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howlsmovinglibrary · 7 years

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The relationship between misogyny and romance: a SJM study

Why female desire* isn’t problematic, but A Court of Thorns and Roses is.

In which I wade into an issue in depth, praying that the flame war gods do not strike me down.

**Please note that this essay discusses only the misogynist elements of SJM’s writing in the ACOTAR series. There are obviously other problematic elements that require acknowledgement, but this is the one I feel confident in addressing. I haven’t read any of ACOWAR yet.**

*also, female desire in this instance refers to the desire of the presumed female reader of romance. The reading of romance and YA is obviously not exclusive to women, although a lot of the assumptions of SJM’s work ascribe to the concept of a binary gender.

Recently (or perhaps it’s always been there, and has only recently wandered onto my dash) I’ve seen a lot of discussion of the problematic nature of Sarah J. Maas’ writing. This is an issue I have thought about a lot, because although I absolutely hate the Throne of Glass series with a passion, on account of what I feel is bad writing, poor plotting and awful treatment of non-heterosexual non-white people, for some reason this hatred does not extend to ACOTAR and ACOMAF, which I read and really enjoyed, despite much of the content - and the issues of diversity and misogyny - being consistent across both.

I soon realised that this difference of opinion lies in the genre distinctions I make between the two. While Throne of Glass was initially marketed as a YA high fantasy book (I never got past the second, so I can’t speak for the later books), ACOTAR was sold to me as essentially a romance novel, or at least a paranormal romance. While I ask for diverse representation and good feminism from my fantasy reading, it seems that I consider escapist fantasy, misogyny and sexism to be all part and parcel of romance.

In fact, when you examine ACOTAR and ACOMAF’s problematic gender portrayal (as I am about to), you realise that a lot of Maas’ problematic tropes - traditional alpha male behaviour, such as possessiveness and animalistically coded desire, issues of iffy (and in cases utterly absent) consent, reinforced heterosexuality - are typical to a majority of the romance genre.

‘Alpha Males’ in Romance

The question of whether ‘alpha male’ behaviour is problematic and should be called out isn’t unique to SJM’s writing (although, in her case, you could perhaps refer to it as ‘fae male’ behaviour). It has been levelled at the whole of the romance genre, in particular paranormal romances and ‘bodice rippers’, for a long time.

The problem with outright condemning it lies in the paradox of the romance genre itself. On the one hand, romance is written by and aimed almost exclusively at women – it is the genre where female desire, which is often suppressed or demonised in society and popular media, can be freely indulged and explored. Women are writing these kinds of relationships, and other women are buying them, so clearly some kind of female desire is being acknowledged and explored, whereas before it would’ve been suppressed or even punished. On the other hand, it often tends to be explored in some quite squicky ways. Because romance has roots in the Byronic heroes of Mr. Darcy, Mr. Rochester and (for a reason I still cannot fathom) Heathcliffe, they often feature domineering, rude, taciturn and belligerent male love interests who are critical and sometimes cruel to the heroine. And, in the paranormal romance genres, and new adult literature in particular, this has morphed into a more sinister figure, the possessive, aggressive ‘alpha’ male.

Feminist critics have constantly been trying to decide whether romance literature is feminist or misogynist. Most would say that women should be allowed to enjoy sex and indulge in whatever fantasies they wish to, when the female desire has been policed, demonised and made a taboo for so long. On the other hand, a lot of romance literature focuses on fantasies which have their basis in some very heteronormative and sexist concepts. This raises a question: do women (or the presumed femme coded reader) enjoy them because they enjoy them, or because this is what society has told them to enjoy? Is the romance genre actually just reproducing and perpetuating this harmful societal influence, rather than promoting sexual agency?

This is why when I criticise the misogyny in her writing (and specifically misogyny, diversity is another matter), I criticise SJM and her authorial intent, rather than her readers, because I’m not going to tell people what they should and shouldn’t find enjoyable or sexy in a romance novel. But it is also why people should be willing to see the problematic elements of her writing, because otherwise the harmful sexist ideals it is based in just get thoughtlessly perpetuated. People should be willing to discriminate between what is explicitly a fantasy, and what is outright abuse.

Sexual fantasy vs. abuse

An example in book is the difference between the ‘napkin’ dress scenes in ACOTAR and ACOMAF. In ACOTAR, Feyre is ‘dressed’ and painted against her will, she is humiliated and made into an exhibition involuntarily.

‘They stripped me naked, bathed me roughly, and then - to my horror - began to paint my body [...] the two High Fae ignored my demands to be clothed in something else [...] but held my hands firm when I tried to rip the shift off’ (ACOTAR, p.254)

What follows is a party where Rhys forces her to drink what is essentially drugged wine, and then she dances for him, in a scene that is analogous to date rape. She blacks out and wakes up with only the smudged lines on her body to tell her what she has done, or rather, what has been done to her. Her agency is ripped away from her.

“What happened?”[...] “I don’t think you want to know.” I studied the few smudges on my waist, marks that looked like hands had held me. “Who did that to me?” I asked quietly.’ (ACOTAR, p.259)

To compare, in ACOMAF, Feyre consents to being dressed in order to enter the Court of Nightmares, and willing enters into an exhibitionist scene with Rhys (if under very flimsy plot purposes).

‘I leaned a bit more against him, my legs widening ever so slightly. Why’d you stop? [...] I became the music, and the drums, and the wild, dark thing in the High Lord’s arms.” (ACOMAF, p.414)

‘We were his distraction [...] You and I put on a good show, I said’ (p.415)

This time, the scene is enacted with consent - in fact, her and Rhysand have discussed their actions beforehand and established limits: ‘he’d apologised in advance for it - for this game, these roles we’d have to play’ (p.410). Feyre is the one who makes a choice, she initiates sexual contact, she is sober and has full agency, even when it does not seem that way to their audience.

The latter scene in ACOMAF is, arguably, a dominance fantasy that is carried out with the consent of both parties (three, if you include a reader indulging in the same fantasy). The first isn’t, it is abuse, but somehow it gets painted retrospectively with the same brush.

There is nothing innately wrong in engaging in dominance fantasies, or enjoying a book which perpetuates one. You could even take enjoyment in the ACOTAR version of the dress sequence, if you, as a reader, consent to indulge in it. But please understand, that that is the *reader* who is making that decision, whereas SJM is forcing it on all readers and, in universe, on Feyre.

Why this is problematic: it is not wrong for a reader to feel desire, but an author orchestrates the route that desire takes

The reader can choose to engage in a fantasy (and in this case the word is not explicitly sexual, it can also refer to the escapist elements of ACOTAR, or the romantic nature of Feysand’s relationship), either in spite of the problematic elements or in ignorance of them, and not necessarily be culpable. But it is important to note that, if the reader does accept this in ignorance, it is an ignorance which SJM contributes to, because she normalises problematic behaviours that have become ingrained in society, and also in the culture of heteronormative romance. Rhysand is never called out for the non-consensual public humiliation and things he forced Feyre to do in the first book. It is in fact retrospectively romanticised and made into an act of love:

‘“So we endured it. I made you dress like that so Amarantha wouldn’t suspect, and made you drink the wine so you would not remember the nightly horrors in that mountain [...] I was jealous.” (ACOMAF, p.525)

The repetition of ‘I made’ acknowledges that this behaviour was non-consensual. But all that’s offered is a weak excuse about how it was done as a way of him processing and dealing with his emotions, and it is explained that the act actually protected Feyre (bleugh). Rhysand even admits that he was doing it to ‘get back at Tamlin’ (p.542), reducing Feyre to a territory that is fought over by the two men, something which is never interrogated further - and will no doubt be perpetuated by the plot of ACOWAR.

And this is what ultimately makes me uncomfortable with SJM’s books: not that they have these elements of domination, but that the more sinister aspects are never questioned or challenged. Through the thin and very flimsy plot trickery of ACOMAF, Rhysand is made into a saint, his previous sexual assault explained away, becoming something done to Feyre out of love and for her own good.

And regardless of how you feel about Rhysand as a character, or the quality of his redemption arc, you have to admit that this is particular incident is part of a much more insidious theme in SJM’s writing, where all sexual violence and domineering behaviour becomes normalised to a point where they are explicitly attributed to the innate nature of masculine desire, and of masculinity itself. Rhysand was confused in ACOTAR, he needed to get close to and protect Feyre because of the incipient mating bond, so he has to ‘help’ her without her consent. Tamlin will act aggressively feral when initiating sexual contact, because that’s part of his essential nature as a fae male and a shape shifter. Even though this behaviour is called out in Tamlin, a) it is not done so in the book where it happens, meaning that a reader of ACOTAR alone could see it as an acceptable form of sexual interaction, and b) the connection of this behaviour to his innate nature as a male is never problematised or challenged. Tamlin’s possession and dominance is a ‘wrong’ version of natural fae male behaviour, but this behaviour is still upheld as an ideal. Because what Tamlin does is not that different from how a fae male acts under a mating bond - it’s just that he and Feyre are not mates.

Don’t believe me? Rhysand acts just as possessive and domineering as Tamlin, it’s just that he has the ‘right’ to be, as Feyre’s true mate, under a perfectly natural force he ‘cannot control’...

‘“It’s normal [...] When a couple accepts the mating bond, it’s...overwhelming. Again, harkening back to the beasts we once were. Probably something about ensuring the female was impregnated...males get so volatile that it can be dangerous for them to be in public anyway.” (ACOMAF, p.541)

There is *so much wrong* with this entire concept - for one thing, ascribing biological imperatives to desire and romance is heteronormative as fuck - but the main issue is the way that toxic, violent and ‘volatile’ masculinity is made entirely natural - ingrained into fae males from the beginning of time when they were ‘beasts’. It’s telling that the words ‘beasts’ is used, because it seems that, in the world of this book, men are animals where sex is concerned - another utterly toxic image of masculinity. And this utterly ‘normal’ behaviour is never challenged: Feyre accepts that she is in close proximity to a ‘dangerous’ man without question. Rhysand can’t help being possessive, because he’s mated to Feyre, whereas Tamlin’s possessiveness was bad because he didn’t have the right to be. Why doesn’t Feyre get as violently possessive as Rhys does when their mating bond holds? As far as I can tell, it’s cause she’s a woman, just waiting to get ‘impregnated’.

There is very little difference between this passage and the behaviour that Tamlin has portrayed in ACOMAF to make him become the villain of the piece: dominance, jealousy, possessiveness, a desire to place Feyre in a traditionally feminine role of wife and mother. Yes, Rhys is ‘nicer’ to Feyre than Tamlin is in ACOMAF, but that is arguably an act of clear author intentionality, designed to rewrite his character, and utterly inconsistent with his possessive and sexual actions in ACOTAR. And more importantly, the link between masculinity, sex, and domineering violence remains firmly in place.

Masculinity and dominance are inextricably linked in the ACOTAR series, and this link is never challenged. In both the arc of ACOTAR and ACOMAF masculine dominance is held up as an ideal - even if the ideal of Tamlin is later dismantled to be replaced by Rhys, Rhys’ domineering characteristics are still disassociated from Tamlin’s ‘bad’ example and held up as a positive trait. Furthermore, it is only ever men who are domineering and possessive, unless you count Amarantha, and Ianthe, whose attempts at dominating seduction are always utterly demonised as wrong and intrusive.

‘She’d hounded him relentlessly - stalked the other males, too. [...] She’d be a problem - now or later. He knew it. Kill her now, end the threat before it began, face the wrath of the other High Priestesses, or...see what happened.’ (Ianthe seducing Rhys in ACOMAF, p.233)

Don’t get me wrong, all situations are examples sexual assault - but only the ones perpetuated by women are called out and condemned, and in both cases this is explicitly tied to their bids for power. How many times has ‘stalking’ been used positively in reference to Rhysand’s sexiness? Here, when a woman ‘stalks’, it is seen as wrong. Even if these characters are legitimately evil in-universe (no one is trying to redeem Amarantha), you cannot ignore a trend within the series where male dominance and possessiveness (in the case of Rhys) is excused and actually conceived as the ‘ideal’ relationship, and the same predatory characteristics are coded as villainous and unnatural when presented in women. That is contributing to an offensive and toxic conception of gender, masculinity in particular, and of heterosexual relationships (or, in SJM’s writing, relationships, given that non-het relationships have - at the point of writing - never been explored).

This is also why SJM needs to be called out on her misogyny (among other awful things), regardless of whether you enjoy her books or not. Because she normalises these behaviours, and people will think they’re normal if we don’t decry them. While I actually have no issue with sex being in books aimed at young people (hell, this was kind of the only way young me learnt about these things), I do take issue with representing toxic relationship dynamics as the norm OR THE IDEAL to younger readers, who are unlikely to be certain about what they want or should expect from relationships. She normalises an incredibly sexist dynamic that has men universally characterised as possessive, violent and dominating, and women as passive objects to be fought over. In the case of Feysand, this is repainted in ACOMAF as a narrative of undying and ‘true’ love. Even if you enjoy the books, you *cannot* ignore these implications.

#anti-sjm #essay #critique #emma writes about things #i like talking about books #please don't kill me #this is how I celebrate the ACOWAr release apparently #and yes I do actually like these books #but come on this shit is just weird #anti acotar #anti acomaf #heteronormativity #toxic masculinity

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