1st Edition

Fictional Feminism How American Bestsellers Affect the Movement for Women's Equality

By Kim Loudermilk Copyright 2004
    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    236 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book focuses on the ways in which second-wave feminism has been represented in American popular culture, and on the effects that these representations have had on feminism as a political movement. Kim Loudermilk provides close readings of four best-selling novels and their film adaptations. According to Loudermilk, each of these novels contains explicitly feminist characters and themes, yet each presents a curiously ambivalent picture of feminism; these texts at once take feminism seriously and subtly undercut its most central tenets. This book argues that these texts create a kind of fictional feminism that recuperates feminism's radical potential, thereby lessening the threat it presents to the status quo.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 Out of the ‘70s: Feminist Politics and Popular Fiction; Chapter 2 From The Women's Room to the Bedroom: Marilyn French's Feminist Fiction; Chapter 3 Sexual Suspects: Feminism According to Garp; Chapter 4 “Weak Sisters”: Feminism and The Witches of Eastwick; Chapter 5 “Consider the Alternatives”: Feminism and Ambivalence in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale; conclusion Into the ‘90s: Fictional Feminism and Feminist Politics;

    Biography

    Kim A. Loudermilk is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Planning at Emory University.