Sophie Moss, author of the Seal Island Trilogy (The Selkie Spell, The Selkie Enchantress, The Selkie Sorceress), explores the enduring appeal of romance novels …

Sophie: What is it about the genre of romance that draws so many readers? Is it the desire to escape into a world of passion and adventure, of true love and happy endings? Is it the promise of a lightweight read that will help us relax and let the rest of the world fall away at the end of the day?

According to Romance Writers of America, romance fiction was the largest share of the U.S. consumer market in 2011. Despite a struggling U.S. economy, romance fiction revenue actually increased from $1.355 billion in 2010 to $1.368 billion in 2011. This billion-dollar-a-year industry of sweet contemporaries, racy paranormals, heart-thumping suspense, sweeping historicals, young adult, family sagas, humorous chick lit and epic fantasies offers something for everyone.

But the genre is particularly compelling because it has such a long history and has evolved in so many different ways. The "happily ever after" ending is a relatively new construct. If we look at the romance in a broader context, defining it as a literary depiction of romantic love between a man and a woman, it has prevailed throughout nine centuries of popular literature.

The genre's ability to adapt to any society, particularly regarding that society's attitudes toward marriage, explains its enduring popularity. In medieval times, marriages were often arranged for political and economic considerations. Marriage did not represent a consummation of love. Famous literary couples Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Isolde found true love in secret, adulterous affairs.

Courtly love sprang out of a dangerous, feudal society destined for war, turmoil, tragedy and death. It emerged at a time when nothing lasted, everything was uncertain, and marriage was likely to be loveless. The tragedy of the medieval romance carried into the 16th century with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet — two ill-fated lovers who could only be together in death. In these earlier romances, love ended disastrously.

But these clandestine plots were forever altered with the phenomenon of companionship marriages introduced in 19th-century novels such as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Instead of rapturous passions and betrayals, the 19th-century bourgeois romance is a story of the steady courtship and gradually developing love between the hero and heroine. These stories are more closely linked to our modern romances as they are tales of "falling in love." They almost always ended in a proposal of marriage, culminating in the promise of love and happiness in marriage.

But marriage as "happily ever after" met deep criticism in the 1960s and 1970s when the feminist and women's liberation movements challenged the very idea that love could endure in a union where a woman's identity was shaped solely through her relationship to her husband. The movement demanded equal rights, pay and respect for women. And as women redefined their identities and demanded respect outside of their relationships to their husbands, the romance genre experienced another fundamental shift — the emergence of the modern romantic heroine.

The modern romantic heroine is a strong, capable, determined, independent individual. She is comfortable with her own wants and needs and will fulfill them when and with whom she wishes. She exists on an equal level of society as that of her lover. And it is she who chooses her own destiny. The heroine in the modern romance is no longer a "damsel in distress" who needs to be saved by a strong, virtuous man. But deep down, more than anything, she still yearns for love.

Through nine centuries of documented literature, the desire to fall in love, to be in love and to stay forever in love has remained strong. As times change and as society accepts new and varied forms of marriage, so, too, will the romance. Today, the genre is undergoing another transformation. Not all modern romances end in marriage proposals. Some incorporate a wide range of sexual preferences, including same-sex relationships.

But if the genre's capacity for transformation accounts for its persistence, we must also remember that not everything about the romance has changed. As long as it continues to position, in whichever society it is written, the notion that every hero and heroine will find their true love — the person who ignites their deepest flame of passion, cares for them, loves them and understands them — the genre will forever endure.

To find out more about Sophie and her books, you can visit her website, www.sophiemosswrites.com. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter (@SMossWrites).

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