The Radical Class Consciousness of Queer Regency Romance
With splashy Jane Austen adaptions and Netflix’s Bridgerton hitting screens, Regency fever is more prevalent than ever. The Regency Era, a period of British history roughly spanning 1795–1837, has long enjoyed an outsized place in the contemporary imagination. Its empire-waist gowns, sprawling manor estates, and deliciously repressed sexualities make for some of the most iconic backdrops for romantic plots. These plots often follow a Cinderella-like arc: not only does the scrappy heroine win her hero in the end, but she marries up, finding economic security for herself and her family through her new role as Duchess or Viscountess. The typical Regency story imagines perfect continuity between emotional and financial needs. Property is transferred and wealth consolidated with a kiss.
But a new subgenre of queer Regency-era romance are turning the manor-house love story on its head. For the protagonists of recent novels by , , , , and , falling in love inevitably leads to economic ruin, and so much for the better. Like Jane Austen and her successors, these writers never pretend that love and money can be separated. But they suggest that queer love may contribute to the erosion of wealth and the strict nuclear family inheritance structures that protect it. It unravels the social fabric, rather than
