What Makes Romance Romantic? Women Authors Discuss Role Of Consent

What makes romance romantic for us? For many of us, we’re invested in a romance when it’s “love at first sight.” For others, it’s when the enemies turn into lovers, after being forced to spend time one-on-one with each other. Over the years, our films and stories have become conscious in terms of storytelling, especially in terms of representation and gender dynamics. 

To discuss more about the changing narratives of romance, author Richa S Mukherjee moderated a panel titled ‘Re-Imagining Love in the Age of Swipes’ during the SheThePeople’s Women Writer's Fest powered by Gytree. 

Why Do We Like Romance?

So, why do we like romance? Mukherjee suggests it's because of common tropes most romances use that audiences love. “There are typical characters, characterisations, tropes, and stories which are popular low-hanging fruit, so to speak, that will be loved within the genre,” Mukherjee notes.

She makes an example of Korean drama (K-dramas) and how even the most cynical parts of our society will watch them and fall for the tropes. For instance characters such as the sweet, chatty, lively woman swooning over the big, mysterious, and quiet man. “We’ve fallen hook line and sinker for all of it,” she says. Thinking out loud, Mukherjee asks the panellists are these common literary tropes still essential for romance fiction writing or do they need to evolve with the times. Will audiences see these tropes in a different light?

The Importance of Consent

Milan Vohra, the author of Our Song, had an interesting reply to this question. She expressed that consent should be built into these tropes indeed, one of the many criticisms against the romance genre is that it often overlooks consent in its tropes. One of the factors behind the success of K-dramas, as Richa S Mukherjee points out, is that many K-dramas do incorporate consent within the romance tropes that they feature. And isn’t just limited to K-dramas for many other films and TV shows have also gained popularity through their depiction of consent in romance.

Pride and Prejudice

In fact, older films like 2002’s Pride and Prejudice, while retaining its popularity, have undergone a renaissance of sorts in the way it deals with consent and unspoken gestures. Anmol Malik brings up the scene where Mr Darcy helps Elizabeth Bennet to her carriage holding her hand, and afterwards, clenches his fingers and forms a fist. She finds these small acts more telling, more romantic, than big gestures.

When writing her own book, A Plane Story, she remembered how she found writing the male protagonist asking the female protagonist for a kiss more satisfying. “I found that more romantic than the kiss itself,” she said.

“You could have grand gestures of running across airports,” she noted. “But there’s always that small moment in everyone’s love story where- it’s just a spark, a fleeting moment where they suddenly feel like “Oh God, this is going to take me months to get over!”

The Audience's Reaction

What’s the reason behind wanting your audience to feel certain things whilst reading/watching your work? Andaleeb Wajid, author of My Brother’s Wedding, answers this, stating that “as writers, we’re trying to chase that feeling that we experienced when we read or saw something.” In a way, the writers of romantic tropes are inspired to create them with consent because that’s what they want to see in romance! “It’s so important to represent in our books what we want to see in the world,” she added.

Milan Vohra agreed with this, also bringing up how the Netflix series Heartstopper is a quintessential romance because of its emphasis on consent in the romance between the two main characters. “Whether it’s young adults, or adults, or Shabana Azmi and Dharmendra in Rocky Aur Rani,” she said. “At the end of the day, we’re just enjoying something we can’t have in life or something we want to relive… we just want to relive that ‘aww!’ feeling when we watch a romance.”

Watch the discussion here

Suggested Reading: The Challenge In Writing A Romance Novel Is To Keep It Fresh: Milan Vohra