On problematic romance (and other) novels

[soleiltropiques]

This rant/discussion began as a book review on Goodreads, which morphed into a discussion of misogyny in romance and (some) other genres. The review (abridged, because Goodreads caps the length of book reviews) and discussion are reproduced herePlease note that this review contains a discussion of adult topics

Comments

[honeymink]

I haven't read very many but one thing I find exhausting in historical (regency era?) romance novels is the "the first, now dead, wife was evil and he never loved her" trope (not sure we can already call this a trope but well). It's this things where the first wife usually tricked the unsuspecting hero into the marriage and though he tried his best to deal with it all, he couldn't, and the wife went insane/cheated/died in childbirth after tricking the hero into sexual relations/etc. -- the hero spends quite some time nursing his manpain but eventually a young vivacious woman saves him despite himself and he can finally truly experience love. Whenever I read this I find it so offensive that we have to pit women against each other that way... the internalized misogyny that goes into writing something like this is astonishing. It's this idea that a man (our hero) can only truly love once and that can only be the heroine. There is no room for the possibility that you may have had a partner before that you have loved, that was taken from