Why Irish romance fiction deserves its happily ever after

Irish Times

2 days ago

The illustrious history of
Irish literature
is rife with romance fiction, from Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale published in 1806 to Anna Carey's recently released Our Song.
Romance fiction revolves around a love story and ends happily.
It includes literary classics as well as commercial fiction, and plays a crucial role in representing Irish society, past and present. By featuring characters who overcome internal and external barriers to happiness, it voices aspirations for personal fulfilment and a better society.
Wildly popular with readers of all ages, romance has long been the most profitable genre in publishing. Colleen Hoover, an American whose novels revolve around love stories, was the bestselling writer in Ireland in 2022, and Irish authors from Maeve Binchy to Sally Rooney have had internationally chart-busting, award-winning novels rooted in romance.
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A quick scroll through BookTok or Instagram, or a quick pass through any library or bookshop, confirms that romance is having a cultural moment.
Yet, this genre continues to be dismissed as a mindless guilty pleasure for readers. Even the most successful Irish writers bristle at the 'romance' label because the term so effectively has been weaponised to demean and dismiss their work.
An exhibition currently on view at the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) – titled Happy Ever After: Falling in Love with Irish Romance Fiction – seeks to change that misconception.
By awarding Irish romance fiction the serious consideration it deserves, it hopes to transform 'romance' into a neutral descriptor, one that generates as little adverse friction as labels like 'French fiction' or 'nature writing'.
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The exhibition traces the long and varied history of the Irish romance novel, beginning with Vertue Rewarded; or, the Irish Princess, anonymously published in 1693.
This is the first of many examples in which romance serves as political allegory. In subsequent centuries, numerous other novels have focused on love stories between English settlers or soldiers and Irish women, thus offering a highly personal metaphor for reconciliation.
This tradition continues into the 21st century: Sue Divin's
Guard Your Heart (2021) depicts two 18-year-olds from Derry, one Catholic and the other Protestant, who meet and fall in love in 2016, years after the Good Friday/ Belfast Agreement, but who must necessarily negotiate the legacy of the Troubles.
Romance fiction has historically been written by women, for women. By taking romance seriously, we not only open the canon to more women writers, but also revise certain long-standing misconceptions of Irish literature. Aside from rare examples such as Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses, it has been commonly understood that poetry, drama, and the short story were the dominant Irish literary forms until the late 20th century.
But Ulysses didn't come out of nowhere. For centuries, Irish women writers published hundreds of popular novels, many of them romances. In the early decades of the 20th century, Katharine Tynan wrote more than 100 novels, Rosa Mulholland more than 50. Yet these contributions were largely ignored, disregarded as sentimental or too feminine.
Irish romance fiction frequently depicts suffering, loss and shame – but it also shows how people can endure those trials. Photograph: MoLI
Irish romance fiction is a transnational genre, one that has long been popular with readers worldwide. In fact, my interest in its history was stoked by a discovery in the library stacks of the Jesuit college in Massachusetts where I teach. At Holy Cross, our collection holds shelves and shelves of these older Irish romances, suggesting that these novels were relished by the many Irish immigrant priests teaching there during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This finding undermines another stereotype, that only women read romance: over a century ago, priests and their male students were enjoying these warm tales of human connection.
The enduring appeal of Irish romance fiction owes much to the qualities it shares with Irish literature more broadly: lively dialogue, vivid detail and a tight focus on ordinary life. At times, these books seem to depict cultural transformations almost as they occur in real time. Published in 1917, and dedicated to the 1916 revolutionaries, Annie MP Smithson's bestselling novel, Her Irish Heritage, might seem like a dusty artefact.
Yet, it unfolds in a surprisingly modern Dublin with professional men and women enjoying motorcar rides and film screenings. In one scene, Smithson describes Dr. Delaney and nurse Mary Carmichael catching the opera Faust at the Gaiety; while the novel embraces the conservative mores of its time, Smithson's accounts of flirtatious banter and eating chocolates at the interval feel as though they could be happening today.
Skipping ahead a century, Adiba Jaigirdar's Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating, published in 2021, invites readers into the everyday lives of two queer teens as their friendship evolves into a romance. Without significant toll, the young protagonists embrace their ambitions and their attraction with support from their middle-class Bengali-Irish families.
Meanwhile, writers such as Marian Keyes and Patricia Scanlan are revisiting characters from their previous novels. Decades after we first met them, the Walsh sisters and City Girls now care for elderly parents, manage menopause, struggle with grief, negotiate a changing workplace and enjoy the freedoms of the empty nest – all with the backing of friends, family and love interests.
Irish romance fiction moves with the times. Its characters might exercise reproductive choice, seek gender equity, escape intimate partner abuse, struggle to come out of the closet, or navigate the challenges of inward and outward migration. These books also reflect and normalise changing perceptions of love and marriage.
Today, the happily ever after in Irish romance does not necessarily mean a Catholic wedding between a man and a woman. Instead, it may take the form of short-term relationships, queer relationships, polyamorous relationships or individual self-fulfilment.
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A global reading community is helping to give romance fiction its own happy ending. Photograph: MoLI
In recent years, romance fiction has responded to legitimate criticism that it too often unfolds in a world of white, heterosexual affluence. Increasingly, Irish romance fiction, particularly in the Young Adult category, represents the diversity of the island's population.
New works feature a broader spectrum of linguistic, racial and ethnic identities, as seen in Disha Bose's I Will Blossom Anyway and Zainab Boladale's Braids Take a Day. They also highlight a range of gendered identities and sexual desires, as with Jarlath Gregory's What Love Looks Like, Kel Menton's A Fix of Light and Ciara Smyth's The Falling in Love Montage.
Love interests are more likely to have bodies that do not conform to traditional standards of beauty or ability, as in Carmel Harrington's My Pear-Shaped Life and Sally Rooney's Intermezzo.
Some have claimed the consoling narratives of romance perpetuate false hope. But in a polarised world, these novels show us not only the risks and rewards of reaching out to others, and the power of emotional and physical intimacy, but also the roles that a community might play in the realisation of a happily ever after.
Indeed, a global reading community is helping to give romance fiction its own happy ending. Through their purchasing power and their voices on digital platforms such as GoodReads, Bookstagram and BookTok, fans of romance fiction are advocating for the genre, helping to ensure it receives the respectful recognition it deserves.
These books are also fun to read. Part of the pleasure stems from how authors cleverly revitalise recognisable storylines and tropes such as the love triangle or the second-chance romance – a fact evident in the many contemporary adaptations of Jane Austen's fiction, including the recent production of Emma staged at the Abbey Theatre.
Such good feeling is reflected in the design of the MoLI exhibit. The objects on display tell fascinating stories about Irish romance, past and present; visitors are encouraged to flick through books and to listen to podcasts and interviews; informative quotes captured in speech bubbles and posted to the walls reflect the sense of community among romance readers, who in this case also happen to be well-regarded academics.
Sally Rooney's Intermezzo is an example of where love interests are more likely to have bodies that do not conform to traditional standards of beauty or ability. Photograph: Simone Padovani/ Awakening/ Getty Images
Progressive politics and pleasure are not mutually exclusive. As a scholar of Irish writing and an avid romance reader, I find it baffling that fictional representations of individuals finding love and feeling good have attracted such contempt. My decades-long academic career has been built on the rigorous study of formally complex books and plays about challenging issues. But I also enjoy the accessible and uplifting narratives offered by romance fiction. Truth be told, during the darkest days of the pandemic, I received a mildly unsettling email celebrating my status as among the 'top 1 per cent of Kindle romance readers worldwide,' so I know of what I speak.
Like other readers of romance, I am not naive. These books and their happy endings do not seduce me into believing that everything is just fine and inevitably will work out for the best; I am, after all, a woman currently living in United States.
Irish romance fiction frequently depicts suffering, loss, shame and sustained bad feeling – but it also shows us how people can endure those trials and even thrive. These stories suggest that consensual emotional and physical intimacy, and mutual gestures of care and attention, might help make the world a better place.
Both romance fiction and Irish women's writing are flourishing, so this is the perfect time to revisit the genre's contributions.
As in any written corpus, some of these books are great, while some are forgettable. Yes, romance novels are predictable in that they end happily. But for the record, no one criticises football matches when they end, as expected, on a grassy field rather than in outer space.
The 'happily ever after' is not a generic failure, as Marian Keyes observed in our interview for RadioMoLI. It is simply where the author chooses to end the story.
Happy Ever After: Falling in Love with Irish Romance Fiction continues at
MoLI
until November 9th
Paige Reynolds is Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. Her latest book is Modernism in Irish Women's Contemporary Writing: The Stubborn Mode (2023)
Irish romance fiction favourites - by curator Paige Reynolds
By taking romance seriously, we revise certain long-standing misconceptions of Irish literature. Photograph: MoLI
Kate O'Brien's Mary Lavelle (1936): Banned in 1936, this gorgeous novel depicts Mary's affair, while working as a governess in Spain, with the married Juanito. It is one of many Irish romances with an untidy HEA focused more on self-fulfilment than lasting romantic love.
Emma Donoghue's Stir-Fry (1994): This insightful novel set in 1989 is a campus romance featuring lesbian characters. Read today, it reminds us of the rapid transformations in matters of gender and sexuality.
Maeve Binchy's Tara Road (1998): Light a Penny Candle and Circle of Friends are Binchy's acknowledged masterworks, but I have a soft spot for this tale of an Irish and American woman swapping houses one summer: a potent reminder that romantic relationships are often opaque not only to outsiders, but to the people in them.
Marian Keyes's Rachel's Holiday (1997) and Again, Rachel (2022): Two of my desert island books. Keyes realistically navigates Rachel's decades-long path of addiction and recovery, showing the support offered, in good times and bad, by her quirky family and her super sexy love interest, Luke.
Anna McPartlin, Pack Up the Moon (2005): The term 'chick-lit' has a bad rap, but I love the early 21st-century romances from Poolbeg Press that show Irish women exercising their newfound spending power and sexual freedoms. This one focuses on healing from grief.
Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling (2017): Romance is one among many types of relationships in this first of the delightful Aisling series. When I first read it, I was impressed that a Brazilian appears among the cast of characters as a simple matter of fact – a confirmation that Irish romance fiction swiftly embraces and helps to normalise cultural changes.
Sue Divin's Guard Your Heart (2021): Not many HEAs in Northern Irish romance, but this Young Adult novel set in 2016 is a smart, engaging account of two 18-year-olds from Derry (both born on the day the peace agreement was signed) who find love despite lingering sectarian discord.
Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident (2023): This is another campus romance, set in Cork. It cleverly spins a commonplace plot device found across Irish fiction, an affair between an older male professor and younger student.
Naoise Dolan The Happy Couple (2023): Dolan's Exciting Times is more obviously a HEA romance, but in this second novel, she astutely (and hilariously) takes on the marriage plot with characters documenting the intricate path to Celine and Luke's wedding day.
Sally Rooney Intermezzo (2024): In her fourth novel, Rooney reworks familiar tropes – the age-gap romance, the meet cute, star-crossed lovers – and grants her characters satisfying HEAs that fit the present day.
Another favourite - by curatorial adviser Maria Butler
Patricia Scanlan's City Girl (1990): This eighties-tastic novel was the first to apply the topics and themes found in the bonkbuster to a modern Irish context. Although parts seem a bit dated, it paved the way for everything we have now.