I came across a link to an article from last year that still annoys me, so it got me thinking about a topic that comes up in romanceland from time to time – the placeholder heroine. This idea seems to come from two main sources. There is the discussion in Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women primarily based around Laura Kinsale’s essay(“The Androgynous Reader: Point of View in the Romance”) which is really more a thoughtful discussion of viewpoint rather than an argument centering on the perceived uselessness of developing the heroine’s character and/or giving her a lot of individuality. Unfortunately, this latter argument is what many people discussing the placeholder heroine seem to mean when they get on the topic.

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