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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