| Abstract: |
Blending romance and fantasy, romantasy’s growing popularity within online book communities has increasingly attracted critical attention. Its overreliance on tropes, recurrent plot devices, and a disregard for building strong narrative structures has caused scholars to start examining not only the cultural phenomenon it represents but also the ideological assumptions that underpin it. This dissertation explores how Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing (2023), uses the enemies-to-lovers trope as the central element of its narrative construction, consequently embedding gendered ideologies that sustain traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity. To examine this phenomenon, this analysis draws upon Janice Radway’s model of romance as a comparative framework for understanding current trends in the genre. Furthermore, Judith Butler’s theory of gender as a performative construct built upon repetition illustrates the danger of the reiterative use of tropes that perpetuate gender stereotypes. The findings reveal that Yarros uses the central romantic tension between her protagonists to determine the novel’s pacing and progression, overriding the political and fantasy plotlines, which function largely as scaffolding, sustaining the conditions of their romance. The analysis further demonstrates the significant gender implications this centrality entails: To maintain the tension required by the trope, Yarros presents a heroine who is consistently emotionally and sexually subjugated to the hero’s inability to be emotionally forthcoming, while framing her submission as romantic devotion rather than structural imbalance. Ultimately, the dissertation concludes that the enemies-to-lovers trope functions as a vehicle for patriarchal gender ideologies, which go largely unquestioned precisely because of their deep embeddedness within romantasy. |
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