This was a fascinating read! As a romance-writer I've predominantly done farm-themed smut (currently working through my first book as a serialized novel here at Substack), but I have aspirations of doing a historical romance. All of my stories are set in western Maine, where mountains and wilderness abound, so this one would be during the time period of the American Frontier, during the Indian Wars. I hadn't even considered the dynamics you've presented--the role pregancy plays in the lives of women during that time period. It's a profound concept and one I look forward to working with. Thank you for sharing!🙏
Thank you for reading! I'm also a huge fan of farm historical romances, for reasons I haven't quite worked out yet. At least in English set romances, a farm is often framed as the quaint alternative to city life, but my favorites complicate this. But repeatedly, my favorite book in a series will be the one when the reprobate brother gets sent to a farm to learn some responsibility and inevitably meets a widow.
Oh absolutely! I love toeing the line of realism vs fantasy in romances, but they always need to remain a reliable escape. Worrying about maternal death...not much of an escape! (If you want to read about accoucheurs fictionally, my book is The Governess Without Guilt, and then I also wrote up my research into accoucheurs - which made me cross my legs a lot because it is GORY - for my newsletter subscribers)
Loved reading this! I read Catherine Called Birdy in 5th grade and was traumatized, but reading your thoughts made me want to revisit it.
Have you read Eloisa James' books Potent Pleasures and Midnight Pleasures? They are her first two books, published in 1999 and 2000, and both contain graphic, traumatic experiences of childbirth on page.
In the first, the heroine nearly dies during childbirth after exhausting herself in a fit of terror, believing that her husband, the hero, will take her child away. She delivers the baby, recovers, and the book ends abruptly and unbelievably 15 pages later.
In the second, the heroine is seven months pregnant when she learns that her baby is dead in utero. The subsequent stillbirth is on page. They have a child in the epilogue.
I don’t think I could recommend either book but, I haven't stopped thinking about them.
Oh both of those sound so interesting! I'm both a pleasure reading and an academic reader of romance, so I'll read anything that does something different, even if the result is a less good/enjoyable read. I have only read one Eloisa James book, but it was audiobook because I was particularly discriminating about narrators and I think the narrator really soured my experience of it.
I highly recommend the adaptation! I similarly read Catherine Called Birdy as a kid, but it terrified me in a way that I was morbidly fascinated with it. The movie I found just incredibly healing and redemptive. And the changes Dunham makes to the plot, particularly the ending, are so beautiful to me.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately (in the context of reading about Gothic literature, but also in the TTRPG system I play regularly that often serves functionally as a 'write your own Regency romance novels' game) and I am so thrilled to see this analysis, it's so good and thought-provoking. Thank you.
Okay that TTRPG sounds amazing. And yeah, I don't have a solution for myself where I want to read mostly historical romance still and I don't expect or want it to take up these plot points. Just there's huge consequence gap that haunts (maybe Gothic literature is the answer!) the reality this fiction is setting itself in that I can't always escape in my brain as a reader.
Very interesting! Like you said, it is hard to figure out how to make room for this kind of story on page in the romance genre (rather than being flashbacks from a widower's perspective or an adult child thinking about the mother they lost). I wrote a historical romance with an accoucheur (man mid-wife) as the hero. The pregnancy is not the heroine's, and yet even though the mother in question was not actually a main character, I still was very concerned not only that she could not die in childbirth but also that the reader would not be worried that she might die. But as a writer, I also enjoy having these genre constraints as a challenge to write towards/against!
Thank you for a writer's perspective on the experience of genre constraints! I hope it was clear that I don't really want my romance novels to suddenly be filled with childbirth death or the threat of postpartum injuries. Just that it is interesting to me that one genre convention (this focus on family and children as proof of HEA) meets another (the threat of the danger of childbirth cannot be real on-page because then we wouldn't get a HEA) and creates this gap. But now I want to read about accouchers!
This was a fascinating read! As a romance-writer I've predominantly done farm-themed smut (currently working through my first book as a serialized novel here at Substack), but I have aspirations of doing a historical romance. All of my stories are set in western Maine, where mountains and wilderness abound, so this one would be during the time period of the American Frontier, during the Indian Wars. I hadn't even considered the dynamics you've presented--the role pregancy plays in the lives of women during that time period. It's a profound concept and one I look forward to working with. Thank you for sharing!🙏
Thank you for reading! I'm also a huge fan of farm historical romances, for reasons I haven't quite worked out yet. At least in English set romances, a farm is often framed as the quaint alternative to city life, but my favorites complicate this. But repeatedly, my favorite book in a series will be the one when the reprobate brother gets sent to a farm to learn some responsibility and inevitably meets a widow.
Oh absolutely! I love toeing the line of realism vs fantasy in romances, but they always need to remain a reliable escape. Worrying about maternal death...not much of an escape! (If you want to read about accoucheurs fictionally, my book is The Governess Without Guilt, and then I also wrote up my research into accoucheurs - which made me cross my legs a lot because it is GORY - for my newsletter subscribers)
Loved reading this! I read Catherine Called Birdy in 5th grade and was traumatized, but reading your thoughts made me want to revisit it.
Have you read Eloisa James' books Potent Pleasures and Midnight Pleasures? They are her first two books, published in 1999 and 2000, and both contain graphic, traumatic experiences of childbirth on page.
In the first, the heroine nearly dies during childbirth after exhausting herself in a fit of terror, believing that her husband, the hero, will take her child away. She delivers the baby, recovers, and the book ends abruptly and unbelievably 15 pages later.
In the second, the heroine is seven months pregnant when she learns that her baby is dead in utero. The subsequent stillbirth is on page. They have a child in the epilogue.
I don’t think I could recommend either book but, I haven't stopped thinking about them.
Oh both of those sound so interesting! I'm both a pleasure reading and an academic reader of romance, so I'll read anything that does something different, even if the result is a less good/enjoyable read. I have only read one Eloisa James book, but it was audiobook because I was particularly discriminating about narrators and I think the narrator really soured my experience of it.
I highly recommend the adaptation! I similarly read Catherine Called Birdy as a kid, but it terrified me in a way that I was morbidly fascinated with it. The movie I found just incredibly healing and redemptive. And the changes Dunham makes to the plot, particularly the ending, are so beautiful to me.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately (in the context of reading about Gothic literature, but also in the TTRPG system I play regularly that often serves functionally as a 'write your own Regency romance novels' game) and I am so thrilled to see this analysis, it's so good and thought-provoking. Thank you.
Okay that TTRPG sounds amazing. And yeah, I don't have a solution for myself where I want to read mostly historical romance still and I don't expect or want it to take up these plot points. Just there's huge consequence gap that haunts (maybe Gothic literature is the answer!) the reality this fiction is setting itself in that I can't always escape in my brain as a reader.
Very interesting! Like you said, it is hard to figure out how to make room for this kind of story on page in the romance genre (rather than being flashbacks from a widower's perspective or an adult child thinking about the mother they lost). I wrote a historical romance with an accoucheur (man mid-wife) as the hero. The pregnancy is not the heroine's, and yet even though the mother in question was not actually a main character, I still was very concerned not only that she could not die in childbirth but also that the reader would not be worried that she might die. But as a writer, I also enjoy having these genre constraints as a challenge to write towards/against!
Thank you for a writer's perspective on the experience of genre constraints! I hope it was clear that I don't really want my romance novels to suddenly be filled with childbirth death or the threat of postpartum injuries. Just that it is interesting to me that one genre convention (this focus on family and children as proof of HEA) meets another (the threat of the danger of childbirth cannot be real on-page because then we wouldn't get a HEA) and creates this gap. But now I want to read about accouchers!