BEMIDJI — Whether you’re a fan of the genre or not, there’s no mistaking the popularity and the cultural influence of the romance genre. Through the decades romance has branched out into new subgenres like romantasy (a blend of fantasy and romance) to Christian romances to dark romances. Also on the rise are book-to-film or TV series adaptations and romance-specific bookstores, like Forbidden Love Bookstore in Bemidji.
Romance novels were also the topic of a recent Honors Lecture at Bemidji State University given by Rucha Ambikar, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. Ambikar’s lecture was titled “What Do Women Want? Evolving Representations of Women in Popular Romance Novels.”
In a recent What We’re Reading conversation, Ambikar spoke to the historical and current impact the genre has on society, as well as the significance it has on the publishing industry, stating that romance novels are what is keeping the industry afloat and that there is a “contrast between [how] we treat this genre as very sort of lowbrow and stuff women read for escapist fantasy type of feelings and the real economic engine that this industry is.”
Romance novels in history
While romance novels existed prior, they emerged as a genre after World War II. Ambikar named two long-standing major publishing companies, Harlequin and Mills & Boon as being responsible for the formula romances which rose to new heights of popularity in the 1950s into what we know of today as the “popular romance novel.”
Ambikar explained, “They are genre romances, they are full of what people who don't like them call formulaic ideas of how the book should proceed, but what people who read them will say is, very sort of predictable ways in which the books proceed and a lot of the readers approach it through a sense of comfort. They know what is to be expected, and many will say we are in it for the emotional satisfaction of reading these books.”
Ambikar also described how romance novels of the 1950s-1970s highlighted the limited aspirations that women were supposed to have.
“So, for example, one of the biggest tropes then was the nurse falling in love with the doctor who is older, more powerful, in a position of authority over the nurse ... and frankly what we would today call a disastrous relationship. [It] is saved only by the fact that they fall in love with each other,” she said.
Literary merit and stigma
Today, there is still a stigma associated with popular romance novels—that it lacks literary merit.
Ambikar explained, “I think it's best illustrated by the idea of how these romance novels are received. Literary critics, for example, have always dismissed this as ‘lady porn.' It's escapist fantastic fiction for bored housewives or frustrated teenagers.”
She also pointed out how readers feel the stigma as well. “Ninety-eight percent of the readers are women, are not necessarily walking around announcing that they are romance readers. And so there's a lot of notions of not shame, but that you're engaging in some sort of [mass market] product, that it's the fast food of literary fiction, for example. And so, a lot of people who actually consume these will talk about not necessarily saying that these are the kinds of books that they consume.”
Popular romance novels today
While the romance formula accounts for its popularity, romance novels have changed with the times. The “limited aspirations” that women were supposed to have expanded in the 1980s and 90s and now we are seeing more stories where what women want is considered at the heart of the novel.
And we are moving away from the notion that popular romance novels are what “bored, unfulfilled women” want to consume.
Ambikar noted, “When you talk to young readers, teenagers, young adults who are reading this, they're talking about it as something that extends their imagination about how relationships should be…for example, there's a study that comes out of India where young women reading these romance novels in English say that already reading in English is an act of pushing back against patriarchal expectations. Reading something for pleasure, not just for improving your own mind, is an act of resistance at that point. But within the genre, the content itself is now lending women to ask things like, ‘What do I want? Do I have agency? Is pleasure something I should think about? Is my desire important in a relationship?’”
Based on Ambikar’s research, we are learning that popular romance novels are helping women understand and articulate expectations for their own relationships by modeling successful ones.
“This is … women learning that their feelings are important and that the expectations they have of men, whether these are the fantasy men in the romance novels or these are from actual relationships, should not be considered fantastic. All they really are asking for is an equal partnership in a relationship,” she said.
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