When one thinks of romantic novels, shiny covers surely come to mind, titles so sugary that they are fattening and authors with names that seem from another era, or at least typical of some of the heroines of their own books (Corín Tellado, Danielle Steel , Megan Maxwell).
And despite all the romantic is one of the best-selling genres and, therefore, the most read. In fact, it enjoys enviable health: ‘Fortune’ magazine placed romantic books sold at 47 million in 2021. Many women, and more and more men, abandon themselves to the passions of its pages. But, although in recent years this has ceased to be a more or less discreet phenomenon (probably the filmy covers of shirtless models helped the secrecy), the truth is that the romantic novel continues to have a worse reputation than others just as popular, such as the historical or the black, and is still considered a minor genre. Unlike other cases, such as science fiction, traditionally despised, or at least ignored, and which has been experiencing a boom in our country for a couple of years, romantic fiction does not seem to suffer the same fate and continues to raise eyebrows and provoke smug smiles.
Perhaps one of the reasons for the general contempt for the genre lies precisely in its most defining characteristic. Although sentimental novels are currently undergoing changes, since the protagonists have ceased to be the model of a heterosexual woman hunting (or waiting) for a man to conquer her and have been adopting points of view more in keeping with the times (two examples of LGTBI romanticism are ‘Call me by your name’ and the graphic novels ‘Heartstopper’), the romantic was the first genre designed and written by and for women.
And in a society in which what is traditionally feminine has always been despised (there are still children who do not like pink “because it is for girls”), it seems inevitable that this disdain will be transferred to texts that speak of love and feelings, a naturally feminine terrain. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that romantic relationships, especially marriage, defined life for half the population.
On the other hand, another reason that seems to point to the genre’s bad reputation is its poor literary quality.. At first glance, it may seem that this prejudice is true, not only because in many sentimental novels, with more or less success, there is a repetition of archetypes (the nice and good-natured protagonist, the tortured but sensitive boy) and plot lines. (a couple knows each other, sometimes they hate each other, a problem separates them but love always triumphs) but also because of the enormous number of works of this type that are published, and whose pastel-colored covers are repeated, clones, on the shelves of bookstores and supermarkets. In fact, it is estimated that Corín Tellado, a mid-20th century romantic legend, wrote more than 5,000 texts in this style.
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It has been a long time since, in 1740, it was published ‘Pamela’, considered the first novel of this genrecuriously written by a man and conceived as a model of behavior that readers of the time should follow. ‘Pamela’ has been somewhat outdated, but there are other examples of romance that are still as valid today as the day they were written. Nobody doubts the extraordinary literary quality of novels such as ‘Pride and Prejudice’, by Jane Austen, or ‘Jane Eyre’, vilified when it was published for being amoral and “anti-Christian”, as the English critic Elizabeth Eastlake defined it in 1848, and that even today arouses passions and revisionism, especially for the role of the famous “crazy woman from the attic”.
The conventions by which we classify people, fiction, and the world are more challenged than ever, and the romance novel is no exception. Perhaps we need a new classification, or stop pigeonholing everything, and simply get carried away by what we feel like reading.