The Feminist Playground of Historical Romance

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you’re a historical romance person, all I need to say is: Sarah MacLean is here, and she is answering all the questions. If you’re not a historical romance person, I’ll spell it out a little more: Sarah MacLean is one of the most popular writers of historical romance today — and she’s also the cohost of the incredibly popular podcast Fated Mates. She’s a very good pod conversationalist, which is one of many reasons we wanted to have her on the show (that and I knew it would make Melody faint if she said yes). We talk about how the conventions and constrictions of the historical genre allow for feminist play and provocation, how historicals handle virginity, why author’s first books are so often the most compelling, and so, SO much more. If you’re a longtime fan (of the genre, of Sarah), you’re going to absolutely love this; if not, we’ve got so many recommendations for starting points. I hope you enjoy this one as much as we enjoyed recording it!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Anne. So here's a heads up on all the episodes we're working on so that you can submit your questions.
0:06.9	We're talking about trends and men's fashion. That can be anything, like this is not highfalut in fashion.
0:13.4	It's more like, why are all the guys that I know wearing this or still wearing this or when will they wear this, that sort of thing.
0:22.5	We're doing another one about plastic surgery culture. We're doing one on periods,
0:26.8	and then we're doing one on how cookbooks get made. You can submit your questions at tiny URL.com
0:33.1	slash culture study pod. That's also where you can submit questions or prompts for the Ask
0:38.2	An Anything segment and where you can give us your ideas for future episodes. We can't wait
0:43.9	to hear from you. So, okay, on to today's show. I think historical romance slaps on like a number
0:50.4	of levels, right? I think it's so fun. I think you're not going to find romance novels
0:55.4	that take the giant swings that historical takes as regularly in other sub-genres.
1:03.3	That all said, I also think of historical as being such a deeply political genre. And part of the
1:10.0	reason why is because we have had to reckon with the whiteness, the
1:16.5	cisness, the heterosexualness, the like, ableismness of the genre writ whole in a very
1:25.0	different kind of way.
1:26.1	And so now I think what's happening in
1:28.2	historical currently is so political, right? We're seeing writers negotiate bodily autonomy
1:36.6	in an overt way that we're seeing less in contemporary. We're seeing them. We've always been
1:41.7	the subgenre that has like most tackled misogyny,
1:46.7	patriarchy, the kind of the gender politic of romance has always been really thickly
1:54.6	dealt with in historicals. And so I think part of that is because if we set it in history, we can play with the boundaries in a different way.
2:05.4	But I also think that it's because we are so akin to fantasy and we can put people in gorgeous dresses and send them to like beautiful balls and give them these kind of elevated exceptional experiences, we can also
2:20.3	have the dialogue in a much less overt way. We are simultaneously more overt and less overt.
	...

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