Beautiful Disaster

The romance genre relies on the theme of “love conquers all” and has from its beginnings, whether those beginnings are located in the action-adventure prose romances of classical Greece or the love lyrics of medieval troubadours. Pamela by Samuel Richardson, a landmark in the 18th-century development of the novel in English, features a love story and more specifically, the tale of a virtuous maid who is aggressively wooed by her employer and, in refusing to sleep with him, eventually wins an offer of marriage and elevation in social status. The fantasy that a romance with a powerful partner will guarantee a woman protection, security, shelter, and passion for life is a key trope in romantic fiction and perhaps the reason that romance continues to be the best-selling fiction genre, year after year.

The trope of the “good” girl falling for the “bad” boy who is then reformed by his devotion to her has proved its continued appeal since Pamela and defines the central relationship in Beautiful Disaster, though the novel relies less on the notion of reform than on the transcendent power of physical attraction. While their declarations of love to one another prove a turning point in their commitment to a relationship,