by Molly Borowitz
For class this week, I had to read “Romantic Love and Other Attachments,” a chapter of Anthony Giddens’ book Transformations of Intimacy. If you’re at all interested in the history of intimacy, I would recommend Giddens very, very highly. In point of fact, I sent a copy of the chapter I’d read to my friend Alex, with whom I often have debates about romance, marriage, and other institutionalized interactions between men and women (yes, I am trying to convince him to write for EW).
We were both particularly interested in Giddens’ contention that romance is inextricably bound up with self-narrative; that “romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative into an individual’s life — a formula which radically extended the reflexivity of sublime love” (Giddens 39). In other words, romance becomes a way of conceiving yourself and your history in terms of your partner; a way of institutionalizing interest and courtship such that you learn as much about yourself as you do about your significant other. The following post is excerpted from my side of the resulting email exchange.
While I don’t necessarily agree with the contention that the romance trope was designed by men in order to subjugate women (and I don’t think Giddens does, either), I do think that in concert with the idea of self-narrative, romance does generate more problems for women than for men. In essence, “romance” is a set of established or institutionalized practices (courting, wooing, an entire romantic canon — roses, poems, candlelight, moonlight, surprise gifts, etc.) that function as a basis for attraction. The promotion of these behaviors as an acceptable basis for love prompts their participants to overlook other necessary components of functional long-term relationships — for instance: sexual chemistry, financial stability, emotional compatibility, family situation, and so on.
In my opinion, this problem is worse for women for a few reasons. One, dudes are usually the ones doing the romancing, right? Yall are the ones who buy the flowers and write the poems and light the candles. And of course, we’re taught to expect these things from you (for which we have movies, Jane Austen, and movie versions of Jane Austen to thank). We conceive of these behaviors as fundamental to our self-narratives — i.e., if you’re capable of romance, you must be a good partner, because that’s how we’ve learned to envision our lives.
That’s how we’ve narrativized the progression from meet to date to marry. Problematically, a lot of the narratives upon which we’ve based our self-narration (e.g. romance novels and romantic comedies) imply that romance leads to happily-ever-after by ending the story at the wedding ceremony. Hence, the movies say that romance is all you need — all that other stuff like religion and family and money and emotional problems and history and allergies isn’t important if you’re actually in love. If you’ve got romance, you’ll be happy forever!
So we’re taught to fall in love with men who buy us flowers and write us poems, rather than men with whom we’re actually compatible (although of course these two things do sometimes, fortunately, overlap). But what then? Well, then the girl is trapped. Although women are becoming increasingly empowered in relationships [Alex made this point in his original email], a failed marriage is still a big social blow. Historically, separation and divorce have carried an incredibly heavy stigma for both sexes, but whereas a man in an unhappy marriage could cheat — or visit prostitutes — and be forgiven, a “fallen woman” brought shame upon her family, her husband, and her children. Basically, she lost her social position irrevocably.
Bummer, right? So I suppose that’s one of my problems with romance as a trope — it’s like a trick! I’m not saying that every man who ever does anything romantic is just doing it to trick some hot and/or rich girl into marrying him despite the fact that he’s poor and/or ugly. Rather, I think romance often functions like blinders or rose-colored glasses or some other trite metaphor about selective vision: e.g., it makes people (men and women) think they’re in love — and that they’re compatible — when in fact they’re not.
So in sum: I’m still down for roses and candelight and moonlit walks on the beach, but I feel like those things are only appropriate after chemistry and compatibility have been established in the cold light of day. Under those circumstances, romance can be what it’s meant to be: a generous gesture that indicates interest in and commitment to your partner. I don’t think that, as feminists, we have to be anti-romance — we just have to make sure that romance is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for, actual emotion.
