Silly Books for Silly Women: In Defence of Romance Fiction

There is perhaps no pastime more universally mocked than a woman openly enjoying herself. Especially if she dares enjoy herself in a way others deem incorrect.

Women may consume media, of course. Nobody is saying we can’t. But we must do so only within carefully approved parameters. We may read books, but preferably miserable ones about war, addiction, or a man quietly staring out a window contemplating suicide, or the end of the world. We may read books, but only if they teach us something. We may read, even enjoy, books that contain allusions to, or, God forbid, graphic descriptions of sex, but it must be done intellectually. Tastefully. We may desire escapism, but we must never stray too far. And above all else, we absolutely must not enjoy romance novels too loudly.

Romance fiction occupies a fascinating place in modern culture, because despite being one of the most commercially successful genres on earth, it is still treated by large sections of the population as unserious. Embarrassing. Frivolous. Silly books for silly women.

Which would perhaps come as something of a surprise to Jane Austen.

In one of literatures funniest, and longest running hypocrisies, people will spend their lives revering Austen while sneering at contemporary romance. As though Pride and Prejudice is not, at its core, a book about a woman navigating class, attraction, familial pressure, and wondering whether that rich man who initially annoyed her might actually be the love of her life.

Austen appears on every ‘books you must read before you die’ list ever assembled by a broadsheet newspaper. This entire article has come to be because I was in a Waterstones this morning and overheard a member of staff’s surprise that Jane Austen made a must read list four times, when the many women who came after her would never be in the conversation. Persuasion is considered one of the greatest novels ever written. Entire academic careers have been built around analysing longing glances across drawing rooms. And yet, place a modern romance novel with an illustrated cover in front of those same academics, and marvel at all the ways they will tell you it’s not real literature.

The literary industrial complex (a title of my own invention) has always been remarkably comfortable elevating women’s stories and voices, once enough time has passed for both the author, and the initial readership to be dead.

Romance is dismissed not because it lacks emotional complexity, cultural relevance, or literary merit, but because it is associated primarily with women, pleasure and optimism. Three things famously never taken seriously.

We are, after all, talking about a genre built largely around women’s interiority. Taylor Swift said “I’ll save all my romanticism for my inner life”, and it seems many critics wish romance readers would take a leaf out of her book. For them, women’s fantasies, emotional desires, and worst of all, their sexuality, should be kept off the page. As should any notion of women choosing themselves, choosing love, or choosing happiness.

It’s hard to believe that 300 pages of human connection and a happily ever after could have so many people quaking in their boots.

The contempt directed at romance fiction has never really been about the writing itself. It is about discomfort with what the genre represents: desire. And female desire, historically, has always required justification.

People online, particularly book content creators (we in the biz know them as booktokers and bookstagrammers) who consider themselves to be real readers, often speak about romance readers with a level of concern usually reserved for those likely to get swept up in a cult, or attempt to survive exclusively on a diet of raw milk.

Women openly reading romance are mocked as delusional, lonely, unserious, or intellectually inferior in a way that avid fans of other genres seldom are. Nobody sees an adult man perusing military thrillers on the shelves of the overpriced WH Smith at the airport and wonders if he has unrealistic ideas of being headhunted by MI5. And yet, romance readers are consistently told that their books are giving them impractical, idealistic, and unreasonable expectations about love. Such unreasonable expectations include but are not limited to: emotional vulnerability, open communication and partners that actually like each other.

The moral panic around romance fiction becomes even more absurd when you consider how readily we are pedalled graphically violent media. Nobody argues crime fiction is corrupting society despite the fact an alarming percentage of thrillers only feature women in a victim role. Where they are reduced to whatever heinous, and often sexual, crime has been perpetrated against them.

And the thing is, romance fiction serves a genuinely important cultural purpose precisely because it offers escapism. There is nothing morally superior or impressive about suffering through bleak literary fiction if what you actually need is joy.

People speak about escapism as though it is an indicator of intellectual weakness, rather than a natural human want. We as human beings have always sought stories that comfort, excite, distract, and emotionally sustain us through difficult periods of life.

Especially women.

Historically, women’s worlds were often painfully small. Romance novels offered fantasy, freedom, emotional exploration, and possibility long before many women had meaningful access to independence in real life. They allowed women to imagine different futures, different relationships, different versions of themselves.

That legacy matters.

Modern romance fiction has also quietly become one of the most body positive and sex positive spaces in publishing. While mainstream media continues insisting desirability belongs primarily to the young, thin, and conventionally perfect, romance fiction has increasingly embraced protagonists with different body types, disabilities, chronic illnesses, sexualities, cultural backgrounds and life experiences.

Women are allowed to be desired as they already are. That matters more than people want to admit. Especially now, with the normalisation of drastic physical transformation, and the resurgence of heroin chic.

And yes, romance can absolutely be badly written. So can literary fiction. Bad books exist in every genre, and I have unfortunately read plenty of aggressively joyless novels across the board, all with stagnant plots and emotionally constipated characters. But romance is one of the only genres where the existence of bad examples is used to dismiss the legitimacy of the genre itself.

Nobody reads one mediocre literary novel and declares literature fundamentally unserious. If that were the case, I’d have hung up my glasses long ago. Yet romance constantly has to defend its right to exist at all. I also think there is something deeply revealing about how often romance readers feel pressured to justify their reading habits intellectually.

You will notice romance readers frequently list other titles they’ve read or begin over explaining plots as though women are only permitted to enjoy something once it has been analysed into acceptability. Sometimes women simply enjoy stories about people falling in love. This should not require a defence.

Maybe that’s the real issue: romance does not fit the narrative that suffering is inherently more intelligent than happiness.

A woman quietly dissociating in a crumbling marriage will win literary awards. A woman having excellent sex with a man who communicates properly and prioritises her pleasure is dismissed as trivial. One is considered profound commentary on the human condition. The other gets relegated to the proverbial seasonal purgatory that is the ‘beach read’ sub-genre.

But despite all the sneering, romance continues to terrorise the publishing industry. Women continue buying the books, recommending the books, writing the books, adapting the books and building entire communities around them while critics continue to be shocked that stories centred on love, desire and emotional fulfilment remain popular.

Romance never actually needed permission to be considered legitimate literature. People simply became uncomfortable once women stopped pretending to feel embarrassed about enjoying it.

Rest in peace Jane Austen. You would’ve loved Emily Henry.