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

by Kim A. Loudermilk

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415968065
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/13/2004
Series:	Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
Pages:	236
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

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

Table of Contents

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;