Pride and Prejudice is not a Romance.
You heard me.
I know what you're thinking. But let's take a step back and look at the definition for the genre Romance.
According to Romance Writers of America, "Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."
Hmmm..... looks legit. Seems like Pride and Prejudice should qualify...
But the main plot and focus of Romance is to stay strictly with the main romantic characters and is not to stray far from them at any point in time. If the focus strays too far for too long, then things start getting muddy and we have to question whether we actually have a Romance or if we have another genre with a lot of Romance in it.
I know today's readers are not so nit picky. I know most of them figure if it's got a great romantic story in it, then it qualifies and who cares about finicky definitions?
But this is a blog post and writing about pointless things is the whole point of this blog!
Anyway, Elizabeth spends an awful lot of time not being with, talking to, describing, or thinking about Mr. Darcy. I mean, if you think about it she spends a shocking amount of her energies on other things entirely! She lavishes attention on Jane, Charlotte, and the other people in her life with no regard to him whatsoever for pages on end!
What kind of romantic heroine is this?
Now in my experience, in Romance Novels the main couple meets on the first page and proceeds to be together in one capacity or another on every single other page of the book. If they aren't actually together they are thinking about each other. Other relationships and characters are making mere cameo appearances and spend a great deal of time talking about or to the main couple. Really, try it. Open any legitimate romance and see how many pages you can go without both parties of the main couple being mentioned from a romantic standpoint.
Not so with Pride and Prejudice.
But might there be another genre that suits it better? That better describes the relationships and action going on in Pride and Prejudice?
Realistic Fiction is imaginary characters doing things and in situations that could happen in real life. A strong argument could be made that Jane Austen is the founder of this genre since she's the first English author who wrote about everyday life and situations that could really happen with fictional characters which had a profound effect on English authors who came after her. But, a great deal of Romance could be said to also fit into this category. (You could, of course, also make a strong argument that Romance has little resemblance to real life, but we won't go there...today.)
Women's Fiction deals mostly with women and women's relationship and their growth. This sort of fits. But it tends to be light on romance and a bit on the heavy reading side. Not quite a good fit.
Chick Lit - Is usually about young adult women their various relationships, including romantic, and emotions and is often witty and light and fun.
Sound familiar? Fits Jane Austen to a T.
Except it wasn't invented back then.
Aaand one of the important aspects of Chick Lit is that it's modern, here, now, current. Which Austen was... a couple hundred years ago.
So where does that bring us?
I submit to you that she's a mix. Yes, a mixed genre. We'll call it 'Rerowochick'. Sounds catchy don't you think? And you were here to witness it's birth! Everyone will be using it.
Next time you're at a party with a bunch of intellectuals throw that one at them. They'll be speechless! And the whole point of being intellectual is to be finicky and precise isn't it? And what's more finicky and precise than Rerowochick?
I rest my case.
So now that we've established that Jane Austen wrote Rerowochick, lets discuss Gone With the Wind which is also not a romance....
