beyond 'girl gone mad melodrama' — reframing female anger in psychological thrillers
- Written by Liz Evans, PhD candidate; journalist; author; psychodynamic psychotherapist, University of Tasmania
Along with Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012), Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (2015) helped establish the flawed anti-heroine as the rising star of psychological suspense fiction.
These novels are the most prominent examples of the growing genre of “domestic noir”. Focusing on the moral chaos of modern life, these psychological thrillers, written largely by — and for — women, expose the secrets, lies and betrayals at the heart of intimate relationships and family networks.
As a writer and a psychotherapist, I’m fascinated by human nature, and I love reading about the problems of ordinary women. But, too often, domestic noir fiction aligns female aggression with madness, death and terror.
Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and many other books of the genre prioritise unhelpful stereotypes over more subtle psychological states. They fuel assumptions about the proximity of women to emotional breakdown, feeding the exploitative mythologising of women’s mental health problems in the name of entertainment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for happy endings. I just prefer a more sophisticated scenario in which the dark fantasies and troubled emotions of heartbreak and trauma do not become the fuel for psychosis. A thriller where women don’t all hate each other; where the only way out isn’t to murder someone.
References
- ^ domestic noir (juliacrouch.co.uk)
- ^ big business (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ 23 million copies in over 50 countries (www.davidhigham.co.uk)
- ^ don’t care (www.theatlantic.com)
- ^ divided (www.researchgate.net)
- ^ told The Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger (www.goodreads.com)
- ^ Women are (rightly) angry. Now they need a plan (theconversation.com)
- ^ calls (www.elle.com)
- ^ overlooked or misdiagnosed (www.apa.org)
- ^ inappropriately (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ Biology is partly to blame for high rates of mental illness in women – the rest is social (theconversation.com)
- ^ says (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ is published by Penguin (www.penguin.com.au)