There was one that I remember (and I remember hating) that cast it in some sci-fi/fantasy world were there was very much a gender reversal going on and it was an powerfeul female society where men were valued for their chasteness, etc. And it was... honest to god, a boddice ripper in reverse! Which if you ever wanted to be smacked across the face with the offensive nature of the old "boddice ripper" trope, this gender reversal story really highlighted it by reversing the gender. I remember at the time the amazon reviews of it being quite divided with some loving the gender reversal and others being repelled because it was the exact same trope as the bodice ripper in a gender reverse. I'm still unsure whether the writer actually thought it was a 'cool twist' or whether it was intended as a social experiment of "how will people react if I were to reverse the genders"... all it did for me was remind me why I disliked the old trope bodice ripper. But, re: male gaze it's difficult to argue that that one wasn't written to be a direct confrontation of it... in some respect (still not sure how she intended it though).
A more successful one in my memory was one that was more subtle about it but still reversed some of the trope by the heroine being a widow suspected of having murdered her first husband and having a very upright-naive-do-good military officer fall for her. It wasn't quite as in-your-face with the trope reversal as the one that was romance couched in sci-fi/fantasy, but a deliberate reversal was definitely going on.
Which was sort of why I wanted to jump to the romance novels defense, because while its true that the books you're talking about absolutely exist, there are other books in the genre. And as time has gone on there seems to be an awareness among some of the writers of the tropes you're talking about who have the urge to subvert them... or at least not adhere to them. It's probably the genre that affords some of the most experimentation of female writers because it's the genre where female authors dominate, and I remember listening to a lecture on genre fiction where the professor noted that romance is probably the most inclusive genre in that romance readers will accept multiple dramas. Mystery readers seem to have rather specific requirements about what fits its genre. Westerns do as well. And so do sci-fi and fantasy... and yet romance willingly accepts all of the above. So while there's a fair degree of formula involved, it's actually more inclusive of other formulas than most other genres are. Basically, it's a genre where there are female writers who experiment in them...it's just that with the hokey titles and even hokier covers, few people know that that subset of romances are also going on and they aren't all just old trope bodice rippers.
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There was one that I remember (and I remember hating) that cast it in some sci-fi/fantasy world were there was very much a gender reversal going on and it was an powerfeul female society where men were valued for their chasteness, etc. And it was... honest to god, a boddice ripper in reverse! Which if you ever wanted to be smacked across the face with the offensive nature of the old "boddice ripper" trope, this gender reversal story really highlighted it by reversing the gender. I remember at the time the amazon reviews of it being quite divided with some loving the gender reversal and others being repelled because it was the exact same trope as the bodice ripper in a gender reverse. I'm still unsure whether the writer actually thought it was a 'cool twist' or whether it was intended as a social experiment of "how will people react if I were to reverse the genders"... all it did for me was remind me why I disliked the old trope bodice ripper. But, re: male gaze it's difficult to argue that that one wasn't written to be a direct confrontation of it... in some respect (still not sure how she intended it though).
A more successful one in my memory was one that was more subtle about it but still reversed some of the trope by the heroine being a widow suspected of having murdered her first husband and having a very upright-naive-do-good military officer fall for her. It wasn't quite as in-your-face with the trope reversal as the one that was romance couched in sci-fi/fantasy, but a deliberate reversal was definitely going on.
Which was sort of why I wanted to jump to the romance novels defense, because while its true that the books you're talking about absolutely exist, there are other books in the genre. And as time has gone on there seems to be an awareness among some of the writers of the tropes you're talking about who have the urge to subvert them... or at least not adhere to them. It's probably the genre that affords some of the most experimentation of female writers because it's the genre where female authors dominate, and I remember listening to a lecture on genre fiction where the professor noted that romance is probably the most inclusive genre in that romance readers will accept multiple dramas. Mystery readers seem to have rather specific requirements about what fits its genre. Westerns do as well. And so do sci-fi and fantasy... and yet romance willingly accepts all of the above. So while there's a fair degree of formula involved, it's actually more inclusive of other formulas than most other genres are. Basically, it's a genre where there are female writers who experiment in them...it's just that with the hokey titles and even hokier covers, few people know that that subset of romances are also going on and they aren't all just old trope bodice rippers.