In the novels of Gillian Flynn, including Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009), and Gone Girl (2012), the female characters often use violence as a way of achieving ends and accomplishing goals. It may be tempting to dismiss these women outright as repugnant villains, or perhaps as abnormal examples of female mental illness. Upon closer examination, however, it can be argued that the violence and the femme fatale character type in the novels serve a distinctly feminist purpose. In allowing her female characters to generate and direct extreme violence, including mutilation and homicide, Flynn sets women on an equal footing with men and explores the ways in which the female psyche is as equally power-hungry and capable of violent crime as its male counterparts. While Gillian Flynn has not categorized her books as feminist works, her texts align closely with the goals of feminism, particularly the reclamation of the female figure as a complex, three-dimensional human being. The novels are fundamentally feminist in that they reclaim the negative capacities of women to do harm, as well as to do good.
Introduction
Recently, a new type of female representation has begun to emerge in popular media, including television, film, and popular fiction. This representation usually manifests in a character who is repugnant or highly unlikeable. Representations of the unlikeable woman are evident not only in the works of Gillian Flynn but in other novels like The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins, and in television shows like Killing Eve, Lena Dunham’s Girls, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. Popular culture has begun to draw attention to a style of female representation that is distinct from any other point in history, at least in terms of the way that this representation is discussed and labeled. Although previous examples of unruly, troubled women are plentiful, including Lady Macbeth, Tess Durbeyfield in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary, and Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, recent popular media has shown a trend towards featuring these character types at a much greater frequency, and with less restraint. In recent popular works, the authors refuse to present their protagonists as exemplary role models or admirable women. Instead, they focus on the female characters’ negative capacity, sometimes to extremes. These narrative arcs are not stories of correction or redemption. Rather, they are tales of continuous evolution and a constant iteration of personal flaws and defects. Perhaps as a backlash to decades, even centuries, of positive representations of women in literature, these profoundly fallible, often reprehensible characters move the scale of perception into an entirely different direction and viewpoint. Rather than emphasizing women’s strength, virtue, intelligence, and capacity for good, these characters stress the ways in which the female of the species has the potential to embrace and even wallow in negative, violent capacities.
When male characters fit this description, they are generally called “anti-heroes.” From Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth to, in modern times, Walter White of Breaking Bad, Tyler Durden in Fight Club, and Don Draper in Mad Men, the masculine antihero has frequented the realm of popular fiction for decades. While there have been some efforts to apply the term “antihero” to female characters, another term has proved to be more durable. In general parlance, rather than being given the label of antihero, these female characters are termed “unlikable.” Notably, there is a vast gap in gendered significance between these two terms. The notion of the “antihero” has a long and well-established line of literary standing and criticism, while the label “unlikable” is far more prosaic and is virtually devoid of academic implications. Though the terms “antihero” and “unlikable woman” may carry a comparable set of traits, the gap between the two labels is on the gender axis. Although many books have been devoted to the exploration of the male antihero, far fewer do so in relation to the female antihero. Discussions of these women characters are heavily dependent on gender. Although the traits that define both terms are shared, a male character may be read and described as an antihero, while a female character is merely “unlikable.” A fundamental assumption within this critique is the notion that female characters are supposed to be likable to the reader. The logic of the assumption dictates that female characters in fiction and indeed, women, on the whole, ought to be “likable” and to behave in ways that are pleasing to others. In other words, the personal essence and actual character traits of the woman in question are far less important in comparison with the extent to which she is either pleasing or not pleasing in the eyes of men and society.
This project, therefore, will situate the notion of “unlikable” within a more empowered terminology, one based on the Jungian archetype of the “Dark Lady,” that occurs throughout literature in the form of the femme fatale. Although the term “femme fatale” is not without its problems, it contains the appropriates elements of danger and femininity associated with female villains.
There is also an argument to be made regarding the positive qualities of negative representation. There may be a point at which the extreme negativity of a particular representation may be greater than the positivity found in the full spectrum of female characters. Negative representations of women may be liberating and a statement of feminist power, as this project intends to demonstrate; however, there is also a danger that negative representations could veer into the territory of sexist representations and two-dimensional depictions of women that neglect their humanity entirely.
In navigating these issues, attention to context becomes of the utmost importance. Through an examination of the fiction works of Gillian Flynn, a popular novelist from the United States whose body of work is concerned with concepts of female violence, it becomes possible to parse the ways in which negative representations are both useful and limited, while also examining their broader function within the texts and the implications that are raised regarding fiction and gender. Through an analysis of the way that Flynn’s works reconfigure traditional female archetypes, it will be argued that violence perpetrated by women is a fundamentally subversive, consciousness-elevating aspect of Flynn’s novels. In blending unlikable female protagonists and female villains alongside a narrative focus on the femme fatale archetype of female characters, Flynn’s novels offer a unique and innovative gauge for the parameters of female behavior.
To this end, this project will analyze the perverse, negative aspects of women characters in Flynn’s three novels: Sharp Objects, Dark Places, and Gone Girl. The thesis will examine the ways in which these texts represent and characterize female characters and female acts of violence. Both a feminist perspective and a psychoanalytic framework will be used, with particular attention to the psychology of Carl Jung and the concept of archetypes and the “shadow.” The specific female characters and incidences of violence throughout each of the novels will also be analyzed, with a focus on the ways in which these fictional representations contradict or support expectations around gender.
Descriptive Outline
The first chapter of this thesis will be an introduction and background to the primary texts, to the topics explored within the body of the thesis. The terms used throughout the paper will be defined and the theoretical framework will be introduced. The research questions and aims will be presented. Chapter Two will consist of the methodology section. The theoretical frameworks will be introduced in detail here. Chapter Three of the thesis will contain the literature review. The literature review will draw upon a wide range of primary and secondary sources and will be arranged thematically. Every effort will be made to consult with academic literature that presents support for this thesis, and also with literature that provides contrasting and provocative viewpoints, including the common idea that Gillian Flynn’s novels are misogynistic and anti-feminist.
There are several important aspects of the thesis that merit consideration in relation to the literature. First, a broad outline will be established in which the main strands of academic scholarship relating to Flynn’s work and to the femme fatale archetype will be assembled. The feminist and psychoanalytical theoretical frameworks that will be used to analyze the three novels will be discussed in greater depth and in reference to academic precedents, with particular attention in the latter case given to Jungian concepts regarding archetypes. The literature relating to feminist theory and psychoanalytic theory will provide an appropriate academic backdrop from which further analysis and discussion can be explored.
The second part of the literature review will relate more specifically to the texts themselves, and the intersection between the violent female characters in the novel and the femme fatale archetype. At this juncture, various perspectives will be reviewed, including those that present opposing viewpoints. The inclusion of conflicting views is crucial in order to present strong arguments in favor of Flynn’s texts as fundamentally feminist in nature. The literature review will also highlight current gaps in the literature and ways in which the present project can assist in filling those gaps. Potential areas for future research and study will be indicated.
Chapter Four of the thesis will include the discussion and analysis portion of the paper. In this chapter, close readings of the three novels will be included in reference to the female characters and specific instances of violence that occur. In relation to the theoretical templates, the findings of the analysis will be situated within a broader framework.
Research Questions
The primary research questions that inform this work are as follows:
To what extent does Flynn represent female violence in the texts as feminized, or as non-gendered violence?
At what point does the extent to which a representation is negative outweigh the overall positivity of female representation in fiction?
At what point, if any, do negative representations of female characters in Flynn’s work veer into sexist representations?
Preliminary Literature Review
Because all three of Gillian Flynn’s novels were published within the last decade, it is necessary to expand the relevant literature beyond those who are concerned with Flynn’s work to a broader discussion of female villains in the literary canon. To this end, it is useful to consider commentary regarding the notion of the femme fatale. It should be noted, however, that the femme fatale is different from the “unlikable woman” in some key aspects, most notably when it comes to the overt use of sexuality (Courmans 23). Many, if not all, of Flynn’s female characters, do use sexuality at various points; however, the use of sexuality is not typically of the glamorous, attractive femme fatale type. Yet the femme fatale, with its representations of dangerous women, provides a useful starting point for discussion within the academic literature.
Representations of the femme fatale are not exclusive to the modern age. The seductive, dangerous femme fatale is present throughout literature, film, and even world mythologies. This type of character is evident in many ancient works, from classic Greek epics, featuring Medusa, to the nineteenth century, where the femme fatale appears as a vampire alongside Count Dracula (Hanson and O’Rawe 24-28). The concept of the femme fatale also has precedent in female characters throughout history, such as the spy Mata Hari, in the twentieth century. The mystique that arose around Mata Hari, which encompassed terror, anxiety, and psychological projections of both men and women, is typical of the ways in which the femme fatale often is interpreted in popular culture (Huyssen 52).
According to Resti and Soelistyarini, the character of Amy Dunne in Gone Girl is a portrayal of a femme fatale. The authors argue that the representation of Amy is consistent with the traditional femme fatale type because Amy rejects traditional gender roles in order to manipulate her circumstances and gain control in her intimate relationship, thus subverting the patriarchal structure of power. According to this study, however, the character of Amy Dunne cannot be read as a feminist character. Rather, the authors argue that the portrayal of Amy as a femme fatale is fundamentally misogynistic and essentially anti-feminist. The current project will endeavor to disprove the claims of Resti and Solistyarini, along with other critics; however, the study is useful in terms of setting an oppositional stance and providing a critique from the other end of the spectrum.
In keeping with the notion of Amy Dunne as a femme fatale, Burns suggests that the character of Amy is consistent with modern representations of the “cool girl.” In the early part of the novel, the reader believes, as does Nick Dunne, that Amy is essentially good-natured; it is only as the text progresses that her true character becomes evident. The “cool” girl image is consistent with the femme fatale archetype, but less consistent with the concept of the unlikable, reprehensible woman. In fact, within the novel, Amy Dunne complains specifically about having to maintain the “cool girl” image, an image that is at odds with her true desires and needs, and which she sees as being fundamentally misogynistic (Flynn 42). Burns suggests that Gone Girl can be compared with other classic texts, such as Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, in the sense that the female characters are gradually revealed to be “unladylike, unnatural, abhorrent, violent women” (n.p.). However, whereas Rebecca is punished for her transgressions against the patriarchy, Amy Dunne is rewarded. Rebecca dies, but Amy is victorious in gaining complete control over her surroundings. Like Resti and Soelistyarini, Burns does not believe that this representation of Amy is supportive of feminist ideals, rather, Burns argues that it is a fundamentally misogynistic perspective, one that supports classic patriarchal fears regarding strong, independent women: “…the representation of women within the current American political climate reveals that a fear of nasty women resonates throughout contemporary society and that there are much greater strides to be made before women with strong minds, opinions, and beliefs will be viewed with the same level of respect and authority as their male counterparts” (n.p.). Notably, Burns’ critique of Gone Girl is not so much a criticism of Flynn’s representation so much as it is of the novel’s reception, implying that the issue is not so much within the text but is inherent in a culture that continues to view literature through a patriarchal lens. Similarly, Nick Cappello, writing for the Huffington Post, takes strong issue with Gone Girl, arguing that “there is not a single woman in the entire novel that isn’t a complete and utter mess” (n.p.). The absence of any positive female role models in the novel, Cappello suggests, is tantamount to misogyny, particularly because, in his view, the female characters are two-dimensional.
While a number of scholars see the “nasty woman” characters in Flynn’s works as anti-feminist and even misogynistic, others have noted their potential to subvert and upend patriarchal values. Dockterman calls the book “extremely feminist,” pointing out the obvious, which is that equal and fair representations of women must inevitably include negative representations, as well as positive representations (n.p.) Likewise, Marso argues that the actions of Amy Dunne can be interpreted through Simone de Beauvoir’s scaffolding of perverse protests (883). In other words, Amy’s reprehensible actions can be understood as a form of resistance that arises out of a repressive environment. At the same time, Johansen points out that the ending of Gone Girl does little to reassure the reader that equality or civility has been established (48). Furthermore, while many readers and scholars may be tempted to explain Amy Dunne’s character, along with Flynn’s other female characters, through a framework of sociopathy or psychopathy, Marso disputes the idea that the actions of these women can easily be dismissed through a simple diagnosis of mental illness (882). Although the actions of Amy Dunne are extreme and violent, they are understandable from the perspective of women who have found themselves caught in a patriarchal system of oppression (892).
Presenting a somewhat different view, Osborne (2019) takes a positive reading of Flynn’s novels and focuses primarily on the satirical elements of Flynn’s work, suggesting that the violence of the femme fatale characters is intentionally exaggerated as a means to expose romantic tropes regarding “unconditional love” and also to highlight narcissistic tendencies in American consumer cultures (4-5). From this vantage point, the representations of violent women in the novels are neither feminist nor anti-feminist; rather they are applicable on a broader societal level, pointing to the inherent neuroticism cultivated in both men and women. At the same time, Osborne also points out that it is impossible to divorce feminist elements entirely from the text:
Women are expected to live up to the dreams and expectations achieved by second-wave feminists and are simultaneously expected to conform to the gender norms of a doting wife and mother. This, of course, creates an impossible double bind of juggling both personal and professional desires that may lead to a fear of missing out by choosing one or the other.