Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different

Abstract

In an unpublished talk, critic Peter Parisi has hypothesized that Harlequin romances are essentially pornography for people ashamed to read pornography. The ubiquity of the books indicates a central truth: romance is a primary category of the female imagination. This chapter focuses on Parisi’s definition of how the books are pornography and, finally, to modify his definition of what women are looking for in a sex book. The women’s movement has left the fact of female consciousness largely untouched. The world that can make Harlequin romances appear warm is indeed a cold, cold place. In the misogynistic culture in which we live, where violence toward women is a common motif, it is hard to say a neutral word about pornography either as a legitimate literary form or as a legitimate source of pleasure. Women are naturally over-whelmed by the woman-hating theme so that the more universal human expression sometimes contained by pornography tends to be obscured for them.