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They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.

These novels became known as bodice rippers because they were much more sexually explicit than earlier romances had been. Instead of experiencing a delicious kiss or a mystical wedding night at the end of the story, heroines in the bodice rippers were regularly ravished by the hero. Some feminist critics objected to these books as a romanticization of rape, but readers identified strongly with the heroine's powerlessness as a woman in a rigidly patriarchal society. Unlike the sweet virgins of earlier romances, the heroines of the bodice rippers were notoriously feisty.

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