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Creating Identity: The Popular Romance Heroine's Journey to Selfhood and Self-Presentation
While the world often categorizes women in reductive false binaries―careerist versus mother, feminine versus fierce―romance novels, a unique form of the love story, offer an imaginative space of mingled alternatives for a heroine on her journey to selfhood.
In Creating Identity , Jayashree Kamblé examines the romance genre, with its sensile flexibility in retaining what audiences find desirable and discarding what is not, by asking an important "Who is the romance heroine, and what does she want?" To find the answer, Kamblé explores how heroines in ten novels reject societal labels and instead remake themselves on their own terms with their own agency. Using a truly intersectional approach, Kamblé combines gender and sexuality, Marxism, critical race theory, and literary criticism to survey various aspects of heroines' identities, such as sexuality, gender, work, citizenship, and race.
Ideal for readers interested in gender studies and literary criticism, Creating Identity highlights a genre in which heroines do not accept that independence and strong, loving relationships are mutually exclusive but instead demand both, echoing the call from the very readers who have made this genre so popular.
In Creating Identity , Jayashree Kamblé examines the romance genre, with its sensile flexibility in retaining what audiences find desirable and discarding what is not, by asking an important "Who is the romance heroine, and what does she want?" To find the answer, Kamblé explores how heroines in ten novels reject societal labels and instead remake themselves on their own terms with their own agency. Using a truly intersectional approach, Kamblé combines gender and sexuality, Marxism, critical race theory, and literary criticism to survey various aspects of heroines' identities, such as sexuality, gender, work, citizenship, and race.
Ideal for readers interested in gender studies and literary criticism, Creating Identity highlights a genre in which heroines do not accept that independence and strong, loving relationships are mutually exclusive but instead demand both, echoing the call from the very readers who have made this genre so popular.
222 pages, Hardcover
Published April 11, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
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June 2, 2024My expectation was that there would be more problematizing of the genre but this book didn't seem interested in that work. I've been spoiled by all the thoughtful, well-researched romance blogs I've been reading the past few years.
The final two chapters in this book, Citizenship and Intersections, stand out. I found the first three chapters (Sexuality, Gender, and Work) to be underwhelming and disappointing because the author narrowed the focus to cis, MF romances. This choice really began to grate after a while! I was disappointed that the Gender chapter didn't consider "woman in pants" romances which seem ripe for exploration of gender presentation.
I'd still recommend this for folks who are interested in reading about romance genre but go in knowing the scope is quite limited.
The final two chapters in this book, Citizenship and Intersections, stand out. I found the first three chapters (Sexuality, Gender, and Work) to be underwhelming and disappointing because the author narrowed the focus to cis, MF romances. This choice really began to grate after a while! I was disappointed that the Gender chapter didn't consider "woman in pants" romances which seem ripe for exploration of gender presentation.
I'd still recommend this for folks who are interested in reading about romance genre but go in knowing the scope is quite limited.
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June 26, 2025por fin!!! terminé!! se me hizo cuesta arriba el análisis de cada una de las obras, Kamblé se centra demasiado en relatar qué sucede en cada una, podría haber sido más sucinta. lo más interesante que ofrece el libro es la relación entre el género romántico y el Bildungsroman, género que descansa en esas dicotomías dialécticas al + puro estilo Hegel
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews