Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained

by Maya Rodale

What I found instead was a call for women to value themselves, or at least act as if they are valuable. Late-night bootie calls are to be declined not because women should be chaste but because if a woman wants more than a man’s fleeting, horny attentions, she has to hold out for more than a man’s fleeting, horny attentions. (The authors are clear to note that a woman not interested in marriage should feel free to enjoy all the bootie calls she wants.). The implicit message is that if you want to be cherished by another person, you have to value yourself as a person worthy of love, respect, and commitment first.

  When it comes to playing by the rules in the reformed rake romance, it all falls on the woman’s shoulders to set boundaries and enforce them. The successful conclusion of the story hinges on a woman’s resistance and determination to avoid sex. All too often real life women are expected to live by this script: Just say no. No means no. We are to avoid dimly lit terraces or dark alleys or frat houses or any other places where we might be compromised. We must watch our drinks. We are to cover ourselves up so as not to tempt men or to be seen as “asking for it.” Don’t call him first. Because dangerous beasts with appetites for lady flesh roam the earth and we are constantly in danger from being ravished.

  Hence the appeal of stories that take a dangerous man and make him safe—which is often how reformed rake stories are interpreted. There is something powerful about the role women play in these stories. She is the lion tamer. She is the one who takes a wild beast and gets him to sit, stay, and come when called. He becomes domesticated enough to sleep in her bed. In a world that gives her so very little power, where a woman’s safety is most likely to be compromised by the men in her life, a woman has this. One reader notes these stories can be “incredibly ego-boosting if you're feeling powerless at the time in real life.”

  But that interpretation doesn’t completely capture the dynamic happening here. It assumes that one must be dominant and one must be subordinate. It assumes that one wants monogamy and the other wants all of the sex. It assumes the one who is wild must be tamed.

  But this heroine, this woman, is always bundled up and saying no even though—true fact, newsflash, fetch the smelling salts—she might not always want to. She might want to break the rules. She might want passionate nights of wild abandon and multiple orgasms. She might want to benefit from the rake’s sexual experience—just imagine how well he knows how to please a woman in bed by now! This heroine doesn’t want to tame the bad boy so much as ride off into the sunset with him.

  This flies in the face of how we’ve understood sexual dynamics between men and women. “Most Darwinian models of human origins incorporate females only as passive objects of male competition,” wrote biological anthropologists Craig Stanford and John Allen.[146] But that interpretation is changing. “Certainly since at least the mid-90s, evolutionary biologists have known that the dichotomy of ‘indiscriminate males’ and ‘choosey females’ was a gross oversimplification,” says Dr. Kimberly Russell, an associate professor at Princeton, who holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, in an interview with Psychology Today.[147]

  The bad-boy-rake “gives women more permission to let out the inner kick-ass chick,” says a reader named Kathryn. And she probably needs it, given how our culture’s long-held assumptions about women’s lack of sexual interests aren’t true and have probably led many women to stifle their true desire. There are consequences, Dr. Russell points out:

  If you have a culture that convinces women that 1) they are less interested in sex (than men) and 2) they are more interested in monogamy, then you create a situation whereby women learn to ignore or disregard their own physical arousal, particularly in situations that are deemed inappropriate.

  Romance novels play with this tension between what we’re supposed to want and how we actually feel. “Everyone wishes they could cut loose from the social contract every once in a while...and hey, guess what! The bad boy does,” says a reader named Jess. And the heroine goes along for the ride, breaking all the rules. One reader points out that the real appeal isn’t reforming the bad boy, but “being with a rake or a bad boy" frees the heroine from strictures of society. Seeing the wild side of life sounds like an attractive prospect if you’ve been living your life by the rules. And let's face it, most heroines do exactly that.

  And so do most real-life women, for that matter.

  But to get there, she has to make him see that she is not just another conquest, not another one-night stand. She has to believe that she deserves more than that—and must hold out for it. A reader Catherine points out “It’s a mark of a heroine’s specialness to find a man who responds to her like he does to no one else in the world.” It is also a mark of her desirability. Because the rake cannot rely on his usual bag of physical tricks to get this heroine in bed, he has to appeal to more than her body—he has to get to know her thoughts and opinions and see her as a whole human.

  And to do that she has to believe that her worth is derived from her whole self, not just her sexy parts. She has to believe that she is worth love, worth time, worth attention, and worth the chase. She has to show him what he is missing.

  * * *

  I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.

  —Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas

  So we have the stereotypical wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am man waking up to discover he has feelings. And we have a woman waking up to the sexual pleasure she has probably been resisting for too long.

  They have cast off the traditional notions of what they should be like.

  And then they live happily ever after (okay, maybe after a few more obstacles and black moments). Because the happy ending is often marriage, it further reinforces the interpretation that these stories are just about making men and women fit into some mold—men are tamed into monogamy and women end up buying right back into the patriarchal system where they pony up a dowry and give up their name.

  But what if the real happily-ever-after isn’t about the institution of marriage, but about finding that person you can be your whole self with? The reformed rake is “allowed” to become more than the emotionless sex-obsessed creature that old notions of evolutionary biology told us and that traditional ideas of masculinity reinforced. Likewise, the ever-resisting coy female can finally indulge the passionate feelings she’s been keeping under wrap. Rather than taming or trapping each other, the reformed rake plot is one of liberation.

  If that happens, of course you’d try to stay with that person forever, not because you need a ring or a vow or want to reinforce traditional gender roles but because it makes you happy. Women can stop resisting, if it feels right. Men can stop chasing, if it feels right. And they can just be. Together.

  HAPPY EVER AFTER

  WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING?

  Because people should not be punished for loving and hoping and holding their hearts open.

  —Hot Head by Damon Suede

  Romance novels end happily. This is what distinguishes the books from other love stories, such as Romeo and Juliet or Gone with the Wind. While often criticized for glorifying marriage (and thus trapping women in a patriarchal system), the romance novel isn’t about wedding bells at all. The happy-ever-after (HEA) is ultimately about the triumph of hope, acceptance, and justice. The happy ending is also what makes romance novels dangerous books for girls.

  And they got married and lived happily ever after

  “And they got married and lived happily ever after” is a well-worn, hackneyed phrase that ends many a fairy tale. But it’s curious: While marriage in real life was seen as the ultimate life goal for much of human history, novels that portray the marriage of the characters as the ultimate resolutio
n get a bad rap for doing so. But as the institution of marriage and the cultural attitudes toward it have changed over time, romance novels have evolved to reflect this while still remaining true to the definition of the genre. Thus we can get a glimpse of what the HEA is really about—and it’s not the wedding.

  Some detractors believe that HEA = marriage and that a story of female empowerment cannot end with a wedding. Thus, romance novels are terrible for women. “Critics claim that the romance novel extinguishes its own heroine, confining her within a story that ignores the full range of her concerns and abilities and denies her independent goal-orientated action outside love and marriage,” Pamela Regis writes in A Natural History of the Romance Novel. It supposedly “binds readers in their marriages or encourages them to get married; it equates marriage with success and glorifies sexual difference.”[148]

  But if we see many romance novels ending in marriage, it’s because they were set in a world where getting married is what you did, especially if you found true love. Of course, there were economic, social, and religious considerations as well. What marriage is, how it works, who gets to do it, for how long, and how well individuals fare in it is a continually vexing subject (and beyond the scope of this book).

  Some have seen marriage as oppressive to women: Her father walks her down the aisle, hands her over like property to the groom. She subsumes her own identity, takes his name, and gets busy keeping house and making babies. For a woman to choose marriage—as romance heroines so often do—is interpreted as women voluntarily buying right back into the patriarchal system that oppressed them in the first place. When that uppity, adventurous heroine says “I do” in the end, it supposedly “reaffirms its founding culture’s belief that women are valuable not for their unique personal qualities but for their biological sameness and their ability to perform that essential role of maintaining and reconstituting others,” writes Regis.

  Historical romance novels often portray marriage because this is an accurate reflection of the time in which these novels are set, and probably just as important, because marriage was a pre-requisite for sex. But even historical romances don’t always end with marriage—in popular tropes like the arranged marriage or marriage of convenience, the story begins with “I do” (however grudgingly it may have been said). The real HEA in these stories is when the characters have fallen in love and declared it. It’s not over until everyone says “I love you.”

  Long before gay marriage became legal in the United States, there were romance novels featuring gay and lesbian couples. While it was a small subgenre at first, it’s been growing. In the documentary Love Between the Covers, longtime fans of lesbian romance spoke about how powerful it was to read stories about same sex relationships that ended optimistically. Even without a wedding, there could still be an emotionally uplifting conclusion to a love story. Thanks to forward-thinking members of Romance Writers of America, these stories are ensured to be part of the genre.

  Those members of Romance Writers of America in charge of finding a short, pithy, all encompassing definition “romance novel” made sure it was inclusive. “There were those who insisted that the genre prohibit adultery and require marriage at the end, and there were those who pointed out that some people should keep their moral standards out of other people’s stories,” romance author Jennifer Crusie writes in an excellent blog post on the process. “There were those who suggested that the definition include ‘love between a man and a woman.’ And there were those who pointed out that it would be a bad idea to make RWA officially homophobic, given that respected publishers like Naiad Press have been publishing lesbian romances for years. We’d like this definition to be reflective of the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth.”[149]

  And it is: The definition is “a love story that has an emotionally and optimistic ending.” There is no mention of who is allowed to love, or not. And there is no mention of marriage.

  The demographics of marriage have shifted radically since the days of the first romance novels. Now more people have the legal right to marry. People marry at a later age, people live together before the wedding, people live together without having a wedding, and some people get divorced and then do it all over again.

  But the HEA carries on.

  We now see the rise of the “happy for now” ending instead of happily ever after, particularly in contemporary romance novels, which strive to represent an emotionally optimistic conclusion to a story set in a modern world, read by a reader with modern values. When people don’t usually get engaged after a few dates, what does the HEA look like? “I’ve been seeing it more in contemporaries that they don’t necessarily have to be married or engaged at the end as long as there’s a resolution to whatever was hindering their relationship from moving forward,” says Elyse Discher, the romance reviewer.

  A popular new subgenre of contemporary romance, New Adult, focuses on characters of college age. Widely reported statistics show that the younger people marry, the more likely they will end up divorced. Can we have 22-year-olds falling in love and getting married and have modern readers believing they’ll make it forever and ever? It might be challenging. It’s also beside the point. “They don’t need to put a label on it,” Discher said, whether that label is man, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, The One, or whatever. What readers want to see in these stories is that the characters “worked through this major issue,” which provides a sense of optimism that these characters will be able “to get through the smaller ones that inevitably follow.”

  The happy ending of a romance novel is not about marriage at all—it’s about hope for a better future.

  Dangerous books for girls

  If romance novels just reinforced the idea that heterosexual marriage and adhering to traditional gender roles is the key to a lifetime of happiness, they wouldn’t be so revolutionary. Or if romance novels ended tragically, they would have been handed out with conduct books and collections of sermons. It is the happy ending, which champions hope, love, and acceptance above all, that make these stories so powerful and revolutionary.

  The happy ending, in which the villains are punished and the good are rewarded, is an endorsement of everything that happened in the story. In a romance, Jennifer Crusie writes, “the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice, unconditional love in an emotionally safe world.” Is there any better reward than that? It’s not about the money, the aristocratic title, the marriage certificate. The romance novel declares, via the happy ending, that love is the most important thing, and that love can exist between people, no matter how they identify or whom they love. And love doesn’t care about any rules.

  The power of the HEA goes deeper than just a morality tale. It is one that inspires hope and it seductively suggests that you, dear reader, might want to try this at home.

  When a woman reads a romance novel, she is declaring that her needs and desires are valid and should be satisfied. When she reads a romance, she embarks on a journey in which she can identify with the hero, heroine, or any number of characters, giving her a richer understanding of herself. When she reads about faraway lands, other time periods, different types of people, and a variety of experiences, she gains a deeper understanding of the world. This alone is empowering.

  “But on that journey, we get this one contract,” bestselling contemporary romance author Jennifer Probst points out. That contract between the reader and the writer says, “In the end everything is going to be okay. When we’re picking up a romance novel, we’re saying you can take me on this rough roller coaster ride, but I’m going to go for it because you’re going to make it okay in the end.”

  Knowing the story will end well means that it’s safe to feel more deeply as we read, which intensifies and personalizes the reading experiences and makes the story seem so real. When a reader sees and feels these characters living, loving, and triumphing in a fictional world that seems remarkably like the one she lives in, it f
eels possible. Or when the story features fantastical creatures in imaginative worlds that still have remarkably human emotions, it suggests that perhaps this isn’t just fantasy. Maybe, just maybe, this dream can be a reality.

  The happy ending of a romance novel is an endorsement of female value, female agency, and female pleasure. It also conveys hope that we can make these fantasies into our realities. It is this declaration about the power of an individual woman to transform herself, her relationships, and her world that has made romance novels dangerous books to the status quo, and thus dangerous books for girls.

  WHY IT MATTERS HOW WE TALK ABOUT ROMANCE NOVELS

  She didn’t know why arguing this point had become so important to her. If he wanted to live out the remainder of his life bitter and alone, she supposed he had that right. But his smugness made her so prickly all over. And he wasn’t merely insulting love and romance. He was insulting her friends and acquaintances. Her own hard work.

  The innermost yearnings of her heart.

  This wasn’t an academic argument. It was personal. If she didn’t defend the idea of lasting happiness, how could she hold out any hope for her own?

  —Romancing the Duke by Tessa Dare

  There is a sense of shame surrounding the reading of a romance novel. Eighty-nine percent of romance readers think people look down on them for the reading material, 52 percent report feeling shame for their reading habit at some point in time, and 51 percent think they should keep their reading secret.

  “I used to buy romance novels and hide them,” says Courtney Milan, a bestselling author and champion for romance authors. “I would get books I didn’t want to read and I put the romance novels under them when I went to buy stuff.”

  Almost everyone I spoke with had a variation on the same story of their early romance reading years. “I went to library to get them. I didn’t want my dad to know, so I would have my tote bag and get three [other] books on top,” says Elle Keck, the editorial assistant. Elyse Discher told me: “I used to bring them to school with me and I would hide them because if someone saw me reading one my life would obviously be over.”