Take Me, You Brute!
Beating our tiny fists against the broad, unyielding chest of the paperback romance.
Friday, July 6, 2007
One Night For Love, by Mary Balogh
I have just come up with a genius new term for a romance novel you don't finish: Codex Interruptus*. I know, I know, codex isn't that kind of book but it is a kind of book and therefore I am brilliant. This is the third brilliant thing I've done today, the others being putting fresh raspberries in my cottage cheese, and giving up on One Night For Love.

I may roll my eyes at those irrepressible bad boys who co-star in most of these novels, but I sure do miss 'em when they're gone. Neville Wyatt is so, so earnest and pure-hearted that he's almost transparent. A beautiful blond major fighting Napoleon in Portugal, he finds himself drawn to his commanding officer's winsome daughter, Lily Doyle. When commanding-officer is wounded and dying, Neville nobly volunteers to marry her, to protect her from Rape at the hands (erm) of the French. He is as good as his word: the next day he marries her, they admit they've been in love all along, and they have One Night For (remarkable, transcendental) Love. Why only One Night? Because the next day Lily is shot, Neville rushes to her side, gets shot himself, and falls unconscious knowing that Lily is dead. Or is she...?

She's not, and she shows up soon enough, right as Neville is about to remarry, and he of course does the honorable thing and stops everything and reinstates Lily as his wife. If he had had her kicked out of the church and married the bride-in-waiting I might have been able to finish this book, but he didn't, so I couldn't. I must shake my head and sigh in unison with Roger Daltrey, "Lily, oh, Lily," for I thought this kind of heroine had come, none too soon, to extinction half a century ago. Lily is what Little Eva from Uncle Tom's Cabin would be if Little Eva had grown up and got laid. She's whimsical and philosophical and she's always doing eccentric things like running barefoot on the beach and befriending peasants.

You see, Lily doesn't come from this stilted English class system. They're so insular they can't recognize their unnaturalness, their rigidity! This illiterate army brat charms the pants off the populace with her impulsivity and homespun wisdom. Her life has been so hard (more later) that she is filled with insight beyond her years, a veritable Chicken Soup for the Regency Soul. She flits around being charmingly astonished at things like servants and parasols, and in general devotes herself to spreading sunshine where'er she goes. But don't by any means get the impression that she is one-dimensional. For between the time of her supposed death and the time of her reappearance, Lily was...Raped.

I think romance writers are trying to atone for the years in which heroes routinely raped heroines into falling in love with them. Now every other one you pick up has a heroine who has been raped and a hero who must fix her. It goes something like this: Hero is passionately embracing Rapee. Rapee suddenly snaps and begins sobbing and clawing like a wild animal. Hero stops immediately and says, "My darling! Someone...has hurt you! Tell me who it was and I'll kill him!" Rapee demurs and sobs in Hero's arms. Hero reflects sagely that whoever is planning on loving Rapee will have to do it right gingerly for a while. Rapee confides that what would really make her feel better is to have sex with Hero. Hero obliges, reminding Rapee through gritted teeth that he will willingly pull out at any time. Rapee assures him that it is not necessary and presently orgasms. Hero orgasms too. Hooray! Rapee has been cured! Now she's up for anything!

This asininity has been regurgitated for Neville and Lily, and spread as far as it could go. I don't know how many times we heard Neville say, "Would it help to talk about it?" and watched Lily bite her lip and shake her head. But even Rape can only take you so far with a Boy Scout and a Pollyanna, and 200 pages in, when Ms. Balogh divulged that there was a plot against Lily's life, I curtsied and murmured, "Uncle."

*Yeah, so I googled it and unfortunately it's been done. But I didn't know that when I made it up!

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