Teaching Note: Reading the Romance; Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature

The phenomenal success of romances has naturally stirred the contempt high culture critics, and more recently concern feminists, who have generally understood these narratives as promoting a kind false consciousness, coating patriarchal values with frosting fantasy. "Smithton women" appropriated pleasure strictly theirs, an antidote to endless claims made on them by husbands children, defense "female" like emotional sharing (more or less) egalitarian marriage. [...]for many, regular reading books fed proto-feminism that for real gains in their lives, within limits patriarchy sets women.