For Women's History Month, Read a Historical Romance Novel

For better or for worse, it might be the most accessible way to learn about women's history

Every March, we bemoan the lack of representation of women in our textbooks, statues, science, and literary canon while celebrating a few token great ladies. Denied context, these women stand out like mad women in ballgowns in the wilderness — interesting more as an anomaly but hardly representative. The truth is our lady ancestors were living varied, fascinating lives and if we want a complicated, triumphant and real version of women’s history, then we ought to read a historical romance novel.

Historical romance novels — like the series by Julia Quinn that inspired Netflix’s big hit, Bridgerton — teach women’s history by osmosis. ­­They immerse a reader in the past in an accessible way that textbooks cannot (if they even tried). Armchair reviewers sometimes claim that “a young lady would never”, but the truth is that someone, somewhere most certainly did. Historical romance novelists are forensic archeologists who go through our accumulated history with a particular lens, looking for those stories and breathing life into them.

A romance novel is about love and seduction, yes, but they are also about women’s lives in a world that isn’t always interested in the internals and externals of a woman’s existence. The real adventures, friendships and accomplishments of extraordinary but forgotten women are remembered and written as inspiration in a thousand meticulously-researched romance novels.

We celebrate Stacey Abrams and the Black women who delivered us a Blue Georgia. Daughters of a Nation: a Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology by Alyssa Cole, Lena Hart, Piper Hugely and Kianna Alexander sets stories of love and triumph in the long tradition of Black women organizing for change. Their happy ever after encourages readers to carry on the tradition.

We celebrate the female scientists whose work led to the Covid-19 vaccine and highlight Marie Curie in women’s history month. Courtney Milan’s The Countess Conspiracy or Tessa Dare’s A Week To Be Wicked portray pioneering female scientists, what compromises they had to make to do their work, and what made it possible for future generations to benefit.

Today our stereotypical computer programmer is a dude in a hoodie, but it was a woman in a corset — Ada Lovelace — who invented computer programing in the 19th century (and who inspired my own novel, Lady Claire is All That). Ada’s mathematics teacher was also a woman, Mary Somerville. Women have always been helping women.

There are historical romances about female architects in Gilded Age New York (A Scandalous Deal by Joanna Shupe) and Medieval Empresses (The Welsh Blades series by Elizabeth Kingston) and radical British Suffragettes (A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore) and many, many more — all of which are based on women who lived and breathed once upon a time.

Beyond the exceptional heroines, each “every girl” heroine is an opportunity to show us what life was like for women in a particular historical moment, whether it’s Jeannie Lin’s sweeping romances set in ancient China, Beverly Jenkins’ gorgeous novels that bring to life America in the late 19th century, or a million Regency romances. Historical romance novels about a shopkeeper or seamstress, beekeeper or rancher, wife or mother, all illuminate a perspective and experience that textbooks don’t do justice and an annual blog post can’t capture.

No matter what time period or geographic location, women were there, getting things done and living their best lives. We deserve to know that. We should know what contortions a girl had to go through simply to get an education. We learn, from the way family and society treats our heroine, what future a girl could reasonably dream of. We cheer as she refuses that reasonable future and dares to dream of another way. What options did our heroine have to reasonably and respectably support herself besides marriage? Who or what stood in the way of her happy ever after? Who encouraged her and loved her? And yes, what was she wearing?

The romance genre does not perfectly reflect the past. It overly represents the heterosexual white woman’s historical experience, especially if it is Jane Austen-esque. This is a failure of publishing, marketing, sales, and business — it is not due to a lack of stories, talented authors to write them, readers eager to devour them or a lack of historical material to work with.

With our traditional curriculum, our lack of female statues, our lack of diversity in the canon, we fail those brilliant, daring women of the past. We let the paths they blaze become overgrown, so the women who follow have to expend energy and ingenuity to forge the same trail over and over again.

But something wonderful happens after a few months and years of reading historical romance: one day we just wake up knowing that women’s history isn’t a few token mad women, alone, wearing ballgowns in the wilderness. We learn that there are well worn paths underneath the brush that we can follow, that lady guides have blazed the way. That there are other women out in the forest with us, and that we can find joy and happiness there. And then we are unstoppable.