- by Tara Maya
The Escapist Nature of Fantasy Romance (Guest Post by Heidi Wessman Kneale)
When I’ve had too much of reality, I open a book. I love the delightfully escapist nature of Fantasy and Romance. This escapist quality was what saved my life.
For me growing up, books weren’t just an enjoyable pastime. They were my vehicle for escape. My childhood bully lived next door to us. I didn’t dare step outside in case he was there to torment me. He was my age, went to the same school, the same church, the same grocery store. It’s like the greasy tentacles of his presence invaded nearly every aspect of my life.
The only place I truly felt safe was in my own home. However, it didn’t feel like a refuge. It was a prison.
How did I escape? Books.
Fantasy was my first love. I devoured the Chronicles of Narnia when I was six and raided the book shelves for more. I loved it when my mom took me to the library–one of the few places my bully didn’t follow me.
I couldn’t stand contemporary fiction because it felt like all the characters were trapped in their lives like I was. I didn’t want to read about more misery. Bridge to Terabithia positively made me cry.
Fantasy was different. It thrilled me because it was otherworldly. Sure the characters had their problems and their griefs and even their bullies. But their problems were solvable because they had magic, or they had godlike lions or they had Grand Destinies. Unlike me, they had an Out. They could defeat the bad guy and move on with their lives in triumph. In Fantasy, there was always an Out.
Reading about this Out was very important to me as a child. For many years I honestly believed I would never get my own Out. When one spends most of their young life with daily scorn and ridicule, one doubts that they will ever receive respect, even as an adult. Even as young as age 10, I dreaded that I would end up in a life of poverty, having no career prospects as an adult. Nobody wanted me now, I’d reasoned. Nobody would hire me when I grew up. How would I support myself if I couldn’t get a job?
With such a grim future ahead of me, can you blame me for turning to Fantasy?
As I grew older, along with non-existent job prospects, I realised that love prospects were also not going to happen. No boy liked me. In fact, several of them went out of their way to ensure I knew just how unlikeable I was.
So I lost my teenage self in Romance. Again, contemporaries were not for me. Historicals were where it was at, and what few Fantasy Romances existed, I sought them out. Had Twilight been published twenty years earlier, I so would have been a Twihard.
This was the 1980’s, the heyday of those gloriously fuschia bodice-rippers. Their heroines had a much harder life than I, yet I revelled in these stories because of one very important detail: every single one of these heroines got her Happily Ever After (HEA). It didn’t matter how impoverished, shipwrecked, kidnapped, abandoned, or even raped the heroine was. She stuck through it all because she was guaranteed that Happily Ever After light at the end of her long dark tunnel. HEA is what I love most about Romance.
I read for the hope she had.
When I read these books, I forgot about my miserable little self and got nicely lost in someone else’s world. This is what sustained me through my dark years until several very important things happened in my life. My bully moved away, I grew up and went to university where I met lots of other people who loved escapist fiction as much as I did.
So, am I living an HEA now? Of course not; this is reality. I still have to get up at stupid o’clock on a chilly morning, I still have to deal with irritating people, I still fall down and scrape my knees. But now I have friends who will help me up and patch me up and send me on my way with love. I may not have an HEA, but I do have an Out. Even so, when I’ve had too much of reality, I can always open a Fantasy Romance book.
Bio:
Heidi Wessman Kneale is an Australian author of moderate repute. By day, she wrangles computers as a way of supporting her educational and musical habits. By night she stares at the stars in the sky.
