Barnes, Charlotte Sophie (2018). ‘Never Forget Your First’ (novel) and violent women: representations of female violence in Muriel Spark’s ‘The Driver’s Seat’, Virginie Despentes’s ‘Baise-Moi’, Gillian Flynn’s ‘Gone Girl’, and C.S. Barnes’s ‘Never Forget Your First’. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.
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Barnes18PhD.pdf
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Abstract
Never Forget Your First presents the story of Gillian - a young woman who, from a young age, expresses an
attraction to violence. Following an encounter with her father- in the course of which he suffers a fatal injury - Gillian begins her journey towards her first murder. Never Forget Your First aims to illustrate how contemporary authors can deviate from narrative norms in regard to representing female violence.
Complementary to this, the critical portion of this thesis, Violent Women: Representations of Female Violence
in Muriel Spark's 'The Driver's Seat', Virginie Despentes's 'Baise-Moi', Gillian Flynn's 'Gone Girl', and C.S. Barnes's 'Never Forget Your First', discusses how depictions of female violence in fiction remain heavily
gendered. Through an analysis of three novels- Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat (1970), Virginie Despentes's
Baise-Moi, trans. by Bruce Benderson (1993), and Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (2012)- this essay aims to highlight that even innovative narratives of female violence remain, to some extent, governed by gendered expectations. This analysis also draws on feminist theory, above all on Betty Friedan's and Judith Butler's work. The critical essay highlights problems with the gendered representation of violence in fiction and calls for a revision of literary tropes governing the representation of violence.
| Type of Work: | Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.) | |||||||||
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| Award Type: | Doctorates > Ph.D. | |||||||||
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| College/Faculty: | Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Arts & Law | |||||||||
| School or Department: | School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies, Department of Film and Creative Writing | |||||||||
| Funders: | None/not applicable | |||||||||
| Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism | |||||||||
| URI: | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/8443 |
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