ABSTRACT
In twenty-first-century, neoliberal societies we are living through an age of “I”. Yet desire for the unity and reciprocity of “we” is resilient, and pervasively evident in popular culture, not least in the undiminished centrality of romantic love to the stories that people – and especially women – consume. This chapter examines how the ideal of romantic love is socially ordered in new, often exploitative ways in contemporary culture, yet continues to articulate profoundly felt desires for reciprocal, fulfilling relationships with others. To explore this dynamic, I take the case of France – both as representative of globalized Western culture and as the culturally specific pays de l’amour, traditionally identified with romantic love – and focus on the popular fiction currently read by a vast number of that nation’s considerable female readership. Through critical readings of some recent Harlequin romances written for the French market, and of the bestselling work of popular novelists Guillaume Musso and Anna Gavalda, I ask how immersive fictional reading interprets and shapes the lived experience of romance in a period marked by distinct flux in intimacy norms. Study of what most women read suggests that literary fiction continues to play a substantial role in the collective imagining of the meanings of love.
