chick lit: analyzed

This week we decided to read a book analyzing chick lilt:  Chick Lit:  The New Woman’s Fiction edited by Suzanne Ferress and Mallory Young.  I chose to read chapter 2, “Tradition and Displacement in the New Novel of Manners”.  I wanted to get an idea about the history of what I thought was a very new genre.  But the genre has blurry lines:  Are mid-Victorian romance novels chick-lit?  Or can chick-lit only have existed since the feminist movement?  However, many of the chick-lit books we read are not “feminist” at all.  Does chick-lit only refer to books that are not very “good”, intellectually speaking.  Does an advanced literature novel about women exist in a different category than a best-selling type, easy to read novel about women?

 

The author of the chapter, Sephanie Harzewski, distinguishes the new, popular chick-lit novels from the rest of the genre:

 “Though the last two decades of second-wave feminist scholarship have accomplished a recovery and more nuanced consideration of so-called silly lady novelists, recent years have seen a resurgence of antinovel sentiment directed at a new segment of women authors.  They  have been clasified by the neologism chickerati, scribblers of chick lit, popular fiction characterized by its antagonists as consisting of “connect-the-dot plots” recognized by “identikit covers”” (30).   

She describes how “respectable” authors of women’s literature do not want to be associated with these writers and their type of literature.  But why?  Are they just snobby, or does this new form of “chickerati”  challenge women’s literature in a deeper way?  Harzewski claims, ” Those wishing to validate this fiction are confronted with a critical double bind, as they must not only recognize a new mode currently outside of the canon but also risk confirming stereotypes suggested by its label” (30).  Does this new form of literature promote stereotypes?  By playing into already existing notions is this literature confirming those notions, and if so, are those notions bad?  Is the value of chick-lit diminished by being “snack-food, beach-reading literature?”  

One could argue that the literary value of the new “chick-lit” is diminishing.  And, further, one could argue that modern chick lit promotes stereotypes.  However, I think this argument is the “don’t talk about it and it won’t be a problem” attitude that does not work.  The attitude many parent’s have about sex or drugs to their children.  “If we don’t discuss it, it doesn’t exist.”  While chick-lit may play on stereotypes and describe a certain view of women, I doubt whether it promotes this view.  For me, it has done the opposite.  It has opened my eyes to gender stereotypes, depictions of men and women, that I never before would have seen.  It has showed me books that are best sellers that I absolutely despise, but I learn from that.  I learn what people enjoy reading, and then I can analyze why they enjoy that.  And, I think I am much  more aware of gender issues in our country because of it.  What about for everyone else?  

Does it promote stereotypes for those readers who made the book best sellers?  No, not necessarily.  Having an interest in reading about lives that are so severely stereotypical is entertaining, for the same reason that shows like the Hills and reading Entertainment magazines are entertaining.  Those things are entertaining to most people because they are so ridiculous.  Because they are so in line with stereotypes of our day.  People may, in fact, enjoy reading these books almost as a way to poke fun at the stereotypes of our day, and then, further, to not exist in them themselves.