This week I have been pondering Risk.
I am a litigator, so risk is at the heart of what I do. My meat and drink is what happens when risk comes home to roost. Personally - and this is a typical lawyerly trait - I am quite risk averse. Every day, I am told about situations that make me think I can't believe you did that. But those who take risk gain material rewards that those of us who abhor risk never will.
Risk is good and bad; positive and negative; attractive and off-putting. To say something is risky may be to condemn it forever or give it a sheen of irresistibility.
Risk features heavily in romance. Will X risk all for love? we are asked on countless back blurbs. It's associated with high stakes, conflict, hazard.
To be risk-averse is to say.... What if? What if, (s)he doesn't love me in return? What if my heart is broken?
Romance is full of hero(in)es that will throw themselves in front of bullets and swords or rush into burning buildings;who risk bankruptcy to build up phenomenal wealth; who engage in dangerous occupations - but who don't dare to love in case... they get hurt.
Is there is dichotomy here - the hero(ine) who embraces of physical risk but is emotionally risk averse? Is it credible that someone who is a risk-taker in one sphere would be risk averse in another? Is the physical risk-taker/ emotional risk-averse protagonist any more than a genre convention?
What do you think?
Point of interest: the photo is of Philippe Petit, who famously tightrope-walked between the twin towers. In the documentary Man On Wire, Petit speaks powerfully and passionately about what drove him to do this. His language - the object of my dream - is stirring and evocative.
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6 comments:
I want to say you're wrong, and that certain kinds of people risk in one area and not in others, because I want that hero trope to be true, but I think you are right, and that it is not.
Okay, but what is really astounding is that DH and I just 10 minutes ago finished watching that documentary, and then I came here and it's on your blog! Surely it's a sign of something.
I can't understand why they take the big financial/physical risks. Equally, I can't understand what they think's so risky about telling someone that you love them. After all, if they don't love you, you would get over it eventually.
Perhaps I'm being prosaic and not realising that it's different when the person involved is your One True Love and Soul-Mate, because you would Never Get Over the Loss of Your OTLaS-M. Still, if someone was your OTLaS-M, wouldn't it be a bit daft not to tell them about it? If you don't tell them you'll definitely be alone, whereas if you do tell them, there's a chance you won't be alone. And if they don't love you back, wouldn't that perhaps suggest that they weren't really your OTLaS-M after all? So in that case, it's better to find out sooner rather than later.
Sometimes, though, it seems as though romance heroes behave this way because they think almost all women are deceitful gold-diggers who really want to lure men to their doom. In that case, it's understandable they'd feel risk averse about relationships, since they think there's an almost 100% chance of the relationship failing, but it's also deeply misogynistic.
Oh, or perhaps they think the reason there's a 100% chance of the relationship failing is because they think they're incapable of love (despite feeling some strange, unnamed emotion every single time they come near the heroine).
Or perhaps they think they must never marry because they are incapable of being a good husband/father.
In these cases, it would seem that the reader almost certainly thinks the odds of the relationship working are higher than the hero does, because his self-esteem is so low.
In such cases, maybe the heroes' assessment of risk in other areas is also affected by their low self-esteem. For example, if they don't really care if they injure/kill themselves, since they don't value themselves much/ don't think they have much chance of future happiness, they'll be more likely to risk death.
Maybe what these angsty heroes need is some counselling?
There's less to fall back on with emotional risk, I think. With physical risk one surely would know his capability and training pretty well; with financial risk, one can always seek out professionals who know more about it or develop the expertise oneself. But emotional risk, at least of the kind encountered in romance fiction, depends almost entirely on someone else, whose otherness one can never completely comprehend.
dick
Carolyn - I loved that documentary. He's kind of a mesmeric fellow, don't you think? Re the risk issue, I'm not sure I have a settled view - I was just posing the question, really. I love the trope personally.
Laura - you do make me laugh! Maybe is not about attitude to risk but assessment of risk?
Dick - true - and I find this trope so appealing that I will embrace anything that can make it work for me. But I do come back to Laura's "what's the worst that can happen?" question. Thankfully I can do brain tricks whereby I put up resilient (if not idestructible) walls between my rational mind and my ability to enjoy a story.
I think most people are more risk-seeking in some areas of their lives than in others. Some of which we probably manage by your "brain tricks" :)
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