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Sunday, December 2, 2007

Do men’s hearts have less romance power than women’s?


Recently, I borrowed a book, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Civilization, from our college library. When I read about ‘Romance,’ the writers of the oldest Greek romance novels, from ‘Adventures of Chareas and Callirho,’ (probably 1st century of B.C) to ‘Kight in Waiting,’ and ‘His Lady’ of 3rd century (A.D.) were male novelists.
Then I read about ‘Women’ of ancient Greek. I found a tragedy with ancient women. Look at these few lines: “…The Athenian woman was not free to decide her own life. Her lord and master, her kyrios, had every right over her person. In very early times, he could kill or sell her with impunity. A law of Solon forbad anyone to sell his daughter or sister unless she was proved to have had intercourse with a man before marriage…..”
According to these historical notes, we can imagine that those ancient women absolutely could not have freedom and the right to read and write like men did in that era. If they could, some chapters in history would probably be changed.

Alright, let us turn to today’s era.
When I was in Burma and Thailand, I noticed that many famous remance novelists in those countries were women.

In the Time magazine of this week (the issue of December 10, 2007), there are Q&A with best-selling romance novelist, Nora Roberts, for the Time’s ‘10 Questions’ section. Look at here one of the Q&A:
Q: Why aren’t there more successful male romance novelists? (J.R. Repich, Miami)
A: They’re emotion-based books, so perhaps they appeal more to women-although a lot of men will read them if they’re sitting at home on the coffee table. It goes back to reading what you enjoy, and women enjoy romance as a genre more than men do.

What do you think?


Picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/BigPinkHeart.jpg

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