Ivy League and Romance Novels
I had to grin when I saw this headline in today’s Tennessean. Women’s lib derided the genre and intelligent women were expected to look elsewhere for their literary escapes. But the romance genre has come a long way. It is now being written by Ivy League Ph.D.’s and taught by Ivy League professors.
I bet the naysayers were a bit shocked.
I find I want to quote extensively from the article on behalf of my friends who write exclusively romance, on behalf of those who bowed their heads in shame when Germaine Greer said romance novels encouraged women to “cherish the chains of their bondage.”
I want to quote from the male professor who borrowed his wife’s copy of Bridget Jones’ Diary and had his eyes opened. Now he also teaches courses in the romance genre as well as organizing a conference on romantic fiction at Princeton in which romance authors were invited to speak.
I will quote a bit about Mary Bly (pen name Eloisa James) because it’s just too good to pass up. I’ll refrain from the rest for one simple reason. I really want you to read the article. I want all writers to understand that every novel has an element of romance and writing it well is a skill worth cultivating.
Like the overflowing bosoms on their paperback jackets, romance novelists have burst out — bold and unashamed — led by writers such as James. James is the pseudonym of Shakespeare scholar Mary Bly, a tenured professor at Fordham University whose résumé includes Harvard, Oxford and a Yale Ph.D. cherry on top. Last month, the highbrow The New Yorker ran an admiring profile of Nora Roberts.
Not too shabby for a genre that, in 1970, feminist Germaine Greer claimed enslaved women, encouraging them to cherish “the chains of their bondage.”
Today, that attitude is as hip as your mom’s mood ring. Frothy fiction, it turns out, empowers women.
“Romance novels insist that women’s physical desire is significant,” says professor Bly.
Bly, 47, has faced more obstacles on the road to romance respectability. Her academic adviser begged her to keep secret her career as romance writer Eloisa James until she received tenure at Fordham in 2002.
As Eloisa James, she’s known for her rakish aristocrats mixing it up in licentious London in the late 1700s and early 1800s. She has had 14 USA Today best sellers, and last month, her latest, This Duchess of Mine, entered the list at No. 29.
Bly comes from a famous literary family. Her father is Robert Bly, a poet and the author of Iron John. Her mother, Carol Bly, was an admired short-story writer. Carol Bly died in 2007 unreconciled to her daughter’s best-selling career as a romance writer.
“It was like growing up in the Bach family and you’re Simon & Garfunkel,” she says.
