Tuesday Talk: posted on Monday, on the eve of a Romantic Day...
Valentine’s Day. Frankly I think it’s a huge commercial con, with
cards costing a fortune and roses costing an even bigger fortune. Isn’t it
funny how the cost of flowers goes up two or three-fold a couple of days before
February 14th?
OK, I’m a grump… *laugh*.
But what do we really want from ‘romance’ in fiction? Particularly
Historical Fiction? The genre is quite broad, from blatant erotic (which often
has very little historical content apart from quite a few bosoms heaving out of
tight-laced corsets, and semi-clad six-pack men wearing tight breeches) to
relationships between real people from the past.
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| ah for a comely wench... |
Is Pride and Prejudice,
and all Jane Austen’s novels, ‘romance’? What about Georgette Heyer, Jean
Plaidy? Is an Elizabeth Chadwick romance? She has received several awards from
the Romantic Novelists Association, after all, but her latest trilogy about
Eleanor of Aquitaine, given the hatred between her and Henry II – he had her
locked up for ten years – is hardly the stuff of red roses and boxes of chocs!
So those are not romance (but by heck what bloomin’ good reads they are!)
I watched Captain Corelli’s
Mandolin on TV a few days ago. Hadn’t read the book, hadn’t seen the movie.
Romance? For a war film that towards the end was quite shocking (and very sad)?
On the other hand, the passion between the two lead characters absolutely
sizzled. Chocolates would melt for sure!
And why do we read romance novels anyway? For the ‘ah that was nice’ factor? Because we
love ‘weepies’, because we’re making up for the lack of romance in our own
humdrum lives with our predictable Other Halves who never even get round to
taking the trash out, let alone thinking of buying flowers.
Anyone remember Nigel in the Radio Drama The Archers? The Nigel of ‘He who fell off the roof on New Year’s Eve’
fame? I liked Nigel. I more or less stopped listening after his demise (bad
move on BBC Radio’s part, I felt, to bump him off.) Why did I like Nigel?
Simple. He was a romantic. 100%. A bit
of a drip at times (hence going up on a roof when it was slippery with ice) but
he did romantic -sweep-you-off-your-feet sort of things. Well, he was rich, so
I guess he could afford exotic surprises.
But another question. Does ‘romance’ in novels or TV drama or
movies, or whatever, have to include sex?
Especially explicit sex? (Or even worse, badly-written sex?) Sometimes, is it
not just as romantic to leave the ‘romance’ to the romantic couple concerned by
permitting them to firmly close the
bedroom door, and leave what happens beyond to our imagination?
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| Romantic moonlight on the sea, a handsome pirate and his beautiful lady. |
Of course if my other half reads this (which I know he won’t)
especially the bit about the trash, I’ll have completely scuppered any chance of
a bunch of daffs and box of Malteasers. Still, I might, if I’m very lucky, get
a cup of tea in bed… There again, I bet I’ll have to get up and make it…
Where’s my heart-throb pirate, Jesamiah Acorne when I need him? Hmm,
I doubt he’d bring me a cuppa either…
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| a splash of romance - me dancing with OH at our daughter's wedding. |
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