Alphas and Alphaholes: What’s the appeal?

In a previous post I tried to work through a definition of Alpha, Alphahole, and Asshole, and concluded that the line between Alpha and Asshole is something that varies from reader to reader. This time I’m looking at what makes the trope an appealing one.

Before we get started, let me dispel the idea that the Alphahole is a new or recent trope.

In a guest post at Romance Novels for Feminists,  a student in Duke’s romance course in 2015 reports on a talk from author Jessica Scott:

Scott questioned why the alpha-hole—the alpha hero who is also an asshole—is suddenly a “thing” in romance.

That’s just one quote, but there’s a lot more out there expressing the idea that the alphahole is somehow a new thing. But let’s look at the small cross-section of classic romance novels I’ve read so far. And let me remind you that I put all of these books on my syllabus because they were wildly popular in their day, and some of them remain popular among 21st century readers.

Mr. B in Pamela  (1740) is lord of the household, and expects Pamela to comply when he asks her to sit in his lap and be kissed. She refuses/faints and he kidnaps her in order to force compliance. Among other tactics…
Verdict: Definitely on the Asshole side of Alphahole.

Darcy in Pride and Prejudice  (1813) starts the book treating Elizabeth Bennet with disdain and an utter lack of tact, but he never attempts to force compliance. He is competent, but takes steps to improve the lives of others without expecting benefit to himself.
Verdict: Alpha but not Alphahole.

Rochester of Jane Eyre (1847) is admired and feared by those under his command. He lacks tact, and is certainly put out when Jane won’t go through with a bigamous relationship. Jane flees before we see whether he will force compliance, but throughout the book his actions are focused on his own happiness, without regard for the feelings of others.
Verdict: Alphahole.

Captain Percy in To Have and to Hold  (1899) is a leader, feared and admired by those under his command. While a high sense of chivalric honor prevents him from laying a hand on the heroine, he forces compliance on his manservant Diccon and unnamed Indian slaves by beating them. Diccon even attempts to stab him in the back, stayed at the last moment by his own loyalty to Percy. As long as the heroine remains on a pedestal of virtue in his eyes, she is safe–but the narrative is very clear that if her honor is compromised, Percy will kill her. While presented as preferable to rape, it still shows him as capable of violence against woman.
Verdict: Alphahole.

George Emerson in A Room With A View (1908), like the rest of the novel’s characters, is hard to categorize in the usual tropes. He’s not a leader and no one fears him–rather people fear for him. He is a damaged hero with a tortured mind, but he’s more of a danger to himself than to anyone else.
Verdict: Neither alpha, nor asshole. Maybe he’s a proto-gamma?

Sheik Ahmed in The Sheik  (1919) is admired, feared, and far too ready to force compliance on man, woman, horse, whatever gets in his way. Definitively cruel and without tact.
Verdict: Grade AAA Platinum Asshole.

That’s two-thirds of the heroes so far falling into alphahole or asshole territory and I haven’t even gotten to the bodice-rippers of the 1970s and 80s. Take this comment from Maggie B. on an Aug 2014 All About Romance post about ‘Alphadouches’–

I’ve been reading romance for decades. Many decades. One of the first books I read was The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen Woodiwiss. The hero rapes the heroine, who IIRC is in her early teens. This book was a best seller and credited for revitalizing the romance genre. The publication date on this historical is 1974. Since then (and perhaps before for all I know) the debate on what happens to the fragile female brain when it is exposed to such horror has been under way.

The terms “Alpha” or “Alphahole” may be relatively new, but the character type is obviously a classic trope.  Let’s set aside the asshattery for a moment and look just at the popularity of this type of hero. (There are definitely gender-swaps with Alpha heroines, but I’m going to stick with the generalization that it’s an Alpha hero for this post and use masculine pronouns.) And there are definitely plenty of readers out there who consider Alpha or Alphaholes to be their “catnip,” to borrow a term from Sarah Wendell.

For instance, Stacy Gail writes at Contemporary Romance Cafe:

you wouldn’t think I’d have any sort of attraction to a hardcore dominating alpha male, would you? But if that type of character is done right… oh, LAWD. *fans self* I swear, those unashamedly forceful, all-testosterone alpha males rev my engine so much they threaten to pop my radiator cap.

Romance Fan Girl writing in Feb 2014, says:

I’m a HUGE fan of alpha heroes. I love their take charge attitude, absolute belief in themselves and their need to take care of their women. LOVE. THEM.

These sort of comments lead to others wondering what the appeal is. Take this 2015 post on Romance Novels for Feminists:

Why, at this particular point in history, do so many romance readers find the fantasy of being loved by a protective man so appealing? Or, to ask the question another way, what are romance readers today so afraid of?

In discussions of the Alpha or Alphahole trope, I see three different strains of appreciation for this type of hero that we can look to for an explanation of his appeal.

1. The emotional payoff

Romance readers are all about the emotional journey — and the Alphahole has a long road ahead of him. The more of a jerk the hero is at the beginning, the harder the reader expects him to fall at the end. The worse his actions to start with, the bigger the grovel he’ll have to do to make it up.

Here’s what Gail says made her love an alphahole character in Diana Palmer’s After the Music:

Come to find out, I freaking LOVE those heart-wrenching, spill-your-guts-on-the-floor groveling scenes.  Whether it’s the hero or heroine who has to come clean and force themselves to stop being self-protective in order to become one half of a harmonious whole, I love it all.  Just about every romance I’ve written has some form of this emotional scene, and if I blubber like a baby while writing it, I know it’s done right. 

Nicole, in a guest post at Fiction Vixien, writes (emphasis added):

Some of my favorite heroes of all time are fabulous at straddling the line between Alpha and Ass. They are Alpha to the extreme, and although they want to control everything, have everyone fall in line, they also love hard, and are willing to sacrifice everything for their lady love. To me, they are the ultimate heroes, the Alphas that can turn me into a puddle of goo at every turn.

Over on kboards, user Atunah writes:

For a HEA/HFN to be believable, for a romance to be believable, I have to have a proper grovel. Its that emotional roller coaster we love to ride along. All the feelz. That moment where the hero realizes, what have I done and I can actually feel his pain and his realization that the heroine hung the moon, sigh. Its one of my favorites when it happens to some rakes in historical romances especially. When we the reader know he’s fallen in love, long before he realizes it. And you just know he’ll cause pain to her and him and then has to come to grips with the fallout and grovel. Grovel grovel grovel.

In a way, this reminds me of an essay I read many years ago about why we humans are so obsessed with internet cat videos. I can’t find it now, but it boiled down to “cats are snooty assholes, so it’s hilarious when we see them get stuck in fishbowls/fail to jump/lose their shit about a cucumber.” We like to see the mighty brought down. The Hidden Brain podcast had an episode in Jan 2017 that touched on this, entitled “Pedestals and Guillotines,” about our human obsession with celebrities, both as loving fans and as rabid mob in case of scandals. Interesting thoughts there.

2. The fantasy of someone else taking charge

In an opinion letter over at Dear Author, Michelle Sagara suggests that the alpha is popular because he is “an idealized grown-up.” The fantasy of an alpha hero is attractive, Sagara argues, because

… it’s the confidence and the commitment and the lack of feminine (the heroine’s) responsibility for another person that makes the trope attractive. If the heroine suffers from lack of confidence, it doesn’t matter; he has confidence. If she’s uncertain, if she desires him but she’s afraid to commit to more, he’s certain.
In real life, women are responsible for so much, emotionally. On hard days, on days when they just want to give up and crawl back into bed, one of the things they daydream of, outside of romance novels, is for someone else to pick up the slack for a day or a week or a month.

If we take Sagara’s reasoning–and it resonates with me, especially now that I am mother to a small child–that the alpha is attractive because his confidence lets him shoulder the load of responsibilities that would otherwise overwhelm the heroine.

Lynn Connolly, commenting on an All About Romance post, proposes a similar theory:

I think, especially with NA and YA, it’s the fantasy of letting somebody else take the strain. For many emerging adults, life isn’t a challenge, it’s terrifying. Taxes, jobs, the stress of passing exams, and the idea of being responsible for yourself, can be horrific.
So the alpha-hole takes all that strain. He folds his protective wings around said heroine and takes responsibility for her. He’s usually rich, or at least not poor, so he can afford it, too.

Looking at a slightly different aspect of this, much of the discussion in the comments on the Romance For Feminists post I referenced above centers around the protective hero as a fantasy escape from the ‘second shift’ — the domestic work that women often put in after a full work day outside the home. In this view, an Alpha hero isn’t just an adult figure for a younger reader figuring out how to adult, he’s a full partner to an adult who needs a co-parent, co-worker, and companion in a busy life.

3. The fantasy of protection

Some of the commenters on the Romance for Feminists post also bring up the fact that the world is a scary place. While many readers may live humdrum lives, the news is constantly reminding us of the danger that lurks outside. See also, gun ownership debates. That’s right — it occurs to me that the protective Alpha hero may be a similar phenomena to the desire to carry handgun in your purse.

Commenter Teri Anne Stanley writes:

I think…well, I think a lot of stuff, but in this particular instance, I like protective heroes because I AM afraid. Not to go to the grocery store alone, but the world IS a scary place. Every time I turn on the radio, good old ISIS is blowing someone up, and then there is our own version of the suicide bomber, the School Shooter (or movie theater, or church). There is climate change and poverty and heroin. Scary stuff everywhere.
I CAN protect myself–I have the training to use lethal force and some self-defense stuff–but I’m still not as physically strong as almost any man on the streets. Having a giant, sexy, focused-on-me guy at my side wouldn’t suck!

Others speculate there’s an evolutionary appeal to the protective Alpha hero, such as this kboards comment from user kcmorgan:

As pointed out in a different post on Romance Novels for Feminists,

“Military,” like “alpha,” is also shorthand for “protector,” but also for “badass” and “selfless.” It’s this heroic combination of traits that makes the military man popular as a romantic hero: he will sacrifice himself for the heroine, for his comrades, for his country

The alpha military protective hero is a subgenre in its own right, and a very popular one. Maybe even too popular, if you ask Nikki of the Scandalicious blog:

That series you’re planning about the former military dudes forming a security company? I’ve read that.

Or how about the brothers-in-arms turned mercenaries? You know, the one with the PTSD-ridden leader plagued by survivor’s guilt? Yeah. Read that, too.

I think this type of protective Alpha/Alphahole hero-handgun equivalent — dangerous but on the heroine’s side, once she’s tamed him — is the one which gets the most flack as a dangerous fantasy for readers of romance. So in my next post on this subject, I’ll be looking at the shifting lines of what is acceptable in the romance genre from an Alphahole hero.

References and further reading:

Horne, Jackie C.; “The Protective Hero, or What Are Romance Readers So Afraid Of?“; Romance Novels for Feminists, published 16 Oct 2015.

Lee, Jessica; “Duke’s UNSUITABLE #5: Jessica Scott on the Alpha Masculinities“; Romance Novels for Feminists, published 27 Mar 2015.

Nikki; “Why I’m Taking a Breather From Contemporary Romance“; Scandalicious, published 28 Jan 2016.

Sagara, Michelle; “Michelle Sagara contemplates the Alpha Male”; Dear Author, published 26 Aug 2014.

Sholio; “Alpha jerks and the appeal thereof“; livejournal.com; published 16 Feb 2016.

Tan, Candy; “Talking About the R Word“; Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, published 14 Sept 2005

Header image: “God Speed!” By Edmund Leighton – Sotheby’s Sale catalogue, Public Domain