I recently came across an interesting student article regarding the problematic portrayal of women in recent novels and films such as "Gone Girl" and "The Girl on the Train." Kirsten Greenwood's thoughtful critique takes particular issue with the idea that the female characters in question not only define their unhappiness or self value through their unhealthy marriages, but that they are further drawn to commit calculated acts of cruelty. Bloodlust and intellect combine here, she argues, in a way that "end[s] up supporting wildly inaccurate stereotypes" about women rather than participating in recent movements where "women are leading the way and empowering one another." Ultimately she posits that "it’s time our literary females started to do the same."
Certainly there is a need and an important place for female characters whose portrayals are positive and socially empowering in the overt ways Greenwood mentions. But to play devil's advocate -- why must all female characters be positively portrayed or likeable? For hundreds of years male characters could be complex across the moral and psychological spectra (think, for example, about "The Talented Mr. Ripley" or "American Psycho"), and they could do so while generating the mixed disgust and admiration of audiences. Cruel, violent, or calculating female characters have also existed for centuries -- and Lady Macbeth is a case in point, as she calls upon the spirits to strengthen her for her murderous act:
"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe topful Of direst cruelty!"
(Macbeth Act 1, scene 5, 38–43)
Yet characters such as Lady Macbeth, whose desire to be "unsexed" and de-feminized in order to take violent, strategic
political action were often villainized and oversimplified compared to their male counterparts. As I've discussed before, theorists and critics such as Melissa Sanchez have destabilized the idea that violent femininity is reductive or reifies stereotypes. Indeed, it can open our eyes to previously unaccepted forms of empowerment.
It is possible that characters like "Gone Girl"'s Amy assist in transforming our views on gender -- indeed, on humans regardless of sex -- in productive ways. The emergence of female characters like these (or even, one could argue, the women in programs such as Orange is the New Black) increase our comfort level that humans -- men and women -- can suffer from sociopathy, can use their intellect to create harm, or can simply do things that are unlikeable or unpleasant to audiences. As Sanchez pointed out in her 2012 PMLA article, they unsettle us by revealing our stereotyped expectation that women "should" be soft, positive, nonviolent in their personalities, sexualities, and behaviours.
Perhaps literature and popular culture need male, female (and increasingly characters who break even this dual binary!) who deconstruct or question gendered expectations in positive and negative ways to reveal the complex messiness of "human"?
At least in the case of "Gone Girl"s Amy, we can also learn a great deal about this deconstructive process by examining her relationship not only to her husband but her parents. While Greenwood emphasizes that Amy's violent behviors are reactive against her husband's idiocy, neglect, and infidelity, she is in fact more complex than that.
Amy's frustrations seem deeper seated, based in large part on her parents' creation of a fictional version of her -- the character "Amy" who exists only in their "Amazing Amy" book series and depicts her as impossibly successful, beautiful, kind, and talented. While her parents' creation is extreme, many parents generate similar fictions around their children that are less overt. The success of her parents' fictional version of Amy points to a common and limiting social desire for feminine perfection -- something that the "real" Amy deconstructs from top to bottom by being astounding or amazing in a completely opposite way from the expected soft, positive, and gentle feminine ideal. (One could argue, for example, that as Patrick Bateman reacts bestially or violently in opposition to Yuppie ideals that confine him, so too Amy reacts against the family and social expectations placed on women of her specific race and social class).
Finally, I think the point is well taken that literature needs a range of characters that unsettle stereotypes. How might our discussions only of characters like Amy (white, upper middle class, married) be complicated by adding to the conversation depictions of female figures across class and racial lines? Indeed, the "modern day women" of Greenwood's article title are anything but homogenous.
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