Sex. The kinkier the better.
Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen, of polite society, were well into that stuff. Which is why magazines like the Pearl and works like the Romance of Lust, the Memoirs of a Voluptuary and Fanny Hill were far more popular than contemporary and more recent historians would admit to.
Is that the one where he isnt actually of arabian ethnicity just raised as one? I think i may have heard about that but never read it because the premise sounds so silly.
But at my university amongst the literary criticism shelf i once found and an entire book about the modern romance genre and how it developed over tye years and i remember reading that there was a few decades where Shieks and other fellows of non-white ethnicity were popular as romance heroes because they were alpha males rather than refined english gentleman, the 'less civilized' lands/socioty that they lived in functioned as a justification/excuse for their domineering alpha male qualities, opportunities for culture clash meant the misunderstandings that must plague every developing romance seem less contrived and more believable, and that being of an foreign ethnicity made them more mysterious and attractive and upped the escapism element of the story.
That is summarised from memory. I guess Shieks in particualer would have been attractive romance hero during the early 1900s because the British empire was busy exploring/attempting to control those parts of the world. During the Victorian era it was Africa, the dark continent, that was exotic and the setting for many adventures but rarely the setting for romance and then it was always white man/native girl. But during the early 1900s attention had shifted towards Egypt and the middle eastern arabian countries as a place to go exploring and find treasures and maybe romance as female desire was becoming something that could be aknowledged and expressed in fiction more freely than before.
Sorry if that turned into a ramble
edited 13th Jul '12 3:52:04 PM by Merlanthe
@Merlanthe: Yeah, that's the one. Actually there was a sequel- it's called 'Sons of the Sheik' and the movie version was Valentino's last movie. Sheiks are still attractive romantic heroes. I know someone (one of my teachers) who loves romance novels, and she told me that she reads a lot of desert romances. I think it's the idea that a sheik or whatever is wealthy that makes them still an attractive romantic hero.
edited 14th Jul '12 5:13:12 AM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -TolkienBut of course, that doesn't explain, for example, the racism in the portrayal of the sheik, whose difference is singled out but is still the same ie he usually has European ancestry, which is linked to the good side of his personality, and the Arab/Middle Eastern side, linked to "savagery." Heaps of Unfortunate Implications. But Not Too Foreign in full effect. Our hero can be foreign, but he has to be someone Western readers can relate to as well. More proof that there is still racism in the 21st century, it's just not as overt as in the early 1900s because overt racism can get you a lot of backlash.
edited 14th Jul '12 5:11:33 AM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -TolkienThe Sheik is a film, and a novel, very much of its own era; it's very hard to understand its appeal outside of its original context. The "noble savage" is an interesting twist on racism; really, assuming a member of another race is better, nobler, or more spiritual than you is just as dehumanizing as assuming the opposite. A pedestal can be just as much a trap as a pit.
it's on Amazon.
One of the well-known stories in this genre was The Desert Song.
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

As part of my research for my story, I've been looking up Arab stereotypes and found a lot of books of literary criticism related to the way writers in the late 19th and early/mid 20th century portrayed race, as well as some articles on sheikh romances and Hollywood portrayals of race, which basically say that the old Rudolph Valentino image of the menacing, noble savage Arab who kidnaps/buys/whatever/ the White girl was very popular then but is now a Dead Horse Trope except in category romances.
Now obviously I'm not the sort of girl who's into romance novels, so WTH was the appeal of The Sheik by E.M. Hull? It sold over a million copies in 1919 and was so popular there was a song inspired by it (The Sheik of Araby with music by Ted Snyder and lyrics by Harry B. Smith and Francis Wheeler). How could anyone find "Girl gets kidnapped by stranger who rapes her for months on end, but then they fall in love" romantic?
edited 13th Jul '12 4:16:51 AM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien