Criticism of the novel has been tempered, however, by other writers observing that women writers of Hull's period used the already well-established genre of the Orientalist fantasy to begin putting feminist ideas before their primarily female readership. Women appear as protagonists in desert romances, for example, and in The Sheik specifically, the reader is engaged with Diana as an independent-minded and defiant woman for most of the novel's length, before Hull concludes her story in a conventional way.[3] Moreover, it appears the couple means to live in the desert — a break on Hull's part with the typical romance novel ending that sees the heroine safely ensconced in the townhouses and country estates of the British aristocracy.[3]