Splattered Ink: Postfeminist Gothic Fiction and Gendered Violence, Sarah E Whitney

Sarah E. Whitney explores the genres challenge to postfeminist assumptions of womens equality and empowerment. The authors she examines--Patricia Cornwell, Jodi Picoult, Susanna Moore, Sapphire, and Alice Sebold--construct narratives around socially invisible and physically broken protagonists who directly experience consequences of womens ongoing disempowerment. Their works ask readers to inhabit womens suffering and to face the uncomfortable, all-too-denied fact that todays women must navigate lives fraught with risk. Whitneys analysis places the authors within a female gothic tradition that has long given voice to womens fears of their own powerlessness. But she also reveals the paradox that allows the genre to powerfully critique postfeminisms often sunshiney outlook while uneasily coexisting within the same universe.