Here are a few quotes to give an indication of the kinds of issues raised:
I was astonished to find that every novel I read (sixteen, all published in 1983-4) either refers explicitly to feminism or deals implicitly with issues feminism has raised: women's work, their economic and psychic independence from men, their sexuality - or what might better be called the shifts in 'manners' around heterosexual attraction and pursuit. (197)
overt references to feminism are much more problematic in Mills & Boon. The term itself, like the demands and debates associated with it, produces striking ambivalence in these novels, even when they register changes that are feminist in effect. [...] What happens is that certain positions put forward by feminism are taken for granted, along with the economic and ideological benefits it has brought many women, while the movement itself is perceived as alien, threatening, excessive. (201)
It seems, in fact, so difficult to assess any of these novels as regressive or progressive in its totality that I've concluded such judgements aren't the point. Taken as a group, the texts prove that the genre is flexible, but not at every point. One instance: I doubt that the romance format will ever allow writers to challenge the conventions through which the hero is constructed: he is still older, richer, wiser in the ways of the world, and more experienced sexually than the heroine. (214)
Here are a few quotes to give an indication of the kinds of issues raised: