Romance fiction is socially constructed within a framework of patriarchal narrative discourse. Its very existence within the framework of patriarchal societies and subsequently, narrative discourses, causes polemical views on whether romance fiction provides an oppositional reading of patriarchy or one that reinforces patriarchy. According to Walkerdine (1984, cited in Gilbert, 1991, p. 77), romance fiction is "directed at young women [to position] them to look for a 'prince'...to look for an escape route from the tensions and contradictions of lived gender relations in a patriarchal society." Walkerdine (1984) suggests that in looking for an escape route, females are engaging in active oppositional readings of patriarchy that reinforces the value of the feminine self. The feminine self can be defined as that of the "Other," diametrically opposed to the masculine self that is foregrounded and empowered in patriarchal narrative discourses.
             Gender relationships in a patriarchal society are controlled and manipulated by the hegemonic forces existing within that society. The contradictory nature of gender relationships arises from the devalued personal sphere of the female in relation to the valorized and empowered public sphere of the male. Romance fiction generally uses familiar narrative devices that enable a reading that is affirmed by the patriarchal society in which it operates. So, while offering young women an escape route, it is only an apparitional escape route that does not have any impact on the inequalities existing in society. According to Walters (1996, p. 515), the "long-standing program is still to find productive ways of linking abstractions like power, or gender ideology, to individual speakers' day-to-day experience of such forces of language." The language used in romance fiction can enable female readers to find an element of power within the patriarchal society in which the romance genre originated that can ...