Title: Popular/post-feminism and popular literature
Abstract: This thesis is concerned with the ambivalence expressed towards feminism by many
women in the last decade and identifies post-feminism as a problematic through which
to explore this in contemporary women's writing. It focuses on selected fictional and
non-fictional texts of the 1980s and 1990s and examines the ways in which they
engage with feminist concerns.
Until now, post-feminism has not been studied through its articulations in popular
literature. To do justice to the wide range of views held by women and avoid a
defensive and pessimistic reading of commercialised mainstream culture, I have made
use of intertextual readings. The methodology is derived from feminist critical theory
and cultural studies in order to address the relation between feminist and non-feminist
literary texts and the dynamic interchange between what have been labelled as
feminist politics and mainstream or consumer women' s interests. The significance of
the research lies in the identification of ways in which such works of fiction and nonfiction
provide an outlet for women's voices which could serve as a basis for
developing feminist criticism and politics.
The thesis is divided into three chapters, the different themes of which illustrate
post-feminist concerns. In the first, I address the literature of popular therapy by
women. The second chapter focuses on contemporary fictional and non-fictional
writings by women on sex. The final chapter examines women' s relationship to
transgression through genres of crime writing. I have found that popular literary
forms used by women may offer a progressive and complex reading of post-feminism.
I conclude that post-feminism has drawn on popular elements of feminism and that, at
the beginning of the 1990s, one may identify a reincorporation of feminism into postfeminism.
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-06-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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