Women Read the Romance
The Interaction of Text and Context
JANICE A. RADWAY
... The interpretation of the romance's cultural significance offered here has been developed from a series of extensive ethnographic-like interviews with a group of compulsive romance readers in a predominantly urban, central midwestem state among the nation's top twenty in total population.11 discovered my principal informant and her customers with the aid of a senior editor at Doubleday whom I had been interviewing about the publication of romances. Sally Arteseros told me of a bookstore employee who had developed a regular clientele of fifty lo seventy-five regular romance readers who relied on her for advice about the best romances lo buy and those to avoid. When I wrote to Dot Evans, as 1 will now call her, to ask whether (might question her about how she interpreted, categorized, and evaluated romantic fiction, 1 had no idea that she had also begun to write a newsletter designed to enable bookstores to advise their customers about the quality of the romances published monthly. She has since copyrighted this newsletter and incorporated it as a business. Dot is so successful at serving the women who patronize her chain outlet that the central office of this major chain occasionally relies on her sales predictions to gauge romance distribution throughout the system. Her success has also brought her to the attention of both editors and writers for whom she now reads manuscripts and galleys.
NOTE: Excerpts reprinted from Ftfnmist Studies, Vol, 9, So. 1 (1983), by permission of the publisher, FEMINIST STUDIES, Inc., Women's Studies Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
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Women Read tne Romance
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My knowledge of Dot and her readers is based on roughly sixty hours of interviews conducted in June 1980, and February 1981.1 have talked extensively with Dot about romances, reading, and her advising activities as well as observed her interactions with her customers at the bookstore. I have also conducted both group and individual interviews with sixteen of her regular customers and administered a lengthy questionnaire to forty-two of these women. Although not representative of all women who read romances, the group appears to be demographically similar lo a sizable segment of that audience as il has been mapped by several rather secretive publishing houses.
Dorothy Evans lives and works in the community of Smithton, as do most of her regular customers. A city of about 112,000 inhabitants, Smithton is located five miles due cast of the state's second largest city, in a metropolitan area with a total population of over 1 million. Dot was forty-^ight years old at the time of the survey, the wife of a journeyman plumber, and the mother of three children in their twenties. She is extremely bright and articulate and, while not a proclaimed feminist, holds some beliefs about women that might be labeled as such. Although she did not work outside the home when her children were young and docs not now believe that a woman needs a career to be fulfilled, she feels women should have the opportunity to work and be paid equally with men. Dot also believes that women should have the right lo abortion, though she admits that her deep religious convictions would prevent her from seeking one herself. She is not disturbed by the Equal Rights Amendment and can and does converse eloquently about the oppression women have endured for years at the hands of men. Despite her opinions, however, she believes implicitly in the value of true romance and thoroughly enjoys discovering again and again that women can find men who will love them as they wish to be loved. Although most of her regular customers are more conservative than Dot in the sense that they do not advocate political measures to red ress past grievances, they are quite aware lhat men commonly think themselves superior to women and often mistreat them as a result.
In general. Dot's customers are married, middle-class mothers with at least a high school education.2 More than 60 percent of the women were between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four at the time of the study, a fact that duplicates fairly closely Harlequin's finding thai the majority of-its readers is between twenty-five and forty-nine.3 Silhouette Books has also recenily reported that 65 percent of the romance market is below the age of 40* Exactly 50 percent of the Smithton women have high school diplomas, while 32 percent report completing at least some college work. Again, this seems lo suggest that the interview group is fairly representative, for Silhouette also indicates that 45 percent of the romance market has allended al least some college. The employment status and family income of Dot's customers also seem to duplicate those of the audience mapped by the publishing houses. Forty-two percent of the Smithton women, for instance, work part-time outside the home. Harlequin claims that 49 percent of its audience is similarly employed. The Smithton women report slightly higher incomes than those of the average Harlequin reader (43 percent of tru* Smithton
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ROMANCE NOVELS AND SLASHER FILMS
women have incomes of 515,000 to $24,999, 33 percent have incomes of 525,000 to $49,999—the average income of the Harlequin reader is 515,000 to $20,000), but the difference is not enough to change the general sociological status of the group....
When asked why they read romances, the Smithton women overwhelmingly cite escape or relaxation as their goal. They use the word "escape," however, both literally and figuratively. On the one hand, they value their romances highly because the act of reading them literally draws the women away from their present surroundings. Because they must produce the meaning of the story by attending closely to the words on the page, they find that their attention is withdrawn from concerns that plague them in reality. One woman remarked with a note of triumph in her voice: "My body may be in that room, but I'm not!" She and her sister readers see their romance reading as a legitimate way of denying a present reality that occasionally becomes too onerous to bear. This particular means of escape is better than television viewing for these women, because the cultural value attached to books permits them to overcome the guilt they feel about avoiding their responsibilities. They believe that reading of any kind is, by nature, educational.5 They insist accordingly that they also read to learn.6
On the other hand, the Smithton readers are quite willing to acknowledge that the romances which so preoccupy them are little more than fantasies or fairy tales that always end happily. They readily admit in fact that the characters and events discovered in the pages of the typical romance do not resemble the people and occurrences they must deal with in their daily lives. On the basis of the following comments, made in response to a question about what romances "do" better than other novels available today, one can conclude that it is precisely the unreal, fantastic shape of the story that makes their literal escape even more complete and gratifying. Although these are only a few of the remarks given in response to the undirected question, they are representative of the group's general sentiment.
Romances hold my interest and do not leave me depressed or up in the air at the end like many modem day books tend to do. Romances also just make me feel good reading them as I identify with the heroines.
The kind of books I mainly read are very different from everyday living. Thaťs why 1 read them. Newspapers, etc, 1 find boring because all you read is sad news. I can get enough of that on TV news. I like stories that take your mind off everyday matters.
Different than everyday life.
Everyone is always under so much pressure. They like books that let them escape.
Because it is an escape and we can dream. And pretend that it is our life.
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I'm able to escape the harsh world a tew hours a dav.
It is a way of escaping Írom everyday living.
They always seem an escape and they usually turn out Ihe way vou wish life really was.
1 enjoy reading because it offers me a small vacation from everyday life and an interesting and amusing way to pass the time.
These few comments alt hint at a certain sadness that manv or the Smith ton women seem to share because life has not given them all that it once promised. A deep-seated sense of betrayal also lurks behind their deceptively simple expressions of a need to believe in a fairy tale- Although they have not elaborated in these comments, many of the women explained in the Interviews that despite their disappointments, thev feci refreshed and strengthened by their vicarious participation in a fantasy relationship where the heroine is frequently treated as they themselves would most like to be loved.
This conception of romance reading as an escape that is both literal and figurative implies flight from some situation in the real world which is either stifling or overwhelming, as well as a metaphoric transfer to another, more desirable universe where events are happily resolved. Unashamed to admit that they like to indulge in temporary escape, the Smithton women are also surprisingly candid about the circumstances that necessitate their desire. When asked to specify what they are fleeing from, they invariably mention the "pressures" and "tensions" they experience as wives and mothers. Although none oi the women can cite the voluminous feminist literature about the psychological toll exacted by the constant demand to physically and emotionally nurture olhers, they are nonetheless eloquent about how draining and unrewarding their duties can be.7 When firsl asked why women find it necessary to escape. Dot gave the following answer without once pausing to rest:
As a mother, 1 have run em to the orthodontist, 1 have run 'em to the swimming pool. I have run em to balon twirling lessons. I have run • up to school because they forgot their lunch. You know, 1 mean really. And you do it. And it isn't thai you begrudge it. That isn't it. Then my husband would walk in the door and he'd say, "Well, what did you do today?" You know, it was like, "Well, tell me how you spent the last eight hours, because I've been out working." And I finally got to the point where! would say, "Well, I read four books, and I did the wash and got the meal on the table and the beds are ail made and the house is tidy." And I would get defensive like, "So what do you call all this? Why should I have to tell you because 1 certainly don't ask you whal you did for eight hours, step by step."
But their husbands do do that. We've compared notes They nil the house and it's like "Well, all right, I've been out earning a living.
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Now wh.it have you been doin' with your lime?" And you begin to be feeling. "Now, really, why is he questioning me?"
Romance reading, as Dot herself puts it. constitutes a temporary "declaration of independence" from the social roles of wife and mother. By placing the barrier of the book between themselves and their families, these women reserve a special space and time for themselves alone, As a consequence. they momentarily allow themselves to abandon the attitude of tola! self-abnegation in the interest of family welfare which they have so dutifully learned is the proper stance for a good wife and mother. Romance reading is both an assertion of deeply felt psychological needs and a means for satisfying those needs. Simply put, these needs arise because no other member of the family, as it is presently constituted in this still-patriarchal society, is yel charged with the affective and emotional reconsbtution of a wife and mother. If she is depleted by her efforts to care for others, she is nonetheless expected to restore and sustain herself üs well. As one of Dot's customers put it. "You always have to be a Mary Poppins. You can't be sad, you can't be mad, you have to keep everything bottled up inside."
Nancy Chodorow has recently discussed this structural peculiarity of the modern family and its impact on the emotional lives of women in her influential book, Vic Reproduction of Moltwring,* a complex reformulation of the Freudian theory of female personality development. Chodorow maintains that women often continue to experience a desire for intense affective nurturance and relationality well into adulthood as a result of an unresolved separation from their primary caretaker. It is highly significant, she argues, that in patriarchal society this caretaker is almost inevitably a woman. The felt similarity between mother and daughter creates an unusually intimate connection between them which later makes it exceedingly difficult for the daughter to establish autonomy and independence. Chodorow maintains, on the other hand, that because male children are also reared by women, they tend to separate more completely from their mothers by suppressing their own emotionality and capacities for tenderness which they associate with mothers and femininity. The resulting asymmetry in human personality, she concludes, leads to a situation where men typically cannot fulfill all of a woman's emotional needs. As a consequence, women tum to the act of mothering as a way of vicariously recovering that lost relationality and intensity.
My findings about Dot Evans and her customers suggest that the vicarious pleasure a woman receives through the nurturance of others may not be completely satisfying, because the act of caring for them also makes tremendous demands on a woman and can deplete her sense or self. In that case. she may well tum to romance reading in an effort to construct a fantasy-world where she is attended, as the heroine is, by a man who reassures her of her special status and unique identity.
The value of the romance may have something to «lo. then, wilh the fact that women find it especially difficult to indulge in the restorative experience of visceral regression to an infantile state when- the self is cared for perfectly by another. This regression is so difficult precisely because women
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have been taught to believe that men must be their sole source oř pleasure. Although there is nothing biologically lacking in men to make this ideal pleasure unattainable, as Chodorow's theories tell us, their engendering and socialization bv the patriarchal family traditionally masks the very traits that would permit them to nurture women in this way. Because they are encouraged to be aggressive, competitive, self-sufficient, and unemotional, men often find sustained attention to the emotional needs of others both unia-miliar and difficult. While the Smithton women only minimally discussed their husbands' abilities to take care of them as they would like, when they commented on their favorite romantic heroes thev made it clear that they enjoy imagining themselves being tenderly cared for and solicitously protected by a fictive character who inevitably proves to be spectacularly masculine and unusually nurturant as well.**
Indeed, this iheme of pleasure recurred constantly in the discussions with the Smithton women. Thev insisted repeatedly that when they are reading a romance, they feel happy and content. Several commented that they particularly relish moments when they are home atone and can relax in a hot tub or in a favorite chair with a good book. Others admitted that they most like to read in a warm bed late at night Their association of romances with contentment, pleasure, and good feelings is apparently not unique, for in conducting a market research study, Fawcett discovered that when asked to draw a woman reading a romance, romance readers inevitably depict someone who is exaggeratedly happy.10
The Smithton group's insistence that they turn to romances because the experience of reading the novels gives them hope, provides pleasure, and causes contentment raises the unavoidable question of what aspects of the romantic narrative itself could possibly give rise to feelings such as these. How are we to explain, furthermore, the obvious contradiction between this reader emphasis on pleasure and hope, achieved through vicarious appreciation of the ministrations of a tender hero, and the observations of the earlier critics of romances that such books an? dominated by men who al least temporarily abuse and hurt the women they purportedly love? In large part, the contradiction arises because the two groups are not reading according to the same* interpretive strategies, neither are they reading nor commenting on the same books. Textual analyses like those offered by Douglas, Modleski, and Snitow are based on the common assumption that because romances are formulaic and therefore essentially identical, analysis of a randomly chosen sample will reveal the meaning unfailingly communicated by every example of the genre. This methodological procedure is based on the further assumption that category readers do not themselves perceive variations within the genre, nor do they select their books in a manner significantly different from the random choice of the analyst.
In fact, the Smithton readers do not believe the books are identical, nor do they approve of all the romances they read. They have elaborated a complex distinction between "good" and "bad" romances and they have accordingly experimented with various techniques that they hoped would unable them to identify bad romances before they paid for a book that would only offend them. Some tried to decode titles and cover blurbs by looking
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for key words serving as clues to the book's tone; others refused to buy romances by authors they didn't recognize; still others read several pages including the ending before they bought the book. Now, however, most of the people in the Smithton group have been freed from the need to rely on these inexact predictions because Dot Evans shares their perceptions and evaluations of the category and can alert them to unusually successful romantic fantasies while steering them away from those they call "disgusting perversions.''
When the Smithton readers' comments about good and bad romances are combined with the conclusions drawn from an analysis of twenty of their favorite books and an equal number of those they classify as particularly inadequate, an UlumLnating picture of the fantasy fueling the romance-reading experience develops.11 To begin with. Dot and her readers will not tolerate any story in which the heroine is seriously abused by men. They find multiple rapes especially distressing and dislike books in which a woman is brutally hurt by a man only to fall desperately in love with him in the last four pages. The Smithton women are also offended by explicit sexual description and scrupulously avoid the work of authors like Rosemary Rogers and Judith Krantz who deal in what they call "perversions" and "promiscuity." They also do not like romances that overtly perpetuate the double standard by excusing the hero's simultaneous involvement with several women. They insist, one reader commented, on "one woman—one man." They also seem to dislike any kind of detailed description of male genitalia, although the women enjoy suggestive descriptions of how the hero is emotionally aroused to an overpowering desire for the heroine. Their preferences seem to confirm Beatrice Faust's argument in Women, Sex, and Pornography that women are not interested in the visual display characteristic of male pornography, but prefer process-oriented materials detailing the development of deep emotional connection between two individuals.12
According to Dot and her customers, the quality of the ideal romantic fantasy is directly dependent on the character of the heroine and the manner in which the hero treats her The plot, of course, must always focus on a series of obstacles to the final declaration of love between thév.two principals. However, a good romance involves an unusually bright and determined woman and a man who is spectacularly masculine, but at the same time capable of remarkable empathy and tenderness. Although they enjoy the usual chronicle of misunderstandings and mistakes which inevitably leads lo the heroine's belief that the hero intends to harm her, the Smithton readers prefer stories that combine a much-understated version of this continuing antagonism with a picture of a gradually developing love. They most wish to participate in the slow process by which two people become acquainted, explore each other's foibles, wonder about the other's feelings, and eventually "discover" that they are loved by the other.
In conducting an analysis of the plots of the twenty romances listed as "ideal" by the Smithton readers, I was struck by their remarkable similarities in narrative structure. In fact, ail twenty of these romances are very tightly organized around the evolving relationship between a single couple com-
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posed oí d bestii if ul, defiant, and sexually immature woman and a brooding, handsome man who is also curiously capable of soft, gentle gestures. Although minor roil figures are used in these romances, none of the ideal stories seriously involves either hero or heroine with one of the rival characters.13 They arc employed mainly as contrasts to the more likable and proper central pair or as purely temporary obstacles to the pair's delayed union because one or the other mistakenly suspects the partner of having an affair with the rival. However, because the reader is never permitted to share this mistaken assumption in the ideal romance, she knows all along th.it the relationship is not as precarious as its participants think it to be. The rest of the narrative in the twenty romances chronicles the gradual crumbling of barriers between these two individuals who are fearful of being used by the other. As their defenses against emotional response fall away and their sexual passion rises inexorably, the typical narrative plunges on until the climactic point at which the hero treats the heroine to Some supreme act of tenderness, and she realizes that his apparent emotional indifference was only the mark of his hesitancy about revealing the extent of his love for and dependence upon her.
The Smithton women especially like romances that commence with the early marriage of the hero and heroine for reasons of convenience. Apparently, they do so because they delight m the subsequent, necessary chronicle of the pair's growing awareness that what each took to be indifference or hate is, in reality, unexpressed love and suppressed passion In such favorite romances as The Flame and the flower, Vie Black Lyon, Shanita. and Made For Each Other the heroine begins marriage thinking that she detests and is detested by her spouse. She is thrown into a quandary, however, because her partner's behavior vacillates from indifference, occasional brusqueness, and even cruelty to tenderness and passion. Consequently, Ihe heroine spends most of her time in these romances, as well as in the others comprising this sample, trying to read the hero's behavior as a set of signs expressing his true feelings toward her. The final outcome of the ston,- turns upon a fundamental process of reinterpretation, whereby she suddenly and dearly sees that the behavior she feared was actually the product of deeply felt passion and a previous hurt. Once she teams to reread his past beha vior and thus (o excuse him for the suffering he has caused her, she is free to respond warmly tohis occasional acts of tenderness. Her responsi? inevitably encourages him to believe in her and finally to treat her as she wishes to be treated. When this reinterpretation process is completed in the twenty ideal romances, the heroine is always tenderly enfolded in the hero's embrace and the reader is permitted to identify with her as she is gently caressed, caref unprotected, and verbally praised with words of love.1* At the climactic mo-menl (pp. 201-202) of The Sea Treasutr, for example, when the hero tells the heroine to put her arms around him, the reader is informed of his gentleness in the following way;
She put her cold face against his m an attitude of surrender that moved him to unutterable tenderness. He swung her clear of the encroaching water and eased his way up to the next level, with painful slow-
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ness___When at last he had finished, he pulled her into his arms and
held her against his heart for a moment. . - . Tenderly he lifted her. Carefully he negotiated the last of the treacherous slippery rungs to the mine entrance. Once there, he swung her up into his arms, and walked out into the starlit night.
The cold aír revived her, and she stirred in his arms.
"Dominic?" she whispered.
He bent his head and kissed her.
"Sea Treasure," he whispered.
Passivity, it seems, is at the heart of the romance-reading experience in the sense that the final goal of the most valued romances is the creation of perfect union in which the ideal male, who is masculine and Strang, yet nurturan t, finally admits his recognition of 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 a temporary but literal denial of the demands these women recognize as an integral part of their roles as nurturing wives and mothers. But it is also a figurative journey to a Utopian state of total receptiveness in which the reader, as a consequence of her identification with the heroine, feels herself the passive object of someone else's attention and solicitude. The romance reader in effect is permitted the experience of feeling cared for, the sense of having been affectively reconstituted, even if both are lived only vicariously.
Although the ideal romance may thus enable a woman to satisfy vicariously those psychological needs created in her by a patriarchal culture unable to fulfill them, the very centrality of the rhetoric of reinterpretation to the romance suggests also that the reading experience may indeed have some of the unfortunate consequences pointed to by earlier romance critics.15 Not only is the dynamic of reinterpretation an essential component of the plot of the ideal romance, but it also characterizes the very process of constructing its meaning because the reader is inevitably given more information about the hero's motives than is the heroine herself. Hence, when Ranulf temporarily abuses his young bride in The Black hfon the reader understands that what appears as inexplicable cruelty, to Lyonene, the heroine, is an irrational desire to hurt her because of what his first wife did to him.,e It is possible that in reinterpreting the hero's behavior before Lyonene does, the Smithton women may be practicing a procedure which is valuable to them precisely because it enables them to reinterpret their own spouse's similar emotional coldness and likely preoccupation with work or sports. In rereading this category oř behavior, they reassure themselves that it does not necessarily mean that a woman is not loved. Romance reading, it would seem, can function as a kind of training for the all-too-common task of reinterpreting a spouse's unsettling actions as the signs of passion, devotion, and love.
If the Smithton women are indeed learning reading behaviors that help them to dismiss or justify their husbands' affective distance, this procedure is probably carried out on an unconscious level. In any form of cultural or anthropological analysis in which the subjects of the study cannot reveal all
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the complexity or covert significance Of their behavior, a certain amouni of speculation is necessary. The analyst, however, can and should take accounl of any other observable evidence that might reveal the motives and meanings she is seeking- In this case, the Smithton readers' comments about bad romances are particularly helpful*
In general, bad romances are characlenzed by one oi two things: an unusually cruel hero who subjects the heroine to various kinds of verbal and physical abuse, or a diffuse plot that permits the hero to become involved with other women before he settles upon the heroine. Since the Smithton readers will tolerate complicated subplots in some romances if the hero and heroine continue to function as a pair, clearly it is the involvement with others rather than the plot complexity that distresses them. When asked whv they disliked these books despite the fact that they all ended happily with the hero converted into the heroine's attentive lover. Dot and her customers replied again and again that they rejected the books precisely because they found them unbelievable. In elaborating, they insisted indignantly that they could never forgive the hero's early transgressions and they see no reason why they should be asked to believe that the heroine can. What they «ire suggesting, then, is that certain kinds of male behavior associated with the stereotype of male machismo can never be forgiven or reread as the signs of love. They are thus not interested only in the romance's happy ending. They want to involve themselves in a story that will permit them to enjoy the hero's tenderness and to reinterpret his momentary blindness and cool indifference as the marks of a love so intense that he is wary of admitting it. Their delight in both these aspects of the process of romance reading and their deliberate attempt 10 select books that will include "a gentle hero" and "a slight misunderstanding" suggest that deeply felt needs are the source of their interest in both components of the genre. On the one hand, they long for emotional attention and tender care; on the other, they wish to rehearse (he discovery that a man's distance can be explained and excused as his way of expressing love.
It is easy to condemn this latter aspect of romance reading as a reactionary force thai reconciles women to a social situation which denies them full development, even as it refuses to accord them the emotional sustenance they require. Yet to identify romances with this conservative moment alone is to miss those other benefits associated with the act of reading as'a restorative pastime whose impact on a beleaguered woman is not so simply dismissed. If we are serious about feminist politics and committed to reformulating not only our own lives but those of others, we would do well not to condescend to romance readers as hopeless traditionalists who are recalcitrant in their refusal to acknowledge the emotional costs of patriarchy. We must begin to recognize that romance reading is fueled by dissatisfaction and disaffection, not by perfect contentment with woman's lot. Moreover, we must also understand that some romance readers' experiences are not strictly congruent with the set of ideological propositions that typically legitimate patriarchal marriage. They are characterized, rather, by a sense of longing caused by patriarchal marriage's failure to address all their needs.
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In recognizing both the yearning and the /act that its resolution is only a vicarious one not so easily achieved in a real situation, we may find it possible to identity more precisely the very limits of patriarchal ideology's success. Endowed thus with a better understanding of what women want, but often fail to get from the traditional arrangements (hey consciously support, we may provide ourselves with that very issue whose discussion would reach many more women and potentially raise their consciousnesses about the particular dangers and failures of patriarchal institutions. By helping romance readers to see why they long for relationale)' and tenderness and are unlikely to get either in the form they desire if current gender arrangements are continued, we may help to convert their amorphous longing into a focused desire tor specific change-----
NOTES
1.  All In&tfmattM about the community has been taken (mm the 197(1 U-S- Census of ihr population Characteristics of the Population, D.S. Department ol Commerce. Social Mid Etunom-, ic Statistics Aiiministration, Bureau ot the Census, May 1972.I have rounded oft *ome of Ihr statistics to disguise the identity of the town
2. See the (olluwini; table.
Table 24.1   Select Demographic Data: Customers of Dorothy livans
CííPSory	Rŕrwuse*	iVjimWT	%
Age	(42) Less than 25	*	5
	25-44	26	62
	45-54	12	28
	55 and older	1	5
Marital Status	(40) Single	3	8
	Married	33	82
	Widowed /vepa ra ted	4	10
Parental Status	t JO) Children	35	55
	Nu children	4	12
Afp at Marriage	Mnn-19.9 Median-19.2		
Educational Level	(40) High school diploma	21	53
	1-3 years of college	10	25
	College degree	t	2(1
Work Status	(401 Full or part rime	IS	45
	Child or home care	17	43
Family Income	(38) 514.999 or below	2	5
	15,000-24,999	w	
	25.00049,999	14	37
	50.000 .	4	11
Church Attendance	(40) Once or more a week	15	38
	1-3 timiTv per month	8	»
	A lew times per year	9	22
	Nor in two |2) wars	H	20
Note: (4A1 indicates ihn number oi mpown per qucjnonmi te category. A louloi 42 respoo^e* p*r cuec.tirv ,» We maximum r>w»ble I'erteni ralailaliore» .ire all rounded tu the i\t*r*n whole number.
4
Women Read 'he Romance
213
3.  Quoted by Brotman (19«»). AH other details about Ihe Harlequin audience liav« been taken trom bmiman's article Similar information was also givrn by Harlequin in Margaret lensen (J930>, whose dissertation. IViwn m«/ Kamanňr ricfion. A Cm Study cf Harlequin Enterprises, Romatttes.and Reeden, is the only other study I know of to attempt an investigation CÍ romance readers. Because len-en encountered ihr »amp problems in rryifiR to asfemble a representative sample, she relied on interviews with randomly selected readers at a used bookstore. However, the similarity of her findings to ihose if» my study indicate that the lack of statistical representativeness in the rase of real readers does not necessarily preclude applying those readers" attitudes and opinions more generally to » large portion of the audience for romantic fiction.
4.  See Diutman (1900). All other details about the Silhouette audience have been drawn from Urounan'? article. The similarity of the Smithton reader» to other segment» of the romance audience i* explored In pCMttf depth In my book (Radway. 1984). However, the only other available ŕhidy of romance readers which includes snmestatiHiirs. Peter R Minn's (1969) The Remantv NovtL A Survey of Reading Habits, indicates that the British audience (or such fiction has included in the past more older women as well as younger, unmarried readers than are represented in my «ample. However. Mann's survey raise* suspicions because it was sponsored by the company that markets (he novels and because its findings are represented in such a polemical form, For an analysis of Mann's work, see Jensen (1980, pp. 389-392)-
5.  The Smithton readers are Hot avid television watcher*, fen of (he wumen. lor instance, claimed lu watch television less than three hours per week. Fourteen indicated that they watch four lu seven hours a week, while eleven claimed eight to fourteen hours of weekly viewing. Only 'our »aid they watch an average ol (itteen to twenty hours a week, while only one admitted viewing twenly-one or more hours a week. When asked how ölten they watch soap operas, twenty-four of the Smithton women checked "never." five selected "rarely," seven chase "sometimes/ and four checked "often" Two refused to answer the questions.
6.  The Smithton readers' constani emphasis on the educational value of romances was one of the most interesting aspects of our conversations, and chapter J of Reading Ihr Romance (Rrtdway, !9S4) discusses it in depth. Although their citation of the lnstruchonal value ol romances to a college professor interviewer may well Pea form of sell-Justification, the women also provided ample evidence that they do in fact learn and remember facts aboul geographv, historical customs. t>nd dress from the books they read. Their emphasis »n this aspect of their reading, 1 mighl add, seems to betoken a profound curiosity and longing to know more about the exciting world beyond their suburban homes.
7 For material on housewives' attitudes toward domestic work and their duties as familv counselors, see Oakley 11975a, 1975b): See also Komofovsky (1967) and Lopata (1973).
S. CliOdorow (1978). I would llkp to express my thank» to Sharon O'Brien for first bringing Chodorow's work to my attention and fur all those innumerablediscus&ions in which we debated the merit* ol her theory and its applicability in women's live*, including our own.
9.  After developing my argument that (he Smithton women arc seeking ideal romances which depict Ihcgenerally lend« ireMtmenl öl' Ihe heroine. 1 discovered Beatrice Faust's (I9SI) Women. Sex. and Pamogruphy: A Contnrversia!Study in which Faust points oul thai certain kinds of historical romance"- tend |o portray their heroes as masculine, but emotionally expressive. Althüugh 1 think Faust's overall argument has many problems, not the least of which is her heavy reliance on hormonal differences to explain variations in female and male sexual preferences, I do agree that some women prefer the detailed description of romantic love and tenderness to the careful anatomical repiesenialions characteristic o( male pornography,
10.  Maryks(1979, p 69).
11.   Ten ot the twenty books in the sample for the ideal romance were drawn from the Smithton group's answers to requests that they list ihnr three favorite romances and author»-----Because I did not include a formal query in the questionnaire about particularly bad
romances, I drew the twenty titles from oral interviews and from Dot's newsletter reviews,...
12.  See Faust (I«S1), passim.
13.  There are two exceptions to (his assertion. Both 77ie ProMd Hrerd by Oleste DeDlasis and The Fulfillment In' LaVyrlť- Spencer detail the involvement of the principal characters with other individuals Their treatment of the subject, however, is decidedly different Irom that typically found in the bad romances Both of these books are highly unusual in thai they begin by detailing the extraordinary depth of the love shared by hero and heroine, who marry early
214
ROMANCE NOVELS AND SLASHER FILMS
in the story The rest ol each book chronicles the misunderstandings thai Arise between heroine and hero. In both books the tliiid person narrative always indicates very clearly to the reader llijtt the two are still deeply in love with each other and are acting out ol anger, distrust, and insecurity.
14- In the romances considered awful bv the Smithton readers, the remterpretahon takes place much later in the story than in the ideal romances. In addition, Ihe behavior that is explained away is more violent, aggressively cruel, and obviously vicious. Although the hero is suddenly ir.in«formed by Ihe heroine's reinterpreration ol hin motives, his tenderness, gentleness, and care are not emphasized in the "tailed romance«" ,n they are in their ideal counterparts.
15.  Modleski (1980) has alsu argued that 'the mystery nl male motives" is a crucial concern in all romantic fiction (p. 439). Although she suggests, as I will here, thai the process through which male misbehavior is reinterpreted in a more favorable light is a justification or legitimation of such action, she does not specifically connect it» centrálny in the plot to a reader's need to use such a strategy in her own marriage. While there arf similarities between Mtidleski'fi analysis and that presented here, she emphasizes the negative, disturbing effects ,«t romance reading on readers In fact, she claims, the novels "end up actually intensifying conflicts for the reader" {p. 445) and cause women to "reemerge feeling -.. more guilty than ever" (p. 447). While I would admit that romance reading might create unconscious guilt, I think it absolutely essential that any explanation of such behavior like into account the substantial amount of evidence indicating that women not only en/oy romance reading, but (eel replenished and reconstituted by it as well.
16.  Deveraux 119*), p. 66).
REFERENCES
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Millan. Jensen, M. (1980). Women and romantic fiction: A case study of Harlequin Enterprises.
romances, and readers Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McMaster University,
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435-448. Oakley. A. (1975a). Tlie sociology of liúusework. New York: Pantheon-Oakley, A. (1975b). Woman's work: The housewife, past and present- New York: Pantheon, Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy and popular literature.
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