Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 3
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Harzewski, Stephanie. Chick Lit and Postfeminism. 2011. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Xii-247 pp. $US19.50.
<1> Chick lit’s controversial reputation within literary circles poses challenges to critics seeking to analyze gender politics in contemporary culture through the context of popular forms. However, Stephanie Harzewski’s Chick Lit and Postfeminism negotiates the critical terrain pragmatically as the book examines how chick lit’s synthesis of genres and literary traditions has positioned the genre as “the most visible form of postfeminist fiction” (8). Side-stepping questions about the validity of academic attention being paid to chick lit, Harzewski offers up a captivating defense of the genre as she outlines its roots in a combination of several literary forms including romance, bildungsroman and the novel of manners. Further, Harzewski claims that as “an underanalyzed body of postmodern fiction, chick lit serves as an accessible portal into contemporary gender politics and questions of cultural value” (5), and applies Fredric Jameson’s understanding of the postmodern as “‘the consumption of sheer commodification as process’” to chick lit, which, she explains, is engaged in constructing narratives of acquisition that directly posit a lifestyle informed by “media capitalism” (10-11). Thus, for Harzewski, not only does chick lit’s representation of gender pose particular complications when we consider its popularity, but the aversion that literary critics have shown toward the genre has limited the exploration of its cultural implications. Ultimately, Chick Lit and Postfeminism presents a defense of chick lit by outlining the literary traditions it has emerged from and assesses cultural ideologies (particularly around gender and capitalism) that the genre is invested in producing.
<2> Chick Lit and Postfeminism is an intriguing evaluation of chick lit’s multi-genre form and its modern representation of female gender roles. Harzewski’s prose is clear without being reductive, as it outlines the growth of the genre and positions a well-defended critical context on such a hotly debated form. Further, Harzewski’s study is one of the first to evaluate the genre so deeply through both its generic conventions and social context. Harzewski’s finesse in gliding from one lens of analysis to the next makes the work of connecting the genre to relevant theoretical frameworks seem easy. In fact, the author’s use of such theoretical grounding serves two purposes, both working to legitimize the critical conversation about chick lit and as means of introducing a cultural context through which to evaluate the genre’s gender ideologies.
<3> Chick Lit and Postfeminism begins with an attempt to survey the genesis of chick lit through its link to earlier forms, particularly the romance genre. Harzewski presents chick lit fiction as much more than mere entertainment, outlining the genre’s history and cultural context in a more extensive way than any previous study. In the first chapter, the author distinguishes chick lit from the Harlequin romance to connect the genre to earlier eighteenth-century romantic conventions through chick lit’s continuation of romantic themes of gender and money. Harzewski makes this connection more concrete in the second chapter through her close reading of Bridget Jones’s Diary as a modern-day Pride and Prejudice, suggesting that both novels have become sites of discourse about feminist politics and capitalist production. From there, the author moves to a reading of Sex and the City which examines both the television series and original articles as a example of chick lit’s representation of sexuality as capital. Harzewski’s analysis is followed by a landscape view of the genre as negotiating common feminist tropes through the de-emphasis of cultural critiques. In the final chapter on postfeminism, Harzewski notes that “chick lit is vexed by feminism…[i]t’s embrace of women’s rights but eschewal of the feminist label mirrors the most common response of young women toward feminism today” (169).
<4> While Harzewski’s close readings of Sex and the City and Bridget Jones’s Diary act as the textual glue, illustrating how generic forms are manipulated through highly commercialized chick lit novels, the writing seems, at times, lost in the details of summary rather than analysis. Particularly, in the section on Bridget Jones’s Diary, Harzewski’s analysis, which positions Bridget Jones as an example of the genre’s synthesis of literary traditions and as a reaction to second wave feminist values, unfortunately gets lost in bulky summary. Even when the author begins to link recent Austenmania to chick lit’s waves of postfeminist thought and emphasis on production and marketing, the analysis is heavy handed with lists of examples, rather than an explicit analysis of the impact of a branded Jane Austen. However, the chapter does offer a provocative reading of Bridget Jones as a postfeminist reworking of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in which she suggests that Bridget Jones forwards a modern, postfeminist take on both Austen’s social critiques and her marriage plots.
<5> However, it is Harzweski’s analysis of chick lit as a postfeminist genre that is the most absorbing part of her book. For the author, the term postfeminism denotes a repackaged and distilled collection of feminist ideologies used to reflect conservative values; thus, the acquisition by sex trope of the chick lit novel represents a form of postfeminism that replaces sexual liberation with capitalist values. She contends that chick lit’s focus on consumption and narratives wrapped in late heterosexuality pose the genre as a postfeminist construct that negotiates strains of contemporary feminism with venture capitalism. For example, Harzweski recognizes chick lit’s vexed relationship with feminist ideologies around issues of consumption, as the protagonists of chick lit market themselves as commodities both inside of and outside of their novels (155-159). The author goes on to examine both the role of consumerist culture within the novels, including the presentation of protagonists whose value is linked to their “ability to stimulate exchange between the literal and heterosexual marketplace,” as well as the external culture of the chick lit novel whose authors act as real life representations of their characters (174). Harzewski’s skill in navigating the critical and textual elements of her argument makes this section robust without being equivocal.
<6> Overall, Harzewski’s Chick Lit and Postfeminism is an engaging study that grapples with a highly contentious genre in an effort to evaluate the wildly popular cultural contexts the form presents. Harzewski’s connections between literary history, genre composition, gender and capitalism ground the study of chick lit in definable and compelling academic territory that certainly does not risk coming off as flaky. Harzewski is clear about her concerns about dealing with such a disputed genre in the epilogue, where she admits her own hesitation in embarking on a project about chick lit’s generic roots. The author’s self-consciousness recognizes the genre’s history and current academic reception and challenges critics to examine the genre outside of mindless shoe lust and boy baiting, instead, recognizing it as a representation of a larger cultural conversation that has dramatic impacts on the perception of gender and money.
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