‘I can fix him’: Louise Schulmann-Darsy studies what it means to be a woman through romance novels research

Boy meets girl. Girl fixes boy. Happily ever after?

Louise Schulmann-Darsy, a master’s student in the English Literature program, loves a good romance. Though after focusing her research lens on both historic and modern romance novels, she uncovered a pattern that shows what society expects of women in fiction and reality.

“Women are always the ones that have to change the men,” Schulmann-Darsy said. “So, whenever you see a character in a romance novel, there is the man who usually has deep traumas, right? When it comes to men having bad behavior, the woman has to actively work and endure the trauma first and then fix the man, even if that means suppressing her own desires.”

Schulmann-Darsy presented research on the topic at the 2023 Auburn Student Research Symposium on Tuesday.

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Submitted by: Charlotte Tuggle