Page 159 - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture an Introduction

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Reading romance 143

Drawing on the work of Nancy Chodorow (1978), Radway claims that romantic
fantasy is a form of regression in which the reader is imaginatively and emotionally
transported to a time ‘when she was the center of a profoundly nurturant individual’s
attention’ (Radway, 1987: 84). However, unlike regression centred on the father as
suggested by Coward, this is regression focused on the figure of the mother. Romance
reading is therefore a means by which women can vicariously – through the hero–
heroine relationship – experience the emotional succour which they themselves are
expected to provide to others without adequate reciprocation for themselves in their
everyday existence.
She also takes from Chodorow the notion of the female self as a self-in-relation-to
others, and the male self as a self autonomous and independent. Chodorow argues that
this results from the different relations that girls and boys have with their mothers.
Radway sees a correlation between the psychological events described by Chodorow
and the narrative pattern of the ideal romance: in the journey from identity in crisis to
identity restored, ‘the heroine successfully establishes by the end of the ideal narrative
...the now familiar female self, the self-in-relation’ (139). Radway also takes from
Chodorow the belief that women emerge from the Oedipus complex with a ‘triangular
psychic structure intact’; which means that ‘not only do they need to connect them-
selves with a member of the opposite sex, but they also continue to require an intense
emotional bond with someone who is reciprocally nurturant and protective in a mater-
nal way’ (140). In order to experience this regression to maternal emotional fulfilment,
she has three options: lesbianism, a relationship with a man, or to seek fulfilment by
other means. The homophobic nature of our culture limits the first; the nature of mas-
culinity limits the second; romance reading may be an example of the third. Radway
suggests that

the fantasy that generates the romance originates in the oedipal desire to love and
be loved by an individual of the opposite sex and in the continuing pre-oedipal
wish that is part of a woman’s inner-object configuration, the wish to regain the
love of the mother and all that it implies – erotic pleasure, symbiotic completion,
and identity confirmation (146).

The resolution to the ideal romance provides perfect triangular satisfaction: ‘fatherly
protection, motherly care, and passionate adult love’ (149).
The failed romance is unable to provide these satisfactions because on the one hand,
it is too violent, and on the other, it concludes sadly, or with an unconvincing happy
ending. This highlights in an unpleasurable way the two structuring anxieties of all
romances. The first is the fear of male violence. In the ideal romance, this is contained
by revealing it to be not the fearful thing it appears to be, either an illusion or benign.
The second anxiety is the ‘fear of an awakened female sexuality and its impact on men’
(169). In the failed romance, female sexuality is not confined to a permanent and
loving relationship; nor is male violence convincingly brought under control. Together
they find form and expression in the violent punishment inflicted on women who
are seen as sexually promiscuous. In short, the failed romance is unable to produce a