Wieneke’s Reviews > Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature > Status Update

It's a surprisingly sad experience to read this study. Radway posits that the Smithton women (mostly American housewives in the late 70s/80s) read because they take physical and emotional care of their families as a pretty much full-time job, but also yearn to be cared for themselves. And yet they feel the need to defend the hobby of (romance) reading, and are often questioned by their husbands for doing so.