Oh...It's One Of THOSE Books...

"Once I learned, I went online and ordered every romance novel I could find.  They're fairy tales for grown-ups." - Gena Showalter, author of The Darkest Night


If you've ever read a romance novel, you've most likely have heard this a lot from people "Oh you're reading one of those books?"  In fact, I personally heard it just last weekend as I was sitting on the couch reading Fifty Shades of Grey, and then my dad proceeded to go on about how it was "smut".  This is the common stereotype of not only romance books themselves but also of the women who read them.  Despite the fact that romance fiction had "$1.37 billion in sales in 2006 and one third of all women who read, read romance" (Lee 52).  And that's just in 2006, the number has most likely increased tremendously as the popularity of romance novels increases.  Often times, these stereotypes of romance novels comes from the idea that they are all the same, that romance novels have no content, that unintelligent woman read these books, but where did all these notions come from?


The video posted gives some reasons behind these stereotypes; describing reading romance novels as a "revolution".  Those reasons might have been back then, but as the video asks, is reading romance still a revolution?  Women, yes, are still boggled down it seems by gender roles including the most prominent now a days, nonworking mothers, but are we really still at the same level of marrying for money?  Escaping the house?  Today, if you want a career it's much more acceptable to go to school and get one.  Whether you'll have the same rights in that career as your male coworker is a different story.  However, I agree with the notions that a heroine of a romance novel chooses her life and her love, which was a big deal for when these novels were first being written.  Back then, women didn't have any choices, they had to live the life that was decided by then by the men in their life.  Romance novels gave women the chance to read and write about a life that was different, one that they got to choose.

Most people, it seems, are quick to judge what a romance is but they don't understand what exactly constitutes a romance novel.  The video gives the definition of "a story of two people falling in love, overcoming obstacles, and living happily ever after".  But really, there is much more to a romance novel than just a love story.  The romance novel can be broken down into two categories; soft romance and strong romance. Now it's not hard to decipher what the two could possibly be; the soft represents the archetypal romance with a heroine that is more of damsel in distress rather than hero and the strong represents a heroine that is strong, confident, and resourceful.  (Owen 537).  Often times the covers of novels can be a good indicator of which is which.  For example, the soft romance usually shows the couple embracing, whereas the strong romance features the heroine in the forefront with the man in the background, like the examples I have shown above.  Now, they can be broken down again into sub genres like contemporary, historical, regency, western, inspiration, romantic suspense and paranormal (Um, Twilight, anyone?) and that each sub genre contains its own set of formulas, conventions, motifs, and generic expectations (Lee 53).

The romance genre has been around for generations but gained attention when in the 1970's, the historical romances, who often displayed covers of half naked men and women with their boobs hanging out, got the term "bodice-rippers" which came to represent the entire romance genre.  The bodice - rippers "were used to justify dismissing this 'trivial' form of women's fiction as naturalizing sexual violence against passive, naive, women through rape fantasies and other sexual brutalities" (Lee 55).  The historical setting of these romance novels allowed women to enjoy the rape fantasy without confusing it with actual, dangerous, real-life rape.  However, in the 1980's, the rape fantasy was replaced with stronger, sexually active, heroines that enjoyed their sexual encounters.  This new era of romance fiction brought on the term "romantica"which was a combination of both romance and erotica, these books were often more sexually explicit, included more graphic language, and the characters often engaged in difficult or controversial sexual situations.  A perfect example of this is Fifty Shades of Grey with it's BDSM sex.  Often times, yes, romance novels have a basic format to their plot described as follows: "young girl meets older dominant male.  She is attracted, yet frightened.  They become entangled in a relationship in which she feels he dislikes her but in the end after varying degrees of plot complication she finds he loves her" (Owen 538), but romance novels represent so much more than just a woman falling in love.

Romance novels, instead of giving women a choice as they once did, now give women a chance to escape their everyday lives.  "In contemporary culture, the erotic popular romance novel serves the function once filled by the fairy tale.  Fairy tales have been interpreted as encapsulating collective fantasies and providing a way for women to subvert and resist patriarchal norms" (Lee 62).  All fiction novels, not just romance, are supposed to provide an escape from everyday life, I know that's why I read them.  Often times, this fact is overlooked in the critic of romance novels, they aren't meant to be real life, if they were they'd be non-fiction.  Once upon a time, fairy tales, which were intended not just for children but also adults, gave us a way to escape to magical places.  Now, this purpose is given to us by romance novels.  In the novel, Liar of the Lion, written by Christine Feehan, the story of Beauty and the Beast is re-written into something dark and sexual.  The novel begins with it's main character Isabella Vernaducci going alone to a strange castle whose owner is a mysterious man that no one knows about in exchange to set her brother free; very similar to the original Beauty and the Beast story. However, when Isabella sees Nicolai, the owner of the mansion, she does not see him as the beast but as a man.  Every encounter between Isabella and Nicolai creates heat and tension between the two characters, but it isn't until they finally engage in sex that Isabella sees him momentarily appear as a lion.  At the end of novel, Isabella sees Nicolai as being truly a man and as Nicolai declares his love for her, the curse is broken.  The romance novel often does this in the sense that "the domineering male becomes the catalyst that makes the empowerment fantasy work" (Lee 56) and "the confrontations between strong heroes and heroines -which are ultimately always won by the heroines of these novels - results in 'taming' the hero" (Lee 61).  Whether they are literally taming the heros as in Liar of the Lion or even in Twilight, or figuratively as in Fifty Shades Darker, where (spoiler alert!) Christian agrees to have a non-BDSM relationship and try for a standard girlfriend boyfriend relationship, the female is gaining power and knowledge from the male heros of the story.

It's true that romance novels are about the declaration of love, especially from the heroes, however its also about what that declaration gives the women.  These stories aren't just love stories, they're stories about power and relationship.  As I said above, the man is not domesticated by marriage, instead he is "tamed" by the woman.  Especially in the strong romance novels, these stories are more about female empowerment than anything else.  "If we reposition the conflict in romance novels from the quest of a love that conquers all to a struggle for power through knowledge of the other, it becomes possible to read these novels also as fantasies of female empowerment" (Lee 62).  Now, the extent to which the heroine exercise her new found power differs based on sub-genre, novel, author, and story.  Again, in Fifty Shades Darker, our heroine Anastasia learns a lot about Christian's family and past which she uses to get closer to him.
Romance novels are a lot more than just a silly love story or "mommy porn", they are stories of female power, stability, and a way to escape; romance "stories are about both the 'sentimental and sensual delights of love' and the 'forbidden pleasures of revenge and appropriation'" (Lee 61).  So the next time you see someone reading Nicholas Sparks or E.L. James, before you judge, just remember that romance novels are so much more than what you think.

-Liz Harrison

Work Cited

Lee, Linda J. "Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels as Reworked Fiary Tales." Marvels &

Tales 22.1 (2008): 52-66. Print.

Owen, Mairead.  "Re-Inventing Romance: Reading Popular Romantic Fiction." Women's Studies International Forum 20.4 (1997): 537-546. Print.