One of the most popular forms of women’s literature today is the romance novel. They are often written with female sensibilities in mind mainly from the point of view of women. The romance novel industry is a largely female-oriented medium, significant for its focus on the aspects of life that women consider important. Our responses to social conventions in a primarily patriarchal society can be heard in these novels.

Scholars have alleged that romance novels help create subservient readers, who are largely women, by confining heroines to stories that ignore issues other than love and marriage.

Brief History
In the starting of English Renaissance, women’s fictions were mainly written by men and were guided by masculine notions of relevant feminine subject matter. In effect, patriarchal ideals were reinforced through literature, even promoted in areas considered the female sphere at a time when female literacy was on the rise.

One of the earliest romance novels was Samuel Richardson’s popular 1740 novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, which was revolutionary on two counts: it focused almost entirely on courtship and did so entirely from the perspective of a female protagonist. In the next century, Jane Austen expanded the genre, and her Pride and Prejudice is often considered the epitome of the genre. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, who introduced historical romances in 1921.

The popularity of the Renaissance romance is attributed to the new wider audience, which included literate women of the middle class. The commercial success of Renaissance romances was attributed to the emergence of more female readers. Many Elizabethan and Jacobean romance authors credited their popularity to “gentlewomen” readers who were women of middle rank in society, for their commercial success.

Subject of Romance Novels
The main plot of a romance novel usually revolves around two people as they develop romantic love for each other and work to build a relationship together. Both the conflict and the climax of the novel are directly related to that core theme of developing a romantic relationship, although the novel contains subplots that do not specifically relate to the main characters’ romantic love. Furthermore, a romance novel has an “emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.”

As long as a romance novel meets those two criteria, it can be set in any time period and in any location. There are no specific restrictions on what can or cannot be included in a romance novel. Even controversial subjects are addressed in romance novels, including topics such as date rape, domestic violence, addiction, and disability.

Romance novels are sometimes referred to as “smut” or female pornography. While some romance novels do contain more erotic acts, in other romance novels the characters do no more than kiss chastely. The romance genre runs the spectrum between these two extremes. Because the vast majority of the romance novel audiences are women, most romance novels are told from a woman’s viewpoint, in either first or third person.

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