The Mills and Boon mystique: The evolution of female fantasy

They’ve exchanged over 20,000 kisses, shared 30,000 hugs, and headed for the altar 7,000 times in the past four decades. Like all candyfloss romances, the protagonists of Mills & Boon novels have always ended up tying the knot. It’s the only thing that’s remained the same over a century of selling love. What these books offer is an escape from reality for a torrid affair with romantic fiction — a particularly attractive proposition for any teenage girl, as I fondly remember. They remain, for me, the best pick-me-ups when you’ve got time and inclination on your hands, I have sneaked them out of my mum’s closet, hidden it inside Ayn Rand’s more respectable, Atlas Shrugged, on vacations. No doubt my intellectual credibility has gone down several notches with that confession. Mills & Boons have long been dismissed as mindless fluff, but more recently they’ve also been dubbed as dangerous. In 1993, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Hapgood, blamed the “high romantic expectations” created by pop songs and Mills and Boons for Britain’s rising divorce rate. A charge echoed more recently by author and psychologist Susan Quilliam, who blames the novels for a variety of relationship woes including unsafe sex, unplanned pregnancies, and inflated sexual and romantic expectations. But a trip down memory lane reminds us of the many excellent reasons that an M&B novel is bought every four seconds somewhere in the world. It may not be a feminist read, but it has always remained current and relevant; its changing heroines, heroes, and plotlines marking the transformation of female fantasy over a century. Started in 1908, it is sold in 109 countries and translated into 36 different languages, its popularity undiminished by time and across borders. From war hero to brute In the first years of business, the Mills and Boon imprint published novels by Hugh Walpole, PG Wodehouse, and IAR Wylie, but didn’t become popular until after the Second World War. For two pennies, they offered a much-needed escape from the horrors of war. While the 40s heroine (made famous by author Sara Seale) was a nurturer, looking for love in the midst of destruction, the 50s women were older (24 instead of 20) and the heroes more clever and aggressive. The men were not necessarily rich and no longer victims of war, according to Betty Beaty, also known popularly as Catherine Ross and Betty Smith. The post-war heroine is also the first to leave home for a career. [caption id=“attachment_57427” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“By the 1970s, the virgin was out and premarital sex was in. Image courtesy comedy_nose/Flickr”] [/caption] The freewheeling sixties inevitably ushered in a new sexual candour, if not equality. Popular author and self-professed ‘man maniac’ Violet Winspear ushered in the new M&B style: heavy doses of sex, a brooding hero, and tortured heroines with a taste for masochism. Speaking on the BBC Man Alive program in 1970, Winspear raised hackles and eyebrows when she said:

I get my heroes so that they’re lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they’ve got to be rich and then I make it that they’re only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they’re well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it’s dangerous to be alone in the room with.

By the 1970s, the virgin was out and premarital sex was in.  Sheila Ann Mary Coates (aka Charlotte Lamb, Shiela Lancaster, Victoria Wolf, and Laura Hardy) set the publishing house on fire with her often shocking, yet honest treatment of subjects like child abuse and rape, and is often credited for creating independent, imperfect, and often sexually aggressive heroine. In retrospect, she’s also been criticised for her over-violent relationships, abusive heroes, and suicide themes. As award-winning English poet Jane Holland (also Lamb’s daughter) notes on her blog , “many archetypal Lamb heroes are disturbingly reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”, a visceral proto-feminist poem: Every woman adores a Fascist/The boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you.” An observation true of many an M&B author back in the day. Oral sex didn’t make an appearance until 1982 in Antigua Kiss: “‘There are other places to kiss,’ he informed her darkly. Christiana, shocked, nevertheless surrendered to ‘waves of ecstasy.’” Of course, it was the hero’s idea while the heroine remained ‘shocked.’ The great leap forward  The new millennium, however, has marked a great leap forward with the books dealing with more feminist themes such as inequality and domestic violence, while ushering in a sexually aggressive heroine. She no longer has to be younger than the hero, and is every bit as demanding in bed as any man. Brutes are now passe, pushed aside for kinder, gentler New Man. But much of this progress is nowhere in evidence closer to home. Mills & Boon unveiled their first homegrown novel, The Love Asana, in 2008 featuring many of the old, tired cliches : a playboy billionaire hero and innocent and self-sacrificing heroine who reforms him through her pure love. With the emphasis on ‘pure.’ It peddles the sati savitri model of romance that has few takers in new India, be it in present-day Bollywood or desi chick-lit novels. Last year, the publishing house tied up with Dharma Productions around I Hate Luv Storys, or rather it’s cynical anti-love hero, Imran Khan. The plan  is to create a special series of eight books featuring the characters from the film. Also in the works is a second book from an Indian author set to be released in 2012. But here’s the big question: will the Indian M&B remain stuck in time warp, or learn to change with the times like its Western cousin?