Out of Wedlock: The Consummation and Consumption of Marriage in Contemporary Romance Fiction (Critical Essay‪)‬

[1] To the marriage of true minds, romance fiction has not admitted many impediments. The genre has long relied on the marriage closure in the tradition of the fairytale happily-ever-after, and because love and marriage continue to "go together" in popular culture discourses, many critics of the genre have taken as given that romance novels invariably promote a simplistic relationship between desires for emotional and legal commitment. Linda Christian-Smith is a case in point, claiming that 'romance has all the hallmarks of a training camp for marriage, where heart and hearth become bound together and the wifely qualities of self-sacrifice and fidelity are instilled. As such, romance is an important social dynamic for the learning of gendered relations of subordination and domination' (29). Her sentiments are reiterated by romance scholars, many of whom are critical of the genre's sanctifying use of marriage as an institution that perpetuates gendered power inequalities. However, while such criticisms tend to be based on analysis of romance novels from the 1980s and earlier, and do not attend to subsequent shifts in the genre, the assumptions persist in contemporary scholarship. Jeanne Dubino, writing in 2004 refers to the 'formula of contemporary romances' and argues that 'Once the goal of marriage has been reached, the novel usually ends' (103-104). She cites Janice Radway's work from 1984 and 1990, and Jean Radford from 1986, unproblematically. Similarly, Barbara Fuchs' 2004 research in Romance also relies on Radway and addresses contemporary romance logic as demanding 'the happy ending in a wedding, actual or anticipated' (126). [2] While it is cliched to point out that times are changing, shifts in social structures that frame married life in the contemporary world have recast the perceptions and lived experiences of marriage in dramatic ways. Marriages and their ceremonies remain highly fashionable in these apparently postfeminist times and represent a lucrative industry, but the fact that couples are now typically aware of rising divorce rates (and therefore their real-world chances of maintaining a marriage), necessarily floats marriage as a signifier. Further, romance is a highly socially responsive form of narrative production, as the fairytale resonances in the genre suggest, and romance novels have a compelling relationship with the traditions of oral storytelling. Marina Warner demonstrates that traditional stories were often told among women as they worked, attended births and socialised together, and thus the narratives reflected their tastes and interests. Romance is likewise produced predominantly by and for women and, as with the oral tradition of storytelling, is characterised by the repeated retellings of a stock plot whereby each iteration includes alterations and additions that reflect social trends and concurrent shifts in audience sentiment. These changes then manifest themselves in the next telling of the story.