It is in the nature of science fiction, for example, that the impact of science and technology on society should be an issue in many works, but some works convey a very negative assessment of that impact and others a more utopian vision. The popular fiction genres with which I am familiar all exhibit this great range, as well as great variations in quality. I want to look, then, at the work of one author within one sub-genre of romances, the Regency romance. Since her debut with Amelia's Intrigue in 1995, Judith A. Lansdowne has been recognized as one of the most promising new writers in the genre. She has already been nominated twice for a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award.
Regency romances tend to highlight particular gender issues.
The one I want to call attention to here is assertiveness vs. submission, which comes to the fore because the period was one in which masculinity and assertiveness seem linked even more than today, and in which women had far less independence. The genre does not demand that particular works resolve the opposition of assertiveness vs. submission in a particular way. What counts is that the heroine gets the hero in the end, and generic requirements would be fully satisfied if she did so through sweet submissiveness exclusively. Lansdowne's work, though, belongs with those Regency romances which descend from the work of Georgette Heyer and have heroines who are known for their independence and self-assertion and who are ultimately rewarded for such traits. Readers of such works can experience the thrill of being scandalously assertive though differences in historical period mean that the actual behavior is generally mild enough that any modern reader could at least aspire to it.