Hmmm

[jeriendhal]

We all know what "Men's Adventure" novels involve (usually lots of things exploding in an obscure South American/Soviet dictatorship), but what would qualify as a stereotypical "Women's Adventure"? (outside of the Romance genres)

Comments

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

Is there such a thing?

[estokien.livejournal.com]

Probably something like being kidnapped by slavers, escaping from your captors, and having to make your way back home through exotic countries, possibly by disguising yourself as a man. Where the woman gets to be resourceful but isn't being butch because she was forced into the situation through no fault of her own. And she's returning home to her fiance, but when she makes it home she realizes he is no longer the man for her new confident self and she marries the adventurous guy she fell for on the way home.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

That sounds like some romances I've read [g].

[estokien.livejournal.com]

I can't say for sure where that plot memory came from exactly, but I'm not exactly in the habit of reading many romance novels. The only similar ones I can place are the Mary Russell books of Laurie R. King, which at least have lots of resourcefulness in foreign locales in them. Obviously there is a certain 19th century sensibility to that storyline.

That being said, there is almost always some element of romance in women's novels, and certainly in any ones that might be deemed stereotypical.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

According to Received Wisdom, romances are women's adventure novels.

Not that I don't think there's room for a non-romance women's adventure novel, but I'm not sure what it would be exactly.

[lacousteau.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking more Boys on the Side, Thelma & Louise, Charlie's Angels, Nikita or Azumi. It's more an empowerment thing. The romance/sex is optional and pretty much secondary to the plot.

[lacousteau.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know the above are movies, but that is what I think of first with Adventure Stories.

Adventuresome novels with women would be more on the line of the Gold Rush Diaries, Fairie Queene Book III, Queen of the Road, Shifting Sands, Tanya Huff's Blood Series and North & South by Elizabeth Gaskill.