As the millennium turns,the messages the culture-at-large beams at girls seem more stridently insistent; the punishments delivered to the girl who refuses to hear them more damning, as all the stories narrow to what seems the only important one—the story of romance. In the face of postmodern feminism and statistical studies that confirm that most women will live long stretches of their lives on their own, scores of high schoolgirls unabashedly admit to their English teachers that they are waiting for their princes to come. How well are we teaching them at school how to hold back the culture? (133)
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In a rapidly changing social world, the romance is increasingly fundamental to the maintenance of order, critically embedded in the workings of the economy, and a pathway into the compelling archetypal world. Unlike adult readers who read romances as fantasy, girls read them literally. (133)
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