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Popular Culture Review
kicking-est kind.” Wendell further posits that because women are not
taught to cultivate competitiveness, aggression, and anger, female
characters in paranormal romance novels who exhibit these traits are
“refreshing because it is so different from the norm.”
Bantam Dell senior editor, Shauna Summers, agrees that “[For
her readers,] part of the appeal is the freshness and creativity that
paranormal writers bring to their storytelling, which is due at least in part
to the fact that with this subgenre they’re only limited by their
imaginations” (qtd. in Dyer 21). Paranormal novels may include any
characters: vampires, fairies, shape shifters, aliens, angels, demons, and
humans with enhanced capabilities, such as psychics, witches, sorcerers,
and so on. In addition, any setting—real, imaginary, sci-fi, urban,
heaven, hell, the ocean, the past, the future, a mixture of all of the
above—is possible. This desire to generate unique characters in alternate
settings, however, is not reason enough to explain its popularity,
although it does echo the fluidity in identity and reality that the
postmodern era has evoked.
Other readers theorize that women are drawn to vampire
characters, in particular, because of a propensity to hold gentlemanly
values of a bygone era, offering the “security and stability of oldfashioned gentlemen that some readers may now crave” (Mukeijea 3). It
is also common to theorize that paranormal romantic heroes hold
archetypal Byronic hero characteristics of mystery and intrigue, thereby
being a character that women can recognize as culturally desirable. This
kind of hero is often “dark and brooding, writhing inside with all the
residual anguish of his shadowed past, world-weary and cynical, quick
tempered and prone to fits of guilt and depression. He is strong, virile,
powerful, and lost” (Barlow 48-49). This hero is often theorized to
appeal to women who wish to save this man from himself. While it may
be true, this theory needs to account for the fact that human romantic
counterparts also hold these Byronic traits (except they are mortal);
therefore, this characteristic is not limited to immortal vampires and
other paranormal creatures.
Ananya Mukheijea argues that readers enjoy these books