While there are dozens of excellent romance writers - Mary Balogh, Jane Feather, Joan Lindsey, Stephanie Laurens, Julia London, and Julia Quinn, to name only a few - I wish to focus on Laura Kinsale, Mary Jo Putney, and Amanda Quick because they have introduced new elements into historical romance that challenge important assumptions about narrative, about perspective and about the construction of fantasy. (173)
---
Kinsale, whose historical romances range from the mediaeval through the Victorian periods, published ten books between 1986 and 1997. Her heroes are definitely flawed and very often physically disabled as well, assailed by temporary madness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even fear of their entitled positions. These circumstances are central to much of Kinsale's fiction because physical infirmity points to a deeper psychological need or lack that the hero must overcome to find balance and happiness in his life. (174)
---
In the best of Kinsale's romances, Flowers from the Storm (1992), the characters search for balance in religion and in public life in the spiritual and social world of Regency England. The novel goes far beyond the conventions of the genre to examine the deepest levels of psychological ruin and redemption. (174)
---
Putney has also written [a] series of three novels, Silk and Shadows (1991), Silk and Secrets (1992), and Veils of Silk (1992) all of which explore not just love relationships but colonial conquest, deconstructing notions of colonial relationships between men and women and between empires and subject peoples. These narratives uncover the power and the abuse of power colonialism produces and, clarifying the colonial nature of nineteenth-century marriage, allow Putney's readers to see the ways in which contracts, in order to be continuously binding, must be continuously reexamined and re-accepted by the parties involved. Silk and Secrets is, perhaps, the best example of the process. (178)
---
Putney's The Wild Child (1999) [...] [includes] a brief subplot in which Putney like Kinsale, gives a chilling account of nineteenth century asylums, adding information on how medicine was used to entrap and dis-empower women. (178-180)
---
What makes Quick's novels worthy of a second look is the way in which the author parodies the romance genre while managing to make the most of its forms and conventions. An arch style, heroines who deconstruct the heroes as they make love to them, heroes who discuss the importance of rationality while passionately seducing women, and a tongue-in-cheek authorial voice that makes life simply laughable even when the hero and heroine find themselves in the most dire straits all set Quick's novels apart from other romance fiction. (180)
---
---
---
---
---