Barbara Cartland Can Save Your Life

A few months ago, I decided to make use of the "dead" time I was spending in my car by listening to a recorded version of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir, "Infidel."

Ayaan is an exceptional woman. Born into a traditional Islamic family in rural Somalia, her remarkable intelligence, strength, and stubborn independence enabled her to endure and ultimately overcome the sexist limitations and indignities inflicted upon her as a girl and young woman growing up in Africa and Saudi Arabia. She eventually escaped to the West (and I do mean escape -- she had to "jump ship" in Amsterdam en route to an arranged marriage), and currently lives in the United States. I highly recommend her book to anyone who wants a forthright, firsthand account of one woman's experience with Islamic fundamentalism.

Where does Barbara Cartland fit into this picture? Ayaan's book discloses that a virtual "black market" in Western romance novels existed among her teenage girlfriends. I like to imagine well-thumbed paperbacks with titles like "Highland Lover" and "My Naughty Marquis" being passed from burqa to burqa like so much contraband hashish. Even established classics like "Jane Eyre" and "Emma" were carefully concealed and read with furtive interest (and astonishment!) by girls in the chancy privacy of their bedrooms.

Most people I know don't hold paperback romance novels up as a paradigm of women's liberation. The heroines usually have matrimony and motherhood on the brain and aren't above scheming to achieve their goals. Most of them are described (in painstaking detail) as beautiful, although the beauty is frequently labeled as "unconventional" (a nod, I suppose, to broadmindedness). The men are frequently characterized as commanding, arrogant, and brutishly virile. Even good literature is a product of its time, and few women today would publicly own up to the matrimonial campaigning and feminine subterfuge contained in Jane Austen's works.

Ah, but we take so much for granted. These fictional women may appear hopelessly "retro" to us, but imagine their effect on young girls boxed into orthodox fundamentalism. Jane, Emma and Desiree must seem like creatures from another universe. They are opinionated and smart. They address men directly, and initiate conversations in public without a second thought. They venture into the public square without male supervision. It is obvious that they are not enshrouded from head to toe, and yet they survive the day without being stoned or bringing shame upon their family. They frequently disagree with their parents, elders, and suitors and yet they suffer no lasting punishment for it. They have firm opinions about those with whom they are willing to spend the rest of their lives. They smile at ridiculous homilies in their minister's Sunday sermon. They are not at all inclined to spend a life of unending submission, suffering, and self-sacrifice in the hope of a post-mortal existence in which they will be rewarded for their pains.

These kinds of books provided Ayaan with the first inkling that another way of life existed, and that it was being experienced by a great number of girls and women, currently, on this very planet. Knowledge is a powerful thing. Infinite possibilities began to present themselves to her. She began to doubt the justice of her current circumstance, and the infallibility of the tenets she had been raised with. In many ways, her journey to freedom could not have begun without those tattered paperbacks passed back and forth between giggling schoolgirls.

Ironically, Ayaan's flight to freedom has been compromised by constant death threats due to -- you guessed it -- the publication of her book. Those who pursue her aren't delusional in one respect: they know that ideas are dangerous things. Books are powerful. Barbara Cartland can save your life.