Okay, I have more to say on this. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of heterosexual romance is based on the fantasy of the patriarchal bargain actually working.
The patriarchal bargain when simplified is woman submits/dedicates to man. Man protects woman and children. His power becomes both shield and weapon for her.
If you grew up as a girl in a culture, basically any culture, everything around you was propagandizing the patriarchal bargain. (The culture fog/smog did it, even if your specific nuclear family tried not to.) (all the members of your family grew up in worse smog/fog)
The bargain doesnât work. Itâs never worked. But like all fan fiction, lots of writers are in love with the characters and think they can tweak it just a bit to find a new and better story inside the framework. The woman is sassy, a firecracker, not like other girls. She gets respect. Real Respect from the patriarchal object. The man fulfills the role of patriarch, he has power to share and protection to give, and gives it generouslyâŠbut only to special girl. That selective stinginess preserves his power and station within the patriarchy. If he wasnât Like That, her reward for bargaining would be smaller. If a woman is depending on the patriarchal bargain, she needs a man that can navigate and win the patriarchal hierarchy between men. (Thatâs a different post)
And in older novels they are much more blunt about how, legally, picking a husband might be the only meaningful choice a woman ever gets to make. It is life and death. And every grade of misery and happiness in between.
And the thing isâŠpicking a partner is still kind of life or death. I think every heterosexual woman feels the reality of that even if they havenât carefully dissected the cultural forces. Maybe especially if they havenât. So for as many women as there are currently, today, trying to escape the patriarchal bargain, I think there are just as many, probably more that are hypothesizing and fantasizing about making it work.
Essentially: âwhat if I take all the types of people I actually see around me, and the types of relationships I actually know, but make them WORK. With good sex that has no orgasm gap, and like real love and affection under all that other stuff. It HAS to be there, right? Under all that other stuff?â
Itâs often hard to get out of that paradigm. Generally, often not always, you have to admit and reconcile with the fact that your father who was good to you, was kind of shit to your mother. And there is no fixing him, or his type.
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
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turnnoffyourmind
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