Moon Dance (33 page)

It was quiet.

And then a girl raised her
hand.

“
Yeah,” said
Larissa.

“
Oh, you mean they glorify
rape, right?”

“
Yes,” said Larissa,
nodding. “Absolutely, that is what I was going for. And that’s
going to form sort of the structure for our lesson today. In
particular, that book you’ve got there,
The Flame and the Flower
, is
considered an offender in the arena of the rape-leads-to-love trope
in romance fiction.”

Dana scooted down in her chair. This
lecture was starting to make her feel uncomfortable.

Larissa continued. “In our
own no-means-no culture, the idea of sexual consent is very black
and white. And in these romance novels, especially ones from the
1970s and 1980s, it’s definitely muddier. There are a lot of what
is sometimes called forced-consent scenes. And if forced consent
sounds like it’s not much different than rape to you, that may
because, on the surface, it really isn’t. But there is a special
sort of structure to a romance novel, and in that structure, we’re
fairly certain that any man that the heroine has detailed sexual
intercourse with is going to be the man that she falls in love
with. So, there’s a certain safety in reading it, because there’s a
promise that everything is going to turn out right in the end. And
that’s because of the formulaic nature of the books, as has already
been pointed out.

“
So,” she continued, “I’m
going to give a prevailing theory on all this rape/forced consent
in romance novels, and then I’m going to go deeper underneath that
theory, and we’ll just keep digging until we hit the seedy
underbelly.”

More titters.

“
All right, so one of our
working theses for this class is that the romance story is an
adventure story for women, with the relationship being the
adventure, right? So, we’re looking at the romantic evolution of
the relationship as following the same kind of structure as a quest
or a swashbuckling fight against evil or whatever the stereotypical
male equivalent might be. We’ve already established some of the
signposts of the adventure, in that there has to be some sort of
adventure to the hero. There’s no romance novel about the two kids
who grew up together and were high school sweethearts and got
married and had two kids and a dog, because that’s not an
adventure. But thus far, we’ve only looked at interpersonal
conflict, for instance Emma and Mr. Knightley not getting along or
Andie and Ben being on opposite sides of a bet.

“
Today,” she continued, “we
want to examine the idea of the hero as an adventure in and of
himself. One way to achieve this is to make the hero dangerous. And
so, we’ve got a lot of romance novels with a dangerous hero.
Sometimes he’s dangerous because of his job or his position. For
instance, there are pirate romances and romances with men in
motorcycle gangs. Sometimes he’s dangerous because of what he is.
Maybe he’s a monster. There are romances where women fall in love
with vampires, for instance.

“
And so, our first point is
simply going to be that romance novels function as an adventure,
and that the adventure is more thrilling if the hero can’t decide
whether he wants to bite you or bang you, if you’ll pardon my
crudeness.”

The class laughed again.

“
Second of all, in regards
to these rape fantasies that permeate this kind of fiction, the
prevailing theory is that rape fantasies are present because ‘nice
girls’ don’t want to have sex, so the hero has to force her to give
in to her carnal desires. In this way, it’s a safe way to
experience sexual pleasure without having any responsibility. So,
if you’ll remember the virgin/whore dichotomy, this allows the
romance heroine to be both the virgin and the whore without
compromising her principles. And the basic argument is that this is
all psychological, but that when women were more repressed sexually
in the 1970s and 1980s, that they needed the rape fantasy more. But
now women are self-actualized in their sexual identities, and it’s
not as prevalent.

“
And it is true,” she
continued, “that you definitely see a decline in rape fantasies in
romance novels in the 1990s and later. So, it would seem to make
sense as a theory, and there are definitely some elements of truth
in it. But this is the part in which I’m going to start digging
deeper.

“
What’s interesting is
that, with the recent self-publishing boom, we’re starting to see a
lot more of these rape fantasies being published now, but they’re
mostly self-published. If you look at the rise of
Fifty Shades of Gray
,
that came out of fan fiction, it came from self-publishing, and
then it became a huge hit. So, it begs the question, if this
fantasy came from collective repression of women’s sexual desires,
then why is it still so prevalent? In fact, it seems more likely
that the decline in the rape fantasies in romance novels happened
more because of publisher censorship than any decline in demand
amongst readers.

“
And that’s very
interesting, because it raises other questions. Now, in general,
fiction is all about wish-fulfillment. Men like watching
Die Hard
, because they
like being able to pretend that they are able to kill bad guys and
protect people. And romance novels are also wish-fulfillment, but
even a woman with a self-professed rape fantasy doesn’t actually
want to be raped. So, I think there’s something deeper going on
here, and within the context of the narrative, I think that it’s
more than individual women’s repressed sexuality. I’m going to
argue that the rape fantasy in a romance novel is part of something
ancient, something deep within human nature. I know that’s a big
claim to make, but I’m going to do my best to back it
up.

“
So, we’re going to
turn to theepic of
Gilgamesh
, which you all should have
read in your freshman lit classes. Since I know that most of you
probably didn’t read anything in freshman lit, I’ll try to
summarize for you.”

The class laughed again.

“
In
Gilgamesh
, there’s a
character named Enkidu, and he is a beast-man. He’s two-thirds
animal and one-third man. He lives in the wild, and he’s completely
uncivilized. But over the course of the narrative, Enkidu becomes
civilized, and his introduction to civilization is that he has sex
for seven days with a temple concubine. After he does this, he’s
unable to run with the animals in the way that he has before. He’s
lost strength, but he’s somehow more intelligent and more
self-aware.

“
In this case, then, the
sexual act is a civilizing force on the beast-man. And I think that
we see the same pattern in romance novels with dangerous men. So,
it’s not so much that the heroine is repressing her sexuality as it
is that she’s surrendering herself to the bestial hero in order to
civilize him. Once the hero has become both sexually and
romantically connected to the heroine, he chooses to settle down
with her at the end of the novel, and they usually get married and
make babies. We’ve talked about the happily-ever-after
ending.

“
Basically what we’re
looking at here is an ancient story that’s playing out over and
over again in romance novels. It’s very archetypal.

“
However,” Larissa
continued, “it’s also a story coming from a male perspective
in
Gilgamesh
.
After all, Enkidu does not settle down with the temple concubine,
and, in fact, his civilization process continues afterward with
drinking beer and eating bread and various other things. So we’re
not seeing the exact same story as in a romance novel, because it’s
a male perspective on sex. And the male perspective on sex in
fiction is that it tends to be a step towards reaching a goal, but
it’s not a goal within itself.

“
In the romance novel, the
ultimate goal is to reach happily-ever-after, to have a successful
relationship. And we could look at heroines as manipulators, using
sex as a tool to civilize their men. But that isn’t the case in
romance novel, and it’s not the case in a rape fantasy, because the
heroine has to give up power to the hero, and she’s usually
hesitant about doing so—hence the fact it’s a forced seduction and
not a fully consensual sexual incident.

“
But then, that’s the
difference between the adventure in a romance novel and the
adventure in other kinds of stories. Romance novels aren’t stories
about conquering, they are ultimately stories about surrendering.
The bravery that the heroine expresses in a romance novel is not to
crush the hero and bind him to her will. Instead, the stories claim
that the only path to truth happiness is to allow the hero total
control over the heroine’s body and emotions. She struggles,
because it is irrational for her to trust the hero, but only when
he forces her to let him in do the two of them get to the next
level in their relationship. They both have to surrender to each
other. The hero surrenders his beast, his wildness, and chooses
domestication, and the heroine surrenders as well, physically and
emotionally. And it’s this dual surrender that brings about the
happy ending, because they learn to rely on each other.”

* * *

Dana watched as the students
filtered out of the lecture hall. She
’d
found Larissa’s class engrossing, and possibly all of it had hit
somewhat too close to home. She didn’t know what to make of her
relationship with Cole these days. And she had to face the fact
that it
was
a
relationship, however unconventional.

When the students were gone, Cole got
up, and she followed his lead.

They made their way down the
aisle to the front of the room, where Larissa was gathering her
things up and putting them into her bag. When she crossed over to
her podium, she saw them, and her eyes widened.

“
Hey, Larissa,” said
Cole.

“
Cole?” Larissa said in a
tiny voice. “Cole Randall? Oh my God.” She started to shake. She
looked terrified.

“
Listen,” he said, “I know
I’m dropping in on you out of nowhere, but—”

Larissa screamed. “Help!
Help me, someone help me!”

Dana was stunned. Wasn’t
this person supposed to be on their side?

Larissa took off across the room,
heading for the aisle on the other side of the room. She was still
screaming.

Cole made an annoyed face.
“Larissa, can you please calm down?”

“
Help me! I need—” Larissa
fell down on the steps, her voice dying in her throat.

Cole had shot her with one of the tranq
guns. He glowered at her motionless form.

Dana shut her eyes. “Jesus,
Cole.”

Cole scratched the back of
his neck. “Well, I guess I haven’t really spoken to her since I was
splashed all over the news as a serial killer. I guess she’s kind
of freaked out.”

“
Seems like it.” Dana
started to walk back up the aisle, heading for the door.

“
Where are you going?” said
Cole.

“
We should get out of here,
right?”

“
No way,” said Cole. “I just
need to talk to her. She’s going to help us out once she
understands the situation.”

“
Talk to her? You just shot
her.”

“
With a tranquilizer dart.”
Cole strode over to Larissa and gathered her into his arms. He
stood up. “Go check the hallway and see if there’s anyone out
there.”

Dana’s jaw dropped. “You
have got to be kidding.”

“
Dana, how long have you
known me? Do I kid?”

She sighed. She stalked
across the room, went over to the other door and stuck her head
outside. “There are tons of people in the hallway.”

“
Well, give it a little bit.
They’re all still switching classes.” Cole carried Larissa’s
motionless body up to where Dana was standing. He set her down in
one of the chairs.

Together, they watched the
hallway.

Cole was right. Within several minutes,
the hallway cleared.

He hoisted Larissa back into
his arms. “Get the door.”

Dana did as she was told,
but she didn’t understand what the heck was going on.

He stole out into the
hallway. Dana followed him. He carried Larissa down the hallway and
around a corner until they came to a door marked
Dr. Larissa Fielding
.
Cole nodded at the doorknob. Dana tried it, and the door
opened.

They went through the door
and found themselves in a cluttered office. There was a desk along
one wall, covered with papers and post-it notes. Cole set Larissa
down in the desk chair. Then he bent over the computer, moving the
mouse until the screen came to life.

Dana looked from Cole to
Larissa. “Cole, what are you doing?”

Cole clicked things on the
screen. “Hold on, let me just find her email client.”

Dana drew a hand over her
face. “This is crazy, Cole. This is the opposite of lying low, you
realize that?”

“
There,” said Cole,
obviously ignoring her. “Let’s see, has she sent any emails to her
assistant today? Yeah, very good. All right, I’ll send off
something quick.”