Have you hugged your rapist today?

[dangermousie]

Spent most of the evening reading particularly horrifying passages of Ethel M. Dell's The Bars of Iron (a huge 1916 romantic bestseller) out loud to Mr. Mousie.

Bars features a most unfortunate heroine - an impoverished widow whose child has died, she attracts the love of a younger, gorgeous heir to a Baronetcy. Alas, when Avery and Piers marry, she finds out that Husband n.2 is the one who murdered Husband n.1.

Upon realization of said fact, Wife runs away back to husband's ancestral home to try to collect her wits, only for Husband n.2 break the door of her bedroom down, behave in such a manner that if I didn't know better, I would have assumed this was a horror novel about an abused woman locked in with an ax murderer, and cap the evening of fun and games by raping his pregnant wifey.

Did I mention he's the hero?

We are supposed to feel deeply for his pain as he feels so guilty for killing Husband n1 in a brawl and running away and then falling for a gal only to find out he made her a widow and he can't tell her the truth. The only emotion Husband n2 inspires in me, however, is a strong desire to brain him with a frying pan until his brains leak out his ears.

There is also a saintly dying child who murmurs religious platitudes. Because having a thirteen-year-old girl die painfully from tuberculosis is a good way to get Wife and Husband n.2 in the same house - you have got to be kidding me - I am supposed to care about romantic intrigue between a brainwashed weeping pot and a murdering rapist and not the poor dying child, wtf??? Did I mention that said child was sent to stay with Wifey by child's mother, Wifey's best friend, as a result of Wifey telling her about the rape because that would help them reconcile. Yeah, Mother of the Year she is, sending her teen daughter into a house with a murdering rapist. Awwww.

Also, Husband n.2 is very excited to go off to fight in WW1 and thinks it's the best thing to happen ever and will make men of everyone. I was very excited for him to go off too, because there was a chance he might get blown up or eaten by rats in the trenches.

Alas, no luck. At the end he comes back wounded and they reconcile. Happy end. Cue my barfing.

The only way I got through this is by mocking bits to Mr. Mousie who had to be repeatedly convinced that guy was the hero. We had an interesting discussion as to why those old-time lady novelists had a rape fixation (I shall never get that). I told him he was an awesome husband because he never raped or murdered anyone and he said I had interestingly low standards :P Not according to Ms. Dell.

I consider self taken in - this is the fourth novel of hers I read (I love trashy old books) and this is the first with rape. I thought I lucked out and found a trashy teen-twenties novelist who didn't have that, but no luck.

The prose, however, is so deliciously purple a whole new color palette should be invented for it.

Piers went like an automaton, but he could not utter a word. His mouth felt parched, his tongue powerless.

Avery! Avery! The woman he had wronged--the woman he worshipped so madly--for whom his whole being mental and physical craved desperately, yearning, unceasingly,--without whom he lived in a torture that was never dormant! Avery! Avery! Was she lying dead behind that lighted window? If so, if so, those six months of torment had been in vain. He would end his misery swiftly and finally before it turned his brain.

Maxwell Wyndham was guiding him towards the conservatory where a dim light shone. It was like an altar-flame in the darkness--that place where first their lips had met. The memory of that night went through him like a sword-thrust. Oh, Avery! Oh, Avery!

Comments

[sodahands.livejournal.com]

She sounds like that Haou Airen mangaka's hero or something.

I don't understand how these writers ever justify rape. There is absolutely nothing romantic about rape! It's a horrible thing and an abuse of power. It's even worse because most of these writers seem to be women. UGH.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

She and Mayu Shinju would have gotten along quite well.

I have no idea what went on in her head.

[main-hoon-emily.livejournal.com]

I will never understand rape in romance novels. Catherine Coulter's books almost always feature a horrific wedding night where the groom forces himself on the bride and it's painful and awful and enough to put a 15-year-old off sex for life, and then he never apologizes or anything. It's always justified as, "Well, the first time is always bad for the woman so there was no way I could have made it better. But let's do it again, because it won't hurt this time."

At least in one book the heroine beat the hero around the head with a bridle or her riding crop or something, but that was only because he forced himself on her for the fifth or sixth time and she was disgusted that she'd liked it.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Ugh! Those books sound awful!

At least in this one, they don't go into graphic details.

*thank God for small mercies*

Ugh.

[morwen_peredhil]

Nothing says True Love like brutalizing your pregnant wife. Ah, romance!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

True love, such a rare flower...

It's not as if Husband n.2 didn't give fair warning to all and sundry as to how awesome he was going to be - Wifey meeting him was when in a temper he was beating his dog to death and to stop him she had to throw a jug of cold water over him.

Quite the romantic ideal...

[morwen_peredhil]

Wait, he beats his dog, too? WHAT THE HELL, ETHEL M. DELL?

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

That's how we first meet him. His dog and the dog of the family she works for get involved in a fight and he gets pissed off:

It was a brutal thrashing and wholly undeserved. Caesar, awaking to the
horror of it, howled his anguish; but no amount of protest on his part
made the smallest impression upon the wielder of the whip. It continued
to descend upon his writhing body with crashing force till he rolled upon
the ground in agony.

Even then the punishment would not have ceased, but for a second
interruption. It was the woman from the Vicarage garden again; but she
burst upon the scene this time with something of the effect of an
avalanche. She literally whirled between the man and his victim. She
caught his upraised arm.

"Oh, you brute!" she cried. "You brute!"

He stiffened in her hold. They stood face to face. Caesar crept whining
and shivering to the side of the road.

Slowly the man's arm fell to his side, still caught in that quivering
grasp. He spoke in a voice that struggled boyishly between resentment and
shame. "The dog's my own."

Her hold relaxed. "Even a dog has his rights," she said. "Give me that
whip, please!"

He looked at her oddly in the growing darkness. She was trembling as she
stood, but she held her ground.

"Please!" she repeated with resolution.

With an abrupt movement he put the weapon into her hand. "Are you going
to give me a taste?" he asked.

She uttered a queer little gasping laugh. "No. I--I'm not that sort.
But--it's horrible to see a man lose control of himself. And to thrash a
dog--like that!"

I think he quite warned her there - after that I wouldn't be seen dead talking to him.

[main-hoon-emily.livejournal.com]

in a temper he was beating his dog to death...

And she married him???

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Clearly she is like those women who write to serial killers - no self-preservation.

[myrna-nora.livejournal.com]

That is ridiculous! What convinced these novelist that rape would be romantic!? Yuck!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but she isn't anywhere near as bad as The Sheik by EM Hull which was a huge psycho bestseller and featured wall-to-wall rape (haughty British heroine Diana who dominates men gets abducted by a Sheik and raped till she likes it. But it's OK, he's secretly a European aristocrat). That was one of the rare books I didn't finish because I was too disgusted (and I managed to get through The Klansman, the book Birth of a Nation was based on, so that's saying something).

Or the hugely popular Elinor Glyn who had a novel where heroine threatens to shoot herself if hero rapes her then faints. She assumes she's been raped when she wakes up so she marries him - only to find out nothing happens - he says he wasn't going to tell her so she'd know she is his and marry him.

Charming.

To be fair to Dell, this is about her earliest novel and she 'outgrew' it as far as I can tell - I rather adore Charles Rex by her (about a crossdressing girl who ends up being a servant to a bored upper class guy - it's funny and romantic and I swear that is where Heyer got her These Old Shades idea) and the delicious angst of The Obstacle Race is trashy goodness and neither of them have raping. But ehhh - her ideas in general what constitutes awesome men and my ideas, are not the same.

[myrna-nora.livejournal.com]

I liked the Rudolph Valentino silent movie The Sheik. But I read only a little bit of the book, before I gave up.

That does sound just like These Old Shades.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It really does have a number of remarkable similarities - she is a tough child of the streets running from an abusive home, he is older and with a bad reputation and was in love with this beautiful 'pure' woman who instead married this 'good' man - and the couple takes the heroine under their wings. She believes she'll wreck his life/he still loves his old love and runs away and he has to go find her; he kneels to her at the end and she is horrified etc

Hmmm....

TOS is way better though.

The ending is very purple-prosey cute:


That was the first thing that occurred to her--that he should kneel.

"Oh, don't! Oh, don't!" she said quickly. "I am not--not Maud."

He regarded her humorously, but the old derisive lines were wholly gone from his dark face. His eyes held something that was unfamiliar, something that made her quiver with a quick agitation that was not distress.

"So I am only allowed to kneel to Maud!" he said.

She tried to meet his look and, failing, hid her face. "I--I know you have always loved her," she murmured rather incoherently. "You couldn't--you couldn't--pretend to--to--to really love anyone else--after Maud!"

There fell a brief silence, and she thought the beating of her heart would choke her. Then there came the touch of his hand upon her head, and its wild throbbing grew calmer.

"No," he said, and in his voice was a new deep note unknown to her. "I am not pretending, Nonette."

The light touch drew her as it were magnetically. With a swift, impulsive movement she raised herself, gave herself to him, hiding her face still more deeply against his breast.

"But you--you--you couldn't really love me!" she whispered like an incredulous child. "You sure you do?"

His arms went round her, holding her fast. He made no other answer. Saltash, the glib of tongue and ready of gibe, was for once speechless in the presence of that which has no words.

blahblahblah etc...

I love that sort of cheese but not cheese with a topping of rapeage.

[thinking-lotus.livejournal.com]

I consider self taken in - this is the fourth novel of hers I read (I love trashy old books) and this is the first with rape. I thought I lucked out and found a trashy teen-twenties novelist who didn't have that, but no luck.

This sort of thing makes me think that, not sooooo long ago, rape required a lot of reconciling.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Probably - it's shocking how much of it you find in trashier lit of the time.

[sundae-sweet.livejournal.com]

"Oh, Avery! Oh, Avery!"

Sounds like a meme waiting to happen.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

LOLOLOL. True.

In her next book I am reading, Husband N2 (different from the Avery-yeller) makes Husband N1 disappeat because Husband N1 was a scummy bigamist and he threatens him so Husband N1 runs off. I sense a pattern...