Ambiguity is created also
in Mills and Boon and other romantic novels…
'the heroine should not know whether she is pleasing the hero...
The reader also should not know whether the hero is getting interested in the heroine.'
And we are led to wonder ‘is it really worth chasing this guy, anyway?’
We see the tough exterior, and we wonder (knowing such novels)
what does that tough exterior hide?
One of their greatest writers told of her technique…
'I make it that they're only cynical and smooth on the surface.
But underneath they're well, you know, sort of lost and lonely.
In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency.
Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that.
They frighten but fascinate.'
(Violet Winspear, Passion's Fortune, p257)
Secrets again.
