Nothing says love like an abducted, injured woman (which I'm probably misquoting)

[meganbmoore]

Now, here's something I don't get in fiction(spawned by various posts and discussions the last month or so, as well as yesterday's adventure):  Falling in love with your kidnapper stories.

I mean, seriously.  Why on earth would a person fall for someone who abducted them and held them against their will, typically with imprisonment and/or being bound at some point?

There are times I can get past it.  Fantasy, for example, can often get me to smile and nod and get past it, though even then thats the exception.  Typically it involves a case of abduction but not captivity, either because of a vase of mistaken identity, and/or things quickly happening(such as a mutual enemy or the abductee freeing her/himself) and most of those cases involve a preexisting relationship or some sort that keeps the people in question from knowing each other purely in the context of abductor/abductee.

There's also Stardust, of course, though I hesitate to include it(but feel I should.)  There, it's more a case of a stupid boy doing a stupid thing and needing to grow up(and doing so) and the girl going "ok, am ditching the stupid boy first chance I get" and then doing so, and then not giving him a chance until he's proven himself in another context, at which point, it's "ok, the stupid boy has his uses and isn't so bad...just stupid" and eventually "ok, he's a stupid boy but he grew a brain and he's my stupid boy anyway, so I'll keep him."

But mostly, though, these stories are women(and sometimes men) falling for a person who abducts them and holds them prisoner, and falling for the person in that context.

I'd like to handwave it as a certain subset of romance novels, but it seems to be in most genres of any medium, and has a huge following.  It also seems to be really, really popular in fanfic.

Anyone have any opinions on this one(and, seriously, it is something I've always wanted to understand why it's popular)?

Comments

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

Okay...I haven't been following your posts on this crazy romance author carefully, but I know enough that what I'm about to mention is a) either something she is completely unaware of, or b) something she has heard about and subverted horribly in her trashy novels. I own a couple of books on the subject but have never done any real research into it. I'd look up references for you, but I've no idea how to phrase the searches so that useful information pops up.

That all being said...

There was a practice among some Native American Tribes to 'replace' missing or dead family members by kidnapping women or children from the group of people that wronged them. After European colonization, that was most often the white settlers.

These people were not held 'captive' in the way we'd consider it today. They weren't kept bound and they weren't tied to the group they were living with by anything beyond isolation. They were welcomed as family members, taught the lifeways of the people they were now living with, and were not held to be inferior within the group.

Personal narratives written after these 'abductees' returned to White civilization seem to remember the time they spent there fondly and, further, there are multiple recorded cases of women and children running away back to their abductors or, as they would phrase it, their adopted families.

It seems that many found White society difficult to readjust to, and preferred the lifestyle they had as 'natives'. This is much less a case of 'Stockholm Syndrome' and much more that the Native groups often had a better quality of living. Life on the frontier could often be grueling with little room for personal freedom or anything resembling 'relaxation', not to mention strict religious and social structure.

So...yeah. It has happened, but most of the stories you're talking about are really something else entirely.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Actually, Edwards was just the icing on the cake...I've been seeing it around a lot lately, and it's popular all over the place. I am familiar with that practice, but, while I have read several native american kidnappee novels, none have actually portrayed it that way.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

No, because it's not dramatic enough and heaven forbid we use anything resembling cultural or historical accuracy.

I don't understand the appeal of those kinds of stories either. They're stupid and offensive.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Searching on "mourning raid"/"mourning war" will turn up a lot of that material, also "captivity narrative" if you're particularly interested in the white captive/adoptee side of things; adding in specific nations you're interested in will help get you more focused results. I'm most familiar with the Iroquois-specific material, for obvious reasons.

There was a practice among some Native American Tribes to 'replace' missing or dead family members by kidnapping women or children from the group of people that wronged them.

Captives (and adoptees) could also be adult men, and not all captives were adopted; some were taken into the tribe as a replacement for the dead, some were killed as retaliation. Some tribes even kept captives as slaves. And even in cases of full adoption, in some tribes that might be marked by ritualized torture as part of the ceremonial transition of the captive from their old life to their new one.

Judging from the bits Megan has quoted and mentioned so far, it sounds like Edwards really hasn't tried at all to be true to period Seneca practices where mourning raids and captive adoption were concerned; instead it's just your most basic sort of romance-novel abduction dressed up with bronzer and feathers.

As for the white captive-adoptees not wanting to be repatriated, in many of those cases you were also dealing with individuals who'd been captured as younger children, and/or been living with their adoptive tribe long enough to have married and had children. Cynthia Ann Parker (Comanche) and Mary Jemison (Seneca) are two of the best-known example.s