Romance and the Erotics of Property: Mass-Market Fiction for Women - Hardcover

Cohn, Jan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822307995 ISBN 13: 9780822307990

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 1987

Synopsis

Romance and the Erotics of Property examines contemporary popular romance from a number of different points of view, probing for codes and subtexts that sometimes exploit and sometimes contradict its surface tale of romantic attraction, frustration, longing, and fulfillment.
Cohn argues that a full understanding of the contemporary romance requires an investigation of its literary and historical sources and analogues. Three principal sources are examined in the context of women's history in bourgeois society. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Erye, and Gone With the Wind demonstrate the development of romance fiction's themes, yet in all three the central love story is complicated by issues of property, the sign of male power. Jan Cohn further considers the development of the genre n the fictions of Harriet Lewis and May Agnes Fleming, prolific and popular American romance writers of the late nineteenth century who developed the role of the villain, thereby bringing into focus the sexual and economic struggles faced by the heroine.
Romance and the Erotics of Property sets romance fiction against a historic and literary background, arguing that contemporary romance disguises as tales of love the subversive fantasies of female appropriation and male property and power.

About this title

About the Author:

Jan Cohn was G. Keith Funston Professor of American Literature and American Studies at Trinity College and the author of four other books, including Creating America (1989).

Review:

"Building upon earlier work on the genre of romance, Romance and the Erotics of Property advances a new claim; Cohn argues compellingly that the romance's story of attraction and love masks a more important, more disturbing tale about how women achieve power and economic success within partriarchy."—Janice Radway

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0822307995
• ISBN 13: 9780822307990
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 188