Emma Peel, not looking like a victim.
Trigger warning: This blog post will make you think.
There has been a lot written over the past few years about the importance of the romance genre in literature.
The thoughtfully written articles cover much of the same ground:
- Female empowerment
- Life from a female perspective
- The importance as woman as heroine
How sad then that in real life, particular in modern feminist thought, that we don’t celebrate women as empowered decision-makers but as victims.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t downright pathetic.
We had the most powerful woman in Australia, the Prime Minister of the country, trade on being a professional victim.
And most recently Hillary Clinton, a wealthy white woman lawyer, former Secretary of State, $200,000 a pop guest speaker, apparently making a tilt for the world’s top job – that of President of the United States, sees herself as a victim too, judging by the extracts from her autobiography.
So, what does this have to do with romance?
As the authors of the great blog pieces mentioned above, romances place empowered women front and centre. They overcome obstacles – some domestic, others arcane – to get to their happily ever after. Or they own their mistakes like Scarlet O’Hara.
The one thing they are not is victims – they are full agents of their success or failure.
Can you imagine what it would be a like to read a novel where the female central character whined that she didn’t get her raise, get her man, get those oh-so-cute-pair-of-shoes, because the world is just a whole bunch of meanies who hate her and don’t want her to succeed because she is a woman?
You’d want to slap her (then you’d be accused of misogynistic violence). Like Tess of the d’Urbervilles, a hapless milksop if there ever was one.
Then why do we accept the same ‘poor me’ victimhood from women in real life?
For wealthy professional women in western countries to blame ‘isms’ – sexism, racism (yeah, I’m looking at you Oprah ‘ the world’s most influential woman’ Winfrey) or whatever-ism – for lack of success or the heat of professional scrutiny does a disservice to women who genuinely struggle for equality of opportunity and inherent dignity.
This is not to say that genuine sexism don’t exist in the world – it most certainly does. Real misogyny takes the form of:
- refused education
- refused franchise
- refused a drivers’ license
- forced marriage
- forces into prostitution
- forced genital mutilation
We should take a leaf out of the books of our favourite romantic heroines – I’ve spoken before about why the wonderful Emma Peel, heroine of The Avengers is my my feminist role model – when they’re faced with detractors and nay-sayers, they worked to prove them wrong, they used their own strengths and did so with purpose and grace.
And as the last page of the book proves – our heroines are victorious in the end.