The Reef by Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts’ The Reef, a romance and suspense novel, is my favourite text. First released in 1999 and set on the Caribbean Sea, it tells the story of a lad, Matthew Lassiter, who alongside his uncle, witnesses his father’s murder aboard a ship. Though the death seems like an accident, Matthew suspects that Silas, a rich businessman who had quarreled with Matthew’s dad over an amulet they had both been searching for undersea, was behind it. Eight years afterwards, Matthew and his uncle set out to avenge his dad’s death and find the amulet he died searching for. On their expedition, they ran into the Beaumonts, a wealthy family likewise hunting for this amulet undersea, and the two groups team up. The Beaumonts have got the resources whilst the Lassiters have got the skills. Tate, the daughter of the Beaumonts, falls in love with Matthew; but just as soon as they become lovers, they have to part ways. Another eight years later, whilst still searching for this amulet, the two families meet again, and even more romance sparks up between Tate and Matthew. Together, they find the amulet and Matthew finally takes revenge on Silas.

An extrinsic analysis of a text is a method of interpreting it by what it tells us about society. It does not consider the value a text has in itself but rather its value in relation to societal issues. An example of an extrinsic attitude, from which point of view I will be analyzing my text, is the ’feminist theory’. This theory aims at eliminating male supremacy to achieve gender equality. Globally, females are portrayed as the subordinate gender; such sexism is what the feminist theory criticizes. Nora Roberts, in her history of novel writing, has neither ever declared herself as a feminist nor have any of ...

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... show a great deal of pride. It is even for this reason that people use the popular phrase “Be a man”, to show that a male is not being as proud as he ought to be, by social standards.

The depiction of characters by Nora also adds to the “masculinity” of this text, in that the male characters are the dominantly talked-about characters. The females are treated as the ‘other’ and are not heard much of, in any dialogue or conversation.

In my opinion, and still from the viewpoint of a feminist, Nora Roberts’ novel is a “masculine” one because it depicts the superiority of the male gender just as society views it. Simply put, the female characters are disregarded. Though it is my favourite text, I believe it could have been a better one if only Nora had put more “feminist” thought to her work. But who knows? Maybe it would not have turned out to be such a great read!