And Then Their Hearts Stood Still: An Exuberant Look at Romantic Fiction Past and Present

"And Then Their Hearts Stood Still" looks at that most popular of genres, romantic fiction, from classics to comic-strips and women's magazine stories; from teenage and schoolgirl passions to the second (or third or fourth)- time-around affairs of older -- if not necessarily wiser -- women. Looking back to the themes initiated by writers in the nineteenth century, such as Jane Austen and the Brontes, and some luridly intriguing seduction tales, it traces the historical development of the love story, and the changing status of its heroines. As well as these traditional roles, the book looks at images of the overblown femme fatale and the 'other woman'. It considers responses to sexual attitudes and identities and how these change and differ, through the innocent raptures of Barbara Cartland to the occasionally shocking brutalities of Ethel M Dell and E M Hull; from the Gothic of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt to the quasi-spiritual outpourings of Marie Corelli and Florence Barclay. While the genre is often seen as endorsing men's power over women, Mary Cadogan shows that it frequently reflects female domination over men, in 'taming the beast' tales from writers as distinct in style as D H Lawrence and Vera Brittain. In more recent years writers such as Frances Edmonds and Joanna Trollope in Britain, and Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz in America have taken this one step further and created truly feminist heroines. Questions are often asked about the relevance and future of the novel in general: "And Then Their Hearts Stood Still" makes it clear that romantic fiction which has already rolled on relentlessly for some 200 years, seems set to continue its colourful momentum well into the twenty-first century and beyond.