described as spectacularly masculine and often gruff, they become veryloving and nurturing by the end of the book. Building on the research ofChodorow (1978), she noted that women often become depleted by theirrole as caretakers of their families and long for someone to nurture and lookafter them. Romances offer a vicarious experience for women longing tobe cared for. By identifying with the development of the love relationship,the reader can experience a man who becomes very tender and loving. Itwas very important to Radway’s readers that the books follow this pat-tern. Readers often checked the conclusion before purchasing a novel toinsure an ending that satisfied this desire. Once this content was confirmed,readers nurtured themselves in another way—they created a time and set-ting for the reading that removed them from normal concerns and enabledthem to carve out time and space for themselves. Many readers describedthe luxury of being alone and absorbed as an important component of theprocess.However, two less positive results of romance reading should also benoted. First, the reader may derive enough satisfaction from the readingand accompanying fantasies to permit her to stay in what may not be agood or satisfying situation. Second, she may be led to believe that changein her own relationship is just as possible as it appeared to be in the novel.Radway (1984) describes how transformations of the hero are illusory anddo not depict a mature change arising from growth in relationship capacity.Radway focused on novels published by Harlequin during the 1970s.Thurston (1987), writing a few years later, emphasized the messages inlater novels. She believed that the romance novels that achieved greaterpopularity as the decade of the 80s unfolded were responsive to the cul-tural changes brought about by feminism and the sexual revolution. Notonly was there more explicit sex, but the heroines were more dynamicwomen who had career ambitions and were assertive in their lives and re-lationships. Thurston believed that these novels gave women positive rolemodels. More recent scholars (see, for example, Krentz, 1992, Kaler, 1999)have also emphasized the liberating aspects of the romance novel. For ex-ample the argument is made that it is important for the romance readerto see a heroine who is making choices and functioning in the world: “Intoday’s romance fiction, women win” (Charles, Mosley & Boricus, 1999).These scholars believe that heroines can function as role models showingthe way to independence and self-reliance. The more recent, feisty hero-ines know what they want and get it. No longer are they in need of a manfor survival and required to be submissive in order to secure him. On theother hand, some (e.g., Wagner, 1995) see these heroines as subversive.While the rest of the culture is male-centered, these books star a strongwoman character.