Alpha Amours: The Roles of the Alpha Male Hero and Alpha Female Heroine in Romance PART 1
© Suzette L. Mako
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The earl towered over her lithe form, broad shoulders blocking her view of the glittering ballroom. With his lazy smile, white teeth gleamed, almost feral in the candlelit corner. Boldly, he traced his great hand along the full curve of her hip, rising gently . . .
"Young, but not too young," he murmured for her ears alone, and the cultured sound of his voice was enough to finally startle her from her reverie. She shook her head and a glossy curl escaped her coiffure.
"I'll do whatever it takes to get what I want," she told him, surprising herself with her daring. "Even - marry you!"
His eyes shuttered instantly, and he leaned so close that their lips nearly touched. "You may find yourself in my bed - but it will never be a marriage bed."
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"Typical romance genre goings-on," sneers the uninitiate or the derisive critic, upon reading a romance passage such as the one above. Why must the romance hero "always" be the tallest, most handsome man in the story? Why is he always a man of great social standing? Why is he always "sardonic," "fierce," "dangerous"? Why does he seem to spurn the heroine in one scene, then turn about to pursue her aggressively or treat her with jealousy?
Why is the heroine of a romance always, if not classically beautiful, still of above-average looks? Why does she always seem to rise to a position of status in whatever social context she inhabits? Why is she always "tempestuous," "fiery," and "passionate"? And why, in these days of relative sexual freedom, is the heroine "always" a virgin?
Each of these characters' descriptions points to basic biological clues identifying the heroine and her reluctant hero as role models on an instinctual level. In anthropological circles, these are known as "alpha types": gender models that exhibit traits most successful for ongoing existence - for procreation and continuation of the species. What sorts of things constitute the alpha male and female type, and how are these alpha types integrated into the romance?
The alpha types were first identified as they related to animal success in the wild. Imagine the lead wolf in a pack, the king of a lion pride. Then imagine the lioness who guards her cubs to adulthood, training them in survival lore, or the graceful mare nurturing her colt. The attractiveness of alpha types is a certification of biological quality, taking into account such factors as bilateral symmetry (the extent to which a body exhibits balance in its features) and weight/muscle ditribution as cues to freedom from harmful genetic mutations. These are all successful alpha types. These concepts were then applied by anthropologists to ancient (and modern) humans as indicators of why certain traits succeed in the highly competitive human gene-race.
