It’s a new pink library: romance novels are exploding on the sales charts in Quebec. Books by Colleen Hoover, Danielle Steel and Julia Quinn propelled the genre by 53%, in literature, in the Gaspard 2023 report. The duty examines, in a series of three articles, contemporary romance, which attracts many, many readers, women and girls. Third text: dark loves.
“From love to hatred, there is only one step. Before, he wanted to see you dead; now he could die for you. » This is the tone of the trilogy Captive, by the young Algerian Sarah Rivens. This phenomenon book brought together thousands of readers on the Wattpad platform during the pandemic. Then generated thousands and thousands of book sales, in around ten languages. Captive is a book of dark romance pure and hard, where the prince is initially not charming at all.
“It disturbs me that the dark romance sells as much here,” confides to Duty a bookseller from a large chain in Quebec. Captive has been on the charts for weeks. And weeks. And weeks.
Born in 2013 in the United States through self-published texts, the dark romance is a bit of a child gore of 50 Shades of Gray (EL James). In 2017, with the book of the same name Dark Romance (Harper Collins), by Penelope Douglas, the subgenre spreads its black wings. Books are shared a lot on social media, TikTok in the lead.
Captive, is written in French, in a language so transparent that it can hinder readers who like it when it is worked. The newspaper Young Africa summarizes: “Head of a network of gangsters, [Asher fait subir à la jeune protagoniste] humiliation upon humiliation. He burns her hand on a hotplate, makes her sleep in a freezing cellar, orders her to serve him meals that he won’t eat, etc. »
I was a fucking monster. I had become heartless and saw no problem in it. But with her, it felt like I wasn’t supposed to be. I must not break her, I must not stain her, she who was so pure. And yet, I had done it. I had destroyed her because of my shitty selfishness, because of my fucking fear of getting attached, because of my hatred for myself. I didn’t deserve her. She was better than a bad guy who was going to destroy her to protect himself. A guy who eased her pain by hurting her, who could never control his anger. She deserved better than me. And I knew it.
“And never misses an opportunity to threaten death or torture his captive, whom he persists in refusing to call by his first name to better degrade her. We will learn that the previous ones only lasted a few days at his side. He even killed the first one. »
Women’s school
Ella, like the other female characters of the genre, in the end “succeeds in changing him, and he loves her”, continues the bookseller. The charming executioner prince, superhumanized, always has “a reason” to be so harsh, a great inner suffering. “This summary is that of a whole bunch of these novels which are invading our shelves”, such as those by Camille Creati and Angel Arekin.
What worries the bookseller and other observers is that the “18 and over” recommendation and the trauma warnings stop no one. “These books are read by 14 and 15 year old girls,” confirms the Quebec bookseller.
“What will happen to them when they discover that a violent man doesn’t change for love? It troubles me all the more since it is authors who sign the dark romance. »
Élisabeth Desbiens, 36 years old, loves dark romance from a decade. She loves it precisely for its transgressive, forbidden side, outside of morality – which arouses its share of eroticism.
His favorite: Pénélope Douglas. “You open the book,” says Mme Desbiens, “and you wonder how far it will take you. She transgresses and transgresses my emotions — which makes me experience emotions! »
A good old spring of eroticism, already twisted by Sade, Bataille, Anne Archet, like from Sodom to Gomorrah: the forbidden, the amoral, the proximity of violence serve as a spark plug.
I have a love that wants me to die
But when the readers are very young girls? Minors? The sociologist of literature Marie-Pier Luneau sighs. “I can understand the discomfort of booksellers and parents. But I always have trouble saying that literature is bad. »
“We always try to control the girls’ reading. This is the eternal accusation, when it comes to mass literature aimed at a female audience, of the incapacity, by this same audience, to put this literature at a distance. »
The director of the Group for Research and Studies on Books in Quebec continues: “Almost all of the victims in detective novels are women (beaten, raped, kidnapped), and we do not say that a woman who reads of the police officer will end up murdered…”
Mme Luneau also recalls that a whole generation before them gorged themselves before their time, with a delicious feeling of the illicit, of Christiane F., drug addict, prostituteand others The blue hoursby Alphonsine, “while not doing too badly,” smiles the sociologist.
The Anglo-Saxon sentimental novel, including Harlequin, “has always supported this form of rape culture,” continues the specialist. “In all eras, in all categories of romance, there is an unequal relationship between men and women,” she adds, as well as assault and rape.
For Jean-Philippe Warren, who signed with Mme Luneau Love like a noveln (PUM, 2022), this dark sexuality is just the good old Hollywood kiss, XXI versione century: “The one where the man grabs the woman’s wrist, pulls her towards him and kisses her by force; where she gradually gives in to pleasure. The woman opens her body; the man in response opens his heart. »
“I loved him body, heart and soul”
“To think that young readers of dark novelThe risk of being attacked later is the same reflex as saying that a girl was raped because she was wearing a skirt that was too short,” believes Marie-Pier Luneau.
However, American studies conclude that readers of 50 Shades of Graygrandmother’s book dark romance, demonstrated a higher level of sexism. But the sociologist prefers to recall the reflections of Hard romanceby Eva Illouz, on the same book.
She even sees possible therapeutic effects in this type of reading. “I can very well imagine that a woman who has been confronted with a situation of sexual violence” can find imaginary, symbolic comfort in these books which, let us remember, always end well.
“95% of them are women who read these books. If they only found humiliation, it wouldn’t work,” summarizes Marie-Pier Luneau. “The sentimental novel is often realistic, but it is nonetheless imaginary. There dark romance, it’s fiction. It’s another world. Readers know this. »