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Quaker Romances and National Identity

Considered as a whole, these thirty-nine romances offer a very interesting opportunity to test Laura Vivanco’s hypothesis that popular fiction is “a form of collective national therapy” (2016: 124). With this book, in particular, I intend to pinpoint the reasons why many U.S. romance readers feel attracted to these stories, and to unveil the specific goals that they might be trying to achieve as they immerse themselves in these historical romances; ultimately, my aim is to explore readers’ therapeutic use of Quaker romances, following Vivanco’s metaphor. In so doing, I will give special consideration to Hsu-Ming Teo’s conclusion that “focused enquiry into individual [romance] subgenres, authors, and texts yields important knowledge and understanding of women’s popular culture, as well as shedding light on a variety of other cultural phenomena such as national identity, […] [and] whiteness […], among many other themes and topics” (Teo 2018: 20; emphasis added).