Isn't it Romantic? Part 2

As I said in my post on September 18, I was curious about the popularity of romance novels.  I read Janice Radway's Reading the Romance hoping to find some answers.

I imagine that some of Radway's conclusions might be different today given that her book was published in 1984.  (I think there was a revised edition in the early 90s.)  Nonetheless, I came away thinking that some (maybe many) women are very unsatisfied with their lives though they might not say so, and in order to find some kind of fulfillment and enjoyment, albeit temporary, they turn to romance novels.

What I find troublesome is that though these readers of romance novels find their lives somewhat unsatisfying, they persist in believing that they can find satisfaction in precisely what is making their lives somewhat unsatisfying.  What I mean is: these women believe that men can fulfill their needs exactly how these women want to be fulfilled. And what are those needs? They want to be nurtured.  That sounds reasonable; however, they want men to be nurturing in a specific way. What to make of this?

Radway calls romance novels compensatory fiction.  It is called this "because the act of reading them fulfills certain basic psychological needs for women that have been induced by culture and its social structures but that often remain unmet in day-to-day existence as the result of the concomitant restrictions on female activity." Radway further states that romance reading compensates women in two ways:

1.  "It provides vicarious emotional nurturance by prompting identification between the reader and a fictional heroine whose identity as a woman is always confirmed by the romantic and sexual attentions of an ideal male."

2.  "It fills a woman's mental world with the varied details of simulated travel and permits her to converse imaginatively with adults from a broad spectrum of social space.  Moreover, the world-creating and instructional functions of romances provide the woman who believes in the value of individual achievement with the opportunity to feel that education has not ceased for her nor has the capacity to succeed in culturally approved terms been erased by her acceptance of the less-valued domestic roles."

I believe more women are receiving the formal education they desire, and more women are traveling by themselves or with other women.  So perhaps that second way romance reading is compensatory is not as popular as it once was.  But it's that first way that romance reading is compensatory that is disturbing, and not because I don't want women to feel nurtured, but because I wonder how realistic it is to believe that men are capable of being the type of nurturer that many women desire.

It's also puzzling that in the world of romance novels, patriarchy is so supportive of women's desire for independence.  "In the utopia of romance fiction, [female] 'independence' and a secure individual 'identity' are never compromised by the paternalistic care and protection of the male."  But then again, "the romance fantasy is not a fantasy about discovering a uniquely interesting life partner, but a ritual wish to be cared for, loved, and validated in a particular way."  Put another way, "all popular romantic fiction originates in the failure of patriarchal culture to satisfy its female members.  Consequently, the romance functions always as a utopian wish-fulfillment fantasy through which women try to imagine themselves as they often are not in day-to-day existence, that is, as happy and content."

Radway also found within her sample of women who engage in repetitive romance consumption that "their favorite romances continue to advance the ideology of romantic love, insisting thereby that marriage between a man and a woman is not an economic or social necessity or a purely sexual affiliation but an emotional bond freely forged."  (N.B.  Even Sarah Palin has admitted that marriage is a business contract.)

Radway concludes that "this literary form reaffirms its founding culture's belief that women are valuable not for their unique personalities but for their biological sameness and their ability to perform that essential role of maintaining and reconstituting others."

Now I understand a bit better why my grandmother repetitively consumed romance novels.  Yes, her unhappiness with her day-to-day life had a lot to do with it, and because of the year she was born and that she was born to immigrants with little education, I believe she was caught.  Romance novels were indeed an escape.