Deconstructing Dark Romance:
A Critical Analysis of the Portrayal of Gender, Power, and Choice
Abstract
In the 2010s, dark romance has become an increasingly popular and distinctive subgenre of contemporary romance. Unlike regular romance, dark romance promises a focus on more complex, ambiguous, and oftentimes taboo tropes, including stalking, violence, and emotional manipulation. This fact becomes concerning when one considers the genre’s almost limitless accessibility due to the internet and its highly supportive online community. Given the persuasive effect of mainstream media, the lack of critical engagement and discussion risks the popularization and internalization of values that do not promote equality. Therefore, this research intends to evaluate the predominant mode of representing gender and the power dynamics between characters in the dark romance genre. To answer the research questions, this study conducts a discourse analysis of five prominent dark romance novels chosen by purposive sampling. The texts were identified through Goodreads, as it provides a measurable indicator for a text’s cultural reach. The selection criteria prioritized high readership and positive reception to ensure the chosen novels represented the genre’s mainstream appeal, including publication within the last ten years and the exclusion of novels with fantastical elements. A hybrid approach was employed to develop a thematic coding system organized into two main categories corresponding to the research questions: Gender Representation and Power Dynamics. The theoretical framework guiding this process is a postfeminist sensibility established by Rosalind Gill. The findings of this study demonstrate that these novels operate on a concerning framework that is designed to romanticize and eventually justify power imbalances. The narrative begins with the construction of an essentialist view of gender, in which femininity and masculinity are first and foremost established through an overdramatized image of the body to establish the initial power difference. Then, on this foundation, the novels build their central fantasy of eroticizing male control, reframing domination, possessiveness, and narratively justified violence as signs of passion. Finally, in dark romance, the heroine “voluntarily” accepts her subordination through her own act of “agency”. Notably, dark romance is not just a simple rejection of feminist ideals, but rather the use of its language to make a patriarchal fantasy palatable. These novels also provide a revealing look into the contradictory ways of understanding contemporary love by creating a world where dominance is passion and submission is an empowered choice. This study confirms that dark romance is not merely escapist fiction, but rather an expressive contemporary space where ideas about love, consent, freedom, and power are actively redefined and constructed.
References
Arvanitaki, E. (2015). Gender in recent romance novels: A third wave feminist Mills and Boon love affair? In D. Yakalı Çamoğlu (Ed.), Re/presenting gender & love 159–170. Inter-Disciplinary Press. https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848883437_016
Arvanitaki, E. (2019). Postmillennial femininities in the popular romance novel. Journal of Gender Studies, 28(1), 18–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2017.1368370
Butler, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503616295
Butler, J. (2006). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203824979
Carlton, H. D. (2021). Haunting Adeline. H. D. Carlton.
Christian-Smith, L. K. (1990). Becoming a woman through romance. Routledge.
Columpar, C. (2002). The gaze as theoretical touchstone: The intersection of film studies, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 30(1/2), 25–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40004635
Davies, B. (1991). The concept of agency: A feminist poststructuralist analysis. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 30, 42–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23164525
Douglas, P. (2020). Credence. Penelope Douglas LLC.
Ebert, T. L. (1988). The romance of patriarchy: Ideology, subjectivity, and postmodern feminist cultural theory. Cultural Critique, 10, 19–57. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354105
Gamman, L. (1988). Watching the detectives: The enigma of the female gaze. In L. Gamman & M. Marshment (Eds.), The female gaze: Women as viewers of popular culture, 8–26. The Women’s Press.
Gill, R., & Herdieckerhoff, E. (2006). Rewriting the romance: New femininities in chick lit? Feminist Media Studies, 6(4), 487–504. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680770600989947
Gill, R. (2007). Gender and the media. Polity Press.
Huang, A. (2022). Twisted Love. Piatkus.
Kamblé, J. (2014). Making meaning in popular romance fiction: An epistemology. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137395054
Leedy, H. (1985). The portrayal of women in romance novels. Michigan Sociological Review, 1(Fall), 61–71. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40968918
McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. SAGE Publications.
Modleski, T. (2008). Loving with a vengeance: Mass-produced fantasies for women (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203941102
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and other pleasures 14–26. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19798-9_3
Radway, J. A. (1991). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular literature (2nd ed.). University of North Carolina Press.
Regis, P. (2003). A Natural History of the Romance Novel. University Of Pennsylvania Press.
Spivak, G. C. (1985). Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism. Critical Inquiry, 12(1), 243–261. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343469
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson, & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. University of Illinois Press.
Weaver, B. (2023). Butcher & Blackbird. Zando. anizing the conference that provided the initial platform for this research.
Authors retain copyright of their published work and grant the International Journal of Social Science Research and Review (IJSSRR) the right of first publication.
Articles published in IJSSRR are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
Authors are permitted to share, archive, and distribute the published version of their work, provided that proper acknowledgement of the original publication in IJSSRR is given.
