Seven Nights with the Sheikh, A Kiss in the Moonlight, An Heir for the King: the titles of romantic fiction in the world-famous Bouquet series have always appealed to the imagination. Guilty pleasures full of desire, temptation and happy endings are still extremely popular.
Secret pleasure
According to Harlequin Holland, which has been publishing the Bouquet series in the Netherlands since 1975, there are over a million readers in this country. Worldwide, the publisher sells one book every four seconds. The 4,500th title hit the supermarkets in July 2023. The popularity of these romantic bestsellers reflects their subject matter (love, passion!) but also the escapism they offer, an opportunity to drift away into a different reality.
Revival
Literature about romantic love with emotionally satisfying and optimistic endings has been around for a long time. Take the novels of Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë, for example. There was a revival in escapist novels during the economic depression of the 1930s, which the British publisher Mills & Boon picked up again in the 1950s. A merger with the Canadian firm Harlequin and the arrival of paperback publications made this type of literature more accessible and cheaper.
Literary doghouse
Although millions of readers all over the world enjoy these books, romantic literature in general and the Bouquet series in particular, remain in the literary doghouse. Mainstream literature looks down on the exaggerated but wooden style and the often stereotypical characters. Some of this, however, also seems to reflect the difficulty that literary critics have with books written for and by women, and which have female passion at their heart.
Unattainable ideal
Time then to reassess the Bouquet series! Although we should also be aware of how books like this create and perpetuate traditional gender roles. These are not only harmful to women: they influence the meaning of masculinity too. What does it mean for men who do not recognize themselves in the presented ideal that millions of women dream of this fantasy?
More
Passion – Love play
The appearance of sex toys tells us a lot about how people felt about lust and gratification at a particular time. About the taboos that might still attach to them. And about the future of sex and the ideals of designers.
Passion – The kiss
Your first kiss. You never forget it. No matter how sweet, sloppy or bad it was. After that, there’s no stopping you: on average you’ll spend 20,000 minutes of your life kissing.
Passion – Perfectible body
Not happy with your body? Then do something about it. That seems to be the credo of our age, with its obsession with perfect bodies. But is the body really so perfectible?
Passion – The body
The contents of Bouquet romantic novels might still leave something to the imagination, but not so their covers: this is the image of the ‘ideal man’. What does it say about our perceptions?
Falling in Love – Making it happen
Butterflies in your stomach, unable to eat a thing, constantly daydreaming and checking your phone every five minutes to see if you’ve received a new message: falling in love is magical.
Bonding – Parenthood
For centuries being a mum or dad was not a choice at all, simply how things were ‘supposed to be’. The way parenthood itself is viewed has also changed over the years.
Bonding – Marriage
Only three things are truly important in a marriage: you, your beloved and your love for each other. All the same, there are a lot more factors at play in the background.
Bonding – Family of choice
In addition to their biological family, many people have one they’ve chosen for themselves: people you’re not related to, people who understand, help and love you.
Bonding – The Couple Look
See them whizzing across the city on their fast bikes: his a men’s model, hers a woman’s. Both wrapped in a puffer jacket and with matching trainers. The dreary ‘ANWB couple’ in trendy jackets.
Love, designed
We’ve all grown up with stories and clichés that have unconsciously influenced our image of love. Love, designed explores these stereotypes and shows how design guides the way we both seek and ‘consume’ love.
