Guilty pleasures: reading romance novels as reworked fairy tales.(Critical essay)

Alternately dismissed as "trash," "smut," or "women's pornography," popular romance novels--and their readers--are often criticized, marginalized, and mocked. These novels, however, are the most popular of all genres of fiction. The statistics are staggering. According to the Romance Writers of America (RWA), romance fiction had $1.37 billion in sales in 2006 and held a 26.4 percent share of the consumer book market. More than 64 million Americans read at least one romance novel in 2004, and 42 percent of these readers hold at least a bachelors' degree (Romance Writers of America). Studies of romance readers suggest that a third of all women who read, read romance novels (for example, Radway; Williams; Williams and Freedman). These statistics demand we take romances seriously. This fiction genre is often dismissed simply because it is women's fiction. In fact, many of the criticisms levied against it are also true of men's formulaic fiction, such as detective novels. Romance novels have much in common with traditional fairy tales: both are highly formulaic; invoke a fantasy realm; focus on the creation or reconciliation of a romantic pair; exist in an infinite variation of texts that fall into distinct types; and are often dismissed as being "trivial." With their prototypical marriage endings, criticisms are levied against both narrative forms for their failure to challenge the system of social relations and norms from which they arise. These similarities suggest romantic fiction as a natural excursus of folkloristic inquiry into popular culture. This is not the case, however; with few exceptions (such as Williams and Freedman; Hains), folklorists and folklore journals have ignored this genre, preferring instead elite fairy-tale transformations by writers such as Angela Carter, A. S. Byatt, or Salman Rushdie.

Although scholars, authors, and publishers have noted the connection between traditional fairy tales and romance novels, the exact nature of this relationship is not well articulated. For example, in The Alienated Reader Bridget Fowler traces the history of the romance novel through fairy tales and novella, among other fictive forms. Unfortunately, she merely asserts this connection rather than articulates how they are related. This article is intended to address that lacuna, considering the romance genre in terms of its relationship to fairy tales, with particular attention to their parallel structures and the way that traditional tale types and motifs are reworked and eroticized. This represents an under-explored and under-theorized intersection of folklore and popular culture. I consider romance novels from myriad subgenres, with a particular focus on paranormal romance novels, which are more clearly fantastical and often include marvelous elements that are analogous to those found in traditional wonder tales, as well as the importance of the Beauty and the Beast tale type (ATU 425C) for popular romance.

In A Natural History of the Romance Novel, Pamela Regis defines the romance novel as "a work of prose fiction that tells the story of a courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines" (19). The popular romance novels that are the subject of this inquiry are specifically about heterosexual couples, although there are both lesbian and gay romances that explore alternative sexual pairings. (1) Despite the commonly held belief that "all romance novels are the same," there is actually a great deal of variety within this broader generic category. And as with any other type of fictive genre, there are well-written and poorly written popular romance novels. The broad category of "romance" is comprised of numerous subgenres, including contemporary, historical, Regency, Western, inspirational, romantic suspense, and paranormal. Although there is certainly crossover among these categories, each subgenre includes its own set of formulas, conventions, motifs, and generic expectations.

This paranormal romance subgenre is a catchall category that includes diverse topics such as time travel, futuristic settings, magic, shape-shifters, supernatural creatures like werewolves and vampires, or other-world settings. In addition to the fantastical and marvelous elements, the paranormal subgenre has received comparatively less scholarly attention than other subgenres, yet it is one of the more rapidly growing segments of the romance industry. According to the RWA's most recent romance industry statistics, 9 percent of the approximately 6,400 romance titles published in 2006 were paranormals; this demonstrates a substantial increase from the 120 paranormal titles released in 2003 and 173 titles released in 2004.

Since the 1980s there has been a growing body of scholarship on popular romance genres, such as Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance, Janice Radway's highly influential Reading the Romance, and Carol Thurston's The Romance Revolution. (2) Popular romance novels are often interpreted as providing insight into the way that women negotiate fantasy lives within patriarchal culture. Most scholarship on romance novels fall into one of two polarized camps that view these novels as conservative forms that uphold the existing patriarchal structure, or as subversive, resistant forms that challenge the existing structure. Many criticisms of romance novels are based primarily on its generic constraints; critics argue that these novels cannot challenge the existing patriarchal structure, because they end with the establishment or reunion of a heterosexual married pair. I contend that the question should be reframed as: How do popular romance novels subvert and challenge existing social structures within the confines of its form?

The popular romance novel is a dynamic cultural form, and publishers and writers respond to readers' interests and cultural changes in a way that is unmatched by most other types of publishing and popular media (Williams; Williams and Freedman; Calhoun-French; Thurston 6-7). The popularity of the romance novel grew alongside the feminist movement in the 1970s. And although romance novels have been harshly criticized by feminist scholars, there are many women who consider themselves feminists who also read or write these novels. (3) Scholars such as Ann Rosalind Jones and Dawn Heinecken have discussed how romances, especially those published since the 1990s, reflect a variety of feminist concerns. (4) In the twenty years since the publication of Radway's Reading the Romance, there have been many changes in the popular romance novel that warrant attention. Early romances featured restrained sexuality, with timid and passive virginal heroines, and since the mid-1980s the erotic element has been much more explicit. …