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New Zealand Pride and Prejudice: Gender and Location in Selected Chick Lit Novels

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New Zealand Pride and Prejudice: Gender and Location in Selected Chick Lit Novels NEW ZEALAND PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: GENDER AND LOCATION IN SELECTED CHICK LIT NOVELS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury By Phoebe Clay University of Canterbury May 2016 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3 ABSTRACT 4 INTRODUCTION 5 CHICK LIT: TOWARDS A DEFINITION 5 REACTIONS TO THE GENRE 11 NEW ZEALAND CHICK LIT AND OTHER LOCAL FICTION 24 MY APPROACH 30 CHAPTER ONE: THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN 34 1.1 BEAUTY AND APPEARANCE 37 1.2 WORK 50 1.3 MULTIPLE RESPONSIBILITIES 62 CHAPTER TWO: THE REPRESENTATION OF MEN 76 2.1 FARMERS, ALL BLACKS, AND BEER 79 2.2 BLOKES WITH FEELINGS 91 2.3 JUXTAPOSING MASCULINITIES 107 CHAPTER THREE: GEOGRAPHICAL AND CULTURAL SETTINGS 118 3.1 GEOGRAPHICAL SETTINGS 119 3.2 CULTURAL SETTINGS 147 CONCLUSION 169 APPENDIX ONE: BRIEF SYNOPSES OF THE SELECTED TEXTS 177 APPENDIX TWO: TABLE OF NEW ZEALAND CHICK LIT 180 WORKS CITED 182 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the contributions of my supervisors. Thank you to Associate Professor Annie Potts for initially encouraging me to pursue this thesis and this topic, and also to Doctor Christina Stachurski and Associate Professor Philip Armstrong for their excellent advice and expertise. Their collective knowledge and guidance throughout this project has been invaluable. Thanks also to my family, particularly my parents Nicki and Simon, for their encouragement and continuing support. And thank you to the libraries of Christchurch – both on and off campus – for providing with me space everyday to read, and write, and think, and procrastinate. I am so grateful for these opportunities. 4 ABSTRACT Through close analysis of five chick lit novels set in New Zealand, this thesis explores the ways these texts adapt and hybridise recognised conventions of typical British and North American chick lit with popular, mythic conceptions of New Zealand cultural identity. The novels included in this study are Michelle Holman's Divine (2008) and Knotted (2009), Danielle Hawkins's Dinner at Rose’s (2012) and Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (2013), and Holly Ford’s Blackpeak Station (2013). In what follows, I recognise the challenges of defining and labelling “chick lit”, the variety of responses to the genre and perceptions of its merits, as well as my selected texts’ relationships to New Zealand literary and popular fiction. Incorporating these contextual debates and influences, each chapter focuses on the ways my selected texts both diverge from and reproduce key elements of the genre through their representations of New Zealand women, men, and settings. In doing so, I will argue that these texts construct particular, localised fantasies about femininity, masculinity, and New Zealand in order to appeal to readers. Lastly, this thesis seeks to exemplify how the critical study of chick lit offers important insights into the depiction of women in popular culture, and the variety of issues addressed within their light-hearted narratives. 5 INTRODUCTION From Jane Austen in the late 1700s to Bridget Jones in the 1990s, and presently to contemporary chick lit novels written and set in New Zealand, women’s writing has experienced great popularity while also attracting a range of critical responses. The chick lit genre first came to prominence during the 1990s, with Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) widely cited as a key founding text (Ferriss and Young 4; Davis-Kahl 18; Knowles 218; Gill and Herdieckerhoff 448; Ryan, “Trivial or Commendable?” 76). Where Bridget Jones’s Diary offers a British setting, Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (1997) is recognised as an early North American chick lit text, which was later adapted into the popular television series of the same name that screened from 1998-2004 (Ferriss and Young 6; Harzewski, Chick Lit and Postfeminism 91; Ryan, “Trivial or Commendable?” 73; Ommundsen 107). Since the publication of these texts, many chick lit novels about various aspects of women’s experiences have been published and a small body of academic scholarship has focused on the genre. Several conventions of the genre have been adopted and adapted by a number of New Zealand authors. This thesis examines a selection of these texts, exploring the dual influences of British and North American chick lit and popular understandings of New Zealand culture on the representation of women, men, and settings. CHICK LIT: TOWARDS A DEFINITION “Chick lit” is a term applied freely to many novels written by and for women about a range of different things. Due to the variety of texts assigned this label, “there are countless variations in describing the genre” (Ryan, “Trivial or Commendable?” 74). How then, should chick lit be defined for the purpose of this thesis? Chick lit author 6 and commentator Cathy Yardley provides one of the few resources that identifies specific characteristics of the genre in a concise list. She describes the key conventions of classic chick lit in a comic tone evocative of the novels themselves. The first element she highlights as significant is the prominence of urban settings, which facilitate an “exciting, fast-paced, high-toned lifestyle” (10) for the protagonist. Complementing these cosmopolitan locations, she also identifies the “Glam industries” in which many protagonists work, and their “simply marvellous gay friend” (12) as typical components of the genre. Yardley also observes a tendency to include characters such as the “evil boss”, who is out to destroy the protagonist’s career, and “the cheating lover” who similarly ruins her love life, both of whom get their comeuppance by the end of the novel (12). Aside from these stock settings and characters, several key features of the genre are more related to protagonists’ common experiences and activities during the course of the narrative. For example, Yardley labels the “man-hunting” period found in many chick lit narratives “Drinks, Dates, and Mr. Wrongs”. This encompasses any combination of disastrous and funny encounters with unsuitable men experienced by the protagonist while on pub-crawls with her friends, speed dating, or internet dating (13). Similarly, “Life implosion syndrome” is the term Yardley uses to describe the multiple catastrophes that tend to go wrong for a chick lit protagonist early in the narrative, such as losing her job, apartment, and boyfriend all at once, setting her on a quest to get her life back on track by the end of the novel (14). Further characteristics of the genre are linked to the sense of chic style and culture embodied by chick lit. Yardley uses the phrase “Chick Lit Fabulous” to explain the typical emphasis on protagonists’ highly sophisticated and expensive lifestyles, including their obsessions with shopping, consumption, and the inevitable 7 debts they incur (14). Protagonists gathering with their friends to gossip and chat about their lives over coffee or wine is also identified as a key feature of classic chick lit, with these scenes functioning as a vehicle for “some truly funny witty banter” (15). Finally, frequent references to popular culture “often without any accompanying explanation” (15) are recognised as an important characteristic of the genre, adding cultural context and colour to the narrative. Yardley includes a caveat to this list in her parting advice to any aspiring chick lit writers, noting that several of these features have “been used to the point that many of them are considered Chick Lit clichés” (10). This highlights the genre’s highly formulaic narrative, as she acknowledges that these features have been “done to death” and suggests it is time to “twist” them in order to create more innovative and interesting narratives (16). Yardley’s list is one of the most comprehensive attempts to define chick lit by its key characteristics (Ryan 74), however there are a few omissions that I see as particularly notable features of the genre. The first is the presence of love interests, particularly the “Right Man” figure, the character implied to be the perfect romantic partner for the protagonist (Smyczyńska 33). The exclusion of prospective love interests from Yardley’s list is indicative of the genre’s central focus on female characters’ daily lives, and shows that the romance plot makes up just one strand of the narrative. Indeed, Caroline J. Smith observes that chick lit novels are “heroine centred narratives that focus on the trials and tribulations of their individual protagonists” (2). Nevertheless, without exception, at least one male love interest is featured in each novel. As such, the way the genre represents men is significant, especially in terms of which characteristics of masculinities are favoured and which are rejected. 8 Another central component of chick lit is its emphasis on comedy and entertainment. Juliette Wells argues that the genre privileges “entertainment value, particularly humour, over any challenging or experimental content or style” (49). She emphasises that comedy, both in terms of language and recognition, is critical to the genre’s popularity and success, suggesting that its greatest linguistic achievement “is its satiric employment, and sometimes invention, of contemporary slang and lingo” (64). Comedy in chick lit texts functions as a cathartic experience for the genre’s readers, enabling them to identify with characters’ embarrassing incidents and release their own anxieties through laughter. Andrea Hewett argues that in chick lit “humor works as a coping device … In recognizing the humor in these common experiences, we’re able to forgive ourselves” (128). By providing readers with an uplifting experience, the successful use of comedy in chick lit is a critical feature of the genre. A further key feature of chick lit is its capacity to blend social and emotional concerns that affect real women into its romantic comedy narrative. This adds a deeper layer of significance to the genre’s capabilities.
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