ABSTRACT
Mass-produced fiction for women, Kay Mussell writes in her book on women’s romance fiction, always ends with the marriage of the heroine. The modern romance formula essentially affirms the ideals of monogamous marriage and feminine domesticity. The novel closes with Anne Welles’s marriage to Lyon, the man she has desired and who lives up to her ideal image of a husband. In spite of her ambivalent feelings about being married, she rationalizes that the problem lies in Jonathan and the ways in which he has changed during the course of the marriage. The 1970s, in contrast to the 1960s, marshall in a period of liberation, and traces of the women’s movement can be seen in many of the bestsellers of the period. The dilemma in the end is not whether to be or not to be a wife, but how to find the style which best fits.
