Nora Roberts’s Boonsboro Empire: Boosting Business through Romance, Invigorating Romance with Affective Capitalism

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to analyze Nora Roberts’s Boonsboro economic empire, which comprises both the businesses she owns in the town of Boonsboro, Maryland and her Inn Boonsboro romances (2012), a trilogy which fictionalizes those same businesses. In particular, the goal is to study the ways in which Roberts’s trilogy contributes to the entwinement of romantic love with capitalism by probing into several aspects of the novels: the theme of courtship; the contradictory relationship between romance and capitalism; the romanticization of commodities and the commodification of romance; the use of metaphors that present love as both organic (irrational and gratuitous) and contractual (instrumental and utilitarian), and the characterization of the romantic hero as either a businessman or a warrior. Ultimately, the analysis will show the intricate ways in which Roberts’s commercial enterprises benefit from the affect provided by her romances, which are therefore proved to be written at the service of affective capitalism. It will also reveal the need to not disregard the romance genre as mere escapist or commercial literature, but to recognize its ability to shed light on the many paradoxes of our capitalist societies.