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

Kim A. Loudermilk is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Planning at Emory University.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;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.USCopyright ? 2004 by Taylor & Francis, Inc.