Shakespeare's Step-Sisters: Romance Novels and the Community of Women

Publication year
1995
Pages
135-168
Comment

It is [...] probably not enough for the scholar to read romance or any other relatively formulaic genre as an outsider, and then to project from her own impressions what effect the books might have on the enthusiast. [...]
Nor is reader-response always solitary: it creates, and in a sense is created by, community. (137)

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Since there is no single intrinsic meaning to be drawn from these texts and because theories and techniques of folklore fieldwork complement the aims of reader-response theory so aptly, we asked readers and authors of the romance to talk with us about their reactions to the genre.
Our fieldwork was conducted primarily in southern Indiana during the first half of 1992. During this time, Clover visited several used bookstores that specialized in romance novels and discussed romance with readers both at these stores and on the campus of Indiana University, where several readers approached her to discuss the genre. On the weekend of May 2, 1992, we both attended romance conferences. (139)

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Whether one agrees that the qualities associated with écriture féminine are distinctly female properties or not, many members of the romance community seem to share and applaud a very similar understanding of women's writing, for manifestly similar reasons. (143)

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Virtually all of the women who were interviewed cited entertainment, escape, or relaxation as the primary function of the romance novel. [...] It soon became apparent that romance readers are neither helpless dupes who hide from life behind a screen of romance novels nor benighted fools who confuse fantasy with reality. To the contrary, they are busy women with full lives who use romances for specific purposes. (154)

 

We do not mean to make any overblown claims for romance novels, nor do we suggest that they are always ideologically pleasing. To the contrary, we find the assumptions in many romance novels disturbing and regressive: the notion that a person is incomplete without a dyadic sexual relationship, for example, or the idea that abortion is immoral. Yet there are ideologically unsettling aspects of virtually every genre, including the works we consider great literature. (161)

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