Popular Culture Review Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2014 | Page 56

52 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