Love is not enough: Australian romantic fiction from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century

Australian women writers have always been among the most internationally successful producers of anglophone romantic fiction. This chapter explores Australian romance novels from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century to consider how Australian women writers thought and wrote about romantic love, marriage, and gender relations. It argues that early Australian romances display unexpectedly unromantic misgivings about love and marriage for women, and that Australian women writers used the genre to argue that love, marriage and domesticity are not enough to make women happy and provide them with fulfilling lives. The novels of Rosa Praed and Marie Bjelke Petersen, among others, suggest that, in addition to love and a life partner, Australian women need the opportunity of meaningful work and a higher purpose to make marriage successful and to find satisfaction in their lives.