Gothic romance blends elements of the horror and romance genres to create thrilling, dramatic novels often featuring female protagonists battling through terrifying ordeals while struggling to be with their true loves. While Gone with the Wind is not technically classified as a romance novel, it had a longlasting influence on the genre with many novels copying its setting, themes, characterization, etc.ĭaphne Du Maurier’s gothic romance, Rebecca(1938) became a bestseller and invigorated the gothic romance subgenre. In the 20th century, novels such as Georgette Heyer’s Georgian-era romance, The Black Moth (published in 1921) and Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War era epic, Gone with the Wind, (published in 1936) revitalized public interest in romance novels, especially historical fiction. For female readers tied down by social norms and conventions, these romance novels became a form of escape and inspiration. Jane Austen’s novels as well as the works of the Brontë sisters (especially Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre) introduced female characters who were ultimately rewarded with succesful marriages for expressing their individuality or their own desires. Typically, romance novels reflect the desires of their audience. The term "Happily Ever After" or HEA has become an industry standard regarding how a modern romance novel is supposed to end. Any development of a romantic relationship between two (or more) people-as well as an ending that was emotionally satisfying (usually happy but not always)-became the two core guidelines that romance novels follow to this day. The heroines of these novels eventually found the loves of their lives and ended the novels secure and happy. Although modern romance novels have expanded to include both authors and protagonists of different genders, races, sexualities, and abilities, historically, romance novels separate themselves from other genres by being primarily written by women, for women, and about women.Įarly romance novels featured heterosexual, white female protagonists either defying social conventions or overcoming personal struggles in pursuit of their own happiness. In novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, the gothic romances of Ann Radcliffe, and the works of Jane Austen, readers were introduced to a new form of fiction, one that primarily focused on the lives and struggles of female protagonists. The modern romance novel, or mass-market romance novel as we know it today, has its origins in the romantic fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries.
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