A Feminist Apology for Contemporary Romance Literature-Exploring Masochism and the Internalized Male Gaze in Todd’s After

The unprecedented popularity of the After series by Anna Todd has prompted a space for conversations surrounding popular contemporary romance fiction for young adults and the factors guaranteeing its success. This research paper sets out to explore how the popularity of After must ring certain alarm bells for the contemporary feminist discourse since it directly undermines everything that the feminists criticize when it comes to representations of women by male authors. The analysis section reveals how despite being a woman herself, Todd has penned her novel from an internalized male gaze that divests the female protagonist Tessa of any agency and reduces her to the position of spectacle for the male character’s masochistic fantasy. In doing so, Tessa unwittingly and self-detrimentally adopts the role of “the three women” that Giles Deleuze speaks of in his seminal text on masochism. The paper affirms the need for a criticism of the internalized male gaze amongst women authors in contemporary feminist discourse to combat such derogatory representations of women and promote more nuanced and agential portrayal of women in future contemporary romance literature.