Rebecca Kaye Barrett
Abstract
Christian romance novels, one of the most popular genres of fiction
for Christian readers and one of the most ignored areas of study for
scholars, provide countless readers, mostly evangelical Christian
women, with emotional and spiritual encouragement. In this article,
based upon research involving hundreds of women readers and writers
of Christian romance novels, I share women’s own stories about the
emotional and spiritual transformations that happen via the reading
experience in order to discover the reasons why women read from this
particular genre.
[1] Even scholars who argue for romance novels do so
while believing “the abiding myth that romances fill an emotional
void,” Carol Thurston recognizes.[1]
Research focuses on this emotional void, and thus the conclusions
that scholars typically draw are ones that depict women as needy and
unfulfilled. Repeatedly, scholars, even those such as Thurston, Tania
Modleski and Janice Radway who are more positive about romances, draw
pessimistic conclusions about the ability of women to manage their
lacks—lack of love, of nurture, of agency, of mother, or of whatever
else the scholars diagnose. The books, claims Modleski, “take the
actual situation of women in our society … and put it into a context
that is soothing and flattering to women,” thus enabling them better
to cope with their realities, “to convince themselves that limitations
are really opportunities.”[2] This is “the attempt to adapt what
for women are utopian ideals to existing circumstances.”[3]
Each book, declares Lillian Robinson in her essay “On Reading Trash,”
“repeats what direct experience and dominant ideology have already
succeeded in communicating.” This message, according to Robinson,
is that “love really is what motivates and justifies a woman’s life.”[4] Kay Mussell concludes that the
“romance fantasy may be both trivial and insignificant in the world
of art, but it is genuinely tragic in the real world where women must
live.”[5] These conclusions,
drawn from scholars who are most positive about the reading
experience, deny the possibility that romance-reading experiences
can transform readers in meaningful ways, or help readers do anything
beyond survive in patriarchy.
[2] These unhappy conclusions are drawn from a false premise:
the idea that women readers agree with the oppressive, patriarchal
messages that scholars find in romance novels. Whether the novel is
a “sweet” (without sex) Cinderella story or a sultrier Pretty Woman
tale (to name just two incarnations of the popular formula), they
generally tell the story of an emotionally innocent woman who finds
personal fulfillment through a relationship—often of submission, always
of rescue—to a hypermasculine man. Critics of the genre—which include
not only literary scholars but pastors, mothers worried about their
teenage daughters’ reading habits, and school librarians—believe that
readers of these novels subscribe to the patriarchal messages of the
books and adopt attitudes regarding gender that permit women to be
helpless and men to be aggressive. Given that, in the 1970s, many
best-selling secular romances included rape of the heroine by the
hero, the threat that women would adopt these values and thus might
adapt their lives around them would be quite grave, if it were valid.
Yet readers do not report that they internalize these particular messages.
Jayne Anne Krentz, speaking for many writers of secular romances,
offers an “exasperated declaration that the romance novel is based
on fantasies and that readers are no more confused about this fact,
nor any more likely to use their reading as a substitute for action
in the real world” than are readers of other kinds of books.[6]
Readers—even Christian women readers, who are so often stereotyped
as more naïve than the general population—know the difference between
reality and fantasy; they recognize that they are reading conventions,
not reality, even as they appreciate the uniqueness of each new book.
They do not create fantasies from the books. Simply, women know the
difference between what they read and what they want in real life.
They do, however, use the books to change their individual realities.
Critics do not measure this, though, because they do not grant readers
agency, seeing them as passive consumers, swallowing novels without
intelligent processing. While some of the critical work on romance
novels so far—mostly completed in the 1980s, when the secular novels
reached their peak popularity—is useful, but focuses on the negative
effects of reading. Most research has not been supported with quantifiable
data, personal interviews, or ethnographic studies (with the important
exception of Radway’s Reading the Romance) but is instead mostly
ranting against the conventions of the genre and unsupported worry
about how such novels might affect women without evidence of how the
books actually do affect them. Scholars have left unexplored
the areas women really want to discuss: the positive ways that reading
changes their lives.
[3] The genre, which was created through the novels of Grace
Livingston Hill at the turn of the century and whose popularity has
grown since Janette Oke began her prairie romances in 1979, shares
some of the conventions of secular romances. Both kinds of novels
follow a heroine from innocence to experience via a romantic relationship
with a man. Generally, the novels begin with an initial attraction
and then repulsion between hero and heroine, and the next 150 pages
or so tease out the tension. Shortly after love is admitted, a “black
period” separates the potential lovers, but this is always resolved.
In the last pages of the book, marriage is guaranteed, and the novel
ends. In the serial novels produced by major publishers such as Steeple
Hill (owned by Harlequin) and Love Inspired, all of this takes place
in 180 pages. In Christian romances, no sex, violence, or profanity
occurs. Central to the plot is a religious conflict, often having
to do with a woman overcoming her past sins or learning to accept
love. Depending on the publishing house, exact details about faith
may be more or less pronounced. For example, Steeple Hill’s books
are generically Christian, with no references to specific denominations
or details about specific religious practices such as baptism or communion.
Other publishing houses, such as Multnomah, offer a relatively simplistic
view of Christianity that basically describes a born-again experience.
[4] Readers of this genre are mostly white middle- and lower-class
and range in age widely. For the most part, readers self-identify
as born-again Christians or simply “Christian,” though, for them,
this term implies a born-again experience. While a few readers are
undoubtedly Catholic, and the Mormon publishing houses Deseret Book
and Covenant Communications publish romance novels aimed at members
of their church, all the women who participated in research for this
article identified as Protestant, often nondenominational and evangelical.
Strong beliefs in gender distinctions, original sin, the salvific
death and resurrection of Christ, and a “born-again” experience in
which, at some specific moment in one’s life, Christ “enters into”
the heart and offers forgiveness, once and for always, for all sins
and guarantees salvation and a place in heaven after death, are shared
by the majority of readers. The growth in born-again Christianity
has been well documented, and thus the dominance of such believers
in popular Christian culture is no surprise. In order to understand,
in their own terms, what such women gain from reading Christian romance
novels, I gathered responses from hundreds of readers and writers
of the genre. In telephone interviews, email correspondence, and chatroom
discussions, women shared information about their reading habits and
personal stories about how the books affected them. Inviting questions
such as “Has a book ever changed your life?” prompted eager responses.
As a participant-observer in the fan world, I noted patterns of response
and developed relationships with women that resulted in heartfelt,
sometimes very intimate, discussions of reading, faith, and romance.
Finally, many writers granted me access to their fan mail, which gave
me further insights into what qualities women enjoy in Christian romance
novels.
[5] In part, the hundreds of women readers of Christian romance
novels with whom I spoke or corresponded or who shared their fan letters
with me as part of my research on readers’ experiences with Christian
romance novels are likely to be inspired through their reading because
they are open to such an experience. Evangelical women—the bulk of
the readership—writes Brenda E. Brasher, have a “tendency to emphasize
intimacy over conceptual intricacy,” and thus “rank ‘the heart’ higher
than ‘the head.’”[7]
Thus romance novels, which “aim to engage the emotion, not the intellect,
of the reader,” may be appealing to Christian women because they celebrate
the gynocentric values of generosity, healing, sharing, and love,
which Christian women also traditionally espouse.[8] In reading about the triumph of
these values over evil, Christian women find affirmation for their
beliefs. This affirmation results in an emotional response. As one
reader, an evangelist working in Ireland, wrote to B.J. Hoff: “Your
book has given me new courage.”[9]
The evangelist’s claim to “new courage” illustrates that emotional
response to popular culture is not only possible but positive and
potentially useful.
[6] Most reader responses to Christian romances begin by relating
emotional responses to the books. “I feel like a better person just
for reading them,” one fan told Robin Lee Hatcher.[10]
Her self-confidence increased because of her experience with Hatcher’s
novels, she reports. Though this does not necessarily correlate with
changes in her life—that is, she only feels like a “better
person”—the potential for change is present. It begins in emotional
response to the texts. Repeatedly, women praise a book with words
such as “it touched my soul and stole my heart,”[11] “it touched my heart,” “[i]t
was like I was living through every moment,”[12] and “I had every emotion that
I could think of.”[13] The books are valued because they inspire an
emotional response. One fan, writing a letter to Deb Raney about her
novel Beneath a Southern Sky, links these two ideas quite simply
when she says that the novel was “deeply emotional and an inspiration.”[14] In order for the novel to be an inspiration,
for this reader, it must be deeply emotional. Through emotional response,
readers identify with characters and thus learn from them. Through
their emotional response to characters, readers participate in the
emotional journey of the novel. Since Christian novels are resolved
in the always-loving nature of God, the reader, too, finally experiences
God’s love when she puts her book down, as woman after woman testified
during our discussions of reading.
[7] For the women to whom I spoke, the value of a text is not
located in the text but in their own experience with the text. That
is, overall, comments about the books did not focus on the book (for
example, praise about diction or criticism of plot devices) but instead
focused on their personal responses to the books, to, in other words,
what the books did for them. Women’s responses to the texts
were not primarily critical reviews of texts (though most fan letters
began with an enthusiastic but very general sentence or two about
the novel about which they were writing), but were personal stories
about how their lives changed in response to the novels.
[8] Repeatedly, readers and writers of Christian romance novels
reminded me that the story of God’s love for humanity—as told in the
Christian Scriptures—is a romance, a tale of perfect love. Miriam[15] captures this belief when she states, “I believe
marriage is a powerful symbol of humanity’s relationship with Jesus
Christ. He is the Lover and we are the Beloved.”[16]
Salvation discourse relies on this kind of romantic language. Brenda
E. Brasher notes that women use metaphors describing Christ that “range
widely, from friend, to lover or husband, and even to a child who
needs the protection of a mother.”[17] These words—friend, lover, husband, child—are
all words that are echoed in Christian (and secular) romances. At
the same time, Christian marriage relationships are described using
salvation discourse. For example, the church is the bride of Christ,
and just as Christ loves his church, so ought husbands love their
wives. Faith and romance are tied linguistically in Christianity,
so that a kind of relationship between faith and romance exists that
alienates those who cannot participate in it because they are single
or because their own marital relationships fall short of the ideal
espoused in Christian rhetoric.
[9] For some women, Christian romance novels provide a site
for accessing, in some ways, that kind of love. “[O]nly in romances
is an enduring, constructive bond—love—between a man and a woman celebrated,”
notes secular novelist Elizabeth Lowell, and only in Christian romance
novels does God enter this union, making it, for Christian women,
ideal.[18] This triad—God, man, and woman—forms the Christian
marriage, a marriage that allows both men and women growth. Secular
romantic love and mature identity, according to Suzanne Juhasz,
go together because true love turns out to be responsible, mutual,
unconditional, and everlasting. Only a mature person, a person with
genuine self-identity and the ability to use it in the world, can
love properly. And love is necessary for a person to achieve this
kind of selfhood. Consequently, love and identity are not two warring
plots but aspects of the same story.[19]
If secular romantic love prompts this kind of response, then believers
in Christian romantic love, which includes God, should have even higher
expectations of the transforming power of love.[20]
[10] The pressure that readers of Christian romance novels place
on Christian romantic love can be intense. Notes Jan Silvious, a Christian
writer and therapist who focuses on relationship counseling, “Somehow
it seems right and in some ways almost Christlike to be in a relationship
that requires total absorption, devotion, and sacrifice.”[21]
“Total absorption, devotion, and sacrifice” are words that lovers
in secular romances often use in describing their own relationship.
In contrast, heroes and heroines in Christian romance novels prioritize
God before their love for each other. Best-selling author Francine
Rivers, in an article that asks women to investigate their reasons
for reading Christian romance novels, critiques media—including, presumably,
the Christian romance novel industry—for preaching that “romance and
sex are what count, not relationship.” This is not true, she writes,
for “what we really need is Jesus’ love and a relationship with him.
Only then can our deepest needs be satisfied—something no novel can
ever do.”[22] The
necessity of God’s love is a central theme in Rivers’ own writing,
but it does not negate the power of romantic love. Christian romance
novels can thus help women reprioritize their own love lives so that
God, not a man, is central to women’s happiness, though the novels
do not discount men. Readers must seek happiness in both God and marriage.
“Thank God for being the Creator of love and for loving you,” for
this kind of happiness, instructs Rivers. “Ask him to help you enjoy
the moments of romance in your life without making them a priority.”[23] The Christian woman’s first
obligation is to God’s kingdom, not to romance, and even Rivers, who
is heavily invested in the sale of Christian romance novels, recognizes
this. Writer Jacquelyn Cook shares this story:
A young woman in Texas told me how restless she was following a
divorce. “Reading explicit romances made me feel worse. I was ready
to rush into marriage again until I read The River Between
and learned that marriage should be based on the love of God. I’m
going to wait like Lily for someone who can be one with me in mind,
heart, and spirit.”[24]
[11] While the writer of the letter clearly yearns for marriage,
despite her previous negative experience as a wife, and still believes
that marriage will bring a happiness that singlehood cannot, she has
redefined marriage. From a Christian perspective, this new definition,
“based on the love of God,” should guarantee a happy union as defined
in Cook’s novels. That Christian romance novels provide advice for
creating a happy marriage is not surprising. One woman declared that
she enjoyed reading the novels because they “always show how relationships
and life should be handled as a Christian.”[25] While many Christians would disagree with this
absolute statement, readers of Christian romance novels understand
that the books are about relationships. One reader, who grew up in
a single-parent family headed by her mother, claims that she reads
the books because she is “longing for” the father she lacked during
childhood. “It makes me hungry for more,” Simone admits. “It shows
me a world I didn’t even know existed”—a world where men love women
and God loves everyone. She continues:
It is my belief that these books are awakening needs I didn’t recognize,
which in turn gives voice to prayers I would not have known to pray.
Parents want to reflect God so that their kids can get a picture
of God. For those of us who did not have that, this becomes an awesome
way to see what God’s love is really like. For some reason, though,
just telling me about God’s love does not have the same effect as
reading these romances.[26]
For this woman, men, God, and love are closely tied. The language
of romance is the most accessible language for her to understand God’s
love. Her initial reason for reading Christian romance novels was
her longing for a father figure, and she felt that the hero would
fulfill this role, for he “is always stronger, always knows exactly
what’s going on.” In the model of a man who truly cherishes a woman,
she found God’s love.
[12] Simone is not alone in her spiritual experience. Nearly all
of the women to whom I spoke discussed the ways that the books provided
them with spiritual encouragement—far more than mentioned that the
books provided them with models for relationships or hopes for a husband,
despite Love Inspired editor Anne Canadeo’s statement that many women
“read these books as a how-to or self-help kind of read” to help them
“deal with certain problems that they face in their own relationships.”[27]
Many have more powerful, even supernatural, experiences than Canadeo
suggests. Quite a few women share that God leads them to specific
books. One reader told Robin Lee Hatcher, “I thank God that he put
[one of Hatcher’s novels] in my hands at this moment.”[28] This kind of comment—that God
has led a reader to the book or has brought a book to the reader—is
quite frequent. Penelope, in an article that she wrote for her church
newsletter, suggests that women pray as they make a purchase. She
instructs readers to “go to the Christian bookstore to the fiction
section and let God pick one for you!”[29]
God “picked one” for her previously, she relates. She was unable to
fall asleep one night, a sign that, she tells readers, God has a message
for her. That night, she read her Bible, then part of a Robin Lee
Hatcher novel. After reading for a few minutes, she reports, “my eyes
got wide with delight” because “God has put something wonderful in
this book, just for me!” God’s “just for Penelope” message was a reference
to Hannah Whithall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life,
which Penelope then read and which consequently strengthened her faith,
she writes. For many women, God’s specific message for them is delivered
through fiction. As Vanessa happily notes, “Not only do you get a
romance but you generally get a message as well.”[30]
[13] Sometimes the message is quite personal. Many women see God’s
hand in their reading selections, believing that a message is “perfectly
planted there by God so He could reveal His love and caring for ME!”
as Penelope said of her experience.[31]
One reader, reflecting on her initial disbelief, shared this with
Robin Lee Hatcher:
Well, God has spoken to me in many ways, but never through the
words in a book…It seems like God was saying those very words to
my heart. I know without doubt that He was indeed speaking to me…
Thank you for being obedient to the call of God on your life. If
you hadn’t been and hadn’t written the book, I would not have been
encouraged on Monday, March 19, 2001.[32]
[14] Many readers speak of “encouragement,” which is delivered through
Bible references, inspiring plots, and transformed characters. The
books, especially historical novels, according to one reader, “make
me realize that I can trust more things to Him!” because they show
how trust is rewarded.[33] Writes a fan of B.J. Hoff’s novels, the books
“made me realize that in the midst of evil, pain, and our own personal
hell—God is with us, and light truly does come out of darkness.”[34]
According to an online reviewer, the books show “the reality of a
great God who is ever present,” of “God’s willingness to intervene
on our behalf.”[35] Because the novels always end happily these messages
of God’s love, forgiveness, and healing are repeated endlessly—as
often as once a day for the most voracious readers.
[15] Encouragement can come from Biblical allusions and Bible verses
that are included in novels, from plot turns, from specific characters,
or from specific passages. When asked if a novel-reading experience
had ever changed her life, Sue Ellen responded with an enthusiastic
“yes,” then explained, illustrating how textual experiences can inspire
religious experiences:
Now, let me get down to a detail. In [Robin Lee Hatcher’s Whispers
from Yesterday], on page 166 she wrote and I quote, “Open your
heart and let it go. Release whatever fills your hands and your
heart and receive the abundance I offer you. Receive from me….Jesus!”
Please know….this spoke to my heart in an awesome way….I put all
of my heartaches and disappointments into my hands and released
them to our precious and loving God. What better place for them
to be…HE can handle them….I cannot….not on my own.[36]
Sue Ellen received encouragement through a prose passage, and her
response was, she believes, one of most important spiritual experiences
of her life. This encouragement prompts a more joyful relationship
with God, for her and for hundreds of other readers who cite passages
of special meaning by page.
[16] Often, the messages that readers sense from God are rebukes,
yet joy is still the response. Shares one reader, after reading a
Robin Lee Hatcher novel, “But boy! Did this book make me utterly ashamed
of myself. I realized, to my dismay, that I don’t anywhere near lean
on the Lord as I should. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for the
‘wake up’ call!”[37] Readers are “awakened” to ignored sins including
lust, pride, and doubt. Echoes another Robin Lee Hatcher fan, “You
have made me see that I need to make some changes in my life. My religion
has not been heart felt…I really believe my prayers were answered
and I would have never believed before that God could send you a message
in a book.”[38] Whether
these changes occur or not is not stated, but the fact that the reader
felt convicted—and convicted enough that she wrote to Hatcher—suggests
an important spiritual experience. In online communities, fans share
the long term effects of reading in stories about increased frequency
of prayer and a resulting inner peace, greater church participation,
an end to “sinful” behaviors from gluttony to adultery, and improved
relationships with loved ones.
[17] At times, books provide more than rebuke or encouragement; they
provide healing. Writes one fan of B.J. Hoff’s novels, “[T]he Biblical
principles and Scripture used in your books have reached to parts
of me that were closed to sermons, ‘dealing with pain’ books, and
even well-meaning Christian friends.”[39] She ranks Christian romance
novels as more important to her spiritual well-being than more traditional
methods of intervention. Another woman, whose husband of thirteen
years had abandoned her and their four-year-old daughter, spoke of
the way that Robin Lee Hatcher’s The Forgiving Hour helped
her “get rid of some of the bitterness and let go of the past” in
order to proceed with her life.[40] The novels provide comfort, relaxation, encouragement,
challenges, and spiritual reassurance that, with faith, everything
can turn out well for those who love the Lord. As secular novelist
Mary Jo Putney writes, “What matters, and what readers respond to,
is the healing.” They enjoy a character who “manages to transcend
the pain, to become stronger in the mended places, who can forgive
the past, even if he or she can never entirely forget it.”[41] In other words, readers want love—in this case,
both God’s love and a romantic love based on God’s love—to triumph
over individual pain and brokenness.
[18] Readers understand such triumph through relationship—through,
most often, their relationships with characters. For example, Robin
Lee Hatcher’s The Forgiving Hour and Francine Rivers’ Atonement
Child, which is about a woman facing life after an abortion, prompt
the sharing of stories of heartache and recovery. “My marriage was
a lot like Claire’s [of The Forgiving Hour],” admits one woman.
“It’s always so astonishing when someone else seems to understand
what I thought was only my world.”[42] For her, transformation—or,
in this case, astonishment—comes not only through the text but through
the community, the relationship between her as reader and Hatcher
as writer. As secular novelists Linda Barlow and Jayne Anne Krentz
note, “The author of a romance novel and her audience enter into a
pact with one another.”[43]
For readers and writers of Christian romance novels, God blesses this
pact.
[19] “Perhaps,” suggests Deborah Belonick, romance novels are a “subconscious
lifeline to a forgotten world, a world that remembers the feminine
wisdom of abandonment, trust, and union in love with others.”[44] I disagree with Belonick’s claim that this
process is “subconscious” for readers; Christian romance readers are
quite conscious of the wisdom, emotional advice, and community that
Christian romance novels provide; they read for this exact purpose.
“A majority of readers,” writes Carol Thurston, “incorporate into
their lives at least some of what they learn from these stories.”
What they “incorporate” goes beyond new knowledge of interior decorating
and fashion, too. In particular, they internalize “the more intangible
kinds of enlightenment that helps them to better understand themselves
or to improve their relationships with others,” Thurston found in
her own research on secular novels.[45]
While Lillian Robinson criticizes dominant (i.e., patriarchal, heterosexist)
ideology for teaching that love is the purpose of life, suggesting,
by her tone, that making love the focus of life has negative consequences
for women, the Christian theology of the women I met celebrates love
for both sexes. Thus novels that make the struggle to love and be
loved their central focus address the exact concerns of these women.
Instead of seeking in women’s desire for romance novels a lack that
indicates that they are incomplete humans or women brain-washed by
mass culture, I see an admission of the difficulty of self-acceptance,
of confident spirituality, and of mutual, mature heterosexual relationships.
As these are the concerns of many women—and many men—that the novels
address them is expected. What makes Christian romance novels different
from the “trash” that Robinson analyzes is that these novels do not
depict women as sexually submissive or as sexual objects, give credit
to the love of a man for a woman’s fulfillment, or suggest that love
is insignificant in a man’s life. When Christian romance novels provide
“enlightenment” with respect to the concerns of women who do agree
that love is central to life, they serve their readers well. The books,
then, do not function as superficial coping strategies for women trapped
in patriarchy but as sources of genuine encouragement in the direction
in which readers already want to grow: the direction of love.
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Notes
[1] Carol Thurston. The
Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for A New
Sexual Identity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 130-31.
[2] Tania Modleski
“My Life as a Romance Reader,” Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary
Genres 3,1-2 (1997), 17; Tania Modleski. Loving with a Vengeance:
Mass Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1992),
38.
[3] Modleski, Loving
with a Vengeance, 58.
[4] Lillian S. Robinson.
“On Reading Trash,” in Sex, Class, and Culture, ed. Lillian
S. Robinson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 222.
[5] Kay Mussell. Fantasy
and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formulas of Women’s Romantic Fiction.
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 186.
[6] Jayne Anne Krentz.
Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal
of the Romance, ed. Jayne Anne Krentz (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 5.
[7] Brenda E. Brasher.
Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 63.
[8] Jay Dixon. The
Romance Fiction of Mills and Boon, 1909-1990s (London: UCL Press,
1999), 5.
[9] “Accolades,” B.J.
Hoff Fansite n.d. <http://www.homepagez.com/bjhoff/accolades/html>
(15 February 2002). Hoff writes primarily about Ireland.
[10] Robin Lee Hatcher,
“What Readers Are Saying,” Robin Lee Hatcher, Novelist, n.d.
<http://www.robinleehatcher.com/note.htm>
(15 February 2002).
[11] Amazon.com.
“Editorial Reviews,” Amazon.com Buying Information n.d. <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0965190617/qid=1019704962/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-6849281-8515800>
(16 February 2002).
[12] Email to the
author from Deb Raney (13 March 2002).
[13] From two fan
letters to Deb Raney in regard to her book Beneath a Southern Sky.
Email to the author (13 March 2002).
[14] Email to the
author (13 March 2002).
[15] The names of
all readers have been changed.
[16] Email to the
author (4 February 2002).
[17] Brasher, Godly
Women, 63.
[18] Elizabeth Lowell,
“Love Conquers All: The Warrior Hero and the Affirmation of
Love, in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers
on the Appeal of the Romance, ed. Jayne Ann Krentz (Philadelphia:
Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 89-97.
[19] Suzanne Juhasz.
Reading from the Heart: Women, Literature, and the Search for True
Love (New York: Viking, 1994), 12.
[20] Indeed, Juhasz’s
words capture the power that Paul ascribes to love in his famous passage
on the topic (1 Cor 13). Here Paul is not talking about romantic love,
but he is referring to a God-inspired love, and contemporary Christians
often use these verses to define and express romantic love.
[21] Jan Silvious.
Please Don’t Say You Need Me: Biblical Answers to Codependency
(Grand Rapids, MI: Pyranee-Zondervan, 1989), 35.
[22] Francine Rivers,
“Day 20,” in 30 Days to a More Incredible You by Ramona Cramer
Tucker (Christianity Today n.d. <http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/mother/features/romance.html>
[15 February 2002]).
[23] Rivers, “Day
20.”
[24] Letter to the
author (16 February 2002).
[25] Email to the
author (5 February 2002).
[26] Email
to the author (2 February 2002).
[27] Jeanette
Leardi. “Christian Romance Novels, More Spiritual Than Stormy, Pick
Up
Readers,” Knight-Ridder Newspapers. 6 December 1997, <http://www.reporter-news.com/printthis.cf>
(15 February 2002).
[28] Hatcher, “What
Readers Are Saying,” Robin Lee Hatcher, Novelist.
[29] Email to the
author (3 February 2002).
[30] Email to the
author (4 February 2002).
[31] Email to the
author (3 February 2002).
[32] Hatcher, “What
Readers Are Saying,” Robin Lee Hatcher, Novelist.
[33] Letter to the
author (14 February 2002).
[34] “Accolades”
B.J. Hoff Fansite.
[35] Amazon.com.
“Editorial Reviews.” Amazon.com Buying Information.
[36] Email to the
author (3 February 2002).
[37] Hatcher, “What
Readers Are Saying,” Robin Lee Hatcher, Novelist.
[38] Hatcher, “What
Readers Are Saying.”
[39] “Accolades,”
B.J. Hoff Fansite n.d.
[40] Email to the
author (4 February 2002). Many women mentioned this novel by title
and discussed the ways that it helped them heal after broken relationships.
[41] May Jo Putney,
“Welcome to the Darkside,” Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women:
Romance Writers on the Appeal of Romance, ed. Jayne Ann Krentz
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 104.
[42] Robin Lee Hatcher,
“What Readers Are Saying,” Robin Lee Hatcher, Novelist.
[43] Linda Barlow.
“The Androgynous Writer: Another Point of View,” in Dangerous Men
and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance,
ed. Jayne Ann Krentz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1992), 14.
[44] Deborah Belonick,
“The Bold and the Biblical: What Do Some Romance Novel Have in Common
with Scripture? Both Celebrate Female Wisdom,” Beliefnet n.d.,
<http://www.beliefnet.com/story/33/
story_3381.html> (15 February 2002).
[45] Thurston, The
Romance Revolution, 133.
