Redefining the Romance: Classification and Community in a Popular Fiction Genre

Parts of Chapter 1 of this thesis have been published in American Journal of Cultural Sociology.

Chapter 2 of this thesis has also been published, in slightly altered form, in Poetics.

Here's the abstract for the thesis:

Today’s romance fiction landscape is drastically different than the early 1980s when its community of readers and writers formalized in the Romance Writers of America and Romantic Times fan magazine. Then, romance fiction was understood to focus on “the interaction between male and female.” Today, romance depicts a variety of relationships and is primarily defined by its “happily-ever-after.” I draw on archival materials, interviews, ethnography, and content analysis to show how the boundaries of romance genre fiction – and the social meaning of romance itself – have evolved. I focus on three contested classifications (erotic romance, LGBTQ+ romance, and multicultural romance) that prompted community debates over the definition, meaning, and purpose of romance. Erotic romance pushed the boundaries of acceptable female desire by introducing explicit prose and foregrounding sexual pleasure. LGBTQ+ romance expanded the romantic paradigm beyond traditional heteronormative relationships. Multicultural romance forced the community to discuss the politics of inclusion. Advances in publishing technology and organizational change facilitated genre diversification. However, I argue that the redefinition of romance was ultimately driven by a meaning-making shift within the community. Once a private act of leisure, romance reading has taken on political significance as readers and writers see subversive political potential in “happily-ever-afters” for historically marginalized groups. Documenting forty years of romance community discourse from formalization in 1981 to possible fracture in 2021, this project shows that a genre is more than the sum of its texts – it is a social process of community negotiation and redefinition

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This project explores how and why romance fiction changed over forty years, 1981-2021. [...] I find that the genre was redefined, both in definition (what it is; content) and purpose (what it is for; meaning). The change in purpose from entertainment to entrainment plus social/political engagement helped facilitate the change in content. (7)

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romance writers frequently engaged with academic work about romance and cited it to themselves – and outsiders – to articulate the social and (progressive) political significance of romance fiction.

Romance fans sought respect by articulating how the genre is personally, socially, and politically important. Engagement with academic work – including Reading the Romance – is one strategy the community employed to rehabilitate their stigmatized image. Many formal efforts to define romance or articulate its purpose were a direct response to mockery and criticism (this is elaborated in Chapter 1).(7-8)

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While readers and writers explore many dimensions of difference in romance fiction, including class, disability, age, and fatness, these three (erotic, LGBTQ+, and multicultural romance) have been institutionalized as distinct classifications in a way that other dimensions of difference have not. The Romance Writers of America (RWA) has special interest chapters for each of the three classifications. RWA’s RITA awards featured an Erotic Romance category, and Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Awards featured Erotic and Multicultural Awards categories. Publishers have discussed and promoted these as classifications.

I intentionally use the term “classifications” for several reasons. I avoid calling erotic, LGBTQ+ and multicultural romance subgenres because their very status as “subgenres” is contested. (9)

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This project is precisely interested in how, when, and why romance is constituted as an interpretive community. [...] In presenting this project at various stages some audiences have been skeptical that romance is really “a community.” I strongly maintain that it is. (18)

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I conducted forty semi-structured interviews with romance writers and publishing professionals from June 2016 - October 2020. Interview respondents were recruited through a local RWA chapter, networking at RWA conferences, and personal networks. (27)

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I attended three RWA conferences: the national conference in 2016, a regional conference in 2018, and the national conference in 2019. (28)

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I accessed the entire print run of Romantic Times (1981-2016, n=360 issues) at the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) and inductively coded all issues in Atlas.ti.
I also accessed select available issues of Romance Writers Report (RWR) at BGSU (n=180). (29-30)

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To understand how romance novels themselves might have changed over four decades, I took a comparative sample of twenty acclaimed novels published 1985-1988 and twenty acclaimed novels published 2015-2018. [...] In addition to this systematic sample of forty, I read additional notable novels that received outsized attention in the community. (30-31)

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Finally, I draw on media coverage of romance novels and the romance community. This includes articles from prestige media like The New York Times and The Washington Post as well as newer internet-based outlets like Bustle. (31)

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Analyzing romance novels and community discourse from 1981-2021, I find that the genre has been redefined in two ways. First, the definition of romance fiction shifted from emphasizing male/female relations to the happily-ever-after. The gender-neutral definition adopted in 2000 allowed more people and relationships to fall within the technical parameters of the genre. Secondly, prominent voices in the community extended the purpose of romance fiction beyond personal entertainment to political statement. This dual redefinition helped bring in content that had been explicitly excluded (like LGBTQ+ romance) or implicitly marginalized (like multicultural romance). The romance community had new impetus to expand its boundaries (both implicit and explicit) as inclusion took on social justice significance. (34)

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Early definitions of romance fiction emphasized gender relations. In an early issue of Romance Writers Report, Rita Gallagher (a founding member of RWA and then-newsletter editor) offered a “quick course in accuracy” to journalists in response to unfavorable media coverage. In this definition, “A Romance Novel is one of ANY genre, whose main theme is the interaction between MALE and FEMALE, ie: Hemingway’s FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL [sic]; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY and Nabukov’s [sic] LOLITA” (Gallagher 1981: 22). [...] The emphasis on gender relations with no mention of a happily-ever-after expectation is notable as the happily-ever-after (HEA) would later become integral to the genre definition. Even so, most genre romances in the early 1980s did have HEAs. (38)

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Each upcoming chapter each focuses on a contested category of romance fiction whose status as a recognized subgenre was questioned. By looking at contested categories, we see how a genre is a community defined by its negotiations over its own boundaries. Each pushed the genre boundaries and provided an opportunity for the community to openly debate and reflect on the definition and purpose of romance fiction. (64)

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Years before Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) brought “mommy porn” and BDSM into mainstream conversation, erotic romance fiction from small publishing houses, self-published authors, and eventually major publishers became popular among romance readers. [...]

I find that negotiation over erotic romance involved multiple symbolic boundary debates: 1) What is acceptable sexuality? 2) What is a “real” book? 3) Who is a professional author? Though erotic romance was gradually trending towards legitimation, erotic romance was only fully incorporated into the mainstream romance genre when the sudden success of Fifty Shades of Grey forced the resolution of all three boundary debates by showing that a novel on the “wrong side” of all the boundaries could be culturally and financially successful. (65)

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The same technological and industrial changes that facilitated erotic romance also facilitated LGBTQ+ romance, and there was overlap in writers, publishers, and readership. Furthermore, like erotic romance, LGBTQ+ romance is inherently related to sexuality. There is a distinction, of course, between erotic sexual expression and sexual orientation, though LGBTQ+ romance is often (problematically) assumed to be erotic. Thus, LGBTQ+ romance also embodied a symbolic boundary nexus, and making a distinction between LGBTQ+ and erotic romance was one aspect of the symbolic boundary nexus that the classification’s proponents had to navigate. (91)

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In 2005 the Romance Writers of America considered strictly defining romance as “one man and one woman.” Just over a decade later, in 2016, the same organization awarded a gay BDSM erotic romance (For Real by Alexis Hall) a prestigious RITA award. In 2007 Romantic Times stated it was their policy to advertise, but not review, same-sex romance. Yet five years later (2012) they had a cover feature (“It’s Raining Men”) celebrating male/male romance.
This swift change in genre acceptance tracks with rapid increase in support for gay rights at the national level. (92)

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LGBTQ+ romance was institutionalized because it took on a social justice, political imperative. Inclusion in the romance genre specifically, not just pop culture representation in general, was particularly important because of the HEA.
One major theme is the idea that positive representation in romance would help social attitudes on tolerance and gay rights. (107)

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Community debates over multicultural romance reflect larger issues such as racism, ethnocentrism, diversity, inclusion, industry gatekeepers, audiences (real and imagined), respectability politics, and racialized sexual stereotypes. Multicultural romance never challenged the formal definitions of romance the way erotic and LGBTQ+ romance did. It did, however, highlight the implicit assumption that “romance fiction” was white and anything outside of this white default required its own label. (114)

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Ultimately, multicultural romance is contested within the community because there is ambivalence about whether an institutionalized classification is good or bad for “multicultural” writers and readers. People debate exactly what it is and who can write it.  (145)