Feminism in Gillian Flynn's Novels: Violence, Malice and Amorality As the Basis of a Post-Feminist Agenda
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Universität Duisburg-Essen American Literary and Media Studies Feminism in Gillian Flynn’s Novels: Violence, Malice and Amorality as the Basis of a Post-Feminist Agenda Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) der Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Duisburg-Essen vorgelegt von Enes Gülderen aus Duisburg Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Josef Raab, Universität Duisburg-Essen Essen, im August 2019 Gutachter: Herr Prof. Dr. Jens Martin Gurr Herr Prof. Dr. Florian Freitag Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 06.05.2020 Diese Dissertation wird über DuEPublico, dem Dokumenten- und Publikationsserver der Universität Duisburg-Essen, zur Verfügung gestellt und liegt auch als Print-Version vor. DOI: 10.17185/duepublico/71787 URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:464-20200519-130231-2 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 5 1.1 Gillian Flynn’s Novels as Contemporary Vehicles for Post- Feminist Perspectives 13 1.2 Gillian Flynn’s New Kind of Gender Trouble 27 2. Historical and Theoretical Parameters of the Feminist Movements 36 2.1 The First Wave: Claiming Equal Rights 37 2.2 The Second Wave: Claiming Freedom from Gender-Based Role Models 39 2.3 The Third Wave: The Construction of Gender 42 2.4 “The Fourth Wave”: Hashtag Activism 45 2.5 Each Movement’s Influential Feminist Literature 47 2.5.1 Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century 48 2.5.2 Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique 55 2.5.3 Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble 68 3. Gender, Sex, Identity and Equality in Gillian Flynn’s Novels 78 4. Gone Girl: Gender-Based Identity Conflicts in a Typical American Marriage 84 4.1 The Perception of the Characters’ Delusions in Gone Girl 87 4.1.1 Nick Dunne, the Failing American Husband 88 4.1.2 Amy Elliott Dunne’s Feminist Perspective on Marriage and Power 96 4.2 The Setting as a Main Factor of the Characters’ Frustrations in Gone Girl 101 4.3 Media Influence on Preconceived Gender Roles 105 4.4 The Cool Girl as a Modern Concept of Phallocentrism and Male Domination 111 2 5. Sharp Objects: Identity Conflicts due to Morbid Mother-Daughter Relationships 124 5.1 Camille Preaker’s Self-Destruction as a Consequence of the Inability to Perform a Prescribed Femininity 128 5.2 Identity Conflicts Caused by the Violence of a Psychopathic Mother in Sharp Objects 142 5.3 The Emotional and Psychological Effects of the Identity Conflicts on Amma Crellin 147 5.4 Feminist Symbols and Allusions in Sharp Objects 151 6. Gender-Based Expectations and Verbal Misunderstandings in Dark Places 162 6.1 The Emotional Struggles of Libby Day 171 6.2 Diondra Wertzner as the Female Perpetrator in Dark Places 175 6.3 Constant Emasculation and the Inability to be Manly Enough 180 7. The Need to Live up to Gender Roles in The Grownup 184 8. The Duality of Sexism and Feminism: Female Violence as a Consequence of a Consumer Society’s Preconceived Gender Roles 195 9. Gillian Flynn’s Post-Feminism: Amorality as a Prerequisite of Female Diversity 211 10. Conclusion 218 11. Works Cited 226 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Josef Raab for counseling me both in my previous studies and in writing this dissertation. I am grateful for his constant assistance and professional advice, and, most importantly, for his permanent encouragement. Without him I could not have finished this project. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends for their emotional support and help they have offered me. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents for their endless support and motivation, and my brother for his advice. Certainly, without him I would neither have started nor finished this project. 4 1. Introduction 1985. Henderson County, Texas. The Sheriff’s Department issues a search warrant for a house and finds two male corpses on the property. The pistol they find matches the pistol that was used to shoot two bullets into the first and three bullets into the second corpse. It seems that the woman living in the house murdered two of her five husbands for money and property. She has a history of attempted murders, financial problems and physical disabilities. Furthermore, she experienced her father’s and other men’s alcohol-induced sexual and emotional abuse, and attempted suicide. Fifteen years later, she has been found guilty of capital murder and is executed by lethal injection (Montaldo on “Betty Lou Beets”). 1989. Alamance County, North Carolina. An ordained minister has to be taken to the hospital after suddenly becoming sick. The doctors, who recognize the suspicious symptoms, order toxic testing and find large amounts of arsenic in his system. It comes to light that the minister’s wife tried to poison him with toxic milkshakes over the course of a week (Hines et al., 2013: 189-190). In her teenage years, she was forced by her father into prostitution. Still her lawyer claims that “she is not a man-hater. [...] Her response was very normal [...] and in no way suggestive of some psychological change that could explain a person turning into a murderer” (Struck, 1989). However, the minister survives and the police exhume her first husband, another boyfriend, and at least two other persons in order to determine that they have died from the same poisoning. The woman is convicted of quadruple murder as well as attempted murder and is on death row to face her execution through lethal injection (Hines et al., 2013: 189- 190). Although these stories sound like a summary of a novel or a play, they are nonfictional. In fact, these stories are about real-life crimes committed by Blanche Taylor Moore and Betty Lou Beets. In the past, there have been many female murderers, especially the so-called “Black Widows,” who killed their husbands or lovers.1 Such merciless murders were also committed by 1 Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay, the infamous “Black Widow murderers,” befriended two homeless men in California, took out life-insurance policies on them, 5 Belle Gunness, Vera Renczi, Nannie Doss, and Dorothea Puenteto to name but a few. These “Black Widows,” named after the venomous spiders that poison and eat their male mates, “claim a variety of motives, including love and jealousy, a majority murder for money, collecting life insurance or inheritances from their victims” (Newton, 2008: 44). Although most of these women have not experienced what Blanche Taylor Moore and Betty Lou Beets have been through, these killers experienced the pressure of male domination, sexual oppression, and physical as well as psychological violence, which ultimately resulted in an incentive to break free and offer resistance. Although their criminal actions are neither ethical nor excusable, and most probably linked to a mental insanity, one must consider that it was the oppression of a patriarchal society that brought pressure to bear on Moore and Beets and led to their determination to fight back.2 Social oppression of women occurs throughout the world, and it is not uncommon for women to snap at last and seek freedom and autonomy through violence. Regarding the struggles that result from gender dynamics in society, a recent novel comes to mind: Gone Girl. Gillian Flynn’s critically acclaimed novel is about a marriage dangerously infected with paranoia, antipathy, suspicion, and oppression. Husband and wife seem to be constant liars, who do not just betray each other but also the reader by pretending to be other people and by expecting their partners to adjust to socially prescribed roles. They create a world of illusions and deceptions to gain power over one another. Their interpersonal relationship goes so far as to question their sexuality, femininity, masculinity, and their social roles in particular. It is not unreasonable that this toxic marriage results in malicious falsehood, mutual manipulation, and even in a violent and bloody death. That is why I want to and staged hit-and-run accidents to collect the money from their policies (Pelisek, 2017.). In 2008, both women were convicted of murder. 2 John Gray argues that conflicts between men and women are based on both parties not being aware of their differences. In Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992), Gray claims that “men mistakenly expect women to think, communicate and react the way men do; women mistakenly expect women to think, communicate and react the way women do” (1992: 10). To stop conflicts between men and women, Gray proposes the idea that both should accepts the other and acknowledge biological differences (Gray, 1992). 6 focus on the gender roles in Gillian Flynn’s novels in detail and analyze the feminist approaches and statements with regard to the urge to leave the system and take vengeance. Amy Dunne is central in this study, as she is one of the main characters who talks about and commits considerable gender- based acts of violence. Due to the fact that these acts in literature have become quite famous in recent years, I want to unravel the essential idea of gender-based oppression in relationships and violent retaliation that women in particular find justified. The concept of the punishment Amy thinks of for her husband, Nick, a feminist paradigm of literature, has made many female readers feel vindicated. The following quotation may best introduce her feminist and aggressive personality: The bad guy wins? Fuck him! [...] I’ve listened to his lies, lies, lies–from simplistic child’s fibs to elaborate Rube Goldbergian3 contraptions. [...] I’ve suffered betrayal with all five senses. For over a year. So I may have gone a bit mad. [...] But it’s so very necessary.