brought with her to the experience. Few readers easily allied themselveswithasinglestance.Mostfoundthemselvesbalancingavarietyofpositionsthroughout the response process.SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONSWhen we look at the process of constructing meaning in responseto a text, we are interested in what the reader brings to the text andwhat the text brings to the reader. Both elements are necessary to un-derstand the engagement and the meaning that is produced. Many anal-yses have focused on textual structure and content and how these fea-tures elicit response from the reader. Although, the importance of whatthe reader brings to the encounter has been acknowledged, the substanceof her experience and its impact has been difficult to ascertain. I have ap-proached this aspect through an examination of the cultural dialogues withwhich the reader is acquainted and have explored how these influence herresponses.For the majority of the student readers, various conflicting discourseswere engaged during the process of reading. To a large extent, the studentshad accepted a general social perspective that romance novels are a nega-tive influence and had extended this prejudicial evaluation to the peoplewho read them. Such attitudes had inhibited these students in the past andcontinued to influence them as they read the romance for the assignment.Their negativea priorievaluation affected the preliminary activities of pur-chasing the book, which requires public association with romance novels.These students felt a pervasive distaste toward the whole endeavor; butamong them were also some who were simultaneously curious and willingto undertake the task. While the anticipation was largely negative, the ex-perience was not. Many students came into class describing their surpriseat being captured by the books and staying up late into the night reading.They had not anticipated the attraction. Many were also surprised by thecontent, finding the heroines more dynamic and sexual activity a far lessdominant role than expected. These readers subsequently worked to rec-oncile their preconceptions with their experience. Some resolved the con-tradictions by deciding that despite the fact that they enjoyed the novelthey would not be likely to read another.No reader stood outside of her experience within the culture. Awareof it or not, responses were always in relation to the culture. Studentsconstructed meaning within these cultural constraints. Different culturaldiscourses may be appropriate to a particular reader’s experience and