As someone who grew up on Taylor Swift and High School Musical, I’ve gotten used to my interests being dismissed as ‘fluff.’ I’ve found that this sentiment extends into the romance genre, especially as a student at Cambridge. Whenever anyone from home would ask about my English degree, one inevitable question would follow: What is your favourite book? Now, as I’m sure many others do, I have a few prepared answers depending on the inquirer, but very few of these would come from the romance genre. So, what’s with the stigma of frivolity surrounding the romance genre and how do authors grapple with this?

"Why would a show like Gilmore Girls, which markets itself as a chick-flick, prize high academia?"

When I first obtained my offer from Cambridge, I fully embraced the Rory Gilmore-esque lifestyle I planned to live. I later realised that Rory herself rarely reads novels that weren’t written by old, privileged white men. She reads what many would call ‘highbrow’ novels. This I found surprising as you’d expect the Venn diagram of Gilmore Girls fans and romance readers to be almost completely circular. For many of my friends, Rory Gilmore is a symbol of intellectualism; she’s the staple good girl but she definitely falls in love. This got me thinking: why would a show like Gilmore Girls, which markets itself as a chick-flick, prize high academia? One answer I can give you is that this is a survival mechanism, something that romance authors are not unfamiliar with.

Understandably, you might think that the stigma around romance stems from misogyny; like how football fans are deemed passionate for chanting at matches but teenage girls are called crazed for calling out to their favourite artists at concerts. You’d be on the right track. The romance genre is rooted in stories written by women for women about so-called ‘women’s things’: emotion, gossip and love. Authors like Jane Austen bore this reputation of triviality and it would protect them, enabling them to keep writing. Through the guise of writing romance (the gossip-mongering and match-making in Emma and enemies-to-lovers courtship in Pride and Prejudice), Austen could weave in societal commentary. She exposed class rigidity and encouraged women to stay true to themselves under crushing expectations.

In Pride and Prejudice, Austen summarises such impossible expectations through Caroline Bingley and Mr Darcy: “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing and modern languages, to deserve the world; and besides all this she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved.”

“All this she must possess,” adds Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

Austen’s underlying tone is sarcastic, capturing how women could not (and still cannot) win.

Early modern author, Margaret Cavendish, even outwardly admitted to writing frivolously to avoid scrutiny. The Brontë sisters used male pseudonyms for their works, yet their identities were questioned for allegedly feminine themes. It seemed that profound insights didn’t belong in the romance genre. Yet many historical women entrapped in the confines of society could read these novels to subtly transgress societal norms. Romance gave them escapism, as it does for me.

The question as to whether this romance cloaking device extends to our current climate is debatable. I find that authors may now distance themselves from the genre for the very reasons I have spoken about. Even today, female authors, regardless of their novel’s topic, are often categorised as ‘women’s fiction writers,’ seeming to discourage or exclude a male readership altogether. Moreover, there is a tendency for publishers to box authors into genres, making it increasingly difficult for them to write beyond expectation. Nora Roberts, for instance, primarily writes romance novels under her own name but occupies the pseudonym J.D Robb for her suspense thrillers. She also writes as Jill March and even uses a different name in the UK, Sarah Hardesty. In a 2020 Guardian interview, Roberts emphasised how using different pseudonyms enabled her to break out of “the phone booth” of “category romance”.

Publication has become more obsessed with marketing and profit. In the embryonic novel industry, people had less definite ideas about what would sell. However, now there are regulations on formatting, colour schemes and how covers should be designed. People have come to expect certain tropes, which have increasingly been used to advertise (one bed trope anyone?). Nevertheless, the rise of BookTok and social media have positively impacted romance authors in many ways, allowing indie authors to self-advertise and gain traction for their works. I would argue that Emily Henry, as one of the most prolific and popular romance authors of our time, positively embraces the romance genre. Yet, she interweaves witty exchanges and tension, along with many of the tropes romance readers know and love. Claiming to be influenced by Nora Ephron and Gilmore Girls (a woman after my own heart), it is unsurprising that Henry’s books have reached her target audience and enabled her to flourish in the industry.

"In such a high-pressure environment, romanticising simplicity might seem more appealing"

Over the holidays I have been able to get back into reading romance, devouring series after series as a welcome antithesis to Renaissance poetry. There’s something so enticing about snuggling up with a warm coffee and reading about a baker falling in love with a florist. Especially during winter, the stakes are comfortably low and I relish being able to live vicariously through the characters. A small town/hockey/cowboy romance – or some fusion of these tropes – is all I need to relax after a long school term. However, upon returning to Cambridge, I am unsure whether these reading habits can continue.

In such a high-pressure environment, you’d imagine that romanticising simplicity might seem more appealing. However, you have to wonder whether somewhere so focused on academic validation is more susceptible to common dismissive attitudes that make me, and many others, instinctively want to hide my love for romance novels. Or perhaps it is the workload; people have told me more than once that their degree caused them to do so much reading, they never wanted to pick up another book again. Many libraries in Cambridge naturally have reading-for-leisure sections and I’d encourage anyone to make good use of these, as I plan to.

In the past, the romance genre has been dominated, overwhelmingly, by heteronormativity, ableism, and white protagonists. Only in recent years has romance begun to be more inclusive of other races, sexualities, abilities and genders, something that undoubtedly deserves to be celebrated and normalised. The romance genre, as one of the most marketable areas of fiction, deserves to be recognised as shaping and reflecting changes in society. It is also one of the most accessible genres and emphasises that reading is for everyone. However, I still find myself being selective about who I entrust with the details of my most recent romance read. I am hopeful that Cambridge and society will become more accepting of the romance genre in future and less inclined to confine authors to a literary prison.

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