Gender in Recent Romance Novels: A Third Wave Feminist Mills and Boon Love Affair?

Publication year
2019
Pages
159–170
Comment

This item is also associated with a 2015 date. That's because Re/Presenting Gender and Love, ed. Dikmen Yakalı Çamoğlu was previously published by Interdisciplinary Net in 2015. This edition is no longer available at its original location but the author has made it available via Academia.edu (see one of the links above).

For the purposes of this article a selection of very recent popular romance novels (The Fallen Greek Bride – Jane Porter, 2013, A Girl Less Ordinary – Leah Ashton, 2012, The Darkest of Secrets – Kate Hewitt, 2012 and First Time Lucky? – Natalie Anderson, 2012) will be examined in an attempt to shed light on the changes that occur in the representation of love and the construction of gender in a third wave feminist context. In more details, all four novels are literature agents which signal elements of modernity. This chapter is divided in three parts: part one, ‘Signals of Modernity’, focuses on social class, wealth, education, professional occupation and technology. Part two, ‘Representation and Production of Gender’, discusses the reconstruction of the hero and heroine’s representation and attitude. Part three, ‘Sexual Behaviour and Contradictions’, draws attention to the sexual behaviour of the novels’ protagonists. (162, from the 2015 edition)