Adultery

Jenny Crusie's first single title -- Tell Me Lies -- has an adulterous heroine, but when I first read it, I didn't even notice, because the marriage was clearly over emotionally before the adultery occurred (and the husband may even have been dead at the time of the sex, but the wife didn't know that).

I believe Dee Holmes did a triangle story a few years ago, with the heroine committing adultery. The subject isn't my cuppa' tea, so I didn't read it, so I can't comment on whether it was enjoyable or not. If you search her books on Amazon, it was probably one of the most recent ones (although she hasn't had a release in a few years, so it was a while ago).

While it's not a romance novel, the tv show "New Amsterdam" has a strong adultery thread running through it. I really wanted to like the show, but found it too ... I dunno, scattered, I suppose. It couldn't seem to settle on what it was really about, either the "searching for true love" theme or the now/then historical insights or something else. And then in the most recent episode, after he's found the person he thinks is the true love he's been searching centuries for, and she's married, neither of them has a problem with pursuing an affair. I dunno, but that just seems so inconsistent with the whole "true love" and "soul mate" idea that I've given up on the show.

Which is a bit of a ramble to say that I'm not sure a story that really investigated adultery would ever appeal to me. The reason that Crusie's book worked for me was that while it was technical adultery, it was not emotional adultery, if that makes any sense. But to be pursuing one person while emotionally tied to another, and in violation of the mutual expectations (unlike, say, a polyamorous setting, where everyone knows and agrees to the multiple relationships) -- nope, doesn't work for me.

JD

I wouldn't know because I've never read a romance where the Hero or Heroine was commiting adultery on their spouse, but because of that I would be interested in reading a book about it, but with it done well, mind you. Not with the whole wife/husband at home making evil trouble while the Hero and Heroine are out getting it on and sparks are flying for them.

Personally, I've never found adultery entertaining UNLESS a great lesson is learned in the end. I can't. off the top of my head, think of any books that I've enjoyed with this plot line. I have VERY strong feelings about marital vows, not to say, that forgiveness should never be an option. I've done even non-adulterous things for which I required forgiveness. I'm not sure why television and movie companies and some authors think that adultery sells. I don't know. Maybe it does, but not to me.

I've certainly read and enjoyed books where adultery has been part of the plotline but...

...not where the adulterous relationship succeeds and supplants the marriage. I like it when the cheater realises the error of their ways and comes back to the marriage. Clearly this needs to be done in a way that isn't trivial or flippant. But where there's genuine remorse and reason to believe there'll be real change in the future then my romantic heart wants to buy into that.

Lady Chatterly's Lover leaps to mind as one where the entire story is built on adultery and you do root for the heroine. Of course, that was written how many decades ago?

I'm thinking Anna Karenina where Anna, married to cold fish Karenin, looks for love with Vronsky who doesn't want to lose his commission so he drops her.

Madame Bovary. Though I have to say that although I enjoyed the book, I didn't have an awful lot of sympathy for the adulterers in it.

ETA I just looked Mme Bovary up and was interested to note that it came second in a 2007 poll of contemporary authors for Greatest Novel of all time. The winning novel was Anna Karenina.

Looks like you can write adultery pretty successfully!

(If you're a literary genius. )

Does anyone have any examples of enjoyable adultery storylines?

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I can't say that I enjoyed this piece of fiction at all. I was disgusted she didn't boot his sorry ass out the door!



Oh--I once read a survey on adultery. Apparently more women would prefer their spouses to be dead than unfaithful to them.

Yikes.

Gillhoughly said:

Oh--I once read a survey on adultery. Apparently more women would prefer their spouses to be dead than unfaithful to them.

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Well--yeah. Grieving widow gets insurance settlement and full estate. Wife dumped for bimbo gets public humiliation plus a long court battle over assets. No contest there.

I can only think of one, though no title comes to mind.

The heroine is married to a terrible guy, rich, powerful, abusive, and controlling. She was basically forced into the marriage by her father (takes place in some other country, but don't remember which one) and now wants out but is terrified because she has a son and she knows her truly evil husband will kill her and their son before he lets them leave, so asking for a divorce is out of the question. In that book, when she meets the hero, she was still technically married, but I didn't care that they eventually started a romance. I was rooting for the hero and heroine the whole time.

What about Jane Eyre? Mr Rochester was married the whole time he was wooing (and trying to wed) Jane.

Without reading anyone else's replies first... Adultery in books is the same as adultery in real life, isn't it; if a person isn't getting the emotional or physical love that they need, they go hunting elsewhere for it.

I don't think that the other person in the triangle, the one being cheated on, is always evil. But let's face it, anyone that is having an affair will always tell their new love that anyway, I saw this when my own mum went off with another man and the lies she told about my dad hitting her etc. I suppose it's just an excuse to use to justify why they went off with another.

My very first novel, never finished, was about a man having an affair. His wife was cold and made him feel unloved, his mistress made him feel like a man again. But the wife kind of got the last laugh... for a while anyway.


Elodie, (who has been with the same man for 17 years, married for 14 of them, and never had an affair.)

My idea of a good adultery story is

Hehehe a brilliant film!

That is one of my all-time favorite movies. *grin*

I'm more forgiving about adulterous affairs when I read historical romance than when I read contemporaries. Why? Because it seems to me that not only did many people end up in very unhappy unions in earlier eras, they had virtually no way out of the arrangement. In more modern times it has become easier to dissolve a marriage than it once was (if at all). So, in a historical, I find I'm ok with adulterous relationships if it's made very clear that both members of the marriage aren't bothered about it or the situation is simply unavoidable.

Some examples: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, The Romantic by Madeleine Hunter.

Which leads me to another thought. Why are fans of historical fiction much more likely to accept a 'rake' who sleeps with married/widowed women than they are a married hero/heroine who steps out on a bad marriage? Isn't the rake participating in an adulterous affair just as much as the wedded hero/heroine? Or is it ok because the rake is only helping to break someone else's vows, not vows they personally made? Isn't that rather like 'accessory to adultery' and shouldn't they be considered in the wrong, too?

LaVryle Spencer covered this subject in a realsitic way (showed the emotional fallout and no one person was painted the only victim) in two of her books; both historicals. One was called, Twiced Loved, the other title escapes me, but the woman's husband wants her to sleep with his brother so he can father a child. He (and everyone else involved) deeply regrets this decision.

Very emotional, angsty writing, which is one of the reasons I love her books (that and the great sex scenes).

EM

Gillhoughly said:

I can't say that I enjoyed this piece of fiction at all. I was disgusted she didn't boot his sorry ass out the door!

Oh--I once read a survey on adultery. Apparently more women would prefer their spouses to be dead than unfaithful to them.

Yikes.

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Hah!

The Rake Exception

san_remo_ave said:

Why are fans of historical fiction much more likely to accept a 'rake' who sleeps with married/widowed women than they are a married hero/heroine who steps out on a bad marriage? Isn't the rake participating in an adulterous affair just as much as the wedded hero/heroine? Or is it ok because the rake is only helping to break someone else's vows, not vows they personally made? Isn't that rather like 'accessory to adultery' and shouldn't they be considered in the wrong, too?

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I think it's for some of the same reasons you mentioned about historical novels--that most of the marriages made at the time were practical affairs in which husband and wife could and did spend much of their time apart once an heir had been produced. So the vows being violated didn't necessarily hold the emotional significance we ascribe to them today.

In a weird way, the unmarried rake is more honest and faithful, because of his refusal to marry (until meeting the heroine)--that is, he won't take marriage vows that can be so easily broken, and he knows how easy it can be because he's helping to break them. Of course, he may be kidding himself, but it's sort of an "out," and it plays into the fantasy of "taming the rake" that can be so hard to resist.

I realize it wasn't a traditional Romance by today's standards, but The Bridges of Madison County sold quite a few books. Apparently the outrage can be selective if the story is good enough.

Shakespeare in Love turned out to be a tale of adultery. But I think by the time you find out that Will is married, you're so invested in the love affair with Viola that it kind of breezes by. Plus it doesn't exactly have a happy ending.

In general, I don't find adultery romantic not matter how it's portrayed. I think because it implies that if you'd cheat once, what's to stop you from doing it again? Of course, in Romanceland, adultery is usually justified by either the cold, frigid spouse who doesn't put out, or the bat-shit crazy spouse who might just kill herself and take the kids with her. Either of which is pretty much a cop-out of characterization.

Plus I hate drippy heroines who have to sit around waiting for the wife to die so they can be with their lover. Ick. "The funeral baked meats did furnish forth the wedding feast," etc., etc.

Gary said:

I realize it wasn't a traditional Romance by today's standards, but The Bridges of Madison County sold quite a few books. Apparently the outrage can be selective if the story is good enough.

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I didn't like Bridges of Madison County; probably because I couldn't get past the adultery.

In real life. When I was in my twenties and living in rooms, the woman in the room next to mine had been having an affair with a married man for 11 years! She is probably still waiting for him to leave his wife even now, 20 years later, the sad cow.

kimb68 said:

Plus I hate drippy heroines who have to sit around waiting for the wife to die so they can be with their lover. Ick. "The funeral baked meats did furnish forth the wedding feast," etc., etc.

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