The article is written in English so I've chosen to list it here with its English title, but it also has a Spanish title ("Idealización de las sufragistas: romances históricos y la mercantilización de la causa") and abstract. Here's the English version of the abstract:
In this article, I discuss three historical romance novels, Katie MacAlister’s Suffragette in the City (2011), Courtney Milan’s The Suffragette Scandal (2014), and Evie Dunmore’s A Rogue of One’s Own (2020). Based on their similar traits regarding characterisation, plot, and outcome, these works can be said to form a specific subgenre of historical romance, for which I propose the label “Suffragette Historical Romances” (Ripoll-Fonollar, 2024). I first explore these romances departing from the recurrent narrative conventions Pamela Regis (2003) associates with the genre, the most distinguishable of which is what she defines as the “barrier”: what prevents the union between hero and heroine (14). What makes these novels unique, I argue, is that they present the protagonist’s role as a suffragist or suffragette as the obstacle to the happy resolution of the love story. Consequently, the happy ending can only arrive when the heroine decides to renounce her activism. I, then, focus on how these romances are impregnated by the “postfeminist sensibility” Rosalind Gill ascribes to postfeminist narratives (2007), as they paradoxically illustrate the simultaneous incorporation and repudiation of feminist values. I ultimately argue the suffrage campaign serves here to promote a postfeminist ideology according to which feminism has succeeded and, thus, is presented as important, yet no longer relevant.
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The novels I discuss feature empowered and autonomous protagonists who, at first, endeavour to achieve equal rights with men, but eventually abandon the fight altogether, prioritizing the consolidation of their romantic relationships over their emancipation as political subjects and their advancement in the public sphere. The “happily ever after” required by the genre thus works to diminish the impact of the heroine’s political achievement and, as I will argue, turns these novels into accurate reflections of a postfeminist sensibility in which feminist and anti-feminist values seem to coexist. (470)
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I argue that Milan, MacAlister and Dunmore appear to model their protagonists after the prototypes of New Woman and suffragette fiction but eventually offer resolutions which are paradoxically similar to the anti-feminist New Woman novels or to the negative portrayals offered by the early twentieth-century fictions of suffrage. This would prove my main point that SHRs appropriate and ultimately commodify the suffragist/suffragette figure to fit with a context of publication traversed by postfeminist ideas and contradictory understandings of the feminist movement. (474)
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Unlike romance novels, which highlight the flawed nature in which the lovers meet and live, SHRs locate the flaw in the protagonists themselves. Even before the hero and heroine’s first encounter, the protagonist’s position as a suffragist or suffragette foreshadows the existence of this internal barrier, which is defined as all that prevents the relationship between the male and female protagonists (Regis, 2003:14). These contemporary romances, then, fuse two of Regis’ narrative elements – the definition of society and the barrier – into one since they present an inherently corrupt heroine accountable for obstructing the romance, and who hence needs to be reformed. (477)
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Despite being released from their literal imprisonment, SHRs’ heroines are ironically trapped by the patriarchal institution of marriage, because eventually they must fulfil their duties as wives and potential mothers. (486)
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A note from me (LV):
Obviously it is possible for readers to interpret novels differently, both from each other and from the way the author intended, but given what I knew of Courtney Milan in particular (e.g. her support in 2020 for organisations devoted to increasing voting participation) I queried the possibility that she would be deliberately
portraying brave and autonomous protagonists whose rights, the ones they have fought for and are a reality for contemporary readers, seem to be “simultaneously taken for granted and repudiated” (161) by the heroines. (491)
I therefore asked online for feedback on the abstract from people who had read the novels and, to quote Anne Bornschein, the "informal online consensus [was] that the article did not accurately portray the novels' political engagement". Anne kindly supplied a relevant quote from Milan's author's note: "I knew when I was writing the book that many of the things Free hoped to achieve are things that are still in doubt today", which strongly suggests that, since Milan herself does not take for granted or repudiate the rights her heroine fought for, she would not have intended her heroine to have been read as doing so.
Other readers informed me that the heroine's of Dunmore's novel does not abandon her activism and indeed, Ripoll Fonollar mentions that "Lucie sets a condition to become his fiancée: “to be [her] equal before the law” (ROO, 402)" which seems to imply that Lucie remains committed to the cause and will not marry until women have gained equal rights to men.
Finally, with regards to a quote I've included above,
Despite being released from their literal imprisonment, SHRs’ heroines are ironically trapped by the patriarchal institution of marriage, because eventually they must fulfil their duties as wives and potential mothers.
it should perhaps be noted that Emmeline Pankhurst was both a wife and mother while actively campaigning for voting rights for women.
The article is written in English so I've chosen to list it here with its English title, but it also has a Spanish title ("Idealización de las sufragistas: romances históricos y la mercantilización de la causa") and abstract. Here's the English version of the abstract:
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A note from me (LV):
Obviously it is possible for readers to interpret novels differently, both from each other and from the way the author intended, but given what I knew of Courtney Milan in particular (e.g. her support in 2020 for organisations devoted to increasing voting participation) I queried the possibility that she would be deliberately
I therefore asked online for feedback on the abstract from people who had read the novels and, to quote Anne Bornschein, the "informal online consensus [was] that the article did not accurately portray the novels' political engagement". Anne kindly supplied a relevant quote from Milan's author's note: "I knew when I was writing the book that many of the things Free hoped to achieve are things that are still in doubt today", which strongly suggests that, since Milan herself does not take for granted or repudiate the rights her heroine fought for, she would not have intended her heroine to have been read as doing so.
Other readers informed me that the heroine's of Dunmore's novel does not abandon her activism and indeed, Ripoll Fonollar mentions that "Lucie sets a condition to become his fiancée: “to be [her] equal before the law” (ROO, 402)" which seems to imply that Lucie remains committed to the cause and will not marry until women have gained equal rights to men.
Finally, with regards to a quote I've included above,
it should perhaps be noted that Emmeline Pankhurst was both a wife and mother while actively campaigning for voting rights for women.