The RWA hasn’t brought up the definition of romance recently, but while I was playing on Wikipedia, I thought I’d look up their definition:
A romance novel is a novel from the genre currently known as romance. The genre has two strict criteria:
* the story must focus on the relationship and romantic love between a man and a woman;
* the end of the story must be positive, leaving the reader believing that the protagonists’ love and relationship will endure for the rest of their lives.
On the whole, I’d say the wiki entry is not bad. Sure, there are some holes, and certainly the question of plot restrictions and genre requirements could be debated over many, many bottles of wine, but it does pare down what a romance novel is – and not by defining what it is not! I call that a “Canadian definition” so named because Canadians often have to define the differences between American and their own culture by discussing what it is not.
However, the wiki discussion of the Origin of the romance novel caught my attention:
Origins of the romance novel
The earliest English novels in this genre appeared in the 18th century. Classic, highly-regarded romantic novels are Pride and Prejudice (1813), by Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë, and Jane Eyre (1847), by Charlotte Brontë.
Huh. Are these romance novels? More importantly, are they the origins of the romance novel?
I confess to not having read Wuthering Heights, but Jane Eyre? That book left such a poor taste in my mouth I don’t know that I could consider it a foundation for the romance novel – unless it’s a foundation for my personal opinion of what makes an unredeemable hero and what makes for a doormat of a heroine. I’m not a big fan of Ms. Eyre.
Pride and Prejudice, though, I’m on board with that, and Emma, as both books discuss and acknowledge the romantic and matchmaking elements of their storylines frankly, if not on the first page!
So, what other books are the Origins of Romance in your opinion? The Flame and the Flower? Men are From Mars? Red Fish, Blue Fish?
Origins of Romance? Good lord, I’m not sure if you can say it STARTED with Austen. I think Romance has been in books for a lot further than that. I mean, while they often ended tragically, aren’t a lot of the classics about love and what people will do for it? Isn’t that a romance?
Look at Shakespeare. Half his work was romances. (Notably Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both plays where love is found and celebrated.) Great Expectations. Romeo & Juliet come to mind. My sister brings up Dante’s Inferno—though we never read the end—, Cyrano De’Bergerac. What about Fairy Tales? Cinderella?
We could go on and on, including the Greek/Roman myths. Cupid and Psyche anyone?
Smooches,
Dee
Hmmm. I was taught in school that the first romance novel was Ivanhoe. But I’d say Jane Austen qualifies.
I always thought the actual romance novel began with Pamela (Samuel Richardson, 1740) and Shamela (Joseph Andrews) and my personal fave, Tom Jones (Henry Fielding.) I agree that the stories came from fairy tales & refined by Shakespeare. The Decameron was the first novel of all, right? Written in 1350-ish, I think? But not romantic. (I think it was about the plague.—I can’t remember back as far as Freshman year!) Don Quixote was written around Shakespeare’s time and definitely had a romantic thread. But novels really didn’t get wide readership until Richardson’s day.
If you’re thinking the origins of the modern (I mean current) romance novel, I think just about any writer will cite Mary Stewart, whose books—written in the 1950s) really established a certain tone and sensibility that echoes today.
Just my $.02.
Great site, ladies. I check you often!
Nancy
Nancy’s comment raises an interesting question: did the book we consider “the romance novel” appear in the 20th century? Or was it a growth from previous romantic stories going back to the first published works after the printing press was invented?
And hell yeah on Pamela/Shamela.
As an Eighteenth-Century scholar, everything started in the 18thC. I mean, everything. But a little before Austen—I’d go with Fanny Burney’s Evelina, which itself gets a lot from Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa. But Austen’s the closest to “real” modern romance. The Brontes DO NOT COUNT!!!!! IMHO.
Heyer has to be included in early modern romances, along with Stewart.
Sarah F – you are cracking me up. I was “this close” to being an 18th century specialist for a PhD before I ran screaming away from Grad School. But Evelina was totally part of the reason. I was sitting here trying to remember the name, and could only get as far as the secondary title about some chick entering society upon the something something something.
But yeah, 18th century novels rock.
If we are talking about Romance as a genre, it’s difficult to have a first one, because you can’t have a genre with only one book in it.
Romance as a recognised genre (in the UK at least) is, I think, really a post-WW2 phenomenon, but there are pre-WW2 books that can be fitted into it (Heyer’s for instance).
If discussion is limited (as I reckon it should be) to novels, then I think that it would be difficult to find anything earlier than Pamela that would fit into the genre as defined in Wiki, but it wasn’t called a Romance at the time (indeed my edition claims that it has been “published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both sexes” which is a long way from the goal of, say, The Book of Angels.)
I’m not sure that I have really helped much here.
I would go along with the idea that _Jane Eyre_ fits the modern romance definition. Girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back (minus a limb or two) and they get married at the end and seem to be happy together.
And much of the book is really about Jane’s growth and development, and Rochester coming to realize he can’t manipulate Jane and everything else to his own ends—he has to change, and he does, before he can get her back.
SBSarah wrote:
“Nancy’s comment raises an interesting question: did the book we consider “the romance novel†appear in the 20th century? Or was it a growth from previous romantic stories going back to the first published works after the printing press was invented?”
Couldn’t both be the case? I.e., the precise form called “the romance novel” could have achieved its first recognizable form in the 20th century after a long evolution from a variety of precursors. I’d be willing to bet, FWIW, that they would extend past the origin of the printing press and into oral tradition. After all, according to one of my Anonymous Four liner notes, the notion of courtly love—related to but different from romantic love—is recognized from songs dating to the 11th century.
I wonder if the tradition that culminated in our romance novels is strictly a Western phenomenon, or if it evolved independently in other cultures as well—any of you literary scholar-types out there know?
Related also to Nancy’s comment—I don’t know if the Decameron is considered the first novel, but the parts I’ve read are travelogue and do deal with the plague (in Florence, to be precise).
I’m smiling at the subtitle that Stephen gives: “published in rder to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both sexesâ€
I always thought the romance was sort of a hybrid between two strains:
– The morality tract written to teach good conduct to girls
– The age-old tales of love, often adulterous
Put those together and you get the novel of courtship. The search for love, sanctified within the bonds of matrimony. Or, rather, sex with the church’s blessings on the procreative institution.
I don’t know about Red Fish, Blue Fish, but I like Go Dog, Go for that. “Do you like my hat?” “No.” and then finally at the end, he likes her hat and they drive off into the sunset together.
I guess it’s obvious I’ve been reading this a lot. Maybe 50-100 times in the last couple of years. 😉
While I’ve not gone heavily into researching the genre (yet!), I think we need to take into account the genre’s development in different countries.
In the UK, it flourished long before the market in the US developed. Mills and Boon started pre WW1, and even though they didn’t initially concentrate on romance, the era post WW2 certainly saw a flowering
of the romance genre in the UK – and by extension, to Australia adn NZ, which were heavily influenced by the UK at this time. In addition to Heyer and Cartland, romance writers like Lucilla Andrews, Lucy Walker, Essie Summers, were all well-established names by the 1960s.
In a speech given at the RWAus conference recently, Stephanie Laurens said that ‘The Flame and the Flower’ was one of the first romances released in the US market, and that it sold well because it was filling a reader demand for romance that had not been met in the US market to that point. She also suggested that, in trying to analyse its success, the publishing firms (at that time, predominantly male!) decided that it must be the sex and therefore sought more books like it – hence the flurry of rape/forced seduction books in that period.
Juliet Flesch’s From Australia with Love: A history of modern Australian popular romance is a good read and, while it focuses on Australia, because our market is influenced by what is happening overseas, it provides a good background to the genre, especially the UK market.
Okay, I’ll shut up now 😉
Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
Whoops—that would be the first gay romance. Sorry.
I agree that Jane Eyre ‘counts’. Whilst it has other elements (primarily Romance with a capital R and the spiritualist elements), the core story is of two people who are attracted to one another both physically, emotionally and intellectually and who overcome both society’s and their own objections to the relationship. It even does the “things going well until a problem makes her leave him” with the absolute classic wedding interuptus…
Somewhere in the gap between the Brontes and Georgette Heyer, I think what you could call ‘girlhood literature’ definitely contributed to the development of the romance novel as we know it. From Louisa May Alcott to L M Montgomery, there was a group of women writers whose books dealt with young women coming of age and, either by the end of the book or in its sequel(s), falling in love, getting married, having babies.
I re-read some of LM Montgomery’s books recently and was thinking that though these books are usually found in the children’s section, they actually have a lot in common with modern contemporary romance. The love story is usually, if not ‘the’ focus, then ‘a’ focus of the plot; the heroines are identifiable, the stories full of the details of everyday life.
A few examples: Daddy Long Legs, by Jean Webster; A Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter; the sequels to Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery.
Oh, one more thought: in a league of its own, and the inspiration for countless historical romances, is The Scarlet Pimpernel, first published in 1900. I read it for the first time when I was about 13 and Sir Percy has set the benchmark for romantic heroes ever since!
Yeah, L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, a stand-alone book with a 29-year-old heroine, is most definitely a romance, and a terrific one at that.
I think there’s less of a gap between the “founders” (Brontes, Austen) and the 20th century than most of us would imagine—women’s fiction was huge in the Victorian era, but most of the popular novels of that day are no longer in print. Here’s a link to a list of some of these authors (the comments on the page suggest that while they wrote in a number of genres, “sensation and romance influences predominate”). http://www.ampltd.co.uk/collections_az/NinethCWW-1/highlights.aspx
By the way, the Wiki article now reads “two people” instead of “a man and a woman.” If you smart bitches changed it, thanks! But if you just misquoted, shame on you…
Love,
MJ (yes, I write gay romance) Pearson
MJ Pearson’s link and its list of names fascinates me:
Matilda Betham-Edwards, Florence Marryat, Helen Mathers, Charlotte Riddell, Dora Russell, Adeline Sergeant and Emma Jane Worboise
What a roll call. We don’t read them and they aren’t in print. But here we are, talking about “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” & etc. Like them or lump them, those are still in circulation.
At an equidistant point in time, what will happen with the writers whose work we’re discussing today, I wonder? Who’s going to last? Is there any way to know?
[Just now, my eye caught by hot-pink book jacket by Jacqueline Susann in the corner of my bookshelf: a friend gave me “Valley of the Dolls” recently for a trip down memory lane.]
Actually, there is a good argument that The Tale of Genji is not only the first “true novel”, but is certainly the first romantic novel: http://webworld.unesco.org/genji/en/index.shtml
There are older romantic stories, but if you are considering “novel” as a literary form distinct from tale, saga, legend, etc., then I have to go with Genji. But, I guess since it’s Japanese, it can’t really be considered the forerunner of Euro-American “Romances.”
Speaking of Europe, don’t underestimate the impact of the Continent’s Romantic period (Sorrows of Young Werther, anyone?), which made the focus/celebration of emotion (versus the repression and denial of emotion) an acceptable subject for art and literature. This might be more related to modern Romance’s emphasis on emotionalism than the more repressed Pamela.
I think the romance genre boomed in the seventies because someone finally decided to market books “written by women for women.” It was all just part of modern commercialism, and the happy ending was part of the requirement, which is why I don’t think you’ll find the modern definition of romance going back before Jane Eyre. In part because of the marketing, in part because historically women were ignored as readers and writers, but also because of the influences of the times—they were into tragedies or comedies or mysteries, but not boy-girl falling in love and living happily ever after.
MJ, now I spend an hour browsing your site and reading the teasers. You naughty girl you.
Get the Butcher’s Boy published (or email me the continuation, how can you stop there) and finish Discreet Young Gentlemen. 🙂
Don’t the gothics (my first romances were the Victoria Holt ouvre, starting before I read The Flame and The Flower) fit in there somewhere? Weren’t they published in the U.S. before TF2 (pardon the cutesy shorthand)?
MJ: I didn’t change the Wiki article to read “two people” and I’m not sure if Candy did, but I’m glad to see the change. I literally cut-and-pasted the text when I wrote the article yesterday, so in the time I posted it here and when you saw it, someone had the foresight to catch the heterosexism and edit the wiki. To which I say, “Boo Yah!”
Gay love story, Doug? What about the Illiad? Patroklos and Achilles? Now there was a pair. Not really an HEA though.