Trust me, I can handle it

[pbray]

Mini-rant...


I've been watching COVERT AFFAIRS on USA-- brainless eye-candy which is all I'm up for at 10PM. I don't take it seriously, but this week, the b-plot was Annie suspecting her brother-in-law was cheating on his wife. In the end, it turned out he'd been laid off two months ago, so his sneaking off to a hotel was for a job fair rather than a love affair. And his reason for keeping this a secret from his wife? "He wanted to protect her."

Because it's perfectly okay to hide such a crushing financial reality from your partner. Womenfolk need protecting, after all, they can't cope with the facts of modern life. Far better that your wife keep spending--including planning a couples getaway to a luxury resort--than it is for her to know the truth. In the show Annie didn't call him on his bullshit. Didn't point out that it wasn't about protecting his wife, it was about him being ashamed, being afraid that his wife would think less of him. Nope, she just urged him to share the news with his wife, assuring him that her sister was strong enough to handle it.

The next day I started reading an urban fantasy*. At one point the hero realizes that the evil forces have followed him to his home, and his family may be in danger. Does he tell his wife about the threat? No, because he doesn't want her to worry. What makes this worse is that his wife already knows about the supernatural world, and knows that there are creatures out there that want to kill him. He's not hiding what he does from her--he's only concealing the fact that she may be in danger. It's a boneheaded, patronizing move. When the dark forces attack, I'm sure she'll be happy that she had a husband who thought so highly of her that he didn't worry her beforehand.

Maybe his wife would have chosen to stay by his side. Maybe she would have decided now was the time to get the hell out of Dodge, and gone to stay with friends or family until the threat was over. Either way, she deserved the chance to make her own decision. By robbing her of that choice, the hero shows what he thinks of her. And no amount of internal monologue about how much he respects/admires her is going to change the fact that his actions show something else.

It's a flaw that's really bugging me about what is otherwise an excellent read. I'll likely finish the book, just to see if the hero redeems himself. But I'm not holding my breath.

And for the record, the last time someone tried to protect me in this way, I terminated our relationship. He had a brief stint as a stalker, but then transferred three thousand miles away which put an end to that problem.

*Per my usual policy, because it's a first novel I'm not naming names.

Comments

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is indeed another in the collection of pet peeves. "Let's 'protect' this person by not telling her information that could be vital to her survival." Or, as in the first case you outlined, "Not sharing important life information of any kind." Grrrrr.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It's a double sin--not only is it patronizing, it's a weak plot device.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

*gasp*! Not a weak plot device! A Deus Ex Mechina!

[birdhousefrog.livejournal.com]

Ummmm, gender of author of urban fantasy novel?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Female.

[birdhousefrog.livejournal.com]

Ack! Ack, ack, ack, ack! ('scuse me, hairball)

Sigh. Author has no clue, apparently. Thanks for saying. I'll just go clean up the mess I made now.

Oz

[kelly-swails.livejournal.com]

Allow me to interject.

1. I agree with the general tone of the comment thread in that the dude's actions in the novel are at the very least disrespectful. I also agree that the "I'm the manly hero and I will protect you by keeping you in the dark" is a ... retro ... way of looking at the male/female relationship. It has its place in some fiction, but certainly not urban fantasy.

2. Perhaps the author didn't intend to make the hero disrespectful. Perhaps the author doesn't *realize* this is a disrespectful way to think or act. My guess is the author grew up thinking that it's "romantic" to be "rescued," and has her male protagonist act accordingly. We all bring bits of ourselves to our work, and we all learn a lot about ourselves through the act of writing and having folks read that writing. Maybe this is a lesson this particular author still has to learn? So I say, cut her a little bit of slack.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I think you're correct that the author thinks that this behavior is romantic rather than condescending.

And other readers have different reactions than I did to this book, and likely to this scene.

As far as cutting slack--that's where the naming no names comes in, and there's not enough detail in my post to ID the book, since it is a first novel.

[kelly-swails.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that *you* weren't cutting the author slack. You clearly were, as you noted. It's just that sometimes comment threads can veer from "this was a poor choice" to "this author is stupid, delusional, and dysfunctional" pretty quickly. I wanted to throw my thoughts into the ring. :)

[lagilman]

In my family we call this the "grandma move." As in "Oh, I didn't want to worry you, it's nothing, really.."

Give us the respect of worrying us, okay? Thank you. Sheesh.

(I tried watching Covert Affairs, but it seemed to push my annoyance button even standing still)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Earlier in the evening I suspect Covert Affairs would be unwatchable, but by 10PM it's okay, though I'm mostly watching for characters other than Annie.

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Instead of saying he wanted to protect her, if he said he was hiding his embarrassment it would be more accurate.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And no one called him on it.

In THE FULL MONTY (original British movie) it was a major plot point for one of the characters, but it was also completely obvious that his motive in concealing his unemployment was shame--he couldn't let his wife see him as anything other than a successful provider.

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking of The Full Monty when I read your post. (Awesome flick, I laughed my head off in the theater, and I still can't list to Hot Stuff without chuckling.

Instead of a provider, it's more like "Hey, I've had this job and success and some meaning, and I've lost it all. How can I face my spouse knowing that my only chance of real success is to essentially prostitute myself and become a stripper?"

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Oh, and yeah, I saw the movie. Never saw the musical.

[madkestrel.livejournal.com]

A couple I know just went through a similar scenario. He didn't have the nerve to tell his wife that his unemployment benefits had expired. He'd been banking on a new job he'd interviewed for, figuring it would come through and he'd never have to tell.

Did you ever watch Millennium? Frank never told his wife Catherine that a stalker was threatening her. He spent the whole first season keeping it a secret, determined to protect her. When the bad guy was finally stopped, and Catherine learned what had been going on, she kicked Frank's tail to the curb. It was one of the first times I've seen that plot device followed to its logical conclusion. *grin*

[pbray.livejournal.com]

And that's exactly the way it should happen.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That's a trope I really hate.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

In a historical romance it makes sense (in fact I've even written this, back in my Regency days.) But in 2010? Not so much.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ye: indeed, overly modern psychology is one of the things I dislike in historicals.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Blecch. I hate that plot device, too. I mean, I can handle it in books written a couple of hundred years ago, when there was a certain cultural expectation that people would think like that. But it really annoys me to find it in something written last year.

This is perhaps part of the group of tropes that I call "sh*t that might seem romantic and/or exciting in books but would totally piss you off if it happened to you IRL". I was reminded of the difference last week when, in the course of reaming out the closet in my old bedroom for my mom, I happened on a particular letter that I had hoped never to see again. I dated this guy (very briefly and VERY ill-advisedly) in grade 10, he dumped me, more or less end of story. THEN after high school (he's 2 years older) he spent a year in Israel, and after he got back, he wrote me this very emo letter about how he'd thought about me the whole time, kept my photo (I'd forgotten he even had a photo of me) beside his bed, etc., etc., and would I please please agree to date him again because he really thought I was The One. Meanwhile I'd dated two or three other people, had my heart broken a couple more times, grown up, realized what a bad idea dating him had been, gone on with life. And he hand delivered this letter, which meant he had been right outside my house. And the whole thing creeped me out enormously, because (a) he couldn't possibly really think I was The One, because he totally didn't know me well enough to make that call, (b) when you haven't so much as sent a postcard to someone for over 2 years, you really have to work up to that kind of confession, and (c) I was so far from being willing to date him again as to consider him somewhat icky. So I wrote back as politely and firmly as I could saying um, NO, and that was that. But it occurred to me when I found this letter last week (why didn't I blue-box it at the time? WTF?) that in a book, such behaviour might come across as a Big Romantic Gesture, but in fact it's just creepy and stalkery. "Protecting" one's loved one(s) by failing to warn them of imminent peril is maybe in the same category.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Wow. Creepy and stalkery is right.

So many romantic gestures fizzle in real life (I'm fond of the story of the guy who proposed to his girlfriend on the jumbotron at a sporting event, and her response was to slap him for embarrassing her.)

I can understand the hero thinking "Hey, my wife isn't a trained fighter, she's not going to be able to battle the forces of evil at my side." And that's reasonable, and more realistic than books where a 100 lb woman picks up a broadsword for the first time and manages to kill the dragon.

But treating her as an intellectual inferior, someone incapable of understanding the dangers and making her own decisions? That's the part that annoys me.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

RE: Jumbotron, WHOOPS.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Total agreement here. It's the sort of thing that'd make me throw a book across the room, too.

Give me all the information you have. Then I can actually, you know, plan accordingly.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Tell me the bad guys are coming after us so I can make my own decisions. Or hey, maybe help you figure out a way to keep us both safe, because I do have a brain after all, and turns out you were missing the obvious.