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Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature
Janice Radway challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most profitable categories, captivates millions of female readers. Many feminists, literary critics and theorists of mass culture have claimed that romances reinforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of repressive ideologies purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing instead that critical attention 'must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading'.
Reading the Romance investigates that social event, from the complex structures of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's active engagement with the text. Using a provocative approach that combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychoanalysis, Radway asked forty-two readers to explore their reading motives, habits and rewards. She found that while the women in this group used their reading of romantic fiction both to protest against and to temporarily escape from the limited roles prescribed for them by patriarchal culture, the romances paradoxically make those roles seem desirable.
Reading the Romance investigates that social event, from the complex structures of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's active engagement with the text. Using a provocative approach that combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychoanalysis, Radway asked forty-two readers to explore their reading motives, habits and rewards. She found that while the women in this group used their reading of romantic fiction both to protest against and to temporarily escape from the limited roles prescribed for them by patriarchal culture, the romances paradoxically make those roles seem desirable.
278 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
August 23, 2020
4.5 ⭐️ Outdated for sure and limited in scope, but still a FASCINATING look at romance reading and an invaluable consideration, more broadly, of how to read popular fiction / mass-produced cultural objects. Also provides an opportunity to look at how far romance, as a genre, has come since 1984.
July 7, 2021
Ms Radway believes the romance novel (heterosexual; from the '70s and '80s) is not truly a novel; rather, she says, it is a myth. Like Joseph Campbell's hero monomyth (The Hero With a Thousand Faces), she attempts to track the path of the romance monomyth. She separates her analysis into two section: the act of reading the romance and the narrative structure of the romance.
One major theme Radway presents centers around the idea that a reader not only enjoys her escapism, but she receives important emotional nurturance that is lacking in her reality. Also, she improves her understanding of herself and her world. Another major theme is a feminist one: the romance novel-myth is a paradox. At the same time women are reassuring themselves of the validity of their social role (wife, mother, homemaker: the typical end of an "ideal" romance during the era that she wrote her book) in patriarchal society, they are also expressing passive-aggressive discontent.
Her field work is limited to a small group of homogeneous women, so her theorizing is seriously hindered. That said, she doesn't attempt to portray her study group as all encompassing either, so I could respect her study.
I came away from this book excited, full of questions. The basic narrative structure of the romance--regardless if it is M/M, F/F, or M/F--has not changed, but many of the significant details have. (In her essay "Better Than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and the Subgenre of Male/Male Romantic Fiction," Dru Pagliassotti writes about Radway's break down of the romance's narrative elements, showing how they still apply today to the two literature forms of BL manga and M/M fiction [Boys' Love, pg 63].)
How have the readers of romance changed? What motives them now? What are their desires? Their pleasures? How have the structures of the romance narrative re-defined themselves? Why did M/M novels burst onto the scene in the late '90s? What needs do they fulfill? Are romance novels still predominately following Radway's monomyth theory? Or...?
Although I disagreed with many of Radway's assertions, she consistently maintains a balanced personal perspective toward her work; she never minimizes the importance of acknowledging the individuality of each reader.
One major theme Radway presents centers around the idea that a reader not only enjoys her escapism, but she receives important emotional nurturance that is lacking in her reality. Also, she improves her understanding of herself and her world. Another major theme is a feminist one: the romance novel-myth is a paradox. At the same time women are reassuring themselves of the validity of their social role (wife, mother, homemaker: the typical end of an "ideal" romance during the era that she wrote her book) in patriarchal society, they are also expressing passive-aggressive discontent.
Her field work is limited to a small group of homogeneous women, so her theorizing is seriously hindered. That said, she doesn't attempt to portray her study group as all encompassing either, so I could respect her study.
I came away from this book excited, full of questions. The basic narrative structure of the romance--regardless if it is M/M, F/F, or M/F--has not changed, but many of the significant details have. (In her essay "Better Than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and the Subgenre of Male/Male Romantic Fiction," Dru Pagliassotti writes about Radway's break down of the romance's narrative elements, showing how they still apply today to the two literature forms of BL manga and M/M fiction [Boys' Love, pg 63].)
How have the readers of romance changed? What motives them now? What are their desires? Their pleasures? How have the structures of the romance narrative re-defined themselves? Why did M/M novels burst onto the scene in the late '90s? What needs do they fulfill? Are romance novels still predominately following Radway's monomyth theory? Or...?
Although I disagreed with many of Radway's assertions, she consistently maintains a balanced personal perspective toward her work; she never minimizes the importance of acknowledging the individuality of each reader.
January 7, 2022
Yes, this book is thoroughly academic and a little out of date, as one might expect from a book published in 1984. But when I reached "CHAPTER 2: The Readers and Their Romances", things started to go more smoothly.
Mass-market romance novels took off in the '70s so, by this time, a firm fan base was established among Midwestern housewives. On the surface, I have little in common with the test group, but it was interesting to see where our interests intersect.
Content:
INTRODUCTION
Writing Reading the Romance
CHAPTER 1
The Institutional Matrix: Publishing Romantic Fiction
CHAPTER 2
The Readers and Their Romances
CHAPTER 3
The Act of Reading the Romance: Escape and Instruction
CHAPTER 4
The Ideal Romance: The Promise of Patriarchy
CHAPTER 5
The Failed Romance: Too Close to the Problems of Patriarchy
CHAPTER 6
Language and Narrative Discourse: The Ideology of Female Identity
Conclusion
Mass-market romance novels took off in the '70s so, by this time, a firm fan base was established among Midwestern housewives. On the surface, I have little in common with the test group, but it was interesting to see where our interests intersect.
Content:
INTRODUCTION
Writing Reading the Romance
CHAPTER 1
The Institutional Matrix: Publishing Romantic Fiction
CHAPTER 2
The Readers and Their Romances
CHAPTER 3
The Act of Reading the Romance: Escape and Instruction
CHAPTER 4
The Ideal Romance: The Promise of Patriarchy
CHAPTER 5
The Failed Romance: Too Close to the Problems of Patriarchy
CHAPTER 6
Language and Narrative Discourse: The Ideology of Female Identity
Conclusion
December 7, 2007
It's possible this is so dated by now as to be nearly irrelevant, but it's still very, very dear to my heart, by which I mean this vulnerable, untamable organ thumping passionately beneath my soft, pale, untouched, perfectly rounded breast.
This book made the point awhile ago that the pantsuit-wearing masses don't just passively consume popular culture, but actually do create their own meanings in ways that aren't always immediately obvious to the fancy-pantser degree holders who think they know everything. Yeah, screw you, Adorno and Horkheimer! Okay, this book isn't at all perfect, but it made an impression on me early on, and I'm very fond of it.
This book made the point awhile ago that the pantsuit-wearing masses don't just passively consume popular culture, but actually do create their own meanings in ways that aren't always immediately obvious to the fancy-pantser degree holders who think they know everything. Yeah, screw you, Adorno and Horkheimer! Okay, this book isn't at all perfect, but it made an impression on me early on, and I'm very fond of it.
January 26, 2025
Radway wants to know what's with women and their trashy romance books. So she corners a collection of Smithton women and asks them a lot of questions about the books they read, and then attempts to interpret this data into meaningful theories about lady-books—namely, that women escape into "good romances" in order to get the nurturing they don't get from their families.
The major flaw in all this, of course, is that the ~40 Smithton women who participated in the survey are hardly a representative sample and were already unintentionally skewed to a certain "type" of reader due to their engagement and reliance on Dot, the bookseller, who connected Radway to these women. Radway does recognize this limitation, but forges on regardless. So while the results may capture the reasoning and justification and preferences for the Smithton romance reader, I would be hard-pressed to agree that that Miami readers or Portland readers or Chicago readers would necessarily tick the same boxes. This makes the overall experience a little difficult to sink into.
Here's a quote directly from her 1996 edition of the book that captures some of the major issues with the thing:
Other than the introduction, the rest of the book is left as-is and it's... ripe. Radway's tone trends towards pretty dismissive, overall, which colors the entire book in a really sour way. ("The women provided additional proof of their reliance on romance reading as a kind of tranquilizer or restorative agent in their responses to questions about preferred reading times and the habit of rereading favorite romances." / "[This authorial duo] are much more conscious of literary history and generic conventions than most typical authors of romance." / "The contemporary romance's prose is dominated by cliche, simple vocabulary, standard syntax, and the most common techniques associated with the nineteenth-century realist novel.")
And, of course, I have to acknowledge that this book and its original data pool is almost 40 years old: women, romances, and the world have all changed pretty dramatically in the intervening years. For example, I suspect that what Radway documents as elements of an "ideal romance" are extremely representative of the types of books available at the time of publication (and/or the types of books read by the limited society Radway engages with). Some of the traits of "bad romances" (realism vs. idealism; secondary romances for the heroine/hero; sexual and cultural self-discovery, etc.) are things that other romance readers absolutely like or enjoy or prefer—but Radway presumes the Smithton readers and Dot to be The Voice of Romance.
[trigger warning: assault, rape]
It was interesting comparing her "ideal romance" beats to the beats romance readers will be familiar with after spending any time in the genre: "The narrative structure of the ideal romance is summarized below: [spoilers if you don't want the "formula" spoiled]
I was also pretty put off by some of the psychoanalyzing Radway applies to the women she worked with: instead of being insightful, it reads as condescending, generalizing, and overly simplistic. It assumes that the Smithton readers are in some way "simple and solvable" instead of individuals with unique stories of their own. It presumes that reading romance is truly a symptom of something, that if women could locate an alternative source of nurturing or escape then they wouldn't "need" romance novels. ("Clearly, [the heroine] wants to be petted and fussed over as intensely and repetitively as a child might be by its mother. [...] The very particular manner in which the crucial love scene is described in the ideal romance suggests that the heroine's often expressed desire to be the hero's formally recognized wife in fact camouflages an equally insistent wish to be his child." UMM, NO???)
(Is this perhaps colored by my own self-reflection on why I read romance? Don't ask me: I'm here to talk about lady boners.)
Here's an example of the psychoanalyzing that made me snort out loud because NOPE.
The major flaw in all this, of course, is that the ~40 Smithton women who participated in the survey are hardly a representative sample and were already unintentionally skewed to a certain "type" of reader due to their engagement and reliance on Dot, the bookseller, who connected Radway to these women. Radway does recognize this limitation, but forges on regardless. So while the results may capture the reasoning and justification and preferences for the Smithton romance reader, I would be hard-pressed to agree that that Miami readers or Portland readers or Chicago readers would necessarily tick the same boxes. This makes the overall experience a little difficult to sink into.
Here's a quote directly from her 1996 edition of the book that captures some of the major issues with the thing:
Though less than ten years have passed since the book's first, polemical introduction was completed, so much has changed on the academic scene and in the intellectual environment more generally that that introduction now seems dated, if not entirely beside the point. Indeed, in reading Reading the Romance for the first time since the manuscript was completed, I have been struck by how much the book's argument is a product of a very particular historical moment.Which pretty much....yep. Still true.
Other than the introduction, the rest of the book is left as-is and it's... ripe. Radway's tone trends towards pretty dismissive, overall, which colors the entire book in a really sour way. ("The women provided additional proof of their reliance on romance reading as a kind of tranquilizer or restorative agent in their responses to questions about preferred reading times and the habit of rereading favorite romances." / "[This authorial duo] are much more conscious of literary history and generic conventions than most typical authors of romance." / "The contemporary romance's prose is dominated by cliche, simple vocabulary, standard syntax, and the most common techniques associated with the nineteenth-century realist novel.")
And, of course, I have to acknowledge that this book and its original data pool is almost 40 years old: women, romances, and the world have all changed pretty dramatically in the intervening years. For example, I suspect that what Radway documents as elements of an "ideal romance" are extremely representative of the types of books available at the time of publication (and/or the types of books read by the limited society Radway engages with). Some of the traits of "bad romances" (realism vs. idealism; secondary romances for the heroine/hero; sexual and cultural self-discovery, etc.) are things that other romance readers absolutely like or enjoy or prefer—but Radway presumes the Smithton readers and Dot to be The Voice of Romance.
[trigger warning: assault, rape]
It was interesting comparing her "ideal romance" beats to the beats romance readers will be familiar with after spending any time in the genre: "The narrative structure of the ideal romance is summarized below: [spoilers if you don't want the "formula" spoiled]
I was also pretty put off by some of the psychoanalyzing Radway applies to the women she worked with: instead of being insightful, it reads as condescending, generalizing, and overly simplistic. It assumes that the Smithton readers are in some way "simple and solvable" instead of individuals with unique stories of their own. It presumes that reading romance is truly a symptom of something, that if women could locate an alternative source of nurturing or escape then they wouldn't "need" romance novels. ("Clearly, [the heroine] wants to be petted and fussed over as intensely and repetitively as a child might be by its mother. [...] The very particular manner in which the crucial love scene is described in the ideal romance suggests that the heroine's often expressed desire to be the hero's formally recognized wife in fact camouflages an equally insistent wish to be his child." UMM, NO???)
(Is this perhaps colored by my own self-reflection on why I read romance? Don't ask me: I'm here to talk about lady boners.)
Here's an example of the psychoanalyzing that made me snort out loud because NOPE.
More specifically, when she finds out that her mother prefers people like her father who have penises, she desires one for herself in order to secure her mother's love. Penis envy, identification with the father, and admiration of the male, therefore, are simultaneous expressions of a wish to assert her independence and of her love for and desire to win back the mother she has begun to relinquish.This review is dedicated to everyone out there who desired a dick of their own in order to secure a parent's love. ♥
Currently reading
August 31, 2021***Review to Come***
Just jotting down notes here, as it's easier to do than in my updates.
8.31.21 I recognize the book the woman on the cover is reading. It's Glory Days
, a story about two married runners who are having marital difficulties because the heroine is more successful than the hero. Then a coach comes in creating even more trouble in their marriage. Hardly romance women would read for escapism. Bad choice on the publisher's part to feature that romance.
As I skimmed through the book I saw numerous references to feminist sociologist Nancy Chodorow. Oh boy, I haven't heard that name since my Sex and Gender class at NYU back in '96. Well, the title of this book told me it outright this would be a dry academic's analysis of the genre, not a critique written by readers of romance. I think I'll finish
first then move on to this.
Just jotting down notes here, as it's easier to do than in my updates.
8.31.21 I recognize the book the woman on the cover is reading. It's Glory Days
, a story about two married runners who are having marital difficulties because the heroine is more successful than the hero. Then a coach comes in creating even more trouble in their marriage. Hardly romance women would read for escapism. Bad choice on the publisher's part to feature that romance.As I skimmed through the book I saw numerous references to feminist sociologist Nancy Chodorow. Oh boy, I haven't heard that name since my Sex and Gender class at NYU back in '96. Well, the title of this book told me it outright this would be a dry academic's analysis of the genre, not a critique written by readers of romance. I think I'll finish
first then move on to this.
October 21, 2011
This book is an ethnography of romance readers in the earlier 80s. The author doesn't come out and say so, exactly, but my impression is that these are women who were reading, like, crack-addict levels of books.
It's great. The author gets into why they were reading, what they liked and didn't like, what the romances were potentially giving them in terms of enabling them to interpret and negotiate their own marriages and kids, etc.
I love it so much. I don't even know why. I love that it takes the romance novel seriously. I love that the author seems totally engaged with the whole thing and never comes across as condescending in her approach to the readers.
As a lay reader I can't be certain, but my sense is that the literary and feminist theories the author was trying to apply, are at this point sometimes outdated. It's charming, you can see how the author's own interpretations of things come out of the time period, as much as the romances themselves did.
It's great. The author gets into why they were reading, what they liked and didn't like, what the romances were potentially giving them in terms of enabling them to interpret and negotiate their own marriages and kids, etc.
I love it so much. I don't even know why. I love that it takes the romance novel seriously. I love that the author seems totally engaged with the whole thing and never comes across as condescending in her approach to the readers.
As a lay reader I can't be certain, but my sense is that the literary and feminist theories the author was trying to apply, are at this point sometimes outdated. It's charming, you can see how the author's own interpretations of things come out of the time period, as much as the romances themselves did.
June 9, 2021
"We read...so we don't cry."
"I think men do feel threatened. They want their wife to be in the room with them. And I think my body is in the room but the rest of me is not (when I am reading)…for some reason, a lot of men feel threatened by this, very, very much threatened.”
"I know many women...who need to read as an escape as I have over the years and I believe this is good therapy and much cheaper than tranquilizers.”
I've been reading some old school historicals lately, and I found myself starting to slightly judge the audiences of these books: how could they swoon over these heroes that are so repellent to me? Well, consider me chastened. This book was illuminating about the attitudes and reading habits of small-town, Midwestern women in the early 1980s, and it provided a really useful perspective on who these early readers were, what they were reading romance for, and what they liked and disliked in their novels. While I found the psychoanalysis of the later chapters (a hallmark of 1980s literary criticism) a bit unconvincing and outdated, the ethnographic research and especially the anecdotal interviews are the real gems of the study. It turned an abstract blob of "readers" into real women for me.
The study reveals that for many of these women reading romance is a radical act of self-care, the only time in their day that is just for them and their pleasure, a time in which they could "declare themselves temporarily off-limits to those who would mine them for emotional support and material care." These readers were particularly attracted to the controlling ministrations of the 80s hero largely because it fulfilled a fantasy in which someone was caring for the heroine, organizing her life so that she didn't have to. The study really works dispel the still-prevalent critique that romance readers glamorize and romanticize patriarchy, and, thus, that they enjoy and find erotic scenes with rape or violence against women. Here, using actual testimony from these women, Radway pushes back against this, instead showing that these readers in Smithton were just as upset and angry about rape scenes as modern readers are; however, to them, these rape scenes do important work and model ways to navigate the kind of violence women faced in their daily lives and relationships. Radway concludes: "the romance's preoccupation with male brutality is an attempt to understand the meaning of an event that has become almost unavoidable in the real world. The romance may express misogynistic attitudes not because women share them but because they increasingly need to know how to deal with them."
"I think men do feel threatened. They want their wife to be in the room with them. And I think my body is in the room but the rest of me is not (when I am reading)…for some reason, a lot of men feel threatened by this, very, very much threatened.”
"I know many women...who need to read as an escape as I have over the years and I believe this is good therapy and much cheaper than tranquilizers.”
I've been reading some old school historicals lately, and I found myself starting to slightly judge the audiences of these books: how could they swoon over these heroes that are so repellent to me? Well, consider me chastened. This book was illuminating about the attitudes and reading habits of small-town, Midwestern women in the early 1980s, and it provided a really useful perspective on who these early readers were, what they were reading romance for, and what they liked and disliked in their novels. While I found the psychoanalysis of the later chapters (a hallmark of 1980s literary criticism) a bit unconvincing and outdated, the ethnographic research and especially the anecdotal interviews are the real gems of the study. It turned an abstract blob of "readers" into real women for me.
The study reveals that for many of these women reading romance is a radical act of self-care, the only time in their day that is just for them and their pleasure, a time in which they could "declare themselves temporarily off-limits to those who would mine them for emotional support and material care." These readers were particularly attracted to the controlling ministrations of the 80s hero largely because it fulfilled a fantasy in which someone was caring for the heroine, organizing her life so that she didn't have to. The study really works dispel the still-prevalent critique that romance readers glamorize and romanticize patriarchy, and, thus, that they enjoy and find erotic scenes with rape or violence against women. Here, using actual testimony from these women, Radway pushes back against this, instead showing that these readers in Smithton were just as upset and angry about rape scenes as modern readers are; however, to them, these rape scenes do important work and model ways to navigate the kind of violence women faced in their daily lives and relationships. Radway concludes: "the romance's preoccupation with male brutality is an attempt to understand the meaning of an event that has become almost unavoidable in the real world. The romance may express misogynistic attitudes not because women share them but because they increasingly need to know how to deal with them."
October 6, 2012
Let's just begin with the often mentioned phrase that this book is outdated. It certainly is. Or at least I definitely hope so. What I found striking is that I didn't find it very critical. The conclusion seemed to be the most critical part of the book. I would have preferred more criticism throughout the individual chapters. Also, I kept waiting for a more general approach to the whole topic. The inclusion of the Smithon women was alright, but not enough in my opinion. What is a romance? I stil ldon't know. I wasn't expecting a clear-cut definition, no, but more than I was given. In the part where the narrative was examined I was almost appaled at the lack of criticism; women reading (and enjoying!) men treating them badly, but then finding out the man only did it because he didn't know how to show his love? Maybe it's my contemporary view of things, but that almost made me sick. to be honest, I am not quite sure if I have ever read a true "romance". I am fairly certain to have read romantiv novels, but romances? Not sure. All in all the book was rather imformative and I will read one of the mentioned romances just to hopefully what the whole fuss is about. I am quite curious as to how studies nowadays differ from this one. Has anything changed, and if so, what? Are romances nowadays still as fomulaic as they were in the laste 70s and early 80s? Do they still subtly preach the same gender stereotypes and patriarchal power? It's a really interesting topic, I think.
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January 18, 2025Commento sull'edizione italiana di Audino editore perché è stata una lettura imbarazzante su più fronti: https://eresietiche.substack.com/p/tr...
December 21, 2024
Now that I've re-read large chunks of it and done a ton of secondary reading I have to say, this is the most condescending piece of scholarship I've ever read in my life.
October 27, 2010
Read only part of this for a course. An ethnography of women in a fly-over state who read romance fiction. Looks at why they do it, why romances, how they use reading as a way to cope with patriarchal relationships and expectations. Some of the conclusions are iffy, but a milestone text for ASKING people why they do what they do, rather than ASSUMING you can figure it out because you're such a smarty-pants intellectual.
April 19, 2021
阅读过程很愉快。本书提出了一个好问题，女性为什么爱看浪漫小说？作者进行了田野调查，发现很多外在因素引导或促使女性爱上浪漫小说，比如科技的进步以及现实生活的不如意。浪漫小说中有许多巩固现有体制的元素，比如女主角不常主动提出性需求，她们的人设中不女性化的部分是加分项；但也有抚慰读者的元素，比如女主角一定是独立自主的，她最终选择走入婚姻并不是因为世俗原因而是自己选择的。浪漫小说成为了家庭主妇的桃花源，可以暂时让自己不受打扰并跳出现实。不过这本书并没有在浪漫小说与女权/父权制的关联这一主题上并没有聊得很深入，很多推论也有些牵强。
August 26, 2018
This paper was for a class and a little more academic than most of my reviews, but it's still a book review, so it's getting included here.
Janice Radway received her BA (with highest honors) in and 1971 and her Ph.D. in English and American Studies in 1977 from Michigan State University, and her M.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. When Reading the Romance was published in 1984, she was an associate professor in the American Civilization Department at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Pennsylvania she was editor of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association. She is currently the Frances Fox Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of Literature at Duke University. Her second book entitled A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste and Middle Class Desire, was published in 1997 and continues her interest in popular reading habits.
Reading the Romance is Radway’s report of her study of a group of approximately 50 romance novel reading women in a suburban Midwestern community she calls Smithton. The first three chapters of the book outline the romance publishing culture, the community and social situation of the women Radway interviews, as well as an explanation of her interview procedures. The final three chapters explore the results of Radway’s surveys and interviews. She shares the Smithon women’s favorite and least favorite romances and draws conclusions about what these preferences and the act of romance reading mean.
Radway’s argument is interesting, especially for the time that it was published, because it places as much significance on the interpretation of the act of romance reading as it does on the content of romance novel. Many of the Smithton women faced at least mild disapproval of their romance reading habit and Radway explains that this disapproval is proof of the slightly rebellious nature of romance reading. Her analysis of the text further explains that the women are rebelling, albeit subtly, from their role as the primary nurturer in patriarchal society by taking time for themselves to read about heroines who fall in love with masculine, yet kind and caring, heroes.
Her argument is interesting to read because she cites several sources that both support and disagree with her. While the works of Nancy Chodorow and several other researchers support her claims of the nutritive effective romance reading has for the Smithton women, she also makes sure to point out the flaws in the arguments of those such as Ann Douglas, whose works claim that romance novels are simply female pornography that shows the desire of some women to be mistreated by men (p. 77).
While her take on the importance of romance reading was new at the time, Radway finds more than sufficient evidence to support her claims by piecing together research on general reading habits, the role of popular entertainment in culture, studies of housewives, as well as the significant assistance of “Chodorow’s feminist reinterpretation of Freud” (p. 13).
With the assistance of Dot, the bookstore clerk who helped the Smithton women find appealing romance titles, Radway was able to distribute a pilot questionnaire to approximately 50 of Dot’s customers, as well as conduct two initial focus groups with 16 of Dot’s most loyal customers, and individual interviews with Dot and five of her most enthusiastic and articulate customers. After analyzing this data, she sent a revised questionnaire for Dot to distribute to roughly the same number of regular customers as the pilot. Radway returned to Smithton to spend time observing Dot’s interactions with her customers and to conduct more personal interviews to test the validity of the conclusions she had begun to draw. Dividing her data collection into two distinct periods allowed Radway the flexibility to adjust to problems in the pilot questionnaire, as well as returning to her sources after beginning to draw conclusions from their original input gave her a chance to test the validity of her possible argument before publishing (pp. 47-8).
After examining her data, Radway concludes that the reason the Smithton women hunger for the opportunity to temporarily leave their lives for the nurturing experience of reading romances is because these women subconsciously desire a return to their initially nurturing relationship with their mother. While this claim initially appears far-fetched at best, Radway managed to find sufficient evidence (mostly from Chodorow) to explain how women’s desire for a nurturing relationship with a male hero actually has to do with an adolescent girl’s wish to disassociate from her mother, requiring her to find emotional fulfillment in a member of the opposite sex. The popularity of Green Lady by Leigh Ellis, a romance in which the heterosexual romance is significantly overshadowed by the attempt for a reunion of the mother and daughter, seems further evidence that Radway’s claim is at least plausible. The safer argument still appears to be the more general assertion that the Smithton women read romance novels to achieve emotional fulfillment not possible in their daily routine.
The study of reading habits is always of interest to Library and Information Science as understanding our patrons’ reading habits ensures that we will supply them with books they will read. Radway’s choice to research the reading habits of those reading popular literature at time when such research wasn’t popular, also reminds librarians of the importance of understanding that our patrons should play a central role in defining our collections, even if we think they really should be reading something else.
While some of the arguments made in Reading the Romance may be dated by their Second Wave Feminism and preoccupation with psychoanalysis, the trailblazing role it played in the study of popular reading habits, as well reevaluating reasons for female romance reading make it an important book in its field. Radway’s account of her study of the Smithton women is also very readable, partly because her explanation of the appeal of romance reading forces a reexamination of the patriarchal structure of our society, something of interest to a much wider audience than just literary scholars. This book is a fascinating look at the way a patriarchal society affects some of its most undervalued members.
Janice Radway received her BA (with highest honors) in and 1971 and her Ph.D. in English and American Studies in 1977 from Michigan State University, and her M.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. When Reading the Romance was published in 1984, she was an associate professor in the American Civilization Department at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Pennsylvania she was editor of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association. She is currently the Frances Fox Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of Literature at Duke University. Her second book entitled A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste and Middle Class Desire, was published in 1997 and continues her interest in popular reading habits.
Reading the Romance is Radway’s report of her study of a group of approximately 50 romance novel reading women in a suburban Midwestern community she calls Smithton. The first three chapters of the book outline the romance publishing culture, the community and social situation of the women Radway interviews, as well as an explanation of her interview procedures. The final three chapters explore the results of Radway’s surveys and interviews. She shares the Smithon women’s favorite and least favorite romances and draws conclusions about what these preferences and the act of romance reading mean.
Radway’s argument is interesting, especially for the time that it was published, because it places as much significance on the interpretation of the act of romance reading as it does on the content of romance novel. Many of the Smithton women faced at least mild disapproval of their romance reading habit and Radway explains that this disapproval is proof of the slightly rebellious nature of romance reading. Her analysis of the text further explains that the women are rebelling, albeit subtly, from their role as the primary nurturer in patriarchal society by taking time for themselves to read about heroines who fall in love with masculine, yet kind and caring, heroes.
Her argument is interesting to read because she cites several sources that both support and disagree with her. While the works of Nancy Chodorow and several other researchers support her claims of the nutritive effective romance reading has for the Smithton women, she also makes sure to point out the flaws in the arguments of those such as Ann Douglas, whose works claim that romance novels are simply female pornography that shows the desire of some women to be mistreated by men (p. 77).
While her take on the importance of romance reading was new at the time, Radway finds more than sufficient evidence to support her claims by piecing together research on general reading habits, the role of popular entertainment in culture, studies of housewives, as well as the significant assistance of “Chodorow’s feminist reinterpretation of Freud” (p. 13).
With the assistance of Dot, the bookstore clerk who helped the Smithton women find appealing romance titles, Radway was able to distribute a pilot questionnaire to approximately 50 of Dot’s customers, as well as conduct two initial focus groups with 16 of Dot’s most loyal customers, and individual interviews with Dot and five of her most enthusiastic and articulate customers. After analyzing this data, she sent a revised questionnaire for Dot to distribute to roughly the same number of regular customers as the pilot. Radway returned to Smithton to spend time observing Dot’s interactions with her customers and to conduct more personal interviews to test the validity of the conclusions she had begun to draw. Dividing her data collection into two distinct periods allowed Radway the flexibility to adjust to problems in the pilot questionnaire, as well as returning to her sources after beginning to draw conclusions from their original input gave her a chance to test the validity of her possible argument before publishing (pp. 47-8).
After examining her data, Radway concludes that the reason the Smithton women hunger for the opportunity to temporarily leave their lives for the nurturing experience of reading romances is because these women subconsciously desire a return to their initially nurturing relationship with their mother. While this claim initially appears far-fetched at best, Radway managed to find sufficient evidence (mostly from Chodorow) to explain how women’s desire for a nurturing relationship with a male hero actually has to do with an adolescent girl’s wish to disassociate from her mother, requiring her to find emotional fulfillment in a member of the opposite sex. The popularity of Green Lady by Leigh Ellis, a romance in which the heterosexual romance is significantly overshadowed by the attempt for a reunion of the mother and daughter, seems further evidence that Radway’s claim is at least plausible. The safer argument still appears to be the more general assertion that the Smithton women read romance novels to achieve emotional fulfillment not possible in their daily routine.
The study of reading habits is always of interest to Library and Information Science as understanding our patrons’ reading habits ensures that we will supply them with books they will read. Radway’s choice to research the reading habits of those reading popular literature at time when such research wasn’t popular, also reminds librarians of the importance of understanding that our patrons should play a central role in defining our collections, even if we think they really should be reading something else.
While some of the arguments made in Reading the Romance may be dated by their Second Wave Feminism and preoccupation with psychoanalysis, the trailblazing role it played in the study of popular reading habits, as well reevaluating reasons for female romance reading make it an important book in its field. Radway’s account of her study of the Smithton women is also very readable, partly because her explanation of the appeal of romance reading forces a reexamination of the patriarchal structure of our society, something of interest to a much wider audience than just literary scholars. This book is a fascinating look at the way a patriarchal society affects some of its most undervalued members.
October 4, 2024
I learned so much from this book! It is outdated in several aspects, but there are also plenty of trends that emerged from Radway's study that are still relevant when thinking about readers today.
August 7, 2021
3.5 stars
I've been trying to encapsulate my thoughts about this book... but I can't. It covers so much, and so much that's new to me, that I'm sure I'll be referring to it as I continue reading literary criticism of romance.
I've been trying to encapsulate my thoughts about this book... but I can't. It covers so much, and so much that's new to me, that I'm sure I'll be referring to it as I continue reading literary criticism of romance.
March 26, 2025
I had to read this for class and while it was very dense, it was an interesting snapshot of its time and the appeal of the romance genre.
June 17, 2010
A very interesting look at a genre I'm not too familiar with. The book is mostly recounting the opinions of a group of well-read romance fans. Not to discount Radway, but in a way I wish she had written a different book. I would have loved a more in-depth discussion, using multiple feminist perspectives to frame and give a greater context to the responses of the sample audience. Especially I wish Radway had spent more analysis on the issue of rape in romance novels, especially when the 'hero' is the perpetrator. (To which I say, what the fuck? Why? What? How?) Yet, at the same time I understand that she wanted to let the readers speak for themselves rather than pontificate about what it is they 'really' meant. Still, I can't help but be disappointed that it wasn't until the conclusion that the issue of the hero violating the heroine, yet still remaining the hero (again, what the fuck) that this was seriously questioned, all too briefly for me. Perhaps Reading the Romance is simply a great springboard for discussion of male aggression, violence against women, beauty, gender roles, heteronormativy, and marriage. I know it's got me thinking. Also, it has me wondering how romance novels have, if at all, changed greatly since RtR was published.
February 23, 2022
This is my all-time fav feminist media studies book. Radway unpacks the term "escape" beautifully. She argues how reading romance is a harmless activity that women do to fend themselves off from their domestic duties. It provides a grounded account of how this reading practice facilitates the Smithton women to create their own spaces to learn things or travel in their chairs. Women can identify with the heroines in the fairy tale narrative structure to explore the social consequences of romance, which otherwise would not be possible in the patriarchal reality. That said, the escape gave her a safe space for these middle-class American women to be conformed to the heterosexual marriage.
June 22, 2015
An interesting book, really worth reading, even though the study is done on a relatively small number of women, and despite the fact that you can feel the way Janice Radway looks down on her subjects.
Otherwise, it contains a number of really neat things, such as the ordinary structure of the romance, the effect of romance novels on women's lives, considerations on escapism... Quite interesting, quite fun.
Otherwise, it contains a number of really neat things, such as the ordinary structure of the romance, the effect of romance novels on women's lives, considerations on escapism... Quite interesting, quite fun.
May 14, 2023
04/2014
The first chapter was about the history of genre books and publishing in general, and I found it utterly fascinating. After that, not really, and I skimmed quite a bit.
The first chapter was about the history of genre books and publishing in general, and I found it utterly fascinating. After that, not really, and I skimmed quite a bit.
September 16, 2017
Radway wrings an impressive amount of ideas out of a modest ethnographic study. Despite this book's age, most of the ideas in this book continue to be illuminating and relevant.
Annotations
Indeed, it was the women readers’ construction of the act of romance reading as a “declaration of independence” that surprised me into the realization that the meaning of their media use was multiply determined and internally contradictory and that to get at its complexity, it would be helpful to distinguish analytically between the significance of the event of reading and the meaning of the text constructed as its consequence.
(pg. 7)
This genre framework would focus attention on interdiscursive formations, that is, on questions about the kinds of cultural competencies that are learned as a consequence of certain social formations and how those are activated and perpetuated within and through multiple related genres or discourses. Thus, just as one might want to ask what sorts of social grammars prepare adolescent boys to understand and take interest in slasher films… so one might also want to ask what competencies prepare certain women to recognize romances as relevant to their experience and as potential routes to pleasure. (pg. 10)
“Escape”: leaving conditions behind and its intentional projection of a utopian future
Romance reading as a form of individual resistance to a situation predicated on the assumption that it is women alone who are responsible for the care and emotional nurturance of others.
The hero’s ministrations were nearly always linked metaphorically with maternal concern and nurturance.
(pg. 12-13)
Success, in effect, became a function of accurate prediction. That prediction was ultimately dependent on the capacity to control the interaction between an identifiable audience and a product designed especially for it. (pg. 29)
As one reader explained, “Sometimes even a bad book is better than nothing.” The act of purchase, then, does not always signify approval of the product selected; with a mass-production system it can just as easily testify to the existence of an ongoing, still only partially met, need.
(pg. 50)
At first glance, Dot’s incipient feminism seems deeply at odds with her interest in a literary form whose ultimate message, one astute observer has noted, is that “pleasure for women is men.” … [but] many of the writers and readers of romances interpret these stories as chronicles of female triumph. (pg. 54)
To qualify as a romance, the story must chronicle not merely the events of a courtship but what it feels like to be the object of one. (pg. 64)
Clifford Geertz maintains that all art forms, like the Balinese cockfight, render “ordinary everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their practical consequences removed and been reduced… to a level of sheer appearance, where the meaning can be more powerfully articulated and more exactly perceived. (pg. 72)
The sad ending logically ranks high on their list of objections because its presence would negate the romance’s difference and distance from day-to-day existence, dominated as it so often is by small failures, minor catastrophes, and ongoing disappointments. In addition, without its happy ending, the romance could not hold out the utopian promise that male-female relations can be managed successfully. (pg. 73)
… an “intelligent” man would be more likely to appreciate and encourage the extraordinary bilities of the ideal heroine…” (pg. 82)
The focus never shifts for these readers away from the woman at the center of the romance. Moreover, men are rarely valued for their intrinsic characteristics but become remarkable by virtue of the special position they occupy vis-a-vis the heroine. The romantic fantasy is therefore not a fantasy about discovering a uniquely interesting life partner, but a ritual wish to be cared for, loved, and validated in a particular way.
… What the Smithton women are looking for in their search for the perfect romantic fantasy is a man who is capable of the same attentive observation and intuitive “understanding” that they believe women regularly accord to men. (pg. 83)
These women are telling themselves a story whose central vision is one of total surrender where all danger has been expunged, thus permitting the heroine to relinquish self-control. Passivity is at the heart of the romantic experience in the sense that the final goal of each narrative is the creation of that perfect union where the ideal male, who is masculine and strong yet nurturant too, finally recognizes the intrinsic worth of the heroine. Thereafter, she is required to do nothing more than exist as the center of this paragon’s attention. Romantic escape is, therefore, a temporary but literal denial of the demands women recognize as an integral part of their roles as nurturing wives and mothers. It is also a figurative journey to a utopian state of total receptiveness where the reader, as a result of their identification with the heroine, feels herself the object of someone else’s attention and solicitude. (pg. 97)
In discussing the therapeutic function of true fairy stories and folk tales, Bruno Bettelheim has argued that they perform the fundamental service for children of creating and maintaining hope… Not only do they indicate specific psychological solutions to problems… but they also hold out the promise of future solution for the child who cannot see the way to negotiate the necessary journey at the present moment. (pg. 100)
Because the implicit content of the cultural message linking female identity with sexual attractiveness stipulates that a woman's value is produced only when she is recognized by a man, women who accept this image of themselves must seek validation as sexually desirable partners. (pg. 106)
When the reader can demonstrate to her husband or to an interviewer that an exchange has taken place, that she has acquired something in the process of reading, then her activity is defined retroactively as goal-directed work, as labor with a purpose, which is itself desirable in cultural terms. (pg. 107)
In summary, romance can be termed compensatory fiction because the act of reading them fulfills certain basic psychological needs for women that have been induced by the culture and its social structures but that often remain unmet in day-to-day existence as the result of concomitant restrictions on female activity.
vicarious emotional nurturance
Attention of powerful and important person provides her with the sensations evoked by emotional nurturance and physical satisfaction
Reinforces sense of self / value because hero sees the heroine as worthy of concern
(pg. 112-113)
It’s concealed message, however, is the more significant one, for it legitimates through assertion the notion that commodity consumption is an adequate and effective way to negate the “pain” produced by disappointments, imperfections, and small failures that are an inevitable part of human life… Happiness is not an emotional condition one creates for oneself through action; in advertising, it is a thing that one can buy. (pg. 117)
… [T]he good feeling this woman derives from reading romantic fiction are not experienced in the course of her habitual existence in the world of actual social relations, but in the separate, free realm of the imaginary. The happiness she permits herself is not only secondhand experience, but temporary as well. By resting satisfied with this form of vicarious pleasure, the romance reader may do nothing to transform her actual situation which itself gave rise to the need to seek out such pleasure in the first place. (pg. 117-118)
… preoccupation with the gradual removal of emotional barriers between two people who recognize their connection early in the story.... (pg.123)
Because their family histories have created in them what Nancy Chodorow has identified as a “complex, relational self,” romance readers need to avoid such feelings of emptiness by integrating important intimates into their psychic structures who will reciprocate their interest. This profound need, which Chodorow maintains is rarely filled adequately by men because they have developed asymmetrically into individuals who do not define themselves in relation, is confirmed obligingly and addressed vicariously, then, by this story that relates another woman’s successful journey from isolation and its threat of annihilation to connection and the promise of a mature, fulfilled female identity. (pg. 138)
… the wish to regain the love of the mother and all that it implies- erotic pleasure, symbiotic completion, and identity confirmation. (pg. 146)
The reader is not shown how to find a nurturant man nor how to hold a distant one responsible for altering his lack of emotional availability, Neither is she encouraged to believe that male indifference and independence really can be altered. What she is encouraged to do is to latch on to whatever expressions of thoughtfulness he might display, no matter how few, and to consider them, rather than his more obvious and frequent disinterest, as evidence of his true character. (pg. 148)
Despite such internal variation within the genre, however, all popular romantic fiction originates in the failure of patriarchal culture to satisfy its female members. Consequently, the romance functions always as a utopian wish-fulfillment fantasy through which women try to imagine themselves as they often are not in day-to-day existence, that is, as happy and content. … This longing, born of relational poverty, is implicit in all romantic fiction... (pg. 151)
… one assumes, as so many students of the genre have, that the romance originates in female masochism, in the desire to obliterate the self, or in the wish to be taken brutally by a man. Investigation of romances highly valued by their readers reveals, however, that the fairy-tale union of the hero and heroine is in reality the symbolic fulfillment of a woman’s desire to realize her most basic female self in relation with another. What she desires in this imaginary relationship is both the autonomy and sense of difference guaranteed by connection with someone experience as “other” and the erasure of boundaries and loss of singular consciousness achiever through union with an individual indistinguishable from the self. (pg. 155)
All romances grapple with at least one fear prompted by current sexual arrangements. The fear of the consequences of masculinity is usually dealt with by evoking male power and aggression and then by demonstrating that if not illusions they are at least benign… fear of an awakened female exuality and of its impact on men is usually dealt with in the ideal romance by confining the expression of female desire within the limits of a permanent, loving relationship. (pg. 169)
She must also turn back to her daily round of duties, emotionally reconstituted and replenished, feeling confident of her worth and convinced of her ability and power to deal with the problems she knows she must confront. When a writer can supply a story that will permit the reader several hours of vicarious experience living as a woman who flourishes because she receives the attention, devotion, and approval of an extraordinary man, that writer will have written an ideal romance in the judgment of Dorothy Evans and the Smithton readers. (pg. 184)
“The technique of the aimless glance.” - Umberto Eco
There is little need for that reader to attend to the nuances of any particular novel in order to understand the nature of the story. Her energy is reserved, therefore, for the more desirable activity of affective reaction rather than prematurely spend on the merely intermediary task of interpretation. (pg. 196)
The peculiar, but nonetheless crucial, fact that these novels are consumed repetitively by the same readers guarantees that the first recurrence of a familiar phrase, stock description, or stereotypical event in a novel still partially unread will inform the reader that the fate of these “new” lovers is as immutable and irreversible a the already completed and fixed destiny of any mythical deity… the ritualistic repetition of a single, immutable cultural myth. (pg. 198)
The romance’s peculiar narrative strategy seems to encourage the reader in her desire to have it both ways. She can read the story as a realistic novel about what might plausibly occur in an individual woman’s life without having to face the usual threat of the unknown… Reading in that case, would be, as the women have said, a ritual of hope. Repetitive engagement in it would enable a reader to tell herself again and again that a love like the heroine’s might indeed occur in a world such as hers. She thus teaches herself to believe that men are able to satisfy women’s needs fully. It should also be pointed out, however, that in participating in this “mixed” discourse with its contradictory suggestions about the contingency of human life on the one hand and its predetermined nature on the other, the Smithton women unconsciously perpetuate a familiar, ideological argument about female identity and freedom… Although they possess novel personalities and participate in some unprecedented events, women in romances, like mythical deities, are fated to live out a predetermined existence. That existence is circumscribed by a narrative structure that demonstrates that despite idiosyncratic histories, all women inevitably end up associating their female identity with the social roles of lover, wife, and mother. Even more successfully than the patriarchal society within which it was born, the romance denies women the possibility of refusing that purely relational destiny and thus rejects their right to a single, self-contained existence… this literary form 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. (pg. 207)
[I]t cannot be overlooked that the fictional world created as its consequence also reinforces traditional female limitations because it validates the dominance of domestic concerns and personal interaction in women’s lives. The reader thus engages in an activity that shores up her own sense of her abilities, but she also creates a simulacrum of her limited social world within a more glamorous fiction. She therefore inadvertently justifies as natural the very conditions and their emotional consequences to which her reading activity is a response.
Annotations
Indeed, it was the women readers’ construction of the act of romance reading as a “declaration of independence” that surprised me into the realization that the meaning of their media use was multiply determined and internally contradictory and that to get at its complexity, it would be helpful to distinguish analytically between the significance of the event of reading and the meaning of the text constructed as its consequence.
(pg. 7)
This genre framework would focus attention on interdiscursive formations, that is, on questions about the kinds of cultural competencies that are learned as a consequence of certain social formations and how those are activated and perpetuated within and through multiple related genres or discourses. Thus, just as one might want to ask what sorts of social grammars prepare adolescent boys to understand and take interest in slasher films… so one might also want to ask what competencies prepare certain women to recognize romances as relevant to their experience and as potential routes to pleasure. (pg. 10)
“Escape”: leaving conditions behind and its intentional projection of a utopian future
Romance reading as a form of individual resistance to a situation predicated on the assumption that it is women alone who are responsible for the care and emotional nurturance of others.
The hero’s ministrations were nearly always linked metaphorically with maternal concern and nurturance.
(pg. 12-13)
Success, in effect, became a function of accurate prediction. That prediction was ultimately dependent on the capacity to control the interaction between an identifiable audience and a product designed especially for it. (pg. 29)
As one reader explained, “Sometimes even a bad book is better than nothing.” The act of purchase, then, does not always signify approval of the product selected; with a mass-production system it can just as easily testify to the existence of an ongoing, still only partially met, need.
(pg. 50)
At first glance, Dot’s incipient feminism seems deeply at odds with her interest in a literary form whose ultimate message, one astute observer has noted, is that “pleasure for women is men.” … [but] many of the writers and readers of romances interpret these stories as chronicles of female triumph. (pg. 54)
To qualify as a romance, the story must chronicle not merely the events of a courtship but what it feels like to be the object of one. (pg. 64)
Clifford Geertz maintains that all art forms, like the Balinese cockfight, render “ordinary everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their practical consequences removed and been reduced… to a level of sheer appearance, where the meaning can be more powerfully articulated and more exactly perceived. (pg. 72)
The sad ending logically ranks high on their list of objections because its presence would negate the romance’s difference and distance from day-to-day existence, dominated as it so often is by small failures, minor catastrophes, and ongoing disappointments. In addition, without its happy ending, the romance could not hold out the utopian promise that male-female relations can be managed successfully. (pg. 73)
… an “intelligent” man would be more likely to appreciate and encourage the extraordinary bilities of the ideal heroine…” (pg. 82)
The focus never shifts for these readers away from the woman at the center of the romance. Moreover, men are rarely valued for their intrinsic characteristics but become remarkable by virtue of the special position they occupy vis-a-vis the heroine. The romantic fantasy is therefore not a fantasy about discovering a uniquely interesting life partner, but a ritual wish to be cared for, loved, and validated in a particular way.
… What the Smithton women are looking for in their search for the perfect romantic fantasy is a man who is capable of the same attentive observation and intuitive “understanding” that they believe women regularly accord to men. (pg. 83)
These women are telling themselves a story whose central vision is one of total surrender where all danger has been expunged, thus permitting the heroine to relinquish self-control. Passivity is at the heart of the romantic experience in the sense that the final goal of each narrative is the creation of that perfect union where the ideal male, who is masculine and strong yet nurturant too, finally recognizes the intrinsic worth of the heroine. Thereafter, she is required to do nothing more than exist as the center of this paragon’s attention. Romantic escape is, therefore, a temporary but literal denial of the demands women recognize as an integral part of their roles as nurturing wives and mothers. It is also a figurative journey to a utopian state of total receptiveness where the reader, as a result of their identification with the heroine, feels herself the object of someone else’s attention and solicitude. (pg. 97)
In discussing the therapeutic function of true fairy stories and folk tales, Bruno Bettelheim has argued that they perform the fundamental service for children of creating and maintaining hope… Not only do they indicate specific psychological solutions to problems… but they also hold out the promise of future solution for the child who cannot see the way to negotiate the necessary journey at the present moment. (pg. 100)
Because the implicit content of the cultural message linking female identity with sexual attractiveness stipulates that a woman's value is produced only when she is recognized by a man, women who accept this image of themselves must seek validation as sexually desirable partners. (pg. 106)
When the reader can demonstrate to her husband or to an interviewer that an exchange has taken place, that she has acquired something in the process of reading, then her activity is defined retroactively as goal-directed work, as labor with a purpose, which is itself desirable in cultural terms. (pg. 107)
In summary, romance can be termed compensatory fiction because the act of reading them fulfills certain basic psychological needs for women that have been induced by the culture and its social structures but that often remain unmet in day-to-day existence as the result of concomitant restrictions on female activity.
vicarious emotional nurturance
Attention of powerful and important person provides her with the sensations evoked by emotional nurturance and physical satisfaction
Reinforces sense of self / value because hero sees the heroine as worthy of concern
(pg. 112-113)
It’s concealed message, however, is the more significant one, for it legitimates through assertion the notion that commodity consumption is an adequate and effective way to negate the “pain” produced by disappointments, imperfections, and small failures that are an inevitable part of human life… Happiness is not an emotional condition one creates for oneself through action; in advertising, it is a thing that one can buy. (pg. 117)
… [T]he good feeling this woman derives from reading romantic fiction are not experienced in the course of her habitual existence in the world of actual social relations, but in the separate, free realm of the imaginary. The happiness she permits herself is not only secondhand experience, but temporary as well. By resting satisfied with this form of vicarious pleasure, the romance reader may do nothing to transform her actual situation which itself gave rise to the need to seek out such pleasure in the first place. (pg. 117-118)
… preoccupation with the gradual removal of emotional barriers between two people who recognize their connection early in the story.... (pg.123)
Because their family histories have created in them what Nancy Chodorow has identified as a “complex, relational self,” romance readers need to avoid such feelings of emptiness by integrating important intimates into their psychic structures who will reciprocate their interest. This profound need, which Chodorow maintains is rarely filled adequately by men because they have developed asymmetrically into individuals who do not define themselves in relation, is confirmed obligingly and addressed vicariously, then, by this story that relates another woman’s successful journey from isolation and its threat of annihilation to connection and the promise of a mature, fulfilled female identity. (pg. 138)
… the wish to regain the love of the mother and all that it implies- erotic pleasure, symbiotic completion, and identity confirmation. (pg. 146)
The reader is not shown how to find a nurturant man nor how to hold a distant one responsible for altering his lack of emotional availability, Neither is she encouraged to believe that male indifference and independence really can be altered. What she is encouraged to do is to latch on to whatever expressions of thoughtfulness he might display, no matter how few, and to consider them, rather than his more obvious and frequent disinterest, as evidence of his true character. (pg. 148)
Despite such internal variation within the genre, however, all popular romantic fiction originates in the failure of patriarchal culture to satisfy its female members. Consequently, the romance functions always as a utopian wish-fulfillment fantasy through which women try to imagine themselves as they often are not in day-to-day existence, that is, as happy and content. … This longing, born of relational poverty, is implicit in all romantic fiction... (pg. 151)
… one assumes, as so many students of the genre have, that the romance originates in female masochism, in the desire to obliterate the self, or in the wish to be taken brutally by a man. Investigation of romances highly valued by their readers reveals, however, that the fairy-tale union of the hero and heroine is in reality the symbolic fulfillment of a woman’s desire to realize her most basic female self in relation with another. What she desires in this imaginary relationship is both the autonomy and sense of difference guaranteed by connection with someone experience as “other” and the erasure of boundaries and loss of singular consciousness achiever through union with an individual indistinguishable from the self. (pg. 155)
All romances grapple with at least one fear prompted by current sexual arrangements. The fear of the consequences of masculinity is usually dealt with by evoking male power and aggression and then by demonstrating that if not illusions they are at least benign… fear of an awakened female exuality and of its impact on men is usually dealt with in the ideal romance by confining the expression of female desire within the limits of a permanent, loving relationship. (pg. 169)
She must also turn back to her daily round of duties, emotionally reconstituted and replenished, feeling confident of her worth and convinced of her ability and power to deal with the problems she knows she must confront. When a writer can supply a story that will permit the reader several hours of vicarious experience living as a woman who flourishes because she receives the attention, devotion, and approval of an extraordinary man, that writer will have written an ideal romance in the judgment of Dorothy Evans and the Smithton readers. (pg. 184)
“The technique of the aimless glance.” - Umberto Eco
There is little need for that reader to attend to the nuances of any particular novel in order to understand the nature of the story. Her energy is reserved, therefore, for the more desirable activity of affective reaction rather than prematurely spend on the merely intermediary task of interpretation. (pg. 196)
The peculiar, but nonetheless crucial, fact that these novels are consumed repetitively by the same readers guarantees that the first recurrence of a familiar phrase, stock description, or stereotypical event in a novel still partially unread will inform the reader that the fate of these “new” lovers is as immutable and irreversible a the already completed and fixed destiny of any mythical deity… the ritualistic repetition of a single, immutable cultural myth. (pg. 198)
The romance’s peculiar narrative strategy seems to encourage the reader in her desire to have it both ways. She can read the story as a realistic novel about what might plausibly occur in an individual woman’s life without having to face the usual threat of the unknown… Reading in that case, would be, as the women have said, a ritual of hope. Repetitive engagement in it would enable a reader to tell herself again and again that a love like the heroine’s might indeed occur in a world such as hers. She thus teaches herself to believe that men are able to satisfy women’s needs fully. It should also be pointed out, however, that in participating in this “mixed” discourse with its contradictory suggestions about the contingency of human life on the one hand and its predetermined nature on the other, the Smithton women unconsciously perpetuate a familiar, ideological argument about female identity and freedom… Although they possess novel personalities and participate in some unprecedented events, women in romances, like mythical deities, are fated to live out a predetermined existence. That existence is circumscribed by a narrative structure that demonstrates that despite idiosyncratic histories, all women inevitably end up associating their female identity with the social roles of lover, wife, and mother. Even more successfully than the patriarchal society within which it was born, the romance denies women the possibility of refusing that purely relational destiny and thus rejects their right to a single, self-contained existence… this literary form 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. (pg. 207)
[I]t cannot be overlooked that the fictional world created as its consequence also reinforces traditional female limitations because it validates the dominance of domestic concerns and personal interaction in women’s lives. The reader thus engages in an activity that shores up her own sense of her abilities, but she also creates a simulacrum of her limited social world within a more glamorous fiction. She therefore inadvertently justifies as natural the very conditions and their emotional consequences to which her reading activity is a response.
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August 17, 2023This was a super interesting read! Most of the reviews refer to this text as "dated", and I guess in some ways it is, but I think the psychological investigation into why women gravitate towards romance novels and certain stylistic choices/character models would definitely still hold true in a modern survey. It would be fascinating to have an updated study of romance readers for the contemporary era, considering how much the concept of a "romance novel" has shifted between the 80s and now. (Honestly, the only thing that I think would experience a major shift is the perception of sexual content.) I would still definitely recommend this read to people who enjoy romances/are interested in an analytical perspective of its readers!
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March 17, 2025Ouvrage fondateur qui a le mérite de vraiment pousser la réflexion plutôt que d'être dans le simple relevé d'informations. Il y a vraiment quelque chose de très (très) intéressant dans la manière dont des productions médiatiques grand public sont reçues. Au moment de l'enquête de Radway, les romances sont des histoires manufacturées et lues à la chaînes pourtant il serait extrêmement réducteur de voir en leurs lectrices de simples consommatrices aliénées. Beaucoup de choses sont en jeu qui vont à la fois dans le sens du patriarcat et contre lui.
Radway a un regard très fin, sensible et précis sur son sujet (même si j'avoue qu'elle me perd un peu sur ses interprétations psychanalytiques mais c'est l'époque) . Il faut vraiment que ce texte soit traduit en français
Radway a un regard très fin, sensible et précis sur son sujet (même si j'avoue qu'elle me perd un peu sur ses interprétations psychanalytiques mais c'est l'époque) . Il faut vraiment que ce texte soit traduit en français
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November 17, 2025mava221, ipek hocamdan gordum. bitirmedim, 4 section okudum ders icin ama kitapligimda gormek istiyorum.
sadece us based bi kaynak olmasina ragmen cok relate ediliyor, 84'te yayinlanmis ama hic eski degil; wattpad, diziler, romantic film editleri derken yine burdayiz. ben de bu okuyuculardan biriyim biliyorsunuz ki kizlar
bi kadin "sadece bu kitabi okurken birine bakmiyorum, tek dinlenme imkanim" demis, benim icin olay burda bitmistir. bu kadina gercekten iyi gelen her sey onemlidir. e cunku tercihler de bilincli ya da degil; politik, cok katmanli bi surecin sonucu. patriyarkayi yeniden uretiyo o tiplemelerle, senaryolarla, rollerle ama insan aklina guveniyorum, perspektif ve goren goz o kadar onemsiz degil, gorulmeyeni gorebiliyor insan kitap okurken, birilerinin hislerine zaman ayirip okumak cunku baska bi yetiyi de getiriyor beraberinde
nurturance gap*
sadece us based bi kaynak olmasina ragmen cok relate ediliyor, 84'te yayinlanmis ama hic eski degil; wattpad, diziler, romantic film editleri derken yine burdayiz. ben de bu okuyuculardan biriyim biliyorsunuz ki kizlar
bi kadin "sadece bu kitabi okurken birine bakmiyorum, tek dinlenme imkanim" demis, benim icin olay burda bitmistir. bu kadina gercekten iyi gelen her sey onemlidir. e cunku tercihler de bilincli ya da degil; politik, cok katmanli bi surecin sonucu. patriyarkayi yeniden uretiyo o tiplemelerle, senaryolarla, rollerle ama insan aklina guveniyorum, perspektif ve goren goz o kadar onemsiz degil, gorulmeyeni gorebiliyor insan kitap okurken, birilerinin hislerine zaman ayirip okumak cunku baska bi yetiyi de getiriyor beraberinde
nurturance gap*
December 29, 2021
“我们也更有可能理清或阐明意识形态的压迫性强加与对抗实践之间的区别。尽管后者的范围和效果有限，但它至少对意识形态的控制提出了异议或抗争。”
“假如我们能够了解不同群体占有和利用我们文化中量产作品的方式，我想，我们很可能就会开始明白，虽然当代文化形式的意识形态力量巨大，有时甚至很骇人，但那种力量并非无孔不入、全面戒备或无懈可击。这个社会架构中仍存在着裂隙，而那些对自己的社会位置，或随之而来的有限物质和情感回报感到不满的人，就会在这样的裂隙中发出抗议。他们于是会试图想象出一个更加完美的社会状态，以此来对抗绝望。我认为，我们这些矢志要推动社会变革的人必须牢记：绝不能忽视这些微小但又合情合理的抗议形式。我们寻找到这类抗议形式不只是要理解它的缘由和它的乌托邦渴望，而且还要了解如何才能最好地推动它发展，让它最终有所成果。如果我们做不到这一点，那么，我们就已经未战先败了；而且至少在浪漫小说这个问题上，我们就得承认，我们无法创造出一个不必依靠阅读来获得替代性愉悦的世界。”
这本书很好地讨论了阅读浪漫小说这一行为以及小说文本本身中的落后和逃避以及进步意义，最后关于浪漫小说和女性社群的构建意义描述令人印象深刻。
当然，在这本书以后，同人、BL文化更加风行，浪漫小说的文本也有了很大的进化，在性别关系方面有了更多新变化，有兴趣的朋友也建议阅读沟口彰子的《BL进化论》。
“假如我们能够了解不同群体占有和利用我们文化中量产作品的方式，我想，我们很可能就会开始明白，虽然当代文化形式的意识形态力量巨大，有时甚至很骇人，但那种力量并非无孔不入、全面戒备或无懈可击。这个社会架构中仍存在着裂隙，而那些对自己的社会位置，或随之而来的有限物质和情感回报感到不满的人，就会在这样的裂隙中发出抗议。他们于是会试图想象出一个更加完美的社会状态，以此来对抗绝望。我认为，我们这些矢志要推动社会变革的人必须牢记：绝不能忽视这些微小但又合情合理的抗议形式。我们寻找到这类抗议形式不只是要理解它的缘由和它的乌托邦渴望，而且还要了解如何才能最好地推动它发展，让它最终有所成果。如果我们做不到这一点，那么，我们就已经未战先败了；而且至少在浪漫小说这个问题上，我们就得承认，我们无法创造出一个不必依靠阅读来获得替代性愉悦的世界。”
这本书很好地讨论了阅读浪漫小说这一行为以及小说文本本身中的落后和逃避以及进步意义，最后关于浪漫小说和女性社群的构建意义描述令人印象深刻。
当然，在这本书以后，同人、BL文化更加风行，浪漫小说的文本也有了很大的进化，在性别关系方面有了更多新变化，有兴趣的朋友也建议阅读沟口彰子的《BL进化论》。
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 4, 2021
“浪漫小说就是在早已界划好的休闲和虚构领域完成所有的抗议，从而保护更加重要的文化场所避免成为女性集体控诉父权制影响其生活的地方。”
July 31, 2021
Not without its limitations, the book provided the best methodology for analyzing popular culture. A must read.
October 19, 2022
Of course limited, Radway is still able to pull relevant and interesting claims from their book into today’s romance reading scene, while also allowing her often hilarious voice to peak through.
April 25, 2024
good book about the structure of romance fiction
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews