One of the many troubling aspects of writing a weblog concerning romance fiction, besides the continuing prospect of having to read and write about romance fiction, is the clear lack of positivistic analysis of psychology related to scientific studies at renowned universities. Worry not though, Bewildered Hearts, for all that is about to change thanks to The Texas Billionaire's Pregnant Bride: An Evolutionary Interpretation of Romance Fiction Titles. You read that correctly, dear reader. Apparently one Anthony Cox from the Centre for Psychology and Computing in Dartmouth, Canada and one Maryanne Fisher from the Department of Psychology in wherever St. Mary’s University is have teamed up to make sense of fifteen thousand and nineteen book titles published between 1949 and 2009 by Harlequin, North America's very own Mills & Boon.
So, how did Cox and Fisher decide to use this huge amassed amount of information and what did they hope this venture would prove? 'First, we identified the most frequently occurring words to determine the most prevalent issues addressed by titles. Second, we performed a qualitative analysis to identify the most popular, recurring themes that appear in the titles.' Hmm, that sounds like something someone might do to obtain grant money, but for those in the audience already bored by phrases such as 'qualitative analysis' is there a pithy sentence in the opening paragraph that might set out a conclusion so obvious it renders the entire research nugatory? 'Our results indicate that Harlequin romance novel titles are congruent with women’s sex-specific mating strategies, which is surmised to be the reason for their continued international success.' Bewildered Heart likes the sound of women's sex-specific mating strategies, but we can't help but wonder whether the world needs hard evidence to show that Harlequin and Mills & Boon are successful because they offer a product that deals with an element of life a large proportion of women think about.
Still, there are fifteen more pages of charts, tables and statistics to wade through, so enough questioning the time and cost that was wasted here, and let us examine the findings. Cox and Fisher break down this vast number of texts into Harlequin's own hilariously-titled sub-categories, such as Love-Inspired (Christian emphasis, inspired by love, no actual love), Super-Romance (Really good romance), NASCAR (Thanks to a clever marketing strategy to combine romance with NASCAR), American Romance (For patriots) and, of course, Flipside, which lasted three years before someone realised the name might be misconstrued as homosexual. To complicate matters further, our clever authors included the Silhouette Imprint and their own remarkably varied list of subgenres, which aren't nearly as silly-sounding as those of their sister company, so little wonder most are now defunct. With their database full to over-flowing with romantic words and their technical normalising work complete, the complex algorithms did their business and now the public can marvel at the surprising results. Do you think billionaire and sheik made the list of most used male occupations? How about disenchanted blogger?
With the paper outlining Harlequin's success, 5.8 billion books sold so far and counting, they go onto speculate explanations for why, and how. According to a study over at Parapublishing, a potential consumer will spend an average of eight seconds weighing up a book's appeal before buying it. As Oscar Dystel points out, in Mass Market Publishing: More Observations, Speculations and Provocations Harlequin do little to distinguish their 'uniform, homogenized, quality controlled' novels. Therefore, within these aforementioned eight seconds the potential reader forms an opinion based on the subtle differences between the books, which are the title, the author name and the photograph of a couple canoodling. Naturally, Harlequin are well aware of their target audience, and in fact, romance fiction publishers conduct more market research than any other publisher. They know what women want from their romance fiction and, for financial reasons, give it to them via implied semantic signifiers.
Therefore, when female consumers trawl through the shelves at a down-market bookshop for as long as we still have bookshops, and after that trawl through the Mills & Boon website, their eyes and opinions are immediately shaped by the title, and shortly thereafter the blurb. Yet we have learned that the blurbs lie and we have also learned that titles lie, so in one sense, the commercial draw of an enticing title is vital yet largely immaterial to plot and characters. As we have witnessed, the salacious aspect of Bewildered Heart's wanton desire for romance fiction means we search the library shelves for certain words. There is no logic in trying to pick a good one, so we pick the ones that offer our favourite clichés of the genre. Those include reclusive billionaires, emasculated former circus performers, brunettes, small business owners, Hugh Jackmen and ladies dressed in costumes of cartoon animals. Had Mills & Boon ever visited this internet treasure trove of useful information they would surely have published The Kinda Hugh Jackman-Looking Emasculated Former Circus Performer Billionaire's Brunette Wearing a Cartoon Animal Costume Mistress, Accidentally Pregnant!
The results substantiate what Cox and Fisher seemed intent on proving, that women's evolved sex-specific mating interests are consistent with the words found in Harlequin titles and the heroine's yearnings within its pages. The top twenty most popular words were Love, Bride, Baby, Man, Marriage, Heart, Secret, Wife, Doctor, Night, Christmas, Cowboy, Wedding, Child, Family, Texas, Nurse, Woman, Lady, and Husband. Danielle shall be delighted to note the absence of mistress from the list. So, Cox and Fisher argue, we can ascertain that what women want from their romance books are Texan cowboy doctors marrying and impregnating a nurse at night on Christmas, whilst one of them hides a secret family. Furthermore, says the paper, what women want from their romance fiction is what women want from life and this means the ideal characteristics of the perfect husband are decency, healing hands, a well-paid job (or cowboy) and a love of fidelity, Christmas, Texas, cooing at babies in supermarkets and different nouns for the same word.
Don't lose hope though, men who are unlikely to become doctors or cowboys, for Fisher and Cox have listed the twenty most frequently occurring professions in romance novels and they are as follows: Doctor, Cowboy, Nurse, Boss, Prince, Rancher, Knight, Surgeon, King, Bodyguard, Sheriff, Soldier, Lawman, Pirate, Secretary, Consultant, Midwife, Cattleman, CEO, Executive. It shouldn't take an academic to note that these careers fit into four categories. Medical: Doctor, Nurse, Surgeon, Midwife. Masculine: Cowboy, Rancher, Knight, Bodyguard, Sheriff, Soldier, Lawman, Pirate, Cattleman. Billionaire: Boss, Prince, King, CEO, Executive. Other: Secretary, Consultant. Secretary would depend largely on the inclusion of Boss, while Consultant is frankly the most confusing one, and that is on a list that includes Pirate. So, what straightforward conclusions can we gleam from these results? Cox and Fisher note, 'two primary themes: resource-based (e.g., doctors, surgeons, CEOs, kings) and athletic (e.g., cowboys, cattlemen). Perhaps related to the athletic theme is that of protectors (e.g., sheriffs, soldiers, lawmen) since these professions also require a high level of physical fitness. Therefore, our hypotheses concerning resources and physical fitness gained at least partial support, given the emphasis on these professions.' See, they glossed over Consultant and Pirate as well.
To round out the findings the authors define eight distinct themes, beginning with the most evident and ending with the afterthoughts: 1. Commitment, 2. Reproduction, 3. Western, 4. Resources, 5. Medical, 6. Christmas, 7.Royalty, and finally, 8. Professional. Now, this data is inevitably skewed by Harlequin's Medical and Western subgenres, and a world of lazily unimaginative writers. Despite this, the popularity of these books should not be overlooked. They should be looked at as indicative of the reader's sex-specific mating interests, and when done so doctors and cowboys are basically the same man, strong, nurturing, able, protective, passionate, land-owning, wearing funny outfits and using unorthodox methods of transportation.
With the irrefutable proof out of the way, the authors can move onto their wild and unreasoned conclusions. For example, 'The 20 most frequent words clearly suggest long-term commitment and reproduction are important to readers.' As other writers have pointed out, with far less research and intelligence to back them up, the romance genre is defined by a happy ending, and unlike life, a successful relationship involves having children and dying together. Therefore many of the words and themes that appear throughout the titles are a requirement of the form of story-telling. While no one should be surprised to see marriage and offspring hinted at by the book names, there were a handful of actual surprises. 'The word “attractive” appears only once in the database, and “handsome” only six times. Synonyms like “gorgeous” appear rarely (gorgeous appears three times), and the word “athletic” does not appear at all.'
What does this mean? As it turns out, nothing, 'It must be noted that there are only a few adjectives that describe the characters’ traits in the database. The majority of the words are nouns that identify the characters’ roles, such as bride, executive, or husband.' However, a quick glance at the contents of the book assuages any doubts regarding the physical attractiveness of the characters. It goes without saying that Texan billionaire doctors who own a ranch are rugged and gorgeous. However, Cox and Fisher are obviously dedicated to the subject of evolutionary psychology and whether or not Harlequin Enterprises entitle their books with a keen understanding of evolutionary psychology. They surmise, rather disappointingly, that such technical terms are interchangeable with common sense. Importantly, there is no way of proving how successful the books are, and whether a title such as The Texas Billionaire's Pregnant Bride would sell more or less copies than The Welsh Lorry Driver's Infertile Pen Pal, although common sense would surely prevail.
Due to these flaws and a seemingly tentative understanding of the genre, the study offers little valuable insights for a prospective romance writer, besides maybe dusting off those boots of yours and giving cowboys another spin. The focus of the article concerns itself with the sex-specific mating strategies of women, and only deal with the what, leaving the why tantalisingly vague. Why would a woman's ideal man be rich, caring, honest, loyal, virtuous, handsome, muscular, intelligent, kind, stable and also a doctor? Please don't just argue that evolution explains everything, because otherwise we are going to need a scientific analysis on what evolution is and then another one explaining why Texans don't believe in evolution.
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