the flame and the flower by kathleen woodiwiss

Forever Amber had many of the same problems with gender issues, and rape specifically, although at least Amber did things on her own initiative and made everyone uncomfortable by wearing too-sexy clothes. I will forgive a book many many flaws if it’s got an engaging plot. The cardinal sin, though, is that the whole book’s boring.

I can’t even begin to tell you how unsexy the sex scenes are. Heather’s not that into it but she’s too scared to tell him so because he flexed his jaw muscles and she finds that very frightening. Oh, and also? The “hero”, Brandon, tells her he’s going to teach her about pleasure, but the book’s from 1972 so he just means, like, nipple-tweaking.

She’s always trying to cover up her breasts because all her clothes are badly fitted and/or translucent so she’s constantly popping out of everything. The book talks about her nakedness a lot. In the first sixty of which, be it said, Heather gets raped like four times and her mean aunt inexplicably rips her clothes off in front of a bunch of people to reveal her nakedness. And then she’s sad that she’s such a coward.

In fact many things about this book just couldn’t be any worse.Īpparently Kathleen Woodiwiss gets praised for writing strong heroines? Says Wikipedia? How can that be? Heather, the “heroine” of The Flame and the Flower, decides to help bathe her husband so he won’t rape her quite so hard because she’ll be a dutiful wife or something. A third of the way through reading it became clear to me that there wasn’t going to be any actual flames or actual flowers, and that the title in fact referred to the hero and heroine, respectively. My notes for this post are massively indignant, because as I was reading and jotting down notes, I started noticing more and more things that pissed me off. But in fact I was nearly as naive as he was in my wild underestimation of the rapidity with which the rapeyness would commence. I thought Captain Hammer was the naive one in this conversation, for thinking the rapist would be the book’s villain. I expect it will be extreeeeeemely rapey but I shall press on.Ĭaptain Hammer: Well, how else would you know who the bad guys are? Jenny: I’m going to read The Flame and the Flower. I told this to Mumsy and she said I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t believe her. And I am interested in the ways genres develop, and I read and enjoyed Forever Amber a few years ago, so I decided to read The Flame and the Flower. I was reading snippets of Social Sister’s copy of Beyond Heaving Bosoms, which she got for Christmas, and it mentioned that the romance novel genre was kicked off by this one book, The Flame and the Flower. But really, The Flame and the Flower, fuck you.

The flame and the flower by kathleen woodiwiss