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Reading Fictions of Romance: Gender, Sexuality, and Nationalism in Postcolonial India

2002; Oxford University Press; Volume: 52; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1460-2466.2002.tb02576.x

1460-2466

Radhika Parameswaran,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

This ethnographic study explores the implications of romance reading for young Indian women's gender, class, and national identities in one urban setting in South India. The project demonstrates that the practice of reading Western romance fiction is deeply embedded within patriarchal discourses of feminine respectability that exert control over women's sexuality. Young women's fascination for the commodities of Western material culture in imported romance fiction is located in their desire to experience their identities as cosmopolitan, global consumers. In negotiating the boundaries of tradition, Indian women readers construct romance fiction as modern manuals on sexuality that afford them escape from the burdens of preserving the honor of family and community. The contradictory character of women's interpretations of sexuality in Western romance novels highlights the complex dialectic between postcolonial audiences' resistance to and collusion with the hegemony of global culture.