I love schlock. I really do. I make it no secret: why do you think I named my Substack “Mechanical PULP?” Because I’m a low-quality paper afficionado? (OK, maybe a little. It’s toothy!)
I love shitty horror movies. I love grindhouse. Exploitation movies. Tits and gore. I went to Film School so I could sit around with friends and put in the stupidest movie I could find, and we’d all laugh our asses off, for way longer than the movie’s runtime because we keep pausing, rewinding, watching the stupid scenes again. (The pretentious douche portion of the film school students were way less fun. You know, the ones who chuckle condescendingly at you if you haven’t seen Citizen Kane1 but if you ask if they’ve ever watched a single foreign film they stutter “K-k-kurosawa” and that's it.)
If you’ve never done so, I highly recommend cultivating bad taste. Why do you think shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Red Letter Media are so popular? Find a bad movie to watch with friends. It’s the best.
To understand bad taste one must have very good taste. —John Waters
This may upset some of you, but there is art in the lowbrow. Honest! And when I say read widely and take inspiration from everything to shape your voice as a writer, I fuckin MEAN IT, bud.
“But Lisa, sex and violence is revolting!”2
Real life is revolting. Good catch!
At least books, movies, video games and music help us explore the revolting safely. No danger or damage will befall you. Art is fantastic that way! You get to explore so many themes!
And anyway, since “sex in fiction” seems to be a topic lately, whenever people ask me why I have sex in my books:
BECAUSE IT’S SO MUCH FUN.
And, listen, not everything is made for everyone. Any movie, book or musical act that tries to appeal to everyone will appeal to no one. So we might as well all take risks with our art, and have fun.
I also want to point out, before I get to the real topic indicated in the title of this “article,” yes, I do consider myself a somewhat more literate stupid bitch vs some others. I do enjoy the highbrow, too, and if you’ve ever spoken with me you know I’ve read at least 3 classic novels. I will not list them, you can guess which ones in the comments (this is engagement bait.) But, maybe it’s the underdog appeal, I’ve just always been drawn to ghettoized genres. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Romance, you know, the genres for total dumdums.3
And Romance is an interesting one, because despite being constantly shit on from the left, right, and sideways, it manages to prop up the ENTIRE publishing industry.
But, what's even “worse” than regular Romance? Enter the bodice ripper. The subgenre that really, really kicked off the Romance boom.
(And for the cover art dorks like myself, a lot of the covers are by Robert McGinnis. He also did a ton of crime novel covers.)
What is a “bodice ripper,” anyway?
Not all romances are bodice rippers. It’s quite specific. These days you might hear “dark romance” and that isn’t totally inaccurate, but not all dark romances are rippers.
The 1970s and 1980s, a magical time. The ‘60s had catastrophically overed, paving the way for grimy cynicism, there were more women in the workforce, the Soviet Union hadn’t collapsed yet, and marital rape was still legal (in Canada at least, until 1993.)
Publishing moneymen were taking lots of chances with mass market paperbacks on the whole. As a collector of vintage SFF, I am very happy about this. New Wave scifi, for example. And, publishers were snatching up forgotten works from the early 20th century, repackaging them, hiring Frank Frazetta to paint some new covers, and giving them a re-release, making them available to a whole new generation of fans.
Movies in the 70s were in a low spot, which wound up being wonderful in hindsight: lots of films that otherwise would never have been greenlit were made, like throwing noodles at the wall. Butts in seats, that’s all that mattered! Do it on a tiny budget, too!
But women, these dumb broads—schlock pushers could be selling to them, too! Directly! They have jobs! What do they like?
Well, shockingly, we like a lot of the same things that men like. In fact, some women like grosser, nastier, darker subjects in their media than men do.4 I know more female gorehounds than males, for example. But we also love looooove stories, man. We just can't help ourselves!!
I’m digressing.
You will not find bodice rippers published much before 1970 or after 1989, mid-90s at the absolute top end. (Maybe there are some new indies out there on kindle, but I’m sticking with trad publishing, here.) And once I list the things that make a ripper a ripper, you’ll guess why:
Historical setting (hence “bodice” instead of like, “shirt”) This, as a lifelong history nerd, is a big plus.
Adventure, action, in the nonsexual way.
Descriptive sex (though, often tame by today's standards of description.) This was a big deal at the time.
Asshole protagonists (male and female, but especially male)
Rape
Violence
Absolutely not palatable to Modern Audiences(tm)
Rape
Lots of rape
Generally non-politically-correct scenes (take your pick of -isms)
Abuses from the hero
Really bonkers scenarios that make absolutely no logical sense (shock value!)
Age gaps. Sometimes rather large ones. I don't think I’ve read one where the hero/heroine were the same age.
Obsession
Gang rape
Trauma bonding
Absolutely no normal communication. On the one hand, you want to strangle the protagonists. But on the other hand… “babe, you know I publicly humiliated you, and forcibly confined you to save you from that other way worse guy right? He was way totally worse, and super ugly. Very sorry to make you so angry. I am emotionally stunted, but I love you, actually. Ever since I took your virginity.” “Oh, wow, thank you for explaining yourself. I am very prideful and stubborn, which makes it difficult to keep me from escaping and getting entangled in things that make you need to save me all the time. It’s very silly and impulsive, so I should stop doing that. I love you too, you’re so strong and brave and incredibly handsome.” *smooch* *smooch* ~Fin~ . . . BORING! There shall be NO sensible, calm, or explanatory conversations until the last 5% of the book. Tension and threats, only.
Etc.
“Regular” Romance novels just don’t compare. Meet-cute? Please. More like meet-kidnap or meet-sexual-assault-because-of-mistaken-identity (“I was shitfaced in the saloon and she was dressed like a specific whore that I frequent, your honour!”)
The heroine of a bodice ripper just can’t ever catch a break, either. These ladies see some shit. Nonstop. Reminder these books are often like 600 pages LMAO
(“Lisa, how can you unironically enjoy books with so much rape and violence?!?”
Uhhh because I'm not a pussy, bro?! Because I know it isn’t real?! What the fuck is a content warning?!)
But the really surprising things that I find in these novels, despite the list above:
Painstakingly accurate historical info dumps (not always, but often enough!)
Sympathy for the hero even if he’s a huge jerk (there’s always a reason if you just sit and listen to him!)
Cruelty toward the heroine perpetrated by other women (these days, I just rarely see cunty women in fiction, like we all have to be paragons of the wholesome, and that's just incorrect.)
Forgiveness, even and especially when it’s difficult.
Healing his hurt as female superpower5
Did I mention the historical accuracy? In some of them it’s very clear the author gave a shit, even when taking some liberties for the sake of plot. (Again, not always, I warn.)
Strong Female Characters who are strong because they have proven themselves, they can put up with all sorts of bullshit and persevere—not because they belittle all the male characters to look “strong”
(Sometimes) Better prose than modern romances. Same with fantasy and scifi tbh.
Men read books about slaying dragons, imagining themselves the saviour of the princess in the tower. Well, despite recent propaganda to the contrary, women like to read books about being the princess in the tower. In a ripper, even if the hero is the one who locked her in there initially, she becomes his reason to finally slay his dragons, and they’re both free. And they fuck a lot. Poetry!
If you think discovering these books when I was far too young for them is the reason I’m messed up, you’re cute. So adorable. I was raised in chaos. Books are books. I repeat: they cannot hurt you. Papercuts aside.
Anywho, reviews.
Love and War by Patricia Hagan
I fucking love this book, and I’m not sorry. It’s a rare one, even amongst ripper appreciators. A hidden gem. If you know me I have probably told you to read this. I don't remember how I found it, I read it about 14 years ago and again a year or two later. I’m writing this review by memory, so it might be patchy, but you’ll get the gist. I really should just reread it. It’s the most bonkers ripper I’ve ever read. Just fascinating.
Setting: American Civil War
Notice the two man heads on the cover? We have two heroes! Travis Coltrane, Yankee, and Nathan Collins, Rebel. Mr. Coltrane gives his name to the series, so you know he’s the worse (behaviour-wise) of the two.
Our heroine is Kitty Wright, a headstrong young woman raised by a somewhat progressive father in the South, much to the chagrin of her more conservative mother. Mother wants Kitty to be a lady, a southern belle. Kitty wants to be a doctor, and her father encourages her to be independent.
And then war were declared.
Oh, good golly, but the descriptions of civil war medical interventions will turn a stomach. I mean, yeah, she gets thrown around and raped and kidnapped and all that. But where the book shines is the war stuff! Honestly, I think this book has some of the best depictions of the war I have personally read in a novel—keeping in mind I haven’t read it in a while, but they’ve stuck with me. (And, we see it from a female perspective, for a book out of the 70s do you wonder why these sorts of books were so hugely popular? This stuff seems cute now—I’m an independant woman and I don’t need no man—but when these books were published, it was a big deal.) Kitty is amputating limbs left and right. Arms and legs, heaps and piles of them. You know, when she isn’t being kidnapped and raped.
Things happen in this book that are just… so bonkers. So, so over the top. It is a hell of a wild ride.
I’m definitely due to reread this one lmao
5 lice-ridden grody stinky lusty soldiers out of 5
The Silver Devil by Teresa Denys
The cover looks like a Gothic horror, I love it. But it isn’t a horror, per se... depending on your use of “horrific.” More like Game of Thrones, but without the dragons, and from a single POV of a woman purchased by a Bolton. This one is also rare and currently out of print with not even an ebook release, but it has enough of a cult following it’s easy to find on that Russian library website. (The paperbacks on eBay are $400-1300!!!!!)
Setting: Renaissance Italy, a made-up Dukedom. We even get an author’s note to set the scene:
Author's Note
This book is set in the year 1605. The Dukedom of Cabria is, of course, fictitious, but it may be presumed to lie along the east coast of Italy, just north of the Kingdom of Naples, and to have formed part of the Papal States before the insurrection of 1555.
At about this time the Papal Mint at Ancona was seized, and a member of the della Rovere family used it to produce his own coinage in defiance of the pope. This incident has been used as the starting point of the story that follows.
The hero is one Domenico, Duke of Cabria, and he has a terrifying reputation. Yet, he also has the entire court by the short’n’curleys. Everyone wants his favour (and they get it by fucking him. Male and female. A bisexual main character in a bodice ripper is actually a big deal! You could get away with a lot of things but even implied homosexuality was super taboo.) Everyone is also fretting he might decide to just have them killed or tortured. Stretching a kid on the rack until he dies is a casual Tuesday.
The heroine, Felicia, had it rough from the start. As the shameful product of her mother's one-night-stand, and that mother dying when Felicia was young, she’s at the mercy of her repugnant half-brother and his ugly bitch wife, forced to work their inn as slave labour like some Cinderella story… except the Duke that spies her in the window and instantly falls in lust is only taking her from one shit-ass situation to another one. He purchases her from the half-brother, then for some reason has some henchman drug her and abduct her?? Seems excessive!
But, the henchman is killed for drugging her almost to the point of death. Domenico does not tolerate incompetence!
There is a ton, A TON of castle politics in this. Court intrigues, spies, war. The Dukedom vs the Spanish, on very unfriendly terms with the Pope… Also, I was actually surprised by the battle scenes, in a good way.
But, oh my goodness, the rape. The sex acts aren’t as descriptive as some other books, but the pre- and postcoitus parts… whew. Poor Felicia gets done so rough she’s battered and bruised. In most books that part is sort of… glossed over. Unless it’s done by the villain.
But Domenico is a very troubled man. Duh, right? But really. He has flights of insanity where he goes into fits and passes out, and has constant nightmares. So, he’s got a lot of trauma in his own past and needs to do some cycle breaking by the end of the novel!
He is absolutely obsessed/overprotective of Felicia which makes the rest of his admirers rage. So her daily life fucking sucks because she’s just a peasant girl thrown into all this royal court BS. Thanks Domenico! You horny, arrogant prick. (But, by the end of the novel, you sort of root for him?? Because everyone else is so gross?? Talk about sympathy for the devil!)
Good thing she’s such a nice girl, poor Felicia, helping him sort out his issues. (I actually really liked that.) Even with a war going on!
I gave this one 4 dashed brains out of 5. 4.5, rounded down for goodreads. It’s really good—but notorious for a reason. I only docked half a star because of one part that dragged.
Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers
Absolute classic. On any list of “top bodice rippers” you’ll see this, probably in the top 3. It’s also quite long, clocking in at 630-700 pages, depending on the edition. This is also regularly shit on by total weenies (As one reddit user says: “I hate it so, so much. I can't even describe how much I loathe this book.”)6
Steve Morgan is such a relentless piece of shit. Ginny gets absolutely no breaks. It’s great. Though, I would prefer if Rosemary had cut the wordcount by just a fraction. Sometimes Ginny’s interiorities get tiresome. Really that’s my only complaint upon rereading this for the first time since I was a teenager… though, it is really interesting how my perspective on certain scenes have changed—the whole brain development thing. The equivalent of when you watch a horror movie and think “no you dummy do NOT go in that basement!” But then they totally go in the basement and that’s great because why the hell else are you watching a horror movie?
Setting: Southwestern US and Mexico, 1866. Yeah, this could have been an adult, raunchy spaghetti western, if it had been adapted. Easily.
Our hero, Steve, (yes, Steve), is half-American, from an afluent Mexican family. He speaks French, Spanish, Comanche, fought for the Union during the Civil War, is a spy for the American Government, can shoot a gun real fast, and now fights for the Juaristas. He’s also a reprobate womanizer and a violent rake. People are still to this day shocked by how much of an asshole he is.
Virginia Brandon, or Ginny, raised in France, most beautiful girl in the whole wide world, we are reminded constantly, because every single male character outside her family wants to fuck her. Every single one. (Actually, including her family, I think even her cousin was crushing on her.)
Her father is some big shot in the US government and decides to send her and her stepmother on wagons across the American southwest with a bunch of cattle and a hidden pile of gold. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?! Especially when one of your hired guns is Sir Fucksalot Steve, the man who shoots, stabs, steals, and is generally so Oppositional Defiant Disorder you want to scream… but then, so is Ginny. A red flag couple if there ever was one! The amount of bickering in the novel, my goodness. If it isn’t rape, it’s hate-fucking. But, Ginny has every reason to complain: her life is so totally crapsack garbage since he showed up, you want her to stab him.
What carries you through the book, though, is wondering if he’s ever going to catch a clue, if he’s ever going to admit to himself that he’s a jerk… but I won't spoil anything.
There’s a lot of historical infodumping. Troop locations, stuff about Emperor Maximilian, the racial and class politics of 19th c Mexico, all the stuff with the French intervention, tons and tons. As I’m not familiar with Mexican history, I can’t say if it’s super accurate, but it’s certainly enough to be convincing.
What’s extremely funny to me is that Rosemary Rogers goes through all the lengths to set the historical scene, and then her Mexican characters all talk like Speedy Gonzales, and the French like Pepé Le Pew.
But I forgive her. It was the 70s.
Also, this is first in a series. Skip the others and go right to Wicked Loving Lies, a standalone with a different hero. I haven't read it in years, but I recall enjoying it!
5 forced confinements in a whorehouse out of 5
So that's that.
If you like what I do here and want to support me, you can purchase one of my books, ordered here by least amount of sex to most (but they all have somethin’!)
The Highwayman Kennedy Thornwick [Amazon] [Kobo]
The Ghosts of Tieros Kol [Amazon] [Kobo]
Peace!
Citizen Kane sucks btw. You watch the movie once to say you’ve seen it and then immediately forget the whole thing. Watch Bicycle Thieves instead.
Tell that to the new Nosferatu remake, and Sinners: two recent movies with sex and horror/violence that were big boxoffice hits! Sinners made 6th place in the top 10 horror releases OF ALL TIME. And that movie took a lot of creative risks, beyond just the sex/violence. TAKE MORE RISKS!!!
I don't actually believe this to be true, if that wasn't obvious.
My favourite movie when I was 11 years old was Silence of the Lambs. I was unsupervised a lot.
Pussy: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.
Proof: https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/od5rpo/comment/h40qyy7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Reading this and realizing Medicine Woman is about a degree and a half away from being a bodice ripper. Excellent essay as always. Loved this one as a fellow trash appreciator.
Great post Lisa.
As someone who found and read all of my great uncle’s True Crime magazines at the age of 10, then proceeded to Mom’s Harlequin romance novel chain-reading club, I can testify to the value of this genre. Especially growing up in a era that did NOT discuss sex, these tomes were valuable aids for understanding the big nasty world, and developing a sense of humor about the overly-dramatic and absolute shitty behavior potential of humanity in general.
I suppose my poor mother was relieved to some extent that she would not have to have “the talk” with me, horror of horrors, lol. She basically said, “If you have any questions, let me know”. Totally typical of the times.
I turned out normal, which means I made mistakes, bad choices and potentially dangerous assumptions about male partners……but I also applied some useful bodice-ripping pro tips as well, because we never would NEVER have had any instruction on how to have a satisfactory sexual relationship with your mate from our parents. Or how to wield concealed daggers and hair-pins to fight off potential assault.
There was much learning to be found, good and bad. Such is life.
You rock. 💗