Romance is in crisis. And not for the first time. At a discussion in 1898, the feminist author and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman took questions from an assembled audience over tea. As a result of middle-class women’s economic dependence on men, she claimed in the book Women and Economics, they had become more feminine and less human. Marriage was a con. Girls were raised to cultivate beauty in order to attract a husband, then, having caught one, were caught themselves, trapped in a home where they became full-time carers. And the trick that led them there was romance.
Romance, seen today through the Vaseline-lensed coverage of the royal wedding, with even proper grown-ups swooning slightly at the thought of a new princess (since April the New York Times has had a fluttering image of doves and butterflies illustrating its royal wedding guide) is in flux. On one hand there’s this, a kitschy scrabbling for proof of true love, and on the other there is an international resetting of the boundaries of hetero romance in the wake of #MeToo. The state of romance; romance, the state of it.
This is how the story goes – this is how the story has always gone. A young, beautiful, preferably poor, preferably vulnerable woman meets a powerful independent man and, after a series of challenges, a push, a pull, he rescues her. And as his prize, she gives him her virginity, the end. But this story has become more and more… problematic. There was a cloudiness to some of the discussions of harassment emerging post-Weinstein that illuminated the issues with this romantic script. Issues that arose after generations of dating rituals that insisted on a woman’s passivity and resistance, and a man never taking no for an answer, and the way that these games have been exploited and fetishised with devastating effect. Romance, with its little Cupid’s arrows scarring the area below our collarbones, its candles burning our wrists, the smell of burning hair.
You see the depth of damage in statements from victims of domestic violence, whose explanations of why they stayed read like the back of Mills & Boon books. In fact, Mills & Boon themselves are aware of a shift in thinking – earlier this year they published a guide to the new romance, including suggestions like: “Tidy your room before using FaceTime.” Without the reliance on their ancient power play between genders, they appeared to be scrabbling slightly – the stakes seemed… not high. But they were trying. They had to – without romance they’d have nothing to sell. After a decade where sales had fallen by 50%, Mills & Boon launched a “feisty and feminist” series peppered with references to “mansplaining” and “feminazis”. And while it was written with a number of tongues in cheeks, in the months since #MeToo, with its sobering lessons about power, a new market has emerged in romance novels that actively plays with the cultural scripts of romance, some utilising the role of HR in stories about office affairs. Which I for one love the sound of, the inevitable “Can I just borrow you for a second?”s, the drawing up of contracts using an outline of the human body to indicate appropriate areas for one to tap when offering tea to a person with headphones on, the erotic potential. Romance is not dead, it’s just buffering. Reloading.
This is the future of romance. Well, this is the landing page for the future of romance, where all the new codes and scripts are being written. That old familiar tension that we’ve been programmed to find titillating, the insistence upon a power struggle, on a man being active, a woman succumbing, is being quietly disrupted.
The new romance, if romance is the mysterious glamour that surrounds love, will happen in broad daylight, with no grand gestures required, nor balloons or teddy bears, or soft things you could buy at Hamleys. Weddings traditionally come at the end of a romantic story, but the test of the new romance will be in watching the royal marriage. No televised ceremonies here, no souvenir coins, no. For those interested in observing what happens next, the marriage itself will be one long bring-your-own picnic, with no canapés or sunshine or anything fun at all. The old romance focused on the bit just before; the new romance will encompass the relationship that follows.
The old romance was for the men in charge while the new romance will encourage women, too, to pursue a mate. To be open and unconfused, and equal, and to pull someone towards you with no niggling doubts that they’re compelled to come with anything other than lust and interest. Without the grim dance of waiting a day to reply to a message, without the obligation to pretend not to care. The old romance was a prank PPI call, a game of catch in the dark; the new romance will be more like strip chess – two people, sitting across from each other, promising nothing.
One more thing…
In July 2014 I was lying in hospital after a, let’s say, traumatic birth? And my friend Rebecca Schiller arrived, uninvited. I was not myself. But in about half an hour she had brought me back to life a little, talking about what had happened, and what to do next. She took my partner off for a bit, too, for an invaluable, teary conversation. Today she runs a charity dedicated to human rights in childbirth, and has written a very sane, very clever book with Penguin, Your No Guilt Pregnancy Plan. I’ve already given a copy to my sister.
The Handmaid’s Tale returns this month with the promise of blood and horror, and I will watch through a now-familiar horrified squint. It’s relentless-tainment.
Google new denim trend ‘invisible jeans’. Sold out everywhere, this... garment? This waistband with thong back, seams and ankles looks like a pair of jeans that’s been mauled by a lion, costs £124. I’m already saving.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.ukor follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
