Publication details
Romance and the Material Culture in Nora Roberts' Bride Quartet Series
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The link between money and courtship and/or marriage is not a new one. For centuries, a marriage was either an act to connect two family fortunes together or a way to improve one's economic status. When in 18th century romantic love took over and became the key element in majority of courtships and marriages, the role of money shifted from its original position. Though in the past, the partner was simply a mere way how to obtain the desired commodity and the wedding marked the beginning of the improved economic status, in modern romance, the commodity, or very often multiple commodities, are tools for reaching the desired goal, winning the partner. A wedding is, in this case, a lavish culmination of this, what some people might call consumerist approach to courtship. This paper discusses the portrayal of this phenomenon in Nora Robert's series the Bride Quartet. The series uses a fictional wedding planning agency, Vows, as a backdrop for its romantic stories making it a complex collection of not only traditional courtship behaviour, but also imagery connected with the perfect wedding and its importance in contemporary popular romance. While Roberts is trying to emphasize the insignificance of economic status and money in romance and is stressing the importance of true emotions and willingness to commit, her heroines and heroes still fall partially victim to the consumerist stereotypes of diamond rings, expensive dinners, designer shoes, and retail therapies as a result of the long tradition of consumer culture in America. |
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