Fairy tales, like myths, have always been used to teach us how to behave. Snow White is rewarded for her beauty and domesticity. Sleeping Beauty is punished for disobedience, then “rescued” by an unasked for kiss. Cinderella is all that is kind, pretty, and quiet—her prize is marriage to a man who fell in love with her at a glance. Legions of romance novels have been built on these fables. And usually, even though authors revised the stories and softened the lessons, they rarely questioned the core: goodness is lovable, and love—especially heterosexual, monogamous, permanent love—is the proof that a woman has chosen well and been chosen well in return.
That’s no longer the given. Today’s books haven’t rejected goodness or love, but they are less interested in making either hinge on self-denial. Heroines no longer have to be endlessly forgiving to be seen as worthy. They don’t have to stay to prove their strength. And if the man fails—not once, but chronically, selfishly, or with the kind of obliviousness that reads more as disinterest than damage—he doesn’t get the girl just because the genre used to say he should.
Romance is, as it always has, evolving. In All the Feels by Olivia Dade, the heroine repeatedly asserts her emotional boundaries—even when the hero is famous, attractive, and trying his best. In Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman, the heroine walks away from the man the world insists is perfect for her—more than once—before she’s willing to believe in him again. We said the novel smartly explores today’s tabloid media and its growth, but what lingers is how firmly the heroine owns her own timing. And in Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan, the central question isn’t whether love still exists between the divorced couple at its core—it’s whether that love is enough, after years of grief and bitterness, to justify trying again. These aren’t stories about being chosen. They’re stories about choosing—and about what it means when women prioritize their own peace, their own boundaries, even their own doubt.
We’re a long way from fairy godmothers and glass slippers.
These aren’t minor adjustments. Where romance once affirmed the values embedded in fairy tales—loyalty, goodness, endurance—it now questions who those values served and at what cost. Many romance novels still believe in connection, but they no longer treat it as a reward for being the right kind of woman. Instead, they insist on something messier and more real: love that coexists with autonomy, healing that doesn’t require reconciliation, heroines who are allowed to walk away and still win.
This strikes me as a good thing. And yet, this shift feels almost out of touch with the broader cultural narrative. The fairy tale is alive and well outside the genre. The 75+ billion dollar a year wedding culture grows more theatrical by the year. Social media continues to elevate coupledom into a kind of status performance—evidence not just of love, but of worth. And yet inside romance fiction, the story has changed. The fantasy is still there, but it’s being dismantled and rebuilt. So here’s what I’m wondering: if the old stories told us to be beautiful, patient, and good in order to earn love, what are the new ones telling us instead? And in tearing up the fairy tale, are we rewriting the ending—or walking away from the story altogether?
if the old stories told us to be beautiful, patient, and good in order to earn love, what are the new ones telling us instead?
In the last week, I’ve finished three romances. One was a short story featuring a short, curvy, beautiful woman who donates the leftover food from her cafe (sigh) to a woman’s shelter, another about a pretty girl and straight A student who volunteers at a local community center and has an antiprom campaign in order to get kids to donate their prom money to said center, and the third about a sexy vet who works to save a charitable animal hospital.
A few things stood out from all three books.
This is pulled from a psych article, ” I hate that women and girls are made to believe they have to be everything (smart, beautiful, brave, and able to save the world) in order to be OK. The belief that we have to be everything to everyone, and to do it all without breaking a sweat, is why so many women report debilitating stress.”
Based on my recent reading and/or viewing, I think we have upped the ante on what women need to deserve love, not lowered it. Hollywood has an endless loop of Scarlet Johansen’s to remind us to starve so we look good in a cat suit while also kicking butt and romance has lovely girls who don’t know their gorgeous winning handsome successful men while having a fantastic career and saving the world.
I honestly think in that sense the “grin and bear it” narrative still exists. Old romance novels required you to be pretty, kind, and always sweet to be lovable. Now they tell you to be confident, creative, an activist in some way, and someone who doesn’t feel like they’re not looking for love or interested in it until—surprise!—it comes along. You basically have to be stunning in some way and “not like other girls.” Maybe for the older generation it’s a refreshing change in romance, but if you’re barely in your 20s and just want to be happy living a modest life with good friends, people who love you, a steady job, getting married, and having a kid or two, it’s like being a mediocre girl.
Honestly, if my grandmother dreamed of being able to be independent of men and find a guy who respected that, if my mother’s generation wanted to hear “you are impressive, go for your dreams and achieve what you set out to do,” many girls of my generation just want to hear “you are enough,” it doesn’t matter if you are not different from other girls and in fact you have 10 friends similar to you, if you are not the most successful or the smartest, the funniest or the sweetest, just be enough. To be able to choose and be chosen in return to have a respectful and altruistic relationship that enriches your life and where both of you grow together as a couple.
That’s what I like to see reflected in my romance.
Oh…. I love this.
I think a lot on the aspirational nature of stories. Somehow, women in fiction are increasingly so flawed they’re hard to care for (are there any kind, low key moms in lit fic these days?) or they’re the best person EVER!!!! Neither calls to me.
I genuinely believe that love is for all–the young, the old, the straight, the queer, the shy, and the wild, just to name a few. I find romance heroines who are practically perfect in every way uninteresting. This is why, I think, I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy. Many of the heroines there–and I’m not talking about the romantasy that is dominating right now, but urban fantasy, grittier works–can be deeply flawed.
I am currently reading a contemporary romance and thus far–at the 50% mark–both leads are without a flaw. They’re gorgeous–she’s one of those curvy heroines who thinks she’s not thin enough and whom men find wildy sexy–completely other oriented, phenomenal parents, and the best friends/siblings you could want. I’m so bored with them both.
But I am a cranky old lady!
I always felt the pinnacle of Nora Roberts’ writing career was the Chesapeake Bay books. None of the heroines were hot messes, but neither did they have glamorous careers. They were social workers, professors, and waitresses. One of the brothers had a hotshot career, but even his was so niche he wasn’t paparazzi bait. They were normal people having normal romances. Pamela Morsi used to write books like that, too. I don’t want my heroine’s sole goal in life to be getting married, but I also don’t want her to be hostile to the idea. I want people in the pages of my book, not caricatures or worse, political pundits telling me what I should be.
I feel like there’s this understandable idea that if we think women are so fabulous–and we do!–that means our heroines should be fabulous, that somehow, writing women who are sometimes mean or drunk or misguided or boring is an insult to women. But that’s the opposite of how it comes across.
I read this comment a few days ago, and have been trying to gather my thoughts to make a suitable reply, because much of what you say here made me think of the reasons I’ve largely stopped reading m/f romance. I find it hard to articulate exactly why it is that m/m romance is so much more appealing to me these days – the lack of gender politics/roles is one thing, but I think this idea that romance heroines are becoming more like superwomen and less like women who are “enough” (as per Amy’s comment) could be another factor. I’ve always been a hero-centric reader and so never felt a great deal of affinity with the heroines in romances, and I’m in my sixties, so don’t feel the same pressures to be all things to all people that younger women may do. But I do think that perhaps the picture being painted for younger female romance readers, of a heroine who has to Do All The Things, to kick butt and save the world would probably have me looking elsewhere for my romance fix if I were in that age bracket.
Yes, between the Wonder Womens and the Hot Messes, I’ve found myself approaching romance much more warily.
I suspect I’m not alone, but I’ve never read a m/m romance. I’d love to see a column about why they appeal to women, and including the titles and authors of two or three of the best for people like me.
The topic of women mostly writing and reading m/m can provoke heated debate in some quarters which is one reason I haven’t written something like that. Some see it as fetishisation (and I’ve certainly read some that could deserve that label) and are very anti women writing m/m and I didn’t wantbto go there.
As to why women enjoy reading m/m romance – there are probably as many reasons as there are readers, but the main one that comes up is the absence of m/f gender stereotyping and power imbalance. I’ve also found that m/m is where you’re more likely to find stories about people whose sexuality covers a spectrum – I’d never read non-binary, demisexual, asexual or aromantic characters until I started reading m/m.
The first m/m romance I read was Provoked by Joanna Chambers, which is an historical and the first in her Enlightenment trilogy. K.J Charles is far and away the best author of HR writing today- if you care about historical accuracy, well-crafted stories and strongly-drawn characters then she’s a must. Some of the best romantic suspense around is also coming from m/m writers, most of it in same-couple series which gives the relationship time to develop rather than trying to cram a fully-developed romance and a mystery into 350 pages. I’m very selective with contemporaries because, as with m/f, there’s a lot of dross out there, but if you look at my reviews, you’ll see the same names cropping up regularly.
I could certainly come up with some suggestions if you want to give some m/m romance a try.
Oh, thank you, Caz for your comments. One reason I have stayed away is that if you know anything about Oscar Wilde, you know his life was destroyed because he was gay, so I didn’t want to read fairy tales where the family and the society were just delighted with same-sex romances. I would be interested, if you would be kind enough to recommend a couple that I could read, at least the first few chapters on Amazon.
Rest assured, today’s m/m romance doesn’t ignore the fact that being queer, even in 2025, isn’t always easy, and there are proper HEAs; gone are the days when the queer character had to be left miserable.
If you like historicals, the Joanna Chambers Enlightenment series is good – check Power Search for our reviews; and you can’t go wrong with anything by KJ Charles. Her Will Darling trilogy is set in the 1920s and is a terrific mix of adventure/mystery and romance, or if you prefer 19th century, her Society of Gentlemen series (beginning with A Fashionable Indulgence) or her homage to the three-volume Victorian novel, Sins of the City (book one, An Unseen Attraction) are among my favourites of hers. One of the best HRs of recent years is Sally Malcolm’s King’s Man (there’s a prequel, Rebel that sets the scene that is worth reading first.) Cat Sebastian’s We Could Be So Good, set in late 1950s NYC is lovely.
Nicky James’ Valor and Doyle series (starting with Temporary Partner) and C.S. Poe’s Memento Mori series (starting with Madison Square Murders) are terrific examples of romantic suspense.
Sally Malcolm and Joanna Chambers co-wrote some contemporary romances I enjoyed a lot – Total Creative Control and Best Supporting Actor, Fearne Hill’s
Two Tribes is great and she’s one of my favourites, as is Jay Hogan – her Painted Bay series (starting with Off Balance ) is fabulous. Annabeth Albert’s Out of Uniform and L.A. Witt’s Anchor Point are two of my favourite contemporary series, both featuring characters in the military.
I have probably reviewed most of these titles here and you should be able to find them via the Power Search. Let me know how you get on, or if those don’t appeal, and I’ll come up with some more ideas.
(Yes, Wilde’s history is a sad one – Alan Turing is another famous casualty of bigotry.)
I read them because the narrative gaze is on the male. In m/f, the focus is mainly on the heroine (all those books with no hero POV) and the text tends to assume the reader will be on the heroine’s “side.”
Yep – I’ve always been a hero-centric reader, so that makes perfect sense to me. And – big confession – I’ve come to realise that I just… don’t like many of the heroines being written now, regardless of the genre.
I think there’s honestly room for everything; but I’m frankly glad we’ve shed the TSTL heroines who get dragged through life by exasperated heroes. Patience and goodness are fine virtues, but there has to be a happy medium between insipid tweety-bird “I love baking bread and orphans” heroines and “I’m a high-achieving lawyer and a goddess who is also a virgin ” heroines.
I think you’re confusing the Disney/Victorian version of fairy tales with the real thing. Well, those Disney princesses probably are the sweet fairy tale heroines that got turned into romance heroines. The real fairy tales, however, were more apt to feature clever girls and clever younger sons who succeeded in outwitting the Powers That Be, whether they were wicked witches and sorcerers or evil kings and queens. Much more subversive stuff, told at the peasant fireside, not at the royal court.
I guess I’d argue they are all fairy tales–what we define as such has changed over time.
It has been decades since I read Grimm’s fairy tales, but I think they have endured for generations before being recorded because they offer hope, as well as truths about the world.
“Cinderella” teaches that the world can change unexpectedly–Cinderella’s mother has died which was statistically more likely for women than men at the time, given the mortality of childbirth. Cinderella goes from being the the pampered child to a servant, a fall that has happened to many people in the world. She endures cruelty and hard, dirty work with grace and acceptance, making her a popular character in lots of stories, novels, movies, and TV programs.
“Cinderella” also tells the hard truth of a step-mother who favors her own children, at the expense of Cinderella. By the way, I always wondered as a kid where Cinderella’s father was. It certainly is not unknown for fathers to fail to support their daughters in the face of termagents, as the step-mother is.
The Grimm Brothers’ version is grisly, with one of the step-sisters cutting off her toes to fit into Cinderella’s shoe. Given the brutality of bound feet, I suppose I am stretching real-life parallels, but I do wonder if the step-sister’s willingness to mutilate herself to have a smaller foot could have been influenced by this custom which broke the foot and rotted off the toes of the victim. Given how myths and stories travel, it is possible.
I have read that this story originated in the myth of a slave girl marrying the king’s son, which historians believe really happened hundreds of years ago. Casting Cinderella as too stupid to live is, to me, a misleading characterization. Instead, to me it’s about a girl whose endurance and patience lead her to happiness.
Interesting.
Here’s what I learned from ChatGPT:
Rhodopis (Ancient Greece): A Greek slave’s sandal is carried off by an eagle and dropped in the lap of the Egyptian pharaoh, who takes it as a sign from the gods and makes her his queen—an origin tale that ties beauty to destiny and divine favor.
Ye Xian (China, 9th century): A gentle and obedient orphan is mistreated by her stepmother but aided by a magical fish spirit; when she loses a golden slipper, the king uses it to find and marry her. Virtue is quiet, feminine, and ultimately rewarded by cosmic justice.
Giambattista Basile’s Cenerentola (Italy, 1634): A bawdy, violent tale full of grotesque humor and sharp social commentary, where the heroine must scheme and endure to escape her brutish family. Survival, not sweetness, is the path to power.
Charles Perrault’s Cendrillon (France, 1697): The version most associated with the modern fairy tale: glass slipper, fairy godmother, and a heroine whose kindness, grace, and patience are rewarded with royal marriage. It’s an idealized morality tale shaped for the court of Louis XIV.
Grimms’ Aschenputtel (Germany, 1812): A darker, more mystical version grounded in folk belief and ancestral ties. Magic comes from the heroine’s dead mother, birds enforce justice, and the stepsisters are punished with blinding. Endurance is sacred, and justice is severe.
The Book of Esther in the Old Testament also pretty much tells the Cinderella story.
As always, a very insightful post that makes me think about a lot of things. In my opinion, if things are the way you see, it looks like the fairy tales are not over at all. The core idea of a fairy tale is just that virtue is rewarded with an everlasting happy ever after.
It’s just that nowadays virtue is seen differently. A virtuous heroine from the past usually had to be stoic, kind to others, thinking of everybody but herself. Today, our heroines have to be self-centered, with lots of agency and conscious of her own emotional needs before anything else.
The fairy tale part remains. If the heroines fight for themselves even if it means wandering apart from the heroes, they will be rewarded, and the heroes will still be there form them, waiting.
It’s a fairy tale because, in reality, it will be far from a sure thing that the hero will be there. In those examples you write things could easily go in a different way. The heroine asserts her emotional boundaries, walks away from the hero or thinks a lot about having a second chance, only to find out that, when she chooses the hero, he’s already far away with somebody else less messy.
Virtue keeps on being rewarded in a romance novel, it only changes the definition of virtue. In fifty years time, it will be defined in a different way, and romance novels will still capture the idea and remodel it in a fairy tale form.
I agree.
And, let me just say that if any of my kids brought home someone who’s
I’d suggest they think long and hard about seeking their HEA with such.
I think there’s something off about the idea of being self-centered as a virtue. There are altruistic and virtuous reasons to not be a doormat and to have self-respect, but selfishness is, i’d argue, one of the archetypal failings across many, many cultures and times. If we’re now holding it up as a virtue, I think we have problems.
I don’t think the writers and their readers would consider it as self-centered so much as self-affirming. Rather than a heroine simply accepting whatever affection the hero throws her way, she requires he do it in a manner that shows he’s paid attention to her wants and needs, boundaries, and/or feelings. Two good, famous examples of where this has been done right:
Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth doesn’t accept Mr. Darcy’s initial proposal which comes across as him lowering himself to love her. I honestly think he would have treated her like dirt for the rest of their lives if she had, always feeling he had condescended to marry her. In SEP’s Nobody’s Baby but Mine, Lynn, the mother of the hero, does let her husband treat her like it was a favor for him to marry her, and it takes a lot for them to work through that. And they only do so because she finally insists on it.
Beauty and the Beast, Disney Version: Belle rejects Gaston, the most eligible bachelor in town, although everyone thinks she is lucky to have him. She knows they’d be miserable and are ill-suited and says a firm no. Disney gets a lot of things wrong but in this case, they show us a woman falling for the guy who a) risks his life for her b)rather than telling her to get her nose out of a book, gives her a library c) plays in the snow with her d) dances with her. In contrast, a lot of romance novels have the heroine falling for an emotionally abusive monster whom she then “tames”.
There are a lot of entitled brats out there in romancelandia but I think most writers are really aiming for the above.
I hear you… and… maybe a better way to frame what am struggling with–and I see in lots of modern contemporary romance is the heroine’s conviction that the path to happiness in life is found in individualism. She is working on finding herself, on making sure her dreams are met, on setting limits for herself so that she can be strong, and on making sure her love interest adheres to her definitions of behavior. These things are, to be sure, often very healthy. But there is too much of ME in the way the heroines approach life and love for me, personally, to feel that, over time, they’ll commit to the compromises that a true partnership involves.
I can understand that. I recently finished a book where a woman made the hero (and quite a few other people around her) twist themselves into pretzels to make her happy. Fortunately, an old friend gets through to her and makes her realize she’s got a problem. It enables her to meet the hero halfway, but the damage had been done for me, and I didn’t think she deserved him. I think it is a symptom of the times. The new women’s fiction/romance hybrids focus so much on the heroine’s journey that the heroine inevitably comes across as selfish because the story really is all about her. I think part of the appeal for some of these hybrid books is just that – the fantasy at the center of them is a woman entirely in control of her life and not having to make the compromises real life demands of us. I read recently that people feel more hopeless than ever before -job insecurity, financial insecurity, home insecurity, and relationship insecurity. Divorce, low marriage rates, ghosting, and cancelling have all led to an increased realization that, in reality, friendship and love aren’t always forever. Plus, we have a therapy speak epidemic. Part of counseling can often be speaking your needs to your partner and getting their feedback on it, but in today’s world, a lot of people are utilizing this to simply speak their demands, not allowing any feedback. They throw terms like dysfunctional, toxic, abusive, victim, and gaslit around like they are confetti. It is making it harder and harder for people who really are in those situations. It takes useful language and turns it into meaningless slang.
So agree.
Don’t get me started on what we expect from young people today–their world is just so so hard.
See, I don’t mind this because it’s important to be a complete person outside of a relationship, even in a romance. Compromise is a fine thing to show, as is accepting someone as they are. But it’s important for everyone to change, I think.
I think the issue is what is that in service of. If the goal of being a complete person is to be able to be connected to others, I’m all for it. If the goal is to be happy simply to be a happy individual, I doubt that will inherently lead to a lifetime of satisfaction and joy.
Also, even if it did happen to lead to a lifetime of satisfaction and joy — that’s not a romance novel.
I agree that it’s important to be a complete person outside of a relationship. There used to be a saying that marriage is bad math because it’s two wholes that make a whole, not two halves.
Many romances have embroiled themselves in the darker side of fairy tales — the evil parents, the hero who treats her badly, etc. Some of these stories made me doubt their HEA would last.
Too many romance heroines in the past were expected to act like Patient Griselda. (That’s a folklore or legend rather than a fairy tale, but it’s in a similar vein.) Like Griselda, their “heroes” doubted them and belittled them for pages and pages. Then, at the end, the heroines were rewarded for their patience when the heroes finally admitted they loved them all along. And I often wondered how long that hero’s trust would last.
In the Boccaccio version, the poor heroine doesn’t see her children again until they are grown. But everything is great because the hero finally starts treating her like a human being again. 😐
Oh, that’s so interesting. What fairy tales do you give as examples? As you know, there is a difference between adult literature and fairy tales. I can’t think of one that cruel hero, for example.
I agree that in the 80’s the heroes did treat the heroine terribly, for which I blame “The Flame and the Flower” which was so influential, and I suppose you could call it a fairy tale, but maybe not. I, personally can’t think of one hero in a fairy tale who is not wonderful.
In the original version of Sleeping Beauty, the “hero” (a married king) doesn’t just give her a kiss — he sexually assaults her. She wakes up 9 months later when she gives birth to twins. His wife is the evil queen (because how dare she be angry about this), and she plots against him. At the end, he splits up with her and marries Sleeping Beauty. 😮
The early versions could get dark!
There are so many versions. This one is the one I learned.
Early contributions to the tale include the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (c. 1337–1344).[13] In this tale, a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her, and impregnates her in her sleep. They conceive and when their child is born, the child draws from her finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the ring Troylus left her that he was the father, and Troylus later returns to marry her.
Eh–I am pretty convinced most romance is feminist. So, even in the stories where the hero treated the heroine like a jerk, she gets what she wants. The times, yay, have changed but I think the older tales still were wish fulfillment for many many women.
At least in romances, the heroine is making these choices for herself.
The early romances remind me of the fantasies in “My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies.” Women still have those fantasies, of course. And now, heroines are more likely to insist on boundaries (such as safe words). 😉
Yes!
Tania Modleski (Loving with a Vengeance) and Helen Hazen (Endless Rapture) both spoke of how the appeal of romance had ties with the appeal of the mystery (the other genre where women are the primary consumers). In mysteries, we receive resolution to a horrible event, and in the abuse romances, the same happens. The heroine is ultimately the winner, surviving all that has been thrown at her, and receiving the adulation of the hero as the crowning glory of her triumph. The books then became a beacon for women feeling overwhelmed by a world where they have to earn everything – being attractive enough to win a good mate, smart enough to be brilliant career women, generous enough to be willing to sacrifice all for love, etc. A lot of the women in this time frame were also having to both work outside the home and do the bulk of the work in the home, have primary responsibility for the kids, etc. The stories we told ourselves through romance served as reinforcement of the idea it was all worth it.
I’ll add that we often have differing limits in what we can tolerate in this arena. Some don’t mind forced seductions, others find any form of rape appalling. I love mysteries, but I have a line of violence that I don’t cross. Too much of it sickens me, and I find it distasteful. Outlander is a good example of how various depictions can divide people. The books are clearly extremely popular, but the first one did include Jamie hitting Claire. Violence against women or historical accuracy?
We’ve been asking that for years!!!
https://allaboutromance.com/jamie-fraser-dreamboat-or-douchebag/