The Romance Plot intro

Focus:

How earlier texts have seen reimagined, recontextualised, or appropriated contemporary contexts, both affirming or challenging the concerns of the earlier text.

Narrative vs. Story

The conventions of the romance require that the heroine be courted, and the dynamic of the plot comes from the way in which the barriers to expressing her response to the hero – scheming relatives, class constraints, opposing political forces, the social prescriptions of race and caste – are progressively removed by fate, destiny or other forces over which the heroine has no control, so that the final ecstatic union with the beloved may occur.

The shaping romantic myth is, of course, a Western creation; it is a source of puzzlement to members of non-Western societies, in which marriage operates to link family, property and political or religious groups, or else as a prudential institution guaranteeing personal service and the care of one generation for another.

What is important about the Western romantic heroine is that she has no agency, or power to act on her own behalf. Things happen to her - adventures, lovers, reversals of fortune … Jill Ker Conway

Things to look out for

• Values and attitudes

• Context (social and historical)

• Language + form

• Purpose

What is context

• Social/cultural norms

• Historical context (What period of time this was in? Where were they?)

• Pride and Prejudice: Regency Era (early 19th century England countryside)

• Crazy Rich Asians (Late 2010s Singapore)

• Political context

• Technological/scientific advancements

• Personal (author’s) context

What are values

• Personal (author’s) values

• Values based on historical context

• Gendered values

• Class values

What is the relationship between context and values?

Historical context → shapes values

Definition: Cultural context

Cultural context is related to the society where individuals are raised in and at how the culture affects behaviour. It incorporates values that are learned and attitudes that are shared among groups of people. It includes beliefs, meanings, customs, ideas, language, norms.

Definition: Values

Values relate to judgments about what is important in life and how this translates into principles, moral codes or standards of behaviour.

Textual form

• Satire

• Novel of manners

• 3rd person limited narration

• Free indirect discourse and authorial intrusion

  • Free indirect discourse: author speaks on behalf of the characters, author is tell us what happens inside the minds of the characters

Language and form: Satire

• Irony

• Sarcasm

• Parody (mock imitation)

• Caricatures

• Hyperbole

• Example:

  • Bingley sisters

  • Lady Catherine de Bourgh

  • Mr Collins’s

Language and form: Free indirect discourse/authorial intrusion

Narrator shapes our views of characters thoughts + motivations

Language and form: character foils

Opposing characters differ in personality traits

Novel of manners

Textual form explores the daily lives of particular social groups, customs, ideals, etc

What conventions of the Romance genre have been utilised so far?

• The love rival to the main female protagonist: Caroline Bingley

• Enemies to lovers

• Mirrors (Jane and Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy)

• Parallel plot of Jane and Bingley

• Character foil of Elizabeth (more independent and feminist), Charlotte (more practical and realistic)

What societal values are explored? How do these values act as a barrier to love in the novel?

• The need for young women to marry asap (Mrs. Bennet and Charlotte Lucas)

• The naivety of young boy-crazy girls (Kitty and Lydia) (Jane Austen mocks this)

• The pompousness of inherited money and how out of touch the gentry is (Mr Collins & the Bingley sisters)

• The division between the upper gentry and the country (lower) gentry