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Wed, May. 25th, 2005 09:53 pmI give up, Mary Jo Putney. I do.
I tried to read one of her earlier books on the suggestion that her contemporaries and her later books haven't been as good. Picked up Dearly Beloved at the library. The first scene opens with a rakish male ogling at a barmaid. This is our hero, of course, and this scene is to demonstrate how morally dissolute and secretly heartbroken and tortured he is without our heroine. Anyhow, he arranges a tryst with said barmaid. When he goes up into his room, he is discovered with the priest's daughter in a Compromising Position (tm) and forced to marry her.
Because her father is insane and makes him marry her, our hero jumps to the utterly reasonable conclusion that of course she was in on the scheme and is ev0l and wh0rish (I have no idea if that is actual netspeak). From there, despite her protests, he jumps to his second utterly reasonable conclusion that the ev0l wh0r should pay and basically rapes her. He discovers upon doing so that she was a virgin, and thus (and only thus, may I add) does he feel remorse for his actions.
OMGWTFBBQ??!?!?!@?@!1111?
(pardon me, I seem to have been bitten by the netspeak bug today. The sheer stupidity of this setup demands it, I feel)
I promptly chucked the book across the room and now wish to scrub my mind of its presence.
What the hell? What is wrong with these heroes? Ok, maybe not what is wrong with these heroes, because hey, forcing one's wife into sex back in the Regency era was probably not as passe as it is now. But still. He is the freaking hero of the romance novel, and this girl is obviously set up as his Designated Love Interest, and somehow, I, the reader, am supposed to forgive him for this because he feels oh so sowwy that he forced her only because she's a virgin?! Note the part that pisses me off the most isn't the rape, although that does piss me off, especially as a set up, but the part in which Putney is manipulating the reader to feel that the hero should somehow be forgiven because *gasp* he didn't know she was a virgin! I don't care if the hero thinks that, but the fact that the author seems to and that the author seems to expect me to makes me want to hurt something badly.
I only wish I had thrown the book harder.
I tried to read one of her earlier books on the suggestion that her contemporaries and her later books haven't been as good. Picked up Dearly Beloved at the library. The first scene opens with a rakish male ogling at a barmaid. This is our hero, of course, and this scene is to demonstrate how morally dissolute and secretly heartbroken and tortured he is without our heroine. Anyhow, he arranges a tryst with said barmaid. When he goes up into his room, he is discovered with the priest's daughter in a Compromising Position (tm) and forced to marry her.
Because her father is insane and makes him marry her, our hero jumps to the utterly reasonable conclusion that of course she was in on the scheme and is ev0l and wh0rish (I have no idea if that is actual netspeak). From there, despite her protests, he jumps to his second utterly reasonable conclusion that the ev0l wh0r should pay and basically rapes her. He discovers upon doing so that she was a virgin, and thus (and only thus, may I add) does he feel remorse for his actions.
OMGWTFBBQ??!?!?!@?@!1111?
(pardon me, I seem to have been bitten by the netspeak bug today. The sheer stupidity of this setup demands it, I feel)
I promptly chucked the book across the room and now wish to scrub my mind of its presence.
What the hell? What is wrong with these heroes? Ok, maybe not what is wrong with these heroes, because hey, forcing one's wife into sex back in the Regency era was probably not as passe as it is now. But still. He is the freaking hero of the romance novel, and this girl is obviously set up as his Designated Love Interest, and somehow, I, the reader, am supposed to forgive him for this because he feels oh so sowwy that he forced her only because she's a virgin?! Note the part that pisses me off the most isn't the rape, although that does piss me off, especially as a set up, but the part in which Putney is manipulating the reader to feel that the hero should somehow be forgiven because *gasp* he didn't know she was a virgin! I don't care if the hero thinks that, but the fact that the author seems to and that the author seems to expect me to makes me want to hurt something badly.
I only wish I had thrown the book harder.
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