The Theology of the Romance Novel

I confess that I have a fondness for reading the descriptions of romance novels and I occasionally submit myself to the sadomasochist act of reading the books themselves. What intrigues me about romance novels is that they function essentially as frum novels (fruvels) with a clear theology and theodicy that make them utterly predictable.

Consider some sample texts from books descriptions:

Together, they journey through everything Quinn's been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love. (Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney.)

She's had enough of playing the good wife to a husband who thinks he's doing her a favor keeping her around. Now, she's going to take some time for herself ... she's going to reclaim the carefree girl who spent lazy summers sharing steamy kisses with her first love on Sullivan's Island. Daring to listen to her inner voice, she will realize what she wants ... and find the life of which she's always dreamed. (The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank.)

She can only trust her heart…and hope it won't lead her astray. (The Bookstore on the Beach by Brenda Novak.)

If she can dare to let go of the life she thought she wanted, she might discover something even more beautiful waiting for her beneath a painted moon. (The Vineyard at Painted Moon by Susan Mallery.)

Violet is tempted to take the ultimate step to set herself free and seek a life of her own conviction with a man whose cause is as audacious as her own. ... Violet's story of determination and desire unfolds, shedding light on the darkness of her years abroad...and teaching Vivian to reach forward with grace for the ambitious future - and the love - she wants most. (The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams.)

These stories are all framed by a particular worldview. The goal of life is to gain self-fulfillment in the form of romantic love. As Nietzsche understood, in our modern world, God is dead (i.e. irrelevant). This leaves man as the only standard of moral value. Since we can no longer expect to find fulfillment in a relationship with God, the alternative is to find fulfillment in the self.

Romance novels, like much of what comes out mass media, takes this concept and gives it a populist twist. The average person cannot plausibly expect to be able to come into themselves by becoming a great artist, writer, or philosopher. That being said, the average person can imagine having sex with someone and that this will lead to a relationship that will lead to them feeling fulfilled. The fact that the sex may violate traditional communal norms, rooted in religion, helps make the sex an act of self-fulfillment. The protagonist is able to choose themselves over the demands of society, demonstrating that their personal happiness is more important than following the expectations of the community.

At the beginning of the story, the protagonist should be someone living under comfortable circumstances but lacking romantic self-fulfillment. This serves to demonstrate the all-importance of love. You can have everything but your life will still be worthless if you do not have romance. If the protagonist does find themselves in a difficult situation at the beginning of the novel that difficulty should clearly arise out of the fact that they were already living without romantic love. For example, the housewife finding out that her husband has been cheating on her and is going to divorce her, leaving her with nothing, has an economic problem that is really a romance problem.

Our protagonist, having lived their lives by the rules of society and now coming to recognize that this has not worked out for them as well as they might have hoped, is suddenly confronted with someone who presents some sort of challenge in the real world that should reflect the raw sexual desire they awaken in the protagonist. After an obligatory round of saying no (the equivalent of the Campbell hero initially turning down the quest), the sex should happen, leading to a heightening of the conflict, which will clearly be resolved by the protagonist deciding that choosing to "follow their heart" is more important than anything else in the world. At this point, the problem will melt away and a happy ending is to be presumed.

As a work of religious fiction, a romance novel will contain some form of theodicy where the believer confronts some challenge to their faith which they must overcome to emerge as stronger believers. For example, a person prays really hard that God should cure his mother's cancer and it does not work; how could God let this happen? The believer will eventually learn that God had a plan for him all along, allowing him to develop a deeper relationship with God as something more than a genie who grants wishes.

In romance novel theodicy, the protagonist will have been burned before in romance, a teenage romance the did not work out or a divorce. After given up hope of true love, an opportunity comes their way, if they are "bold" enough to "believe" once more and take it. As with conventional religion, the believer has been given real evidence that their faith does not work, yet they are supposed to believe anyway. It takes a truly genuine faith to ignore evidence and believe anyway.

This use of theodicy is really a smokescreen. Like most works of religious fiction, romance novels suffer from a lack of real conflict. The point of a Christian novel is presumably about the protagonist choosing Jesus, which needs to be something simple enough that the reader can expect to be able to imitate. An exception to this rule would someone like John Bunyan. As a Puritan, operating within the salvation through grace tradition, Bunyan wanted to make the opposite point that accepting Jesus was something so difficult that no person could ever hope to succeed through their own efforts without active divine assistance. Good religious fiction requires an author who can truly imagine following a different path and get the reader to take that alternative seriously. This makes for good fiction but is totally counter-productive as religious propaganda.

Similarly, there can be real conflict in a Jane Austen or a Bronte sister novel. An Austen or a Bronte heroine is not free to follow her heart. She has a navigate a world in which she has limited economic opportunities and, if she is cast out by her family and community, death by starvation or tuberculosis is a real possibility. By contrast, the conflict of a conventional romance novel needs to be solved by the protagonist deciding that romance is all they care about. The point of the romance novel is precisely the fantasy that life's problems can be solved so easily. A good romance novel would require readers to seriously grapple with the struggle between duty to society and personal fulfillment without taking it as a given that the latter should take precedence. This would make for a good novel but would fail as propaganda for the religion of self-fulfillment.   

It might be interesting to, following the logic of Pride Prejudice and Zombies, to take a conventional romance novel and make it about accepting Jesus. A highly successful career woman has her life overturned when her godless husband cheats on her and demands a divorce. Moving back home, she runs into the handsome former high school sports team captain that she lost her virginity to as a teenager. Desperate to feel valued, she flings herself at him. The guy confesses that he really wants to sleep with her but he cannot because he has accepted Jesus. The woman is so impressed by the guy's self-control that she decides to go to church to accept Jesus. The night before, the husband returns and apologies. Now we have "drama." Will the woman still accept Jesus and will she dump who no good husband for her "true love?" She tells her husband that she can forgive him because there is someone who died for her sins. The two of them go to church to accept Jesus together and run into the other guy. Will our male hero fight for the woman he loves? No, the two men shake hands as brothers in Christ and the woman drives off with her husband, having turned down the really hot guy.