By Dave Newsom
Chances are, if asked about such a thing as “Romance Novels,” we may all automatically think of the thin, cheap, mass-market paperbacks—more than likely published by Harlequin—that our grandmother had stacked by the table next to her recliner, complete with playfully lurid, bodice-ripping covers and histrionic titles like Man Out of Reach; Love Child; and Where the Wolf Leads.
Contrary to anyone’s predictions, this genre previously considered obsolete has recently undergone a notable resurgence. The book publishing industry, today, finds itself in a best-selling renaissance, a resurgence over the last ten or twenty years of one of the oldest and most reliable writing genres—the Romance Novel.
Although the times have changed, and the authors have changed, and the covers and their titles have changed, and the genre’s popularity has changed (it’s certainly no longer just our grandmother reading these books), some things obviously have not changed within the Romance Novel. Some things within the old genre will not change and cannot change.
With that in mind, and with Valentine’s Day at hand, let’s look back through the years at some of the most respected and highly regarded “Romance Tales” in the English language. Chances are, you’ve likely heard of some of these, and maybe you’ve even read some of them (whether by choice or by a merciless teacher assigning it in English class). Regardless, one thing is certain–when it comes to the romance genre, the adage is true: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
- Wuthering Heights (1847) – Emily Bronte
I guess this seems as good as any place to start the discussion, seeing as how the latest film iteration of this classic British novel is due in cinemas starting any minute now. Emily Bronte first published her novel under the pseudonym “Ellis Bell” to maintain an air of androgyny and—quite simply—to help get the book published. Full of dark, stormy nights, and rain, and wind, and tempestuous lovers who, for the life of them, simply cannot make things work between them, Wuthering Heights not only set the mold, centuries ago, for everyone who embraces the “Goth” lifestyle, it also is the tonal template for every Cure album Robert Smith has ever written.
- Romeo and Juliet (1597) – William Shakespeare
Of course this play must be mentioned. It is, in many ways, the quintessential “Romance Tale,” replete with many of the tropes that have been repeated (and re-repeated) across the ages: Two young lovers who “meet cute” and who—though they know they can’t and shouldn’t—are inexorably drawn into one another’s orbit, end with tragic consequences. Shakespeare certainly didn’t invent these tropes, nor could he even really take credit for the storyline of his famous play. (It was all invented and in place well before him.) But he certainly helped to popularize it all.
- Pride and Prejudice (1813) – Jane Austen
A rare classic Romance Tale in which the two lovers—in this case, of course, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy—end up together, happily in love by story’s end. Some of this is because Austen liked to structure her novels of 19th-century England much in the way that Shakespeare structured his comedies: At the outset of the story things are “out of joint” and chaos has the upper hand. By the end of the story, however, peace and order have been restored, things are right in the world, and the young lovers enjoy their proverbial “happily ever after.”
- The Age of Innocence (1920) – Edith Wharton
The first American novel to appear on this list, Wharton’s Pulitzer-Prize winner features an exploration of rigid social norms and expectations in New York City’s high society of the 1870s. Newland Archer, a young, ambitious New York lawyer, is suddenly torn between his required duties to his rather predictable, staid, passionless fiancée, May Welland, and his reckless but real love for May’s scandalous cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. (Oh, whatever will Newland choose?)
- Rebecca (1938) – Daphne du Maurier
A gothic-style romance of love lost, love regained, and love that haunts throughout the ages—all in the dark corridors and chambers of the old Manderley estate. Here again we see a young protagonist orphaned in her early years but who then finds a second chance at her life in the love of a sad widower…(if it weren’t, that is, for the “ghost” of his deceased wife).
- Love Story (1970) – Erich Segal
A story that takes the “Me Generation” of America in the late-1960s and early-1970s and poses it instead as an interesting take on the “Us Generation.” What would happen (Segal asks in his immensely popular novel of the time) if two young, attractive members of America’s youth culture “met cute,” fell in love, and then together faced adversity, pain, trauma, and loss? The result, as it turned out, would be a huge bestseller, a famous movie, and the lasting aphorism: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
- The Princess Bride (1973) – William Goldman
Everyone knows by now this extraordinarily popular contemporary Romance Tale—made even more popular, of course, by Rob Reiner’s timeless 1987 film adaptation. But what may not be known is just how groundbreaking Goldman’s novel initially was when it was first published. The characters of Buttercup, Westley, Fezzik, and Inigo Montoya are now a part of pop culture. But Goldman’s novel dared to deconstruct the familiar fairy tale and, in a post-modern metafictional way, explore the nature of love, devotion, friendship, faithfulness, and the role of stories…particularly, maybe, the ones of romance and high adventure.
- Atonement (2001) – Ian McEwan
This is a wonderful novel that explores a young man and woman in love in 1930s England and then fatefully torn apart because of a false accusation posed by a young girl, as well as a growing World War that takes the young man off to fight in the fields of Europe. McEwan’s story then unfolds in an intricate design of memory, remorse, undying love, loss, and ultimately redemption, not to mention the power (and need) of storytelling.
- Never Let Me Go (2005) – Kazuo Ishiguro
A dystopian “soft” science fiction novel that explores what would happen if a group of children are raised together in seclusion at the mysterious, idyllic Halisham Boarding School, in England’s rural countryside. And what would happen when these children grow up, and form attachments, and explore normal human emotions, and fall in love? And what would happen if they discover their real purpose in life: They were born and raised as clones to wealthy investors, fated to end their lives with their organs harvested as needed. And what would happen, then, if some of them find a way out of Halisham Boarding School?….
- The Fault in Our Stars (2012) – John Green
A popular young writer, writing a popular Romance Tale of young lovers, and going all the way back to the beginning, with echoes of Romeo and Juliet as well as every love story of every “star-crossed lover” facing the difficulty and the pain of the real world. A story that revisits the heart of every love story ever told, and the likes of which keeps today’s Romance Novel genre alive and well.
Dave Newsom is a retired English and literary public school teacher from Chicago who now resides in the Kansas City area.
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