One Summer in Savannah: A Novel

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape and sexual violence.

Romance novels have been popular, particularly with women, since their origin in the late 18th century. Romance novels focus on the development and conflict within romantic relationships, typically from the woman’s perspective, and always have a fundamentally happy ending with a successful relationship as the primary conclusion. Despite its massive and constantly growing popularity, literary scholars have traditionally dismissed or ignored the romance genre. Feminist scholars argue that this is potentially due to romance novels’ focus on women and women’s desires, in contrast to more masculine-oriented genres like detective fiction (Clark, Beverly Lyon, et al. “Reading Romance, Reading Ourselves.” The Centennial Review, vol. 40, no. 2, 1996, pp. 359-84).

However, as feminism and feminist studies were increasingly incorporated into literary scholarship in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, more scholars began to consider the cultural role that romance novels play, especially in relation to feminist perspectives. Scholarly research focuses on various aspects of the genre, from articles on traditional fairy tales in romance novels, to explorations of the depiction of women by women for women in romance novels, to books and articles asking questions about why romance novels are so popular and successful.