REAL ESTATE AND THE MILLENNIAL ROMANCE

Abstract

After modernism and four waves of feminism, why does the so-called millennial romance insist on pairing up intelligent young women with rich married men? This essay claims that, far from signaling regression to a literary or political conservatism, contemporary romance writing registers a felt sense of impasse in professional possibilities for women and the disappointment of modernist ambitions, especially the hope for financial autonomy and a room of one’s own. By reverting to a reductive version of the conventional marriage plot, millennial writers confront recent rollbacks in economic and gender inequality and express rage at the rise of rentier capitalism. © 2025 by Johns Hopkins University Press.