phantasies play an important part in the romantic fiction narrative. Romantic fiction speaks to, and resonates with, these phantasies.
Romantic fiction can make the world seem like a warm, better, more loveable place and indeed the more difficult our lives, the more depressing the social world becomes, the more likely we are to turn to phantasies of glamour, wealth, happiness and love in order to seek a necessary distraction from the increasingly depressing world in which we exist. But this is not to dismiss or patronise romantic fiction, but to argue that one of its functions is to reassure us that the world is peopled with men and women who are certain of what and who they are, in gender and sexuality. Ambivalence, contradictions and doubts are left outside of the narrative. (88)