Reading Aromantically
By Jenna McKellips, September 2022
Aromanticism, though growing in recognition as an orientation and identity, has not been used as frequently as asexuality as a critical theoretical lens within scholarship, though calls from the community have asked for such work to be undertaken. As Tumblr user Koko said in a community post: “I want aromanticism in academia… I want aromanticism as a literary lens to analyze shakespeare, beowulf, bronte.”
A few scholars and community members offer readings of literary works and other media through the lens of aromanticism, and this list offers an overview of current approaches to aromantic reading as a methodology. This list includes academic and scholarly sources, as well as community posts on blogs and social media venues, that pursue aromantic reading as a critical method to approach texts.
The first source on the list is Matthew Williams’s “Cold Heart: An Exploration of Aromanticism in Lucy.” This article, which comes from an undergraduate journal at Loyola Marymount University, discusses Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy, contrasting the titular character’s “cold heart” in the context of romantic love to the intimacy she seems to feel in platonic love.
The next three sources all focus on Victorian literature; we have included them to show how an aromantic lens can be used to find “aromantic resonances” (like the asexual resonances discussed by Przybylo and Cooper) in historical literature. Madeline Andrews’s “Queering Austen: Mary Bennet, Aromanticism and Asexuality in Pride and Prejudice” is found in a UMass Amherst undergraduate journal, and reads Mary Bennet as potentially both aro and ace. The other two sources are both Tumblr posts. The first is by user misslivvie and also discusses Pride and Prejudice: “Theory: Charlotte Lucas is Aromantic.” This post argues that Charlotte Lucas’s romance-free marriage, though questioned by the alloromantic Lizzie Bennet, makes Charlotte happy, and might even reveal a greater acceptance of aromanticism in Victorian marriages, because if “romance wasn’t a big factor in choosing who to marry, her aromanticism probably wouldn’t have been much of a big deal anyway.” User aroacestories’s “An Aro/Ace analysis of Jane Austen’s Emma” close-reads Emma as aromantic, though she is ultimately married off by the text.
The last two sources utilize aromantic theory to study media, to show the way aromantic readings can be made outside of literary analysis. The first is Colin Görke’s “‘Melted Your Cold Heart Yet?’ Amatonormative Masculinity in Casino Royale and Spectre,” which contrasts the way that the character of James Bond presents masculinity in and out of relationships, and the ways that relationships are mandated by the Bond films. Though this article does not focus on aromanticism, its use of Elizabeth Brake’s theory of amatonormativity (one of the foundational ideas in aromantic theory), and its acknowledgement of the destructive gendered and relational norms that amatonormativity upholds, presents an important intercession into the field of aromantic reading of texts. The second comes from a community post, from the blog of S.L. Dove Cooper: “We’re on Our Side: Aziraphale and Crowley’s Thoroughly Queer Relationship in Good Omens.” This essay close-reads the show to suggest that Aziraphale and Crowley have a queerplatonic relationship. Dove Cooper argues that the show–rather than queerbaiting its audience, as some have suggested–instead presents a queer relationship outside of both romantic and heterosexual norms.
While the above readings focus largely on aromantic reading in terms of looking for aro representation, posts such as Görke’s also highlight the way that aro readings might also work as theoretical investigations of amatonormativity, the ways characters break from the social forces that punish singleness, and the ways that characters and societies can relate non-romantically. Aromantic studies offers an exciting opportunity for queer theoretical studies to explore, both within literary/media studies and without.
(Disclaimer from the author: While I am ace, I am not aro–just an enthusiastic ally who wants to make sure these resources get the shout-out they deserve. This blog post has been reviewed by my aro-ace research co-lead, but if you are aro, and would like to create an updated, even better version of this list and post, please Contact Us.)
