Pamela VanHaitsma challenges the way people commonly view classic romantic letters in her 2014 study. VanHaitsma argues that while many people view romantic letters of natural expressions of love, the rhetoric is influenced by genre instruction and the cultural and societal norms of the time period they were written in. Heteronormativity is the main underlying cultural view that VanHaitsma focuses on as an idea that is seen in the rhetoric of romantic letters. VanHaitsma uses a qualitative method of study in arguing her case. VanHaitsma demonstrates her point by studying nineteenth-century manuals that taught people several elements of how to write letters and letters by writers Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus. She compares and contrasts the
