This begins with a discussion about reading/theories of literacy. Radway then turns to a description of the Smithton group of readers she discusses at more length in Reading the Romance. Here's a quote about how these readers interpret novels:
The Smithton readers assume that romance authors choose their words very carefully because they intend those words to describe correctly the characters in question. As a result, they do not judge verbal assertion by comparing it with the character's actions. If the writer says that her heroine is intelligent and independent, nothing she does or does not do later can alter her basic character. Consequently, the women believe that they are reading a story about an extraordinary woman who is overcome by unforeseen circumstances, but who nevertheless manages to teach the hero how to care for her and to appreciate her as she wishes to be appreciated. Because he always learns the lesson she has to teach and proposes a permanent commitment, the women can interpret this as the triumph of her values. Their interpretation follows logically from their textual operations, which are themselves dictated by a prior understanding of words and language. It seems to me that what we have here is not a form of partial literacy, but a different form of literacy altogether, founded on its own conception of the word and what can be done with it. (59)
and
their attitude toward language, then, rather than the text alone, is responsible for one of their most important claims about the worth and function of romance reading. Although the books are works of fiction, the women use them as primers about the world. The romance for them is a kind of encyclopedia, and reading, a process of education. (60)
Radway
noticed that one of the reasons they operate on the texts as they do is a function of the fact that the authors had selected a vocabulary and syntax readily familiar to a middle-class housewife and mother with a year or two of college education. I inferred that this simple and resolutely familiar language use actually permits the women to rely heavily on their memory of previously learned cultural codes. When they encounter such a linguistic structure, they simply supply the most common referents for the words and phrases in question and thus actually con struct a fictional duplicate of the world they are familiar with. (61)
This begins with a discussion about reading/theories of literacy. Radway then turns to a description of the Smithton group of readers she discusses at more length in Reading the Romance. Here's a quote about how these readers interpret novels:
and
Radway