ABSTRACT
“The truth had long been settling on Jonathan Gray, sneaking into the resisting corners, but it had finally resounded in the deepest part of him. He’d prayed it wasn’t so, hoped that if he will it untrue it would be. But it was true. He knew it. At last it had to be faced…and dealt with. After denying it all these years, it had come to Jonathan Gray that he was infertile,” so begins the opening paragraph of LaVyrle Spencer’s first novel The Fulfillment (1979). This chapter considers LaVyrle Spencer’s 1979 romance novel The Fulfillment, in which the hero is infertile and seeks to build a family with his wife. This novel was published as part of the rise of the “blockbuster” romance, a period that saw the romance novel, particularly the historical romance novel, explode onto the literary scene in the United States. Novels during this period included Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower (1972), which had an initial print run of 500,000 copies, but by 1978 sold over 4.5 million copies, as well as Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers.
Spencer’s novel is set in 1910 before the scientific advances that unfolded over the course of the twentieth century. The hero of the novel, Jonathan Gray, proposes a rather unorthodox suggestion to his wife, namely that his brother father their child, so as to ensure that he is able to become a father and they are able to have a family. The novel shares much in common with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but unlike Lawrence’s novel, this one is a popular romance. This chapter will thus show how infertility is considered in the popular romance novel, particularly during its “blockbuster” period.
