Adam Anderson is a wholesome, widowed Scottish architect, with two young children to raise, a business to protect, and a strong aversion to scandal. She writes radical pamphlets and lives her life precisely the way she wants, complete with wine-soaked nights, handsome lovers, and all. Seraphina Arden is a “ruined” woman who has embraced her scandalous reputation on a quest for women’s equality. Men are allowed to be unrepentant rakes, but women almost never are. I love reading about a devilish rake meeting his romantic match as much as anyone, but it is undeniable that the trope is deeply entangled in outdated binary gender roles. The historical romance genre is inundated with rakes: dissolute, handsome ne’er-do-wells whose hard-partying lifestyle is (usually) tempered by their love for the novel’s heroine.
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