Beyond Happily Ever After: The Contribution of the
Domestic Noir Genre to Contemporary Debates on Domestic
Abuse
Anna Yeatman: 11108517
MA European Literature and Culture: English Pathway Thesis
27
thJune 2016
Supervisor: Jochem Riesthuis
Word Count: 18,321
Contents
Introduction 3
Theory Chapter 10
Gone Girl Analysis Chapter 17
Gone Girl Response Chapter 28
The Girl on the Train Analysis Chapter 38
The Girl on the Train Response Chapter 48
Conclusion 59
Beyond Happily Ever After: The Contribution of the Domestic Noir Genre to Contemporary Debates on Domestic Abuse
Introduction
Within the current zeitgeist, issues surrounding domestic violence and abusive relationships have become a paramount debate in the discourse of feminism. Statistics show that in the years 2013/14, 1.4 million British women suffered domestic abuse, and that one third of violent crime in London took place in the domestic sphere.1 Media attention on these issues has been vast, ranging from television documentaries such as Behind Closed Doors (BBC, 14/03/16) which revealed the personal stories of three domestic violence victims and the social and legal services attempting to protect them, to womenshealth.gov’s article Am I
Being Abused? Which provides a checklist of behaviours deemed abusive to allow women to
gain clarity on what has long been an underreported and grey issue. It is resultant of this higher level of media focus, coupled with new legal measures to protect women such as the 2012 Protection of Freedoms Act and the 2004 Domestic Violence, Crimes and Victims Act, that domestic violence has transitioned from a shameful secret and cultural taboo to a widely discussed and disputed topic.
Following new legislation passed in December 2015, a British man named Mohammad Anwaar was recently sentenced to 28 months in prison for coercive and controlling
behaviour, representing a significant victory in measures to encourage more victims to report domestic abuse and to protect those who do. This cultural and legal phenomenon is reflected in recent literary trends: domestic noir represents a redefining of the classical thriller genre to epitomise the fact that the private and domestic spheres are often the setting of the most
1 Source: Office for National Statistics, quoted from The Guardian.
tense, traumatic and personal narratives. In a recent call for papers on the subject, Laura Ellen Joyce wrote
Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn), The Silent Wife (ASA Harrison), The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins), are just three recent novels that have captured the commercial imagination and conceivably shifted the critical perception of what a contemporary crime thriller is and should be doing in the second decade of the 21st Century. The terrain is domestic, the narrative perspective and criminal perpetrator firmly female. However, the political is of course ever present in relation to gender and society. The crime thriller has always been a peculiarly modern form. Its transition to an urgent, necessary and contemporary form of literary expression is arguable, and lies at the core of the discussion within this collection.
Although I disagree that a female perpetrator is necessary to qualify a text as domestic noir, the development of the crime thriller from detective and police centred narratives to examining the domestic sphere as a microcosm of society qualifies the emerging genre as a reaction to contemporary debates.
There are a plethora of recent examples of this, but for the sake of introduction, three key ones are 50 Shades of Grey (E. L. James, 2011), the 2002 feature film Enough (dir. Michael Apted) and the 2015 Netflix series Jessica Jones. Focused on the issues of dominant/submissive relationships, marital abuse and sexual consent respectively, these examples have generated a wealth of debate in the media and on social media about how domestic issues are presented and whether the female protagonist is empowered or subdued by her relationship with the male. Despite the commercial success of 50 Shades
million copies in the USA in its first two years of publication to become the fastest selling book of all time,2 the book earned much criticism from those who felt that it portrayed domestic abuse disguised as bondage and sadomasochism. In its article ‘Analysing Abuse in 50 Shades of Grey’, The Cavalier Daily states:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lists 18 signs of abusive relationships on its website — eight of which appear in the relationship between Ana Steele and Christian Grey, the two main characters in “50 Shades of Grey.” Four are depicted more than once.
Over the course of the movie, Christian monitors Ana’s movements without her consent and discourages her from seeing other male friends. Grey also contractually requires her to take oral contraceptives, and limits her to a diet of prescribed foods and limited alcohol intake on five separate occasions. He verbally threatens her with physical punishment twice. In one scene, he beats her six times while she cries in pain and humiliation.
Regardless of the fact that Ana signs a contract stating her consent for the control and punishment present in the relationship, there is little that feels empowering about a reader witnessing her distress as Grey gratifies himself with corporal punishment, or the degree of psychological manipulation and control that accompany the physical aspects of his role as dominant. Instead, both reading the book and watching the film takes on a degree of voyeurism as a naïve young woman is seen to be preyed upon by an emotionally damaged man, with the imbalance of emotional, finance and sexual power making for uncomfortable reading.
Whilst unique among the texts considered here as a glorification of violence and exaggerated control within a relationship, 50 Shades of Grey nevertheless represents a paramount example of how domestic relationships have formed the crux of many recent novels and gripped a predominantly female readership. Despite conforming to the strand of the domestic noir genre examined here, novels produced by, for and focusing on women, 50
Shades of Grey can potentially be viewed as a regression of the recent victories won by
feminists, such as the early mentioned legal changes in favour of women in relationships. However, whilst it does not feature women who perpetrate or suffer abuse and emerge triumphant, and therefore is not feminist domestic noir in the same vein as Gone Girl or The
Girl on the Train, its role in generating readership and debate on the domestic issues within
literature must be acknowledged. Whilst sadomasochism is not a staple part of the domestic noir genre, the focus on the darker aspects of Ana and Christian’s relationship and the consequences of the worrying level of control that he exerts over her still make the text relevant to an examination of the genre.
The issue of sexual consent within a relationship has been the central debate in reactions to Jessica Jones, with The Guardian stating that ‘Netflix’s Jessica Jones is one of the most complex treatments of agency in the wake of victimhood that the small screen has seen yet seen…it’s finally less about trauma than it is a murky contest between revenge and
rehabilitation and the term that floats between those: responsibility’. The actual instances of abuse brought about by Kilgrave’s mind control powers, used to influence Jessica into appearing to consent to a sexual relationship that she has no desire for, are shown in
flashback. This allows for the main focus of the series to be Jessica’s struggle in the aftermath of the relationship, dealing with both her fear that Kilgrave will find her or abuse someone else and her guilt over deeds done under Kilgrave’s influence. The feelings of fear and guilt
may be familiar to viewers who have suffered in abusive relationships themselves. Jeph Loeb,
Jessica Jones’ executive producer had said that ‘this is somebody who, in many ways, from
the beginning is broken. And watching her put her life back together again really is the journey of the show’; a clear example of how even a Marvel superhero based drama has reacted to the contemporary focus on empowering victims of domestic abuse by placing Jessica’s recovery from the relationship and attempt to build a new life for herself as the primary focus, ahead of her super powers.
The issue of consent, dictating whether or not Jessica is responsible for her actions under Kilgrave and whether her influenced appearance of consent detracts from her status as a victim offers a fantasied version of events in the recent debate on sexual consent: whilst the majority of women who appear to give consent to have sex or stay with a partner do not have their minds supernaturally controlled, many may feel that they are heavily influenced by their partner to the point that they lose their agency and independence. The influence of alcohol on an individual’s ability to give rational consent has also become a paramount point of dispute. A 2015 Washington Post survey of American college students found that 95% of male students considered penetrating someone who was passed out or severely intoxicated to be sexual assault; however 55% of female students surveyed felt that nodding was a legitimate means of giving sexual consent, regardless of the fact that an individual too intoxicated to speak may be capable of nodding.3 This disparity of definitions of when sex has taken place without one party’s consent in prominent in the series, as Kilgrave denies raping Jessica because she always appeared willing, despite his knowledge that she was under his control and therefore unable to refuse. Kilgrave’s further attempts to rationalise his behaviour with the justification that he bought her presents and took her to five star hotels in exchange for
intercourse is quashed by Jessica who replies ‘I didn’t want any of it,’ (Jessica Jones, Netflix).
Conversely, Enough received largely negative reviews upon release. Telling the story of Slim and Mitch from their first meeting and through the breakdown of their marriage, the film concludes with Slim’s killing of Mitch, freeing her from the violence and torment that he has subjected her to. The only example here to have been created by a man, the New York Times overlooked a classification in the domestic noir genre, branding the film ‘a jarring thriller packed to the gills with cheap shocks, suggests the emergence of a new Hollywood subgenre: the male yuppie horror film’. Ignoring the that women of a range backgrounds are terrorised worldwide by abuse partners, Stephen Holden’s review presents Mitch, the monstrous husband as a caricature, diminishing the fact that abusive partners are a genuine social problem. Furthermore, Holden mentions the class divide between the two protagonists, describing them as ‘a spunky working-class woman’ and ‘a rich yuppie master of the universe’. The financial dependence Slim has on her husband is an issue which becomes paramount when he freezes her accounts after she leaves him and when he tries to justify his abuse by stating that as he earns the money, he makes the rules. However, the class warfare narrative that Holden places over a tale of abuse and eventual escape detracts from the fact that it is essentially a story of two partners and the one’s sinister attempts to control the life and body of the other.
These examples can be situated within current debates on what constitutes an abusive relationship. However, the question of whether recent cultural attention has been inspired by or fuelled these discussions can be raised. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (2015) are both examples of recent thrillers that can be used to examine this. Both have become highly popular and well known, with a film adaptation of
Gone Girl released in 2014 and an adaptation of The Girl on the Train currently filming,
increasingly the already vast audiences of both texts and ensuring that they have maximum exposure. This puts them in an optimal position to extent to individuals who may not be reached by newspapers and political reports, thus giving them an important role in contributing to and raising awareness of domestic issues.
Although Gone Girl contains no physical abuse, Nick’s insistence on removing Amy from her their home in New York and relocating her to an isolated life in his native Missouri, her attempts to destroy his reputation and frame him for murder and their mutual use of verbal aggression and belittling language qualify their relationship as an abusive one. The coercive control that Nick holds over their finances, lifestyle and future as a family further reflects a crucial and topical issue. In The Girl on the Train, physical violence, infidelity and murder make Tom’s relationships with both Rachel and Megan blatantly abusive. His use of gas-lighting4 and manipulation of Rachel’s drinking problem and Megan’s trust issues as
justification for his abuse also reflects the victim blaming culture prevalent in society today. Both texts clearly fit into the domestic noir genre, likely representing the most well-known examples of the decade. Therefore they are optimal case studies for the central question of this thesis: in what ways has the domestic noir genre benefited from and contributed to current debates on domestic violence?
Theory Chapter
An understanding of sociology and the social theories surrounding the relationship of love and abuse greatly enriches the study of the domestic noir genre. However, the field of social work has devoted relatively little attention to the love/abuse binary, with social researcher Heather Fraser claiming in her 2003 study Narrating Love and Abuse in Intimate
Relationships that ‘the borders separating love and abuse are usually assumed to be relatively
stable and readily apparent’. This mistaken belief shows the lack of research carried out on abusive relationships until recently, and the lack of understanding on how love and abuse are not mutually exclusive concepts. Owing to the lack of academic research available, Fraser draws on literature when examining society’s perceptions and expectations of females in relationships, stating ‘popular cultures tends to produce love stories…marketed
predominantly at women, these stories typically suggest that the love of a man makes women ‘whole’; heals past wounds and leads her to a ‘happy ending’’. It is the concept of the ‘happy ending’ that makes domestic noir a unique genre: the union of marriage or establishment of a romantic relationship is the catalyst for the events of the thriller opposed to the satisfying and optimistic ending of romantic novels.
Fraser’s social theories on the cultural expectations of women in relationships offer two key points of insight into domestic noir. Initially, there is the notion prevalent in both literature and society that a good woman will bring out the best in a man. This upholds the view that male-female domestic violence and assault can be equally the fault of the female victim and may explain why some women feel shamed into remaining in abusive
relationships: to leave would be to admit that they failed to change their partner. The 2002 film Enough provides a stark contrast to this assumption. Whilst Slim initially tries to please her husband Mitch and fulfil his needs, she is able to acknowledge that the reasons for his
increasingly abusive behaviour lie within him, and feels no remorse for taking their daughter, Gracie, and leaving. Despite this, Mitch’s mother, whom Slim appears to have a close
relationship with does not initially acknowledge that Slim is not to blame for Mitch’s abuse, asking her ‘what did you do?’ (Enough, 2002) when first seeing bruises on Slim’s face. Despite offering moral support to Slim over the phone whilst she is on the run, Mitch’s mother continues to urge Slim to allow Mitch contact with Gracie, stating that Slim is depriving him of his rights as a father, thus making Mitch appear a victim as well to some extent.
Fraser’s second point of interest states that ‘women who are born into ‘good’ families, especially those that have access to resources (such as education and health) find it easier to emulate dominant cultural ideals circulating about ‘strong’, ‘independent’ yet ‘sexy’ women’ (Fraser, 285). Examples of this can be found in both Jessica Jones and 50 Shades of Grey.
Jessica Jones focuses on Jessica, a women with superhuman strength on the run from the
mind controlling Kilgrave, whom she has previously had a relationship with and been forced by to commit terrible actions such as killing an innocent woman. 50 Shades of Grey examines the relationship between naïve virgin Ana Steele and the sadistic and controlling billionaire Christian Grey, to whom Ana signs a contract agreeing to be the submissive partner in the relationship.
Whilst both Jessica and Ana find themselves in unconventional and potentially abusive relationships, Jessica with the mind controlling Kilgrave and Ana in 50 Shades of Grey with the troubled and sadistic Christian, they both have wealthy and privileged best friends who avoid this. Ana’s best friend Kate is the most obvious example; whilst Ana’s job, car and accommodation end up financially controlled by Christian, Kate is able to use family money and influence to acquire a condo and job with a high profile newspaper. Lacking the
vulnerability and naivety that attract Christian to Anna, Kate ends up married to Christian’s laid back and mentally sound brother. Trish, Jessica’s best friend in Jessica Jones, fits the stereotype less exactly as she, whilst from a wealthy family she is estranged from her manipulative mother. However, the money that she has retained from her background as a child star allows her to purchase a highly secure apartment and secure her own radio talk show: a venture that ensures her the financial security to refrain from relying on a partner to support her.
Sexual script theory, outlined in Sanchez, Fetterolf and Rudman’s 2012 Eroticising
Inequality in the United States: The Consequences and Determinants of Traditional Gender Role Adherence in Intimate Relationships provides scholarly insight into the workings of
domestic and romantic relationships. Sexual script theory refers to the application of cultural gender stereotypes, men as dominators and initiators and women submissive and receptive, to sexual activity. Sanchez et al state that these established sexual scripts are followed most closely during periods of attraction and the primary stages of a relationship: true in the context of many examples of contemporary literature.
This is true in Enough, where Mitch initially seduces Slim by carefully constructing a scene in which his best friend fakes an attempt to sleep with her for a bet, and Mitch is able to fulfil the chivalrous male stereotype by revealing the bet, and saving Slim from humiliation. As their relationship progresses, Slim is seen to depart from the stereotypically submissive state that she inhabits initially, confronting Mitch over his affairs and the way he leaves her to tend to the housework and their child, to which he replies that men and women have different needs and she should be satisfied with the life that he has provided for her. She overcomes submissiveness entirely when she takes her daughter and leaves him. The climax of the film, in which Slim and Mitch fight to the death to end the cycle of torment and their battle for
daughter Gracie reiterates Slim’s departure from her assigned sexual script. When she informs him that she means to fight, Mitch laughs and asks ‘man to man?’ to which she responds ‘no, man to woman’ (Enough, 2002). Slim’s violent triumph over domestic abuse whilst still retaining her own interpretation of femininity is an example of how domestic noir often usurps sexual script theory to present female victims as triumphant in the end.
In its reliance on gender stereotypes as a way of classifying individuals, sexual script theory is reminiscent of Judith Butler’s work on gender performance. In From Integrity to Gender
Performatives, Butler writes that ‘acts and gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the
illusion of an interior and organising gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive
heterosexuality,’ (Butler, 1990). A key question here is whether abusive relationships represent a strengthening of or a deviation from gender performance. In relation to Jessica
Jones, where Kilgrave deprives Jessica of the agency to decide on her own appearance and
action, it is clear that as their relationship progresses, he makes a show of becoming increasingly protective and paternalistic, whereas her clothes and appearance become significantly more feminine than at the start of their relationship.
A sequence in episode eight in which Kilgrave has purchased and restored Jessica’s childhood home and promises to stop his evil activity on the condition that she agrees to reside there with him also shows evidence of enhanced gender performance within their re-emerging relationship. In having Jessica searched by security upon entry and presenting her with a dress to wear for dinner, Kilgrave attempts to reduce her to his powerless and feminine female ideal once again. In bringing her back to her childhood home and returning her old bedroom, he once again attempts to become a paternal figure, restoring her to her place of safety and the memories of her carefree and innocent life before her family were killed and
she developed supernatural powers. Despite this, Jessica refuses to partake in further gender performance, refusing to wear the dress and eventually killing Kilgrave when he tries to entrap her into a relationship with him for the final time. Finding that his own powers do not work on Jessica, whereas her superhuman strength finally kills him, reduces Kilgrave to the victim at the end of the series, ending his performance of masculine control and superiority. In this sense, when a partner rebels against an abusive relationship, the power imbalance of traditional gender performance is reversed.
Sigmund Freud’s theory of ‘traumatic neurosis’ (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1922) also provides relevant insight into the role and behaviour of the victim in domestic noir texts. Trauma theory has been widely debated in recent years, with the sufferer’s ability to recall traumatic events accurately being disputed. Leading theorist Cathy Caruth has described trauma as ‘an event whose force is marked by the lack of registration’ (Caruth, 1995) and goes on to say that memories may be communicated non verbally, using methods such as Jessica’s drinking in Jessica Jones as means of escape for her inability to deal with her killing of Reva under Kilgrave’s orders, and the fear that he may reappear in her life. Christian Grey’s sadistic obsession with torturing women with brown hair, a result of a traumatic childhood with a brown haired ‘crack-whore’ as a mother, is also a key example of how traumatic memories are communicated through present behaviour.
Trauma theory is highly relevant to a study of domestic noir because many victims of domestic abuse are presented as likely to be prevented from reporting crimes or accepting their situation due to feelings of guilt or gas-lighting, causing them to doubt their own memories of abuse. In 2005, Richard McNally disputed Caruth’s claim that traumatic memories are unreachable by stating that they can be recovered and verbalised, as portrayed in Jessica Jones with Jessica’s flashbacks and the support group formed by Malcolm to share
victim’s stories of Kilgrave. The relevance of the recent domestic noir phenomenon can be assessed in relation to trauma theory: Freud links trauma to a ‘repetition compulsion’ (Freud, 1922) describing a compulsive need for sufferers to mentally return to the experience in order to master it and achieve a different outcome. Therefore, amid the current media attention on domestic violence and surge of reported sexual assault cases overseen by Operation Yewtree in the United Kingdom, a sense of catharsis may be reached by experiencing a thriller in which the victim is triumphant in the end.
When assessing the relevance of the domestic noir phenomenon within the current zeitgeist, Gilbert and Gubar provide the basis for a theoretical analysis of why female authors are presently so successful and popular in this genre. In response to Harold Bloom’s research into the ‘anxiety of influence’, in which predominantly male literary writers are forced to confront the canon and overcome their literary forefathers, Gilbert and Gubar identify an ‘anxiety of authorship’ amongst female writers, resulting from the lack of predecessors from which they can draw inspiration, and of the underprivileged position of women in canonical literature. Far from attempting to disprove Bloom’s theory, they simply acknowledge that it is not wholly applicable to female authors:
Bloom’s historical construct is useful not only because it helps identify and define the patriarchal psychosexual context in which so much Western literature was authored, but also because it can help us distinguish the anxieties and achievements of female writers from those of male writers. If we return to the question we asked earlier- where does a woman writer “fit in” to the overwhelmingly and essentially male literary history Bloom describes?- we find we have to answer that a woman writer does not “fit in”. (Gilbert and Gubar, 11).
This allows both for an analysis of female authored texts separate from the constraints and influence of the literary canon and for an examination of why female authors are now at the
centre of a literary phenomenon such as domestic noir: surely a reaction to the debates on a woman’s domestic role in a patriarchal society that have filled the contemporary zeitgeist. The ‘anxiety of authorship’ Gilbert and Gubar describe appears lessened by the fact that women are currently giving their perspective on a key aspect of both patriarchal society and the feminist response.
Gilbert and Gubar further question that if ‘sweet, dumb Snow White and fierce mad Queen, are major images literary tradition offers women, how does such imagery influence the ways in which women attempt the pen?’ (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979). When considering literature on domestic abuse, both of these images are still clearly present if reclassified as victim and perpetrator. Ana Steele in 50 Shades of Grey is the classical Snow White, or victim. Her innocence and demure persona enchant Christian, and her naivety towards the world of sadomasochism and sex in general mean that he is able to take on the role of her teacher as well as her partner, initiating her with ‘vanilla sex’ and allowing her to share his bed before presenting his contract of binding rules and beginning to take control of her diet,
relationships, job and life.
The best example of a ‘fierce mad Queen’ figure in 50 Shades of Grey is Leila, Christian’s spurned ex-submissive who acquires a gun and attacks Christian and Ana, unable to accept that Ana had succeeded in achieving the lasting relationship with Christian that she yearned for. Despite her initial role as a threat to their safety, Christian is able to pacify and command Leila into submission, returning her to the state of victim. Jessica represents the only mad Queen across the two texts who successfully retains her title, escaping her relationship with Kilgrave and devoting the years after to locating and eventually destroying him.
Gone Girl Analysis Chapter
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl appears a text book example of the domestic noir genre, as a thriller based on a domestic relationship, and the most disturbing events taking place within the private sphere. The story focuses on the marriage of Nick and Amy from the point in which they meet to their conception of a child and at the end. Split between the narratives of both spouses, the majority of the text centres on Amy’s disappearance and the subsequent investigation into Nick’s role in it, helped along by Amy’s fictitious diary which is seen by the reader in the first half of the text and paints Nick as an abusive partner with a motive for killing his wife. In the novel’s second half, Amy’s actual voice takes over narration from her diary entries, and the reader sees the meticulous planning that she put into staging her own abduction and incriminating Nick to punish him for having an affair.
Despite the clear domestic noir conventions of the text, it is problematized by the lack of one obvious abuser within the relationship. Each views the other as the villain, leaving the readers to interpret for themselves whether Amy is an abused and downtrodden woman or a psychopath, and by extension whether the novel is overtly feminist or misogynist. Whilst domestic noir is viewed as a predominantly female genre, both in terms of creators and readership, Flynn challenges the role that women can play in both domestic noir and in the wider context of thrillers. Potentially inspired by the movements such as HeForShe, which seeks to dispel the societal limitations placed on both genres and the One in Three Campaign which fights for the rights of male domestic violence sufferers, Flynn presents Amy as Nick’s tormentor as much as his victim. Amy’s relation to Gilbert and Gubar’s character stereotype of the ‘mad Queen’ is paramount here. Flynn’s motivations for reinterpreting the classic evil queen image into victim-turned-antagonist Amy can be interpreted in a plethora of ways. The lack of police reports and media coverage on male victims of domestic abuse could be a
potential factor here, with Flynn engaging in debates on the culture of shame surrounding male victims by offering the world an example of a hyperbolic female perpetrator.
Unconventional from the offset, their initially happy marriage is introduced to the reader through multiple examples of them mocking other couples, predominantly the husbands for displaying ‘dancing monkey syndrome’ and pandering to their wives’ wishes. Whilst her friends’ partners are often present with them on social occasions whilst Nick is elsewhere leaving Amy to represent both of them, she states ‘I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends’ (Flynn, 62). Along with this, Amy’s resolution ‘I won’t blame Nick…I don’t blame Nick. I refuse’ (Flynn, 72) shows that despite their initial attempts to lead a relaxed and independent marriage, Nick is clearly the privileged partner in terms of being spared the expectation to compromise or explain his actions to Amy.
In accordance with sexual script theory, as Nick and Amy’s married life progresses, the gender stereotypical roles become less prominent, to the point that by their 5th wedding anniversary Amy has fully replaced submission for agency and conspires an elaborate plan to have Nick framed and executed for her murder to punish his infidelity. Amy blames Nick for her departure from the sexual scripts of doting wife and sex symbol, accusing him of reducing her to ‘Avergae Dumb Woman Married to Average Shitty Man’ (Flynn, 263). It is this
realisation that forces Amy to abandon her feminine, ‘Cool Girl’ script and act in a villainous manner usually associated with male characters. Despite Amy’s obvious change in motivation and behaviour, it is Nick who appears to lose agency as he waits for Amy to initiate divorce opposed to filing himself, stating ‘Amy would demand a divorce, and then I would get to be
the good guy’ (Flynn, 170). Whilst a lack of agency may be a factor here, Nick’s financial dependence on Amy’s investment in The Bar is likely to have contributed as well.
A further signifying factor of the deterioration of their marriage lies in the declining of gender performance once they move away from New York and back to Nick’s hometown in Missouri. Whilst the deteriorating health of his mother is Nick’s main motivation for moving closer to her, it is also viewed by Amy and others such as Detective Boney as an abduction, with Nick using emotional pressure to remove Amy from the social life in which she
flourishes and moving her to an area where he is surrounded by family and acquaintances and she is isolated. After Amy’s disappearance, Boney asks him ‘you moved Amy here against her wishes?’ (Flynn, 203) to which Nick responds, ‘we did what we had to do’, attributing some of the obligation to care for Nick’s mother to Amy. This is synonymous with Nick’s changing expectations of Amy: upon first meeting, Amy acknowledges that she took on a ‘Cool Girl’ persona stating ‘I knew immediately that was what he wanted’ (Flynn, 252). This persona becomes irrelevant when they move to Missouri, with their married status meaning that Amy no longer needs to seduce Nick and his dependence on her financial investment and share in caring for his parents showing that he now requires a financial and temporal support system, not a woman to feel attracted to.
The lack of gender performance and growing resentment towards one another once they leave New York provides a stark contrast to the earlier period of their relationship in which they sought to seduce and satisfy one another and is best analysed using sexual script theory. Nick’s bitterness towards his financially dependent state and the heightened control that his threatened masculinity exerts over Amy are resultant of this. Amy offers a more interesting interpretation, as she often appears to manipulate sexual scripts.
The accuracy of Sanchez et al’s statement ‘a recent study suggests that daughters who have a supportive relationship with their fathers show greater sexual assertiveness and less
acceptance of male dominance’ is debatable in relation to Amy. Whilst her father has financially supported her and provided her with opportunities and material goods, his plagiarism of her childhood into the Amazing Amy book series leaves her feeling inferior to the perfect fictional Amy. This damages her self-esteem and could explain why she is not initially assertive in her relationship with Nick. Furthermore, whilst her parents equip her with a substantial trust fund which should prevent her from ending up financially dependent on a man, they are forced to borrow the majority of the money from her to salvage their own finances. When Amy invests her remaining funds into buying a bar for Nick, she is left dependent on the profits and the money he brings home.
Sanchez et al also assert that ‘women who perceived a conflict between being romantically desirable and showing intelligence in masculine domains subsequently underperformed on a math test’ (Sanchez et al, 171). Amy is initially satisfied with having a less prestigious writing career than Nick and says ‘I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I don’t care’ (Flynn, 43) upon marrying him. Her early attempt to forgo her own intelligence, discipline and self-respect in order to impress Nick is also clear in her show of gender
performance upon their initial meeting:
I was playing…the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl…Cool Girl adores…dirty jokes and burping, plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size two. (Flynn, 251).
The attempt to maintain the Cool Girl decreases as their relationship progresses, as Amy realises both that she cannot keep up the charade and that Nick’s early interest and infatuation
is waning regardless. The move to Missouri and Nick’s subsequent focus on The Bar and his affair with Andie provide the catalyst for this. At this point, her intelligence becomes her means of escape as she demonstrates extensive research and meticulous planning when plotting her own staged disappearance, stating ‘I’ve always thought I could commit the perfect murder’ (Flynn, 264). Nick exerts control over Amy by appearing less masculine and in control of his own life: he relies on her trust fund to finance The Bar, which is dually a concession that he needs her support to support the family, and a way of depriving her of her own financial security should she wish to leave. Likewise, whilst Amy plays up her
vulnerable female exterior whilst on the run, appealing to Desi’s chivalrous masculinity as a damsel in distress, she displays levels of calculation and brutality not traditionally associated with femininity. This correlates Butler’s theory with that of Sanchez et al’s sexual script theory, suggesting that gender performance may be linked to sexual attraction, and thus most prominent in the early stages of a relationship. In terms of domestic noir, deviations are made from traditional masculine/feminine performances in order to manipulate and control the emotions of a partner.
Whilst it becomes apparent to the reader in the second part of the novel that Amy’s accounts of their relationship in the initial chapters are ‘a work of fiction’ (Flynn, 248) meant to be discovered by the police, her later testimonies coupled with Nick’s words still show that Nick is not a wholly innocent party. His affair with Andie is a key example of this, and the catalyst for Amy’s staging of her murder to rob him of the ‘good guy’ (Flynn, 170) role that he intends on retaining despite the affair. In stating that ‘Andie became a physical counterpoint to all things Amy’ (Flynn, 170) Nick makes the affair appear a personal attack on her. Andie is later abandoned by Nick, confirming that she was only of use to him as a ‘counterpoint’ to Amy: once Amy is absent, he has no need for her. Nick’s decision to withhold the affair from
the police whilst he still believes that Amy has been kidnapped shocks his sister Go into exclaiming ‘your wife is missing, Amy’s who knows where, and you’re here making time with a little…’ to which Nick responds ‘I enjoy this revisionist history in which you’re Amy’s champion’ (Flynn, 180). Nick’s flippancy towards his missing wife and the contribution that knowledge of his affair could make to the investigation is testament to the lack of care he feels for Amy.
Nick’s open resentment of Amy’s privileged upbringing and the way that he uses this as ammunition against her also detracts from the sympathy the reader may feel for him. Saying ‘I didn’t get to go to fucking tennis camp and creative writing camp and SAT prep’ (Flynn, 76) when Amy attempts to comfort him about their mutual redundancies and assures him of their financial security is a way of both belittling her achievements in life in comparison to his own successes and of undermining her support as wife. When Amy assures him that her trust fund will provide financial security for both of them, stating ‘my money is your money’, he replies ‘not according to the prenup’ (Flynn, 75) rejecting her attempts to comfort him and instigating guilt at her attempts to secure her future should their union breakdown.
Before analysing Amy’s role as an abuser and her contribution to tempestuous events in their relationship, the character of Desi can be examined as the figure of the controlling male partner: a prominent trope of domestic noir. Desi, a past boyfriend of Amy’s, first enters the text when Nick visits him to ask for information on Amy’s disappearance. Upon Nick’s noticing that a photograph of Amy is still displayed in his house, Desi asks ‘would you throw away a photo that perfect?’ (Flynn, 188). This foreshadows later scenes in the novel in which Desi’s idolisation of Amy re-emerges when she asks him for help and ends up trapped in his house. Amy’s claim that ‘Desi is a white-knight type. He loves troubled women,’ (Flynn, 360) initially plays to Amy’s advantage when he agrees to accommodate her in his secluded house
without notifying the police of her whereabouts. In informing him that she can never return home as ‘Nick will kill me, I’ll never feel safe’ (Flynn, 363) Amy manipulates Desi into offering her his protection, which he does gladly.
Testament to the enjoyment she gets out of being desired and manipulating the men in her life, Amy reacts to Desi’s news that Nick visited him asking about her whereabouts by telling the reader ‘I’ve always wanted a man to get into a fight over me- a brutal, bloody fight,’ (Flynn, 365). Whilst this exchange displays Amy’s calculated nature perfectly, further
incriminating her in the eyes of the reader, Desi’s acceptance of her request for help backfires significantly. By telling her ‘now you can divorce him and marry the right man…at long last’ (Flynn, 365) he shows the reader that Amy’s insistence to Nick and her parents that he is unstable and obsessed with her is not unfounded. This becomes more intensely clear to Amy when they arrive at his house which has been decorated in accordance to Amy’s favourite colours, flowers and designs, a clear sign that Desi had always intended for her to reside there. It is at this point that Desi enters the role of the controlling and possessive partner, ensuring that Amy ‘will be forever indebted to him’ (Flynn, 379) and ensuring that she is unable to leave, telling her ‘you don’t need money now’ (Flynn, 380).
Desi’s controlling behaviour is further shown in the meagre portions of food he provides her with, ‘he’s thinning me up, he always preferred his women waify’, (Flynn, 391) and in his response to her question ‘what if I need to leave?’ with the answer ‘maybe I should move in here’ (Flynn, 390). Whilst this response may be intended to sound protective on the surface, when considered along with his desire to physically mould her into his preferred body shape and his failure to provide her with keys and the gate code should she need to leave, it comes across as a threat: apparently he has no desire to let her go.
Desi’s death is interpreted differently by various characters in the text. To Amy, it is both a way out of his house and a means of returning to Nick with a convincing story of abduction to explain her disappearance to the world. To Nick, Amy ‘murdered’ (Flynn, 427) Desi to allow her to return without facing repercussions for faking her disappearance. To others, it is an adventurous tale of an abused captive who took necessary actions to escape and return to a free life with the man she loves. A young policeman tells Nick ‘guy used to sit right next to her on the bed…and feed her…one day the knife slips’ (Flynn, 428) demonising Desi and making Amy’s actions appear to be desperate initiative rather than calculated murder. The third interpretation is the most interesting here. Whilst the reader knows that Amy deliberately contacted Desi for help and willingly entered his house, much of his treatment of her whilst she was there was abusive according to the checklist laid out in the
womenshealth.gov article ‘Am I Being Abused?’. Three of the main points to which Desi’s behaviour conforms are as follows: ‘Decides things for you that you should be allowed to decide (like what to wear or eat)’; ‘monitors what you're doing all the time’ and ‘prevents or discourages you from seeing friends or family’. Despite Amy’s manipulation of him and her willingness to enter his house, Desi ensures that she becomes completely reliant on him for food and money and deprives her of any means of leaving the house or contacting anyone outside. This makes him the novel’s most textbook example of the stereotypical male abuser, a trope which Amy plays upon after escaping. Interestingly, there is also evidence that she truly believes aspects of her story, stating ‘I still have Desi’s semen inside me from the last time he raped me’ (Flynn, 417) upon returning home and being examined by a doctor. This highlights both Amy’s psychopathic state and the grey nature of abuse: whilst Amy requested to stay in Desi’s house and they planned a kidnap, rape and escape scenario to clear her name, part of her still believes that she has been abused.
Amy’s own role as Nick’s potential abuser is harder to decipher owing to the fictitious nature of her early accounts of their relationship. Whilst to many readers she is the villain of the novel, she shows no evidence of being an abusive partner prior to her disappearance. Despite the sadistic nature of Amy’s quest to incriminate Nick, he remains responsible for most of the controlling and underhand behaviour that occurred within the domestic sphere when they were both at home. However, Amy’s later behaviour and the period in which she planned her flight do conform to some of the womenshealth.gov checklist’s examples of abusive behaviour.
Most prominently, Amy embodies the mentality ‘if I can’t have you then no one can’, a statement used to intimidate many partners into staying in relationships, and one confirmed by the fact that Amy’s discovery of Nick’s affair with Andie is the catalyst for her actions. The statements ‘humiliates you in front of others’ and ‘uses a weapon against you’ are also applicable if Amy’s wits and her manipulation of the police and public’s perceptions can be classed as a weapon. The key scene in which these become clear to the reader is that in which Nick reaches the end of Amy’s anniversary treasure hunt and discovers a shed full of
expensive items bought with credit cards in his name and smeared with his finger prints: apparent proof that he was controlling Amy’s trust fund money behind her back. Upon solving the final clue and discovering the items, Nick realises that ‘she’d used the treasure hunt to take me on a tour of all my infidelities’ (Flynn, 255) which forces him to return to places he has committed infidelity and leave traces. Furthermore, by hiding the items until Nick has reached the end of the treasure hunt, Amy ensures that he will initially lie about their existence to the detectives, further incriminating him. In Nick’s words, Amy ensures that ‘it looked like I’d stored them until my wife was dead and I could have a little fun’ (Flynn, 256). Whilst Amy has operated outside of the domestic sphere here, her actions still heighten Nick’s
public humiliation and provide her with a weapon which could condemn him in court. Therefore, these actions are an instance of abuse.
A final point from the checklist which Amy’s behaviour arguable complies with is ‘controls your birth control or insists that you get pregnant’. Whilst as the female in the relationship Amy cannot literally do this, by artificially inseminating herself with Nick’s frozen semen in the novel’s climax she forces him to become a father, the action that persuades him to remain married to her. Whilst Amy’s diary records statements from Nick such as ‘now is about the worst time to start a family, Amy...You have no job,’ (Flynn, 212) attempting to convince the reader that it is Nick who deprives her of motherhood, Nick’s own words present a different story. When considering Noelle’s false announcement that Amy is pregnant, Nick reminisces on his attempts to persuade her to conceive, saying ‘I didn’t just want a child, I needed a child…it didn’t stop me from daydreaming about out boy’ (Flynn, 330). This provides a sad contrast between Nick’s imaginings for his life and the reality of life with Amy, who controls many of his desires. In convincing her doctor and neighbour that she is pregnant before her disappearance, Amy further uses the idea of a child not only to torment Nick, but to provide him with an extra motive for murder.
With maternity and paternity being considered an paramount aspects of femininity and masculinity, the fact that Amy’s actual pregnancy in the novel’s climax motivates both her and Nick to remain together as parents could symbolise a return to the constructed gender performances that they both put on in the early stages of their relationship. Nick describes finding out that the original pregnancy story was untrue as ‘the most desolate part for me’ (Flynn, 434), referring to a sense of mourning for a child that he had become accustomed to the idea of. Whilst Nick’s first reaction upon hearing about the real pregnancy is ‘it’s definitely not mine’ (Flynn, 459) this is followed by ‘a giant bubble of joy…encased in a
metallic terror…I was a prisoner after all’ (Flynn, 459). By using a child as a weapon to force Nick to stay for both the child’s protection and his own reputation, Amy is victorious in the struggle between the two of them, making her self-insemination the cruellest act of abuse that she inflicts upon Nick. Whilst he has been unfaithful, selfish and neglectful throughout their relationship, it is Amy who finishes the story as the antagonist.
Gone Girl Response Chapter
As Gone Girl is a relatively recent and non-literary novel, little academic scholarship is available. However, due to the book’s popularity, high sales and contemporary relevance, there are a wealth of professional and reader reviews available which all present different views on the theme of domestic abuse in the novel and which of the main characters is the true antagonist. These sources will be analysed in three sections: critiques and assessment of the theme of domestic abuse; reactions as to whether the novel is feminist or misogynistic within the debates of the contemporary zeitgeist and reader’s feedback, which will be used to examine how Gone Girl has inspired debate among non-scholars and its community of readers. Examination of responses to Gone
Girl is a crucial supplement to analysis of the novel’s content and will aid the drawing
of a conclusion on Gone Girl and the wider domestic noir genre’s contemporary influences and an understanding of the reasons behind the recent domestic noir phenomena.
The theme of domestic abuse is mentioned in the majority of media reactions to the novel. A paramount example of this is Elif Batuman’s feature in The New Yorker entitled ‘Marriage is an Abduction’. Focusing primarily on earlier sections of the novel in which Nick initially moves himself and Amy back to his hometown in Missouri and the ensuing consequences, Batuman begins her article by commenting that ‘the word “marriage” occurs about a hundred times in Gillian Flynn’s novel “Gone Girl”; there are sixty instances of “husband”…“Wife” maxes out the Kindle search feature at a hundred instances in the first hundred and forty-seven pages,’ (Batuman). This is an interesting discovery: Amy and Nick each provide half of the book’s narration however
Amy is far more frequently referred to in Nick’s chapters by the label ‘wife’ than Nick is labelled ‘husband’ in Amy’s.
Batuman goes on to brand Nick and Amy’s move to Missouri as Amy’s true abduction: ‘an independent, expressive single woman is taken from New York; her beautiful body is…threatened with disfigurement; and her accomplishments are systematically taken away or negated, rendered worthless by comparison to that all-trumping colossus of meaning, childbirth,’ (Batuman). Although Amy accompanies Nick willingly to Missouri, Batuman’s abduction analogy is still applicable when Amy’s motivations and Nick’s influence over them are considered. Conflict between the couple is obvious early on in their relationship stemming from Nick’s resentment of Amy’s privileged upbringing in contrast to his poorer and less harmonious one. He says ‘I didn’t get to go to fucking tennis camp and creative writing camp and SAT prep’ (Flynn, 76) which not only attacks Amy for her childhood privilege but diminishes her adult achievements and writing career in comparison to his own. Amy likely follows him to Missouri, shares the care responsibilities for his parents and invests her trust fund in The Bar under the impression that she is atoning for her childhood advantages and proving that she is a dedicated and family orientated wife, not a spoilt rich girl.
In another sense, Amy has already been disfigured by the popular Amazing Amy series of books, inspired by her childhood and penned by her parents. One of Amy’s first appearances in the novel is at a launch party for the final Amazing Amy book, which sees Amy’s fictional alter ego get married. Spending the night answering questions such as ‘How does it feel to see Amy finally married to Andy? Because you’re not married, right?’ (Flynn, 31) it becomes understandable to the reader that Amy would be keen to take any opportunity for marriage to liberate herself from being viewed as second best
to the fictional Amy. Amy’s loss of agency in having to live up to an idealised caricature of herself could explain her willingness to escape with Nick to a place where no one recognises or expects anything from her.
Batuman states ‘there’s nothing new about lovely girls, expensively educated in how to become brilliant wives. But Amazing Amy stands for a newer creation: lovely girls, expensively educated to seize success for themselves…and yet still groomed for the dream of a beautiful dress and a white cake.’ This shows that whilst many reviews and articles have viewed Amy as a psychotic monster whose portrayal in the novel is misogynistic, the view that she is a victim of the society she grew up in and Nick’s expectations of her is also present. Nick’s desperate to impregnate Amy despite his affair with Andie and Amy’s reluctance to start a family confirm that whilst she may have moved to Missouri with him to escape the shadow of Amazing Amy and the pressures of her former life, she is met with further expectation and pressure to behave as a model wife and eventual mother in order to conform to both society’s and Nick’s standards for a woman of her age.
Whilst Batuman’s article is useful in presenting a unique interpretation of Nick and Amy’s marriage, other articles have focussed less on the novel’s themes and more on portrayals of gender. Two articles from The Guardian, Emine Saner’s ‘The Gone Girl Backlash- What Women Don’t Want’ and ‘Gone Girl Revamps Gender Stereotypes for the Worse’ by David Cox, focus on gender performance and portrayals in the text to examine whether or not it will be detrimental to the feminist cause that Flynn supports. Saner is particularly scathing, quoting an anonymous blogger as stating that Amy ‘is the crystallisation of a thousand misogynist myths and fears about female behaviour. If we strapped a bunch of men’s rights advocates to beds and downloaded their nightmares, I
don’t think we’d come up with stuff half as ridiculous as this plot’. The above quotation supports Saner’s view that Amy is a grotesque caricature of a woman, formed through the exaggeration of stereotypically female traits.
Saner queries whether or not the unlikability of Amy will boost misogyny in readers; Amy’s false allegations of rape and abuse are particularly concerning for Saner in their potential to undermine the experiences of real women who have genuinely suffered and to suggest to the public that false allegations are common. Saner balances the concerns about the manipulation of real narratives of domestic abuse with positive interpretations from other critics and Flynn herself, implying that Amy can also be read as a strong and independent feminist. She quotes Todd Van Der Werff as stating ‘In destroying her husband’s life, she’s symbolically taking back power for women everywhere’, which Saner counteracts by reminding her reader that the majority of feminists are seeking gender equality, not female supremacy.
Flynn’s own comment, quoted by Saner that feminism is ‘also the ability to have women who are bad characters … the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good…there’s still a big push back against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil’ explains Amy’s dark side as a feminist statement. Akin to Gilbert and Gubar’s idea that females in literature are divided between ‘Snow Whites’ and ‘Mad Queens’, Flynn laments that female characters are often divided into two categories, and thus has sought to create a protagonist outside of these. Whilst displaying certain traits of the classical femme fatale villain, Amy is unique in her psychopathic motivations and lack of emotion. The fact that Amy is an individual character and not a commentary on female behaviour has been echoed in the comments section of the article: One commenter asks ‘why should one fictional character be the
embodiment of all womankind? Kronos does not symbolise all fathers, Medea does not represent all mothers,’ highlighting the fact that writers who create male villains are not typically accused of misandry and thus it is unfair to assign Flynn a misogynist intention when she is simply aiming to question literary stereotypes and experiment with women’s assigned roles. This supports Saner’s own idea that the reader’s own intentions are influential in their interpretation of Amy: a reader looking for an inspirational feminist heroine will undoubtedly be disappointed to be met with a sociopathic antagonist, however anyone prepared to view her as a standalone villain not representative of her gender will appreciate the mastery of Flynn’s portrayal of an unconventional female character.
David Cox’s article ‘Gone Girl Revamps Gender Stereotypes for the Worse’, also for The Guardian features the strapline ‘Gillian Flynn feels both book and film advance the female cause. Yet Rosamund Pike’s Amy may harm perceptions of women, although not for the reasons you might expect’ (Cox). Commenting on David Fincher’s film adaption of the novel, in which Amy is portrayed by actress Rosamund Pike, Cox states that Amy is ‘a female psychopath allotted the amorality and obsessiveness that, on screen, have traditionally been the province of the male.’ Whilst Cox says this in an attempt to determine whether Gone Girl can be viewed as a contributor or opponent to recent progress in women’s rights and gender equality, it can be argued that in questioning the gender identity of Amy’s villainous characteristics, he adds to the gender stereotyping and expectations that make the fight for gender equality necessary. Although the domestic noir setting and husband and wife protagonists of Gone Girl make it vulnerable to anticipations of stereotypical characters, such as a submissive and abused wife and a controlling husband which are the characters originally portrayed to
the reader by Amy’s fictitious diary, the hyperbolic conflict between the two should signify to readers that it is not intended as a serious reflection of married life.
Time Magazine’s article ‘Is Gone Girl Feminist or Misogynist’ by Eliana Dockterman acknowledges the novel’s domestic noir genre by using the marital relations of Amy and Nick to assess the novel’s feminist agenda. In stating that ‘most would agree that Amy is the “worse” spouse: she’s smarter, stronger and willing to commit murder’ (Dockterman, Time), the article echoes the commonly held view that Amy’s is the novels most obvious antagonist. Dockterman offers a conflicted view on how the character of Amy fits into modern feminist discourse: whilst her ‘Cool Girl’ speech will be familiar to many women and mocks the way that women are expected to play up to male expectations in order to secure a relationship, Dockterman concludes ‘then I remembered these words that rang so true were being uttered by a woman who lied about being sexually assaulted multiple times, set her husband up for murder and killed someone herself,’ (Dockterman, Time).
This is a crucial point in terms of examination of domestic abuse within the novel. Amy’s fabricated diary entries in the first section, the ‘Cool Girl’ speech in particular, immediately present her as someone females readers will relate to. This heightens the shock when the version of Amy that as she is perceived by Nick is a stark contrast to the version she herself presents to the reader, showing that abuse can occur within any household and that even the most outwardly charming individuals can be perpetrators. Whilst Dockterman acknowledges that ‘it makes us squirm to agree with someone who just might be a psychopath,’ (Dockterman, Time) the readers discomfort when Amy’s controlling and violent persona is revealed shows that you can never assume that a partner is not abusive based on a first impression or their public persona.
The fact that Amy’s weapons are uniquely feminine is emphasised by Dockterman as a catalyst for the many accusations of misogyny levelled against Flynn. Dockterman says ‘Amy fakes a sexual assault, even though overwhelming evidence indicates that women don’t lie about being raped. She manipulates men to an exaggerated and terrifying degree (like faking a pregnancy)…Her vengeance is utterly feminine’ (Dockterman, Time). In using rape allegations and pregnancy as methods of manipulation, Flynn makes it impossible for readers to separate Amy’s psychotic tendencies from her gender, presenting her as the antithesis to the female victim in the majority of domestic noir works. Whilst in taking feminine characteristics and experiences and manipulating them into forming a villain Flynn could be seen as creating a character detrimental to women, it must be acknowledged that Amy is meant as an anomaly: the black hearted female antagonist that is lacking from many literary works. Furthermore, I would argue that Gone Girl is revealing in the struggle of male victims of domestic violence, a topic often overlooked. For this reason, Flynn disproves the accusations that she has manipulated rape stereotypes and narratives to create marketable thriller; instead, she uses them to show the variation and range of experiences, and to challenge the assumption that victims are always passive and female.
One key site of readers’ debate on the merits and content of Gone Girl is the customer reviews left on the book’s Amazon page. The novel’s ending is a particular source of conflict. Reader Daniel Lewis asks ‘does she [Flynn] masterfully develop psychologically complex, multidimensional characters? Present penetrating insight into the nature of modern marriage and relationships...Absolutely. She just needs to learn how to finish. Develop resolution,’ (Daniel Lewis on www.Amazon.com). It is ironic
that this review acknowledges the ‘penetrating insight into modern marriage and relationships’ and the lack of ‘resolution’ as being paramount positive and negative points of the text.
Factors such as the low reported figures for domestic abuse cases and the repetitive cycle as victims and abusers often remain or return to relationships with one another should indicate that a lack of resolution in Nick and Amy’s conflict can be viewed as an accurate portrayal of a modern abusive relationship. The dissatisfaction at the novel’s lack of a clear conclusion was echoed across many reviews, with one commenter lamenting ‘I kept thinking the author must have a really clever way of wrapping up all the insanity. There was no wrap up’ (Island Reader on www.Amazon.com). Again the lack of a ‘wrap up’ is what makes Gone Girl believable.
This has been picked up by other readers, with commenter Paul Reece implying that Amy and Nick remaining in their cycle of abuse and sabotage was the only possible ending: ‘It’s not a Hooray! Or a Yahoo! Or a Gotcha! It’s not TV. It’s a continuation of the lives these pathetically twisted people have knowingly, willingly, compulsively built for themselves’ (Paul Reece on www.Amazon.com). Reece further defends the book, suggesting that much of the negative feedback may be resultant of the uncomfortable feeling of finding aspects of oneself in Flynn’s highly unlikeable characters. In claiming that ‘it will be the quirks and traits and harsh sentiments that all of us hope to keep hidden…Not everyone can look at that kind of naked emotion and see it as powerful, revelatory writing’ (Paul Reece on www.Amazon.com), Reece implies that it is only readers who are prepared to face up to the innately negative parts of themselves and their own relationships that will truly understand the book’s ending.
This point is the crux of much media and reader attention on Gone Girl. Whilst there is eventually no victor between Nick and Amy, and Flynn creates a highly feminine villain opposed to a feminine hero, criticism of the novel based on these points is essentially defunct. The success of Gone Girl lies within Flynn’s revelation of the often unreported aspects of modern relationships, most significantly that a woman can take on the abuser role, and that male victims are rarely taken seriously. In boldly eschewing the expected resolution at the novel’s end, Flynn demonstrates that abusive relationships are often a cycle, not an event with an end date that will cease when one party decides to leave. As Gone Girl was initially published in 2012, a year before Julia Crouch first coined the term ‘domestic noir’; it can be legitimately argued that the term, and subsequently the genre, has evolved out of the debate generated by Gone Girl. Therefore, the variation in the criticism can be attributed to the process of establishing conventions for the genre.
Whilst Flynn has made it clear that Amy is not meant as an anti-feminist statement, but instead as an experiment in the type of roles deemed acceptable for female characters, critics such as Cox and Saner appear to counteract this in implying that the genre would be better served if it represented real life situations of domestic violence against women more accurately. The timing of the novel’s release with the increase in debates on women in abusive situations could be responsible for this. As legislation and the media have increasingly shed light on domestic abuse and the dangers that many women face, Flynn has presented an abusive female antagonist that could be seen to undermine the stereotypical female victim often portrayed in the media as a justification for increased government protection of women in abusive situations. The responses to
allow women to play any role and bring the theme of domestic abuse into the public conscience, and lamenting its negative portrayal of Amy, the female narrator, as untimely and regressive in terms of recent advances in women’s rights.
The Girl on the Train Analysis Chapter
Whilst Gone Girl focuses directly on the marital relations of Amy and Nick, with each of them telling half of the story, Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (2015) takes a more subtle approach to the theme of abuse relationships, with its protagonist Rachel being divorced and single when the events of the novel take place. Many romantic relationships, both marital and extramarital appear in the novel, most prominently that between Rachel and her abusive ex-husband Tom, Tom and his new wife Anna, Tom and his lover Megan, Megan and her husband Scott and Megan and her other lover Kamal. No actual physical domestic abuse is witnessed by the reader, however Rachel, an alcoholic, gradually uncovers her suppressed and warped memories of her life with Tom, eventually realising that he was abusive. Tom’s use of gas-lighting and deliberate manipulation of Rachel’s alcoholism to convince her that she cannot trust her own memories is a paramount example of mental abuse; it is Rachel’s realisation of this and the revelation of Tom’s true character that allow Rachel and the reader to see past his family-man façade and solve the novel’s central mystery, that of Megan’s disappearance.
The story is told in alternating chapters from Rachel’s, Megan’s and Anna’s perspectives, beginning from the point where Rachel, who often observes Megan and Scott through the window of the train, first sees Megan kissing Kamal and becomes obsessed with her affair. Her frequent observation of Megan and Scott has led her to feel involved in their lives: before discovering their actual identities, she names them ‘Jess’ and ‘Jason’ and portrays them to herself as having the idyllically loving relationship that she never achieved with Tom. Shortly after Rachel views her with Kamal, Megan disappears, becoming the central mystery to the novel. Rachel and Anna
provide narration of the present day events that follow her disappearance and of their interactions and relationships with Tom. Megan’s chapters take the form of flashbacks, telling her side of the story in the weeks before her disappearance and revealing her difficulty in maintaining a stable relationship and desire for the excitement of infidelity. Although they are the only couple not seen to be intimate within the timeframe of the novel, Rachel and Tom remain the most important couple, both in terms of the story and the theme of domestic abuse. It is only in facing up to their past and the way she was treated during their marriage that Rachel is able to identify Tom as Megan’s killer, facilitating the novel’s climax where Rachel and Anna confront Tom and Rachel kills him in self-defence, ending the cycle of abuse.
Heather Fraser’s theory, from her study of the links between love and abuse, that ‘many women’s hopes for love make them unconvinced that abusive relationships are irredeemable’ (Fraser, 274) could be a possible reason, in conjunction with Tom’s gas-lighting, for the fact that Rachel struggles to accept that their relationship is truly over and that she is better off without him. Rachel states ‘he met another woman and fell in love with her…it wasn’t his fault though. It was my fault…the drinking started before’ (Hawkins, 191) showing an inability to believe that Tom was at fault in the breakdown of their relationship and instead crediting it to her personal failures. This is supplemented by Tom’s constant blaming of Rachel for his own mistakes, including his murder of Megan, when he claims ‘If you hadn’t been there that night…then I probably just have been able to sort things out with Megan. I wouldn’t have been so…riled up. I wouldn’t have lost my temper’ (Hawkins, 309). This shows the enduring impact of Tom’s abuse of Rachel: she is still bullied and scapegoated for his actions long after their marriage has ended, and he has lost all ability to take responsibility for his actions.
