The "Revolt of the Gentle": Romance and the Politics of Resistance in Working-Class Women's Writing

Author
Publication year
1994
Journal
NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction
Volume
27.2
Pages
140-160
Comment

working-class women [...] commit a transgressive act merely by desiring the romance script itself [...]. During the early decades of the twentieth century in Britain, it was predominantly middle-class women who felt the daily strictures of (and protested against) romantic codes of behavior. Working-class women were more typically denied access to those codes by their own cultural experience. Romance functioned as an emblem of privilege, was reserved for others. (141)