Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature
by Radway, Janice A
- Used
- as new
- Paperback
- Condition
- As New
- ISBN 10
- 0807843490
- ISBN 13
- 9780807843499
- Seller
-
STREETSVILLE, Ontario, Canada
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991 Book. As New. Soft cover. 2nd Ed... Originally published in 1984 and now re-issued with a new introduction by the author. "Reading the Romance" challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. "We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations. 276p. bibliography.index..
Reviews
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- KALAMOS BOOKS (CA)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 038544
- Title
- Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature
- Author
- Radway, Janice A
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- New As New
- Edition
- 2nd Ed..
- ISBN 10
- 0807843490
- ISBN 13
- 9780807843499
- Publisher
- The University of North Carolina Press
- Place of Publication
- Chapel Hill
- Date Published
- 1991
- Keywords
- WOMEN LITERATURE READING ROMANCE
- Bookseller catalogs
- Women Writers; Books and Bibliographies; Women;
Terms of Sale
KALAMOS BOOKS
All books are carefully described. If the book you receive does not match,then please contact Kalamos Books, so we can address the problem. We can accept payments (Cash, Cheques, Postal Orders and International Money Orders)in your choice of the following currencies - CAN $, US$, UK Pounds and Euros - enquire for quotes at the current rate of exchange.
About the Seller
KALAMOS BOOKS
Biblio member since 2004
STREETSVILLE, Ontario
About KALAMOS BOOKS
Kalamos Books specializes in Books about Greece (Ancient,Byzantine and particularly Modern Greece) and also books about the Balkans & Ottoman Turkey. As well there is a wide selection of Fiction including stories set in Greece, or by Greek authors, as well as historical novels. We can special order books from Greece and handle library purchase orders for books in Greek. In addition we have interesting travel books about other countries, and have some Canadiana and popular fiction.Ask about antique maps and prints and vintage postcards of Greece.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...