any story marketed as an erotic romance. Erotic romance readers want to be entertained by outrageous characters and story lines. They do not care that there is a lack of gritty realism and they are grateful for the sensual/sexual fantasy. For many people it is a cheap vacation and a break from the reality of their own lives. For those who like to read before bed, erotic romance promises an ending that shouldn’t detract from a good night’s sleep. Successful erotic romance authors know this and are happy to oblige (bless them).
I agree that erotic fiction and erotic romance are separate genres. Erotic fiction does not promise to make the reader feel good. It can be titillating, tantalizing or utterly disturbing. The satisfaction of the reader is often entirely optional. Fine if you like that sort of thing.
I’ve tried both and read far more erotic romances. I also maintain a stash of 90% dark chocolate along side the trashy books. Once a pleasure loving hedonist… 😀
Hello Rosa,
I think you have really put your finger on some essential issues about romance (and erotic romance). The inevitability of the HEA allows the story to have conflict while always assuring the reader that the conflict will draw to a close in a very precise and predictable way. In a way that actually allows the reader to engage fully in the conflict in a semi-detached way. In a sense that does make romance novels like a very long and complex fantasy (as opposed to story) because readers can fully and completely invest their emotions while knowing that they are never truly at risk. Which as you say, allows for a good night’s sleep.
Personally from both the perspective of a reader and writer, I don’t like closed texts. I don’t get the warm fuzzy feeling, that for me is not really escapism. I similarly don’t care for Disney movies, romantic comedies etc. I’d rather have the freedom to think about it after I’m done reading a story and insert whatever fantasy seems fit to me. As a reader I don’t generally want comfort, I want to be bothered. I want the things I read to make me squirm, hurt me, leave me wanting and upset sometimes.
When I write, I don’t really do happy endings because I don’t do them well. I don’t do smooth happy fantasy well. My ideas of what is romantic and intimate tend to differ from modern HEA/HFN erotic romance and I feel fine about that. When I write this bit you said RG:
“There is very little room for alternate interpretations of the text.”
That is very important to me. I enjoy knowing that two people can read a piece I’ve written and come back to me with two very different interpretations of what was going on or ideas about what came next. I love that.
When I write I am pretty disinterested in absolutes. I don’t write or submit to magazines or presses with any sort of this must happen in your story requirements, for me it’s a turn off and doesn’t inspire me to do anything.
As a writer I must agree with you that I’m not interested in creating under those constraints. And, as a reader, I find it almost pointless to start a book if I know how it’s going to end. However, it has to be stated that we are in the minority here.
interestingly enough, I do enjoy murder mysteries. Structurally, mysteries almost always make a similar contract with the reader – pledging to solve the murder by the end of the book. So, I do know the book will end in a reckoning, but I don’t know WHO done it – and that is what compels me to read on.
What I have tried to do here is to escape the value judgement of whether enjoyment of a ‘closed text’ is good or bad. It’s simply a reading experience that many, many readers enjoy.
What began to interest me is: if the inevitability of the HEA is so ubiquitous, then is it really a part of the plot in the way we understand plot? If it is as inevitable as the back cover page on a book, then it may be less a part of the story and more a mechanism by which the story is called to an end.
You know I only in the last ten or so years realized that my tastes are odder than I’d realized?
I think in some markets the HEA is absolutely a mechanism to deliver the product which is the happy see everything worked out in the end story with sex in it. I could be wrong but that is the impression I get. In this case I think the HEA/HFN acts as the closed door. Bang boom done.
When it comes to plot I am not sure what it says about plot as we understand it. Mainly because I tend to poke at the mainstream ideas about what a plot is and how it is structured for fun.
That’s my highly uneducated thought.
Have you read Rosa’s comment? Because I think it pretty well encapsulates what many romance readers want out of the experience. They really don’t want to be educated or challenged in the process of reading the romance. They simply want to be entertained in a manner that doesn’t require any great degree of risk to the emotions they are investing in the story. The HEA ending guarantees that this investment of emotion will not be abused or forfeit.
When I think about a story like Gaijin, I can see that it is almost the antithesis of a romance story. She is never in love. He dies. And she is left, at the end of the story, to ponder on how the experience of all this has changed her. And so are the readers. This may very well preclude a good night’s sleep.
Gaijin may be the antithesis of a romance, for the reasons you cite and others as well, but I felt that it ended not-unhappily. He’s dead and she’s not. There are so many other endings that would have been more tragic and truly awful for her. What this conclusion says about me as a reader, I haven’t decided…
My tastes rear their heads but I am not in that particular tribe of readers. My mini vacations usually include things that make other people really uncomfortable. My angle on this is sideways. As a reader I’m far more satisfied with my hard upsetting things. HEA for me as a reader when I know it’s coming I can’t invest. Even if I know it’s coming I feel cheated and therefor my good nights sleep is ruined.
Shit I am such a masochist in some ways. As I’ve read these posts and all the comments I have been ruminating quite a bit on my aesthetics and whatnot. I haven’t formed any coherent thoughts yet. I want to keep reading and thinking about it.
I don’t enjoy romance books for exactly the reason you’re discussing. I can’t stand the happily ever after ending.
I don’t enjoy seeing everything that made the male character attractive to me removed by the presence of some female character that I might not even like, and by the end of the book he’s just some dull family man with a baby on the way longing for a picket fence.
I don’t want the happily ever after AND I actually don’t even want the ending. There’s nothing more frustrating to me than a fictional series where the male character I liked so much has been ruined, happily ever aftered, and written out of existence, just so the author can start another book in the series, with a new leading man, and then lather rinse repeat.