Bodice Ripper

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Kathleen Woodiwiss, the author of the first "Bodice Ripper"

The term Bodice Ripper (pronunciation: / ˈbɑːdɪs ˈɹɪpɚ / , English for "Miederreißer"; less catchphrase: "sexy, violent historical romance novel"; German: " Nackenbeißer ") describes in the North American publishing and book trade jargon an adventure set in the historical past and romance novel , in which sexual violence is presented in a romanticized form.

Bodice Ripper novels tell from the perspective of the female main character the story of a young woman characterized as extremely attractive, but unruly and “indomitable”, and a somewhat older, reckless and villainous man who, in the course of the plot, grows over conflicts and misunderstandings Find love These novels gain tension from an (external) adventure story, but even more from the complicated relationship between lovers, which is characterized by great emotional and erotic tension. The woman loves and desires the man from the beginning, but does not want to admit this out of pride and poisons himself with him over hundreds of pages until the man - who usually made her body submissive at a very early age - finally also her Heart conquered and the plot leads to a happy ending . The books are bulky and tell their story, the plot of which often extends over several continents, over a mostly very long time frame.

Most of the histories are sketchy and imprecise, and mainly serve to create a background against which plot elements such as the kidnapping of the heroine and the separation from lovers appear plausible; the mentality of the characters largely corresponds to that of the time the novels were written. Bodice Ripper novels are classified as trivial literature and are made in North America in cheap paperback format ( Mass Market Paperback ) for an almost exclusively female reading audience. The authors are predominantly female and mostly live and write in the United States . Many Bodice Ripper novels have been translated into other languages, with great success also into German.

The Bodice Ripper originated in the United States in 1972, and was one of the first forms of literature to give a female mass audience access to explicit depictions of sexual acts. Most of these sex scenes are romanticized rapes . Because positive depictions of violent sexuality against the background of the second wave of the women's movement were perceived as misogynistic , this type of romance lost its importance in the 1980s and completely disappeared in the 1990s.

Front cover and language usage

The term "Bodice Ripper" comes from the fact that the front cover of many of these novels depicts a young woman clad in only a bodice , after whom a handsome man reaches out with the obvious intention of sexually overpowering the woman. Because the man occasionally starts a wild kiss on the woman's neck or neck, the expression “neck biter” has become established in German.

The distinctive front covers resembled the front covers of many pulp magazines , a type of cheaply produced literary story magazine that had been widespread in the United States until the 1950s. The Bodice Ripper was created in the United States in 1972 and was the prelude to the emergence of a whole range of subgenres of a modern trivial romance novel. B. also the Erotic Historical Romance , the Regency Romance or the Highlander Romance count. According to the principle pars pro toto , the expressions "Bodice Ripper" and "Nackenbeißer" - especially by people who are not familiar with the various subgenres of the serial romance novel - are often used for trivial romance fiction.

history

United States and Canada

Novels with plot patterns similar to the Bodice Ripper novels of the 1970s had existed earlier in the USA, for example in the form of the early works of Denise Robins ( Desert Rapture , Avon , 1944).

In 1972, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss ' debut novel Wohin der Sturm uns carries us (original title: The Flame and the Flower ) was published in the United States , a female drama set in the American southern states around 1800 about a young woman who forcibly married the perpetrator after being pregnant through rape but gradually realizes the good character of her tormentor and begins to love him. From a marketing point of view, the publication of this novel represented a significant innovation because the publisher, Avon, did not have the paperback edition preceded by a hardback edition, as is customary in the industry, but instead brought the mass-market paperback , which was made very cheaply, to the market immediately. Avon sold 2.3 million copies in the first four years.

Woodiwiss wrote numerous other books of similar style for Avon. In 1974, Rosemary Rogers , also at Avon, presented her debut Sweet Savage Love , a story of violent love between a mercenary and the Paris-raised daughter of an American politician , set in the Wild West and Mexico. Another Avon writer made her debut in 1977, Johanna Lindsey , whose early novels (until 1991) were notorious for their ubiquitous depictions of sexual violence.

Other publishers began to copy the concept of the Bodice Ripper , including Warner Books , for which - under the pseudonym "Jennifer Wilde" - the Texan Tom E. Huff wrote novels such as Love's Tender Fury (1976) and Dare to Love (1978). Dare to Love was on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for 11 weeks.

Published in 1977 - under the name "Jennifer Blake" - the native of Louisiana Patricia Anne Maxwell their first Bodice Rippers, like fire on my skin ( Love's Wild Desire ), a Southern belle who abruptly wife of a ruthless as enigmatic Mexican nobleman is . Maxwell wrote for the Minnesota- based Fawcett Publications from 1980 and became one of the most internationally known authors of the genre with her Southern States stories.

In the late 1980s, readers migrated to neighboring sections that no longer raped.

German-speaking area

Many Bodice Rippers have been translated into other languages. One of the first to reach the German-speaking book market was in 1975 Wohin der Sturm us carries by Kathleen Woodiwiss ( Deutsche Bücherbund ). Bertelsmann published Rosemary Rogers' Sweet savage love in 1980 under the title Wilde tender love .

Heyne Verlag in Munich followed the North American model and from 1978 published many of the books directly in paperback, including individual works by Catherine Coulter, Constance Gluyas, Natasha Peters and Bertrice Small; However, focus of Heyne were the books by Johanna Lindsey, starting in 1986 with Wild as the wind ( Brave the Wild Wind ). Goldmann did the same a little later and published individual novels by Sandra Brown, Shirlee Busbee, Laurie McBain, Virginia Henley and Rosemary Rogers, as well as many works by Jennifer Blake (= Patricia Anne Maxwell). The Del Rey Publishing , which are thematically very similar experiences in the 1950s Angélique had published novels, made from 1999 to rows of paperback editions of the works of the prolific writer inner Celeste Bradley, Shirlee Busbee, Janet Chapman, Jane Feather, Stephanie Laurens, Kat Martin, Monica McCarty , Kinley MacGregor and Margaret Mallory follow.

Knaur and List joined them in the mid-1990s .

sexuality

Bodice Ripper novels regularly feature motifs such as coercion of women, the robbery of women and women being forced into marriage . As early as the 1970s, critics clashed with the rape scenes, which they found brutal and stereotyped. The writers, who attended the first Romance Writers of America conference in 1981 , were warned at the event not to write rape stories because readers believed that they did not like stories.

After Kathleen Barry's essay The Vagina on Trial, one of the first theses on the role of rape in patriarchal society, appeared in 1971 , feminists feared that reading this could lead women to become accustomed to rape and domestic violence as a natural part of their own lives to accept. The Bodice Ripper showed innocent virgins who were raped and turned into nymphomaniacs and romantic lovers: a scenario that, according to the feminist point of view, coincided with the fantasies of real rapists terrifyingly.

Later feminists such as Tania Modleski and Deborah Lutz have questioned this interpretation, arguing that these novels boil down to domesticated the initially sadistic rapist and ultimately subordinating him to the heroine. In a 1998 study it was shown that more than half of women are able to enjoy being sexually overwhelmed, which in reality they would perceive as devastating and traumatic, in literary fiction as pleasurable. As the cultural historian Hsu-Ming Teo has shown, the heroines of the Bodice Rippers never appear as victims or broken women, but rather as overcomers who in the end triumph over any hardship.

literature

For a list of Bodice Ripper novels see: Bodice Ripper / Title List .

In German language:

  • Rainer Moritz: Beißer novels. In: Ursula Rautenberg (Hrsg.): Reclams Sachlexikon des Buch. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010520-X , p. 52 (only represented in the first, no longer in the second and third edition).

In English:

  • Lisa Fletcher: Historical Romance Fiction: Heterosexuality and Performativity . Ashgate, Burlington, VT 2008.
  • Carole Thurston: The Romance Revolution . University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL 1987, ISBN 978-0-252-01247-1 .

Web links

Author information

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Definition of bodice ripper. In: Merriam-Webster. Retrieved July 6, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Margaret Ann Jenson: Love's Sweet Return. The Harlequin Story . Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio 1984, ISBN 0-87972-318-1 , pp. 66 ( limited preview in Google Book search). Jessica Luther: Beyond Bodice-Rippers: How Romance Novels Came to Embrace Feminism. In: The Atlantic. March 18, 2013, accessed June 22, 2016 . Ray Walters: Paperback Talk. In: The New York Times. July 19, 1981. Retrieved June 24, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Ruth Nestvold: The Civil War in Popular Fiction. Gone with the wind and after. Retrieved August 26, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Margaret Ann Jenson: Love's Sweet Return. The Harlequin Story . Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio 1984, ISBN 0-87972-318-1 , pp. 66 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ Picture example 1. Accessed on July 16, 2016 . Image example 2. Accessed on July 16, 2016 . Mark Athikakis: A Romance Glossary. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . Anke Stieber: Neck biters don't bite! (No longer available online.) In: Happy-Ende-Buecher.de. December 7, 2011, archived from the original on June 21, 2016 ; accessed on June 24, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / magazin.happy-end-buecher.de
  6. ↑ picture example. Retrieved July 16, 2016 . In Reclam's dictionary of the book , the situation is described as follows: "The man bends over the happy-willed woman and approaches her flawless neck in such a way that it is impossible to definitely decide whether a kiss or a bite will follow." (Rainer Moritz : Beißer-Romane. In: Ursula Rautenberg (Hrsg.): Reclams Sachlexikon des Buch. Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, p. 52.) The literary critic Ulrich Greiner describes the pose as follows: “Blond, curly woman with a magnificent cleavage bends the white neck, so that the tanned adventurer can call the beautiful booty his own with a wild kiss after a successful victory. " (Ulrich Greiner: Less is more: books and their covers. In: Die Zeit , September 26, 2002.)
  7. ^ Google Books: The Flame and the Flower. Retrieved June 20, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Jennifer Allen: Eight who write of love for money. Retrieved June 26, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Jessica Luther: Beyond Bodice-Rippers: How Romance Novels Came to Embrace Feminism. In: The Atlantic. March 18, 2013, accessed June 22, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Book Market: Escape Aid Past . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1999 ( online ).
  11. ^ Hsu-Ming Teo: Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels . University of Texas Press, Austin, TX 2012, ISBN 978-0-292-73938-3 , pp. 155 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  12. ↑ Kathleen Barry: The Vagina on Trial. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 15, 2016 ; Retrieved June 25, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cwluherstory.org
  13. ^ Hsu-Ming Teo: Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels . University of Texas Press, Austin, TX 2012, ISBN 978-0-292-73938-3 , pp. 156 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  14. ↑ Tania Modleski: Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women . Archon, Hamden, CT 1982. Deborah Lutz: The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-Century Seduction Narrative . Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH 2006. Hsu-Ming Teo: Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels . University of Texas Press, Austin, TX 2012, ISBN 978-0-292-73938-3 , pp. 157 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  15. ↑ DS Strassberg, LK Lockerd: Force fantasies sex in women's. In: Archives of sexual behavior. Volume 27, Number 4, August 1998, pp. 403-414, PMID 9681121 .
  16. ^ Hsu-Ming Teo: Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels . University of Texas Press, Austin, TX 2012, ISBN 978-0-292-73938-3 , pp. 159 ( limited preview in Google Book search). Sabine Sielke: “Crisis, What Crisis?” In: Jürgen Martschukat, Olaf Stieglitz (Ed.): Fathers, soldiers, lovers. Men and Masculinity in North American History . transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-664-9 , p. 43–64 ( limited preview in Google Book search).