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Romance: Good Reading or Emotional Porn?

Posted By Claire on October 21, 2011

Since the beginning of ~~time~~ ~~publishing~~ romance publishing, there has been criticism of the entire genre of romance and chick lit. Chick lit today remains the most popular genre in the publishing world, yet it is constantly being marginalized and dismissed by critics and all those who don’t read the genre.
One of my friends recently posted a great response to criticism of this type.

“Let me get my issues with that out of the way first: If you’re talking about the books where a thin veneer of plot is stretched between graphic, descriptive sex scenes, I agree with you. That is porn for women, because its only purpose is to arouse the reader, in the same way that ‘porn for men’, or visual porn, is designed only to arouse the viewer.

But to take that so far that you’d say Beverly Lewis’s books about Amish people falling in love are also porn is simply ridiculous.

Aha, but it’s “emotional porn”! they cry. It engages your emotions and makes you feel, or want to feel, what the characters are feeling. To which I respond: what is the point of reading a novel which doesn’t engage your emotions? If I’m reading a book and I don’t feel sad when the characters are sad, or frustrated when they’re frustrated, or scared when they’re scared, then I’ll probably put it down and never finish it. We’re supposed to be engaged by a story.”