The Bloodsmoor Romance

Taken at its face value, A Bloodsmoor Romance can be looked upon as a domestic romance where issues relating to marriage and securing husbands upon the part of the female species populating the novel occupy centre stage. However, events over the course of "600 pages of anti-romance" prove that there is more to the novel than being a mere replica of Austin's Pride and Prejudice or Suzan Warner's The Wide Wide World. Faithful to the romantic conventions, the novel introduces five marriageable girls but unlike a typical romance three of these five girls spurn marriage "... in their frenzied quest for their own fortunes in the wide world". Far from being "a reiteration of a more or less euphoric or depressed romanticism" (Women's time, Kristeva 43), A Bloodsmoor Romance is more of a critique of the conditions of women in the nineteenth century, conditions Oates sees lingering and spiraling into the modern day. Only the instruments of oppression are different this time.

This middle volume in her "Gothic Trilogy" is set in the last third of the 19th century and concludes with its main character's death at the last stroke of midnight on December 31, 1899. It is about the four daughters of an eccentric New England existentialist and inventor, whose lifelong quest is the discovery of a perpetual motion machine, even though, as he readily confesses, he has no idea what use such a thing would be, except for its ability to "keep going". Along the way, this man, a pacifist, invents the electric chair in response to the cruelty of hanging, sees one daughter kidnapped by a black-clad man who descends from the sky in a black hot air balloon, only to take the girl off to become the most celebrated medium in New York City; has his oldest daughter escape a sure-to-be unhappy marriage on her wedding morning and go west to begin living life as a hired gun; witnesses his most beautiful daughter go to the stage, gain fame and rape Mark Twain; and sees his most eccentric daughter secretly become the finest inventor alive at that time. Wow...what can I say...this is SOME book!

It's popular in some circles to turn up noses at "romance" novels. If you're in one of those, don't turn up your nose at this one! In it Oates has captured the style of the 19th Century Gothic Romance novel down the the last crossed t and dotted i. It's also a beautifully researched picture of how women lived in the late-1800s, written in the language of the time -- or at least a very good simulation of it. 20th century feminism in 19th century guise.It's about women's roles in society and the rules they lived by. A fast-moving tale full of imaginative twists -- there's a wedding night scene that's the funniest and the most surprising I've read.The story begins with the introduction to a surly Cinderella-type with step sisters who definitely are not Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. It's September, 1879. All five girls are spoiled and privileged, living lives of ease in the white-columned splendor of Kiddemaster Hall, near the Bloodsmoor River in Pennsylvania.The girls are relaxing in the gazebo after a grueling party. Deirdre (did they really name girls Deirdre in those days?), who is our Cinderella, becomes angry and stalks down the path to the river. Suddenly a giant black balloon dips from the sky and carries her away. The book describes the fates of the girls for the next 20 years in rich and lively prose.Oates takes the romance novel and skewers it with social satire. Her volume of work is prodigious -- she has probably written more in a wider variety of style and genres than any other contemporary author. Whether romance, horror, science fiction, mainstream, mystery, short story collection, essays, criticism or poetry, her work excels. Joyce Carol Oates is the Renaissance Woman on the modern American literary scene and A BLOODSMOOR ROMANCE eclipses the genre.

I am actually rereading this book currently...it is so impressive; the kind of book i read while i burn candles and listen to gothic music. b/c i am a dork. but it is pretty thrilling and evocative and though Oates' vernacular gets a little heavy, sometimes, I keep thinking about what a great movie it would make, if it was in the right hands. And I don't see it so much as a parody, myself. I mean parts of it are definitely very ironic, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. Though I do read it and think about how, when I read Little Women and like books when I was younger, i wondered if sex wasn't some modern invention.

The cover looked like a melodramatic grocery-store romance novel--it had a woman with billowing black hair and a breathtaken expression, wearing an extravagant 19th-century dress--and the back read, "One beauteous autumn day in 1879, a sinister black balloon swooped from the skies and abducted Miss Deirdre Zinn as her four sisters gaped, mute and terror-struck. For their family nothing was ever the same again..." If I hadn't known it was a parody, I would have been terribly alarmed and probably would have put it back on the shelves. But, having been notified of the fact, I laughed, and decided I had to read it. "Like a long Edward Gorey cartoon, or like Little Women as told by Stephen King," said one review in the front. Yes. It was just my sort of thing. Altogether, Ms. Oates captures the spirit of the times quite well, deftly mixing mentions of Edison and Walt Whitman and Poe into her characters' social lives, and including an intimate personal appearance by Mark Twain. Furthermore, as this book is highly amusing and deeply interesting, and barely at all disturbing, it shows that Joyce Carol Oates is an even more versatile author than I realized. Fans of Victorian literature will be delighted at this new take on the subject.