IUP Publications Online
Home About IUP Magazines Journals Books Archives
     
A Guided Tour | Recommend | Links | Subscriber Services | Feedback | Subscribe Online
 
The IUP Journal of English Studies :
Gender Stereotypes and Feminist Strokes: Negotiating the Spaces in Mills and Boon
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Commercial fiction includes those works which aim to make profit out of readership. Among all genres of commercial fiction, romance boasts of maximum popularity. Of those, the Mills and Boon series produced by Harlequin Enterprises dominates the market at the global level. This paper focuses on three novels from the December 2012 Mills and Boon series, namely, The Ruthless Caleb Wilde by Sandra Marton, A Date with a Bollywood Star by Riya Lakhani, and Staking His Claim by Tessa Radley. The dates of their publication carry no special significance since the pattern of the plot continues to be the same over the decades. The aim of the paper is not only to study the aspects of commercialization of these books, but also to examine how these reflect the sociocultural dynamics at a deeper level. A surface level reading might reflect the social stereotyping of gender roles in these books. However, an in-depth analysis reveals the feminist strokes and how women’s reading habit of these books exhibits their proclamation of freedom, understanding of their psychological needs, and most importantly their awareness of the “self.”

 
 
 

Founded by Gerald Rusgrove Mills and Charles Boon in the year 1908, the Harlequin Enterprises was a general publishing house that brought out all sorts of books from travel guides to arts and craft. The first book, however, was a romance novel named Arrows from the Dark by Sophie Cole. It was received with great success and simultaneously more than thousand manuscripts landed in the office of Mills and Boon. As a consequence, it became easier for Charles Boon to realize that the future of the company’s progress rested on the demands of the fairer sex. More than hundred years have passed since its establishment, and the circulation of these books has expanded at a global level. Every month, a series of books are published under various imprints1 whose contents range from innocent love to explicit description of sexual activities. However, the storyline remains the same with the protagonists uniting in a happily ever after ending.

 
 
 

English Studies Journal, Gender Stereotypes, Feminist Strokes, Negotiating, Spaces, The Ruthless Caleb Wilde, Riya Lakhani, Staking His Claim, Mills and Boon.