This topic aired on the Salon Saturday radio show on January 27. I chose the topic partly because Valentine’s Day was coming, but a good romance novel works any time of year. Romance novels have evolved over time and many readers enjoy the classics as well as contemporary versions. My current novel, The Burren Weeps, is a mystery-romance set in Ireland in the turbulent 1990s so I do consider romance an integral part of many novels.
Romance Novel History
Sometimes called bodice rippers in the 1970s, but an always popular type of fiction, Romance novels are an enduring presence in modern fiction. I must admit that while I don’t typically read romance novels, there is one romance author who I do love and wanted to honor here.
Phyllis Taylor Pianka (1928 – 2010), was a wonderful author of romance novels and dramatically changed my view of the romance novel author.
I’m prejudiced because she led a writing group I was part of back in the early 90s in the San Francisco Bay area. She was a warm, charming woman and great teacher who helped lead me though my first draft of what would later be, The Burren Weeps.
In fact when I redid my novel several years later I realized how much of her influence ended up in my work. Her book, How to Write Romances, revised in 1998 is highly recommended to any aspiring writer of romances, which continues to be a very popular genre.
The History of the Romance Novel
This outline is based on, A Brief History of the Romance Novel, by Amanda Pagan, Children’s Librarian at NYC Public library, one of the best libraries in the country.
The modern romance novel originated in the romantic fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries. Examples include Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, the gothic romances of Ann Radcliffe, and the works of Jane Austen. In them readers were introduced to a new form of fiction, one that primarily focused on the lives and struggles of female protagonists. Although modern romance novels have expanded to include a broad list of authors and protagonists, historically, romance novels were primarily written by women, for women, and about women.
Romance Novel Structure
Early romance novels featured heterosexual, white female protagonists either defying social conventions or overcoming personal struggles in pursuit of their own happiness. The heroines of these novels eventually found the loves of their lives and ended the novels secure and happy.
This led to two core guidelines that romance novels follow to this day; the development of a romantic relationship and an ending that was emotionally satisfying, usually happy but not always. The term “Happily Ever After” or HEA has become an industry standard regarding how a modern romance novel is supposed to end.
Romance novels reflect the desires of their audience. Jane Austen’s novels as well as the works of the Brontë sisters introduced female characters who were ultimately rewarded with successful marriages for expressing their individuality or their own desires. In that time period, females were undervalued and treated as second class citizens so the romance novels became a form of escape and inspiration. And, of course, these were the first feminist writers.
Modern Romance Novel
In the 20th century, Georgette Heyer’s Georgian-era romance, The Black Moth (1921) and Margaret Mitchell’s, Gone with the Wind, (1936) revitalized public interest in romance novels, especially historical fiction. And the movie Gone with the Wind (1939) and its great success kicked interest up several notches. While the book is not technically a romance novel, it’s had a long-lasting influence on the genre with many novels copying its setting, themes, and characterization.
Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic romance, Rebecca (1938) became a bestseller and invigorated the gothic romance subgenre. That novel was adapted as the movie Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock with Joan Fontaine and Sir Lawrence Olivier. Gothic romance blends supernatural and romance elements, often featuring female protagonists battling terrifying ordeals, but still staying true to their lover.
Author Eleanor Alice Hibbert wrote historical fiction romance under the pseudonym Jean Plaidy, and gothic romance under the name Victoria Holt from the 1950s on. Later cover art also became more explicit and there was a shift towards narratives involving exotic locations and heroines who had careers outside of the expected roles of housewife or mother. Stewardesses and nurses were popular choices. Um, still a serving role, however.
In 1972, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower introduced a new subgenre: the bodice ripper. Up to this point, romance novels featured very little sexually explicit material; Woodiwiss’s work changed that. Bodice rippers were historical fiction novels that usually featured beautiful, virginal, yet fierce and independent, women who would catch the attention of a handsome alpha male who would attempt to seduce and dominate her. Bodice rippers were notorious for featuring rape and abuse as part of the “love story” but this morphed into works that did not promote assault or violence.
Harlequin, a division of HarperCollins, was the first publishing house to produce romance novels directly targeting female readers. Over the years, they became known for their distinctive eye-catching covers, which usually featured lovers caught in illicit embraces or otherwise dreamy images.
And this might still be the image many readers hold for the romance novel, but the range and types of romance novels is much broader now and so to is the audience for them as any Hallmark movie can testify. And after all, we all need a little romance in our lives, right?
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