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Huge overreach in regards to generic YA paranormal romances, and I'm done with gratuitious Twilight-bashing (and Shades-of-Grey-bashing), but this article does attempt to speak to something genuine. I'm still terribly burnt out on romance in YA (and I can't help noticing that of the Printz honorees I read this year, In Darkness had essentially no romance, Code Name Verity had small hints around the edges but no real romantic relationships, and Aristotle and Dante is a love story all the way through but considered as a romance -- it's a very nontraditional one.)
I think that if YA novels very rarely approach their romances from "the idea that two people, with all their flaws, might discover themselves operating in emotional synchronicity," it's not out of an anti-feminist agenda (although I do think the result can look awfully anti-feminist) but simply because it's actually very hard to do so. I wonder if people are so quick to dismiss romance novels because they don't realize just how hard it is, and how good it is when it's done well! Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races worked on that level, at least -- you could see two people growing to like each other based on who they were, how each of them was picking up on the small signs that say "This is someone who's a good person, this is someone I can trust."
But, I think it's the fundamental unsolvable anxiety about love, isn't it? Hoping that someone could see into your entire soul and like you anyway, being afraid that it isn't true. And so writers try to externalize it, make it something objective, declaring the heroine to be the Strongest, the Best, the Most Powerful, the one who's secretly much more awesome than she appears to be. Like the Pure Heart Crystals in Sailor Moon.
I think I'm going to have to read The Fault In Our Stars again. It's not a book that worked all the way through for me, but I totally believed in the romance, and I think it's because the narrative didn't ask me to fall in love with Augustus Waters. It just expected me to trust that Hazel was falling in love with him.
I think that if YA novels very rarely approach their romances from "the idea that two people, with all their flaws, might discover themselves operating in emotional synchronicity," it's not out of an anti-feminist agenda (although I do think the result can look awfully anti-feminist) but simply because it's actually very hard to do so. I wonder if people are so quick to dismiss romance novels because they don't realize just how hard it is, and how good it is when it's done well! Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races worked on that level, at least -- you could see two people growing to like each other based on who they were, how each of them was picking up on the small signs that say "This is someone who's a good person, this is someone I can trust."
But, I think it's the fundamental unsolvable anxiety about love, isn't it? Hoping that someone could see into your entire soul and like you anyway, being afraid that it isn't true. And so writers try to externalize it, make it something objective, declaring the heroine to be the Strongest, the Best, the Most Powerful, the one who's secretly much more awesome than she appears to be. Like the Pure Heart Crystals in Sailor Moon.
I think I'm going to have to read The Fault In Our Stars again. It's not a book that worked all the way through for me, but I totally believed in the romance, and I think it's because the narrative didn't ask me to fall in love with Augustus Waters. It just expected me to trust that Hazel was falling in love with him.