A Woman's Place is In Love: The Romance Genre's Interpretations of Women's Cultural Roles PART 1
One may imagine that in those ancient days, the roles played by humans, be they male or female, may have been fairly equal. The day-to-day business of survival in pre-tool-age, pre-agrarian cultures would have required little differentiation of skills based on gender-specific abilities.
One may also imagine that there may have been little of Romance in those harsh days, though a skilled writer can fashion such a reality -- see for example, Jean Auel's 'Clan of the Cave Bear' and its sequels. While not of the Romance genre, these books created the believable world of an independent prehistoric woman, her adventures and, yes, even the developing romantic relationship with the man in her life.
However, the shadowy world of the distant past changed swiftly as humankind developed tools and settled into agrarian forms of life. The agrarian mode required settling in productive lands, and thereby fostered a greater sense of territoriality. This trait, already active in the species, was brought to the fore through conflict, aggressive acquisition, and the struggle to maintain property.
Humankind began to differentiate its society on a gender basis. Fighting and exploit became the roles of men and to women fell the uneventful business of daily living. Standards of merit began to rest upon who had the capacity for exploitation, specifically through aggressive means. Thus came into being the reigns of kings and the powerful knights who served them, sultans, warriors, and emperors.
Under this system, males were of more importance than females, and it wasn't long before the predatory life-style of the dominant male class began to seriously affect the relationships between the sexes, establishing patterns that persist even today. So deeply ingrained did these systems become that these roles have become archetypal, sometimes-negative masks for the positive male qualities of strength and fortitude that underlie them. Romance strips away the negatives of these roles, seeking the human male beneath the masks of aggression, bringing him forth again into the light of love.
Sadly, the assumption of the male's 'natural superiority' became a justification for domination of the female sex. Women became not only depreciated in their social value and repressed as humans, but, as spoils of aggressive acquisition, came to be treated as chattel, mere possessions. It is against these demeaning concepts that the heroines of Romance rebel, and so make themselves characters with whom readers can readily identify...
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