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vcmw[I haven't had much to say here lately, and it occurred to me there are things I've said so often offline that I should find a way to make sure I don't keep saying them again, but maybe haven't said them online. So here you go.]
Things I Say Too Often at Parties 1: Nora Roberts is my Pop-Culture Feminist Hero.
Nora Roberts includes feminist messages in her stories on a consistent basis, right down to the world-building level and all the way through to the smallest character relationships, and she does it in works that have wide commercial appeal. I am always trying to lay this out at parties for people who don't read romance, so I'm hoping that if I write it all up here I'll stop going off at people at cocktail parties.
Feminist NR Thing #1: Women can build whatever kind of life they want professionally. Roberts heroines are police officers, arson investigators, stay-at-home mothers, jewel thieves, photographers, artists, researchers, writers, interior decorators, bakers, florists, innkeepers, ranchers, or any combination that works for the woman. The stories support women's choices, including the choice to be a full time parent or to forgo having children, the choice to work alone or with others, and the choice to work in any field.
Feminist NR Thing #2: About that "choice to be a full time parent" thing? In the sf-world building Roberts does for her "In Death" work as J. D. Robb, being a professional parent is recognized as a valid full time career paying a living wage. Parents can choose to take classes in parenting and receive a full living wage income for devoting their time to their child's well being and success to age 18. No one is shamed for choosing or not choosing this path, which is not treated as welfare and seems to be open to either gender.
Feminist NR Thing #3: Women in her books have deep and rewarding friendships with other women. They often help each other professionally and personally, go into business together, and encourage each other. Friendship between women is shown as so important to many characters that they evaluate the potential impact of romantic relationships on their friendships as one of the main go/no-go decision points in pursuing the relationship.
Feminist NR Thing #4: Sex work is treated thoughtfully. Especially in the sf-world building for the "In Death" works, sex work is treated as something that has many aspects, ranging from something that can be coercive or negative to something that can be deliberately chosen and pursued professionally, with licensing, certifications, advanced class work, and a successful income. Sex workers are shown engaging in dating and romantic relationships which are separate from their work, without being judged by their romantic partners for that work.
Feminist NR Thing #5: Intersectional Feminism. The protagonists of most romances I've read by Nora Roberts are generally white and heterosexual, but the world building and the secondary characters include consistently positive portrayals of people from varied sexual, ethnic, and racial identities. There are also some multiracial and multiethnic protagonists in her work. Queer identities and relationships are supported in her stories, both in the contemporary and science fiction stories. As an example, in her Bride Quartet the text makes a point of including lesbian and gay couples in the different wedding parties that Vows hosts, and the conversations about these weddings do not place them on a different footing in the text from other weddings. Explicit conversations happen indicating welcome and delight for the queer couples, showing that it's not a case of reserved judgement but of active affirmation.
Feminist NR Thing #6: Men support women's choices. Consistently, one of the ways that you can identify which guy in a story will end up being the romantic hero of a Roberts work is that he's a guy who believes in her career decisions, accepts that she can handle situations herself, and is available to help but doesn't generally push his way in or take over, whether in career or personal life.
It's not that I think Nora Roberts is some ideological paragon of feminism or anything like that. I'm sure there are things she gets wrong, or doesn't get right enough for some readers. Because that's how stories work. What I consistently find it worth pointing out is that she's a successful, mainstream, contemporary author, with a large audience, who gets a lot right, and it's obviously a deliberate part of how her stories are told. And this deserves to be noticed and talked about. If nothing else, think about how many thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people read her books and are comfortable enough with the stuff she puts in there to keep coming back to the next book, and the next one. To me that says there's a huge, very mainstream audience that is comfortable with all of the above as a baseline. Roberts's books aren't generally talked about as noticeably, explicitly feminist, they're talked about as successful commercial romance.
Things I Say Too Often at Parties 1: Nora Roberts is my Pop-Culture Feminist Hero.
Nora Roberts includes feminist messages in her stories on a consistent basis, right down to the world-building level and all the way through to the smallest character relationships, and she does it in works that have wide commercial appeal. I am always trying to lay this out at parties for people who don't read romance, so I'm hoping that if I write it all up here I'll stop going off at people at cocktail parties.
Feminist NR Thing #1: Women can build whatever kind of life they want professionally. Roberts heroines are police officers, arson investigators, stay-at-home mothers, jewel thieves, photographers, artists, researchers, writers, interior decorators, bakers, florists, innkeepers, ranchers, or any combination that works for the woman. The stories support women's choices, including the choice to be a full time parent or to forgo having children, the choice to work alone or with others, and the choice to work in any field.
Feminist NR Thing #2: About that "choice to be a full time parent" thing? In the sf-world building Roberts does for her "In Death" work as J. D. Robb, being a professional parent is recognized as a valid full time career paying a living wage. Parents can choose to take classes in parenting and receive a full living wage income for devoting their time to their child's well being and success to age 18. No one is shamed for choosing or not choosing this path, which is not treated as welfare and seems to be open to either gender.
Feminist NR Thing #3: Women in her books have deep and rewarding friendships with other women. They often help each other professionally and personally, go into business together, and encourage each other. Friendship between women is shown as so important to many characters that they evaluate the potential impact of romantic relationships on their friendships as one of the main go/no-go decision points in pursuing the relationship.
Feminist NR Thing #4: Sex work is treated thoughtfully. Especially in the sf-world building for the "In Death" works, sex work is treated as something that has many aspects, ranging from something that can be coercive or negative to something that can be deliberately chosen and pursued professionally, with licensing, certifications, advanced class work, and a successful income. Sex workers are shown engaging in dating and romantic relationships which are separate from their work, without being judged by their romantic partners for that work.
Feminist NR Thing #5: Intersectional Feminism. The protagonists of most romances I've read by Nora Roberts are generally white and heterosexual, but the world building and the secondary characters include consistently positive portrayals of people from varied sexual, ethnic, and racial identities. There are also some multiracial and multiethnic protagonists in her work. Queer identities and relationships are supported in her stories, both in the contemporary and science fiction stories. As an example, in her Bride Quartet the text makes a point of including lesbian and gay couples in the different wedding parties that Vows hosts, and the conversations about these weddings do not place them on a different footing in the text from other weddings. Explicit conversations happen indicating welcome and delight for the queer couples, showing that it's not a case of reserved judgement but of active affirmation.
Feminist NR Thing #6: Men support women's choices. Consistently, one of the ways that you can identify which guy in a story will end up being the romantic hero of a Roberts work is that he's a guy who believes in her career decisions, accepts that she can handle situations herself, and is available to help but doesn't generally push his way in or take over, whether in career or personal life.
It's not that I think Nora Roberts is some ideological paragon of feminism or anything like that. I'm sure there are things she gets wrong, or doesn't get right enough for some readers. Because that's how stories work. What I consistently find it worth pointing out is that she's a successful, mainstream, contemporary author, with a large audience, who gets a lot right, and it's obviously a deliberate part of how her stories are told. And this deserves to be noticed and talked about. If nothing else, think about how many thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people read her books and are comfortable enough with the stuff she puts in there to keep coming back to the next book, and the next one. To me that says there's a huge, very mainstream audience that is comfortable with all of the above as a baseline. Roberts's books aren't generally talked about as noticeably, explicitly feminist, they're talked about as successful commercial romance.
