by Chloe Bair
for Women Writers: Narratives of Empowerment
Often times when we think of the protagonist in story, we look for someone good that we can root for. As we’ve read in works like Jane Eyre or The Life of Margery Kempe, the main female protagonist, while she has her faults, is still viewed as inherently “good.” People, as we know, are not all inherently good. Many have faults much darker than what can be seen from the outside and only may take place in the inner workings of the mind. While these women are able to empower themselves through their purities and use of other strategies, I believe some of the most effective empowerment comes from exploring those dark spots in our minds. Author Gillian Flynn redefines her female characters by making them the main character or narrator and then making them almost unlikeable, but manages to pull them back through transformative character development. Flynn uses other uncommon strategies to empower her female characters while tackling some unsettling themes like substance abuse, self harm, and childhood trauma. Specifically in her works Gone Girl, Dark Places, and Sharp Objects, Flynn creates empowered protagonist female characters that have the ability to double as antagonists as the reader experiences the dark and twisted inner workings of the characters minds.
Each novel contains specific strategies used to empower the main characters, but there are some strategies used that can be observed throughout all three novels. One such strong strategy used is that each main female character is struggling with some sort of mental conflict. Amy in Gone Girl struggles with losing her job and moving back to her husband's hometown, which she comes to resent. Besides this, Amy also borders on the line of being a psychopath and narcissist, entrapping the reader into her lies and deception. Camille in Sharp Objects struggles deeply with self harm and substance abuse, along with having a complicated relationship with her abusive mother. Libby of Dark Places is completely isolated, angry, depressed, and is constantly tormented by a horrific act that took place during her childhood. While these only skim the surface of the strategies used by Flynn, many times in fiction writing there is a lack of representation for characters that struggle with mental illness, particularly in female “hero” roles. This alone not only empowers the women's roles in the novels themselves, but it can also be empowering for women reading.
When looking at strategies used in the specific novels, I want to look at Gone Girl first. This novel differs in a few ways from the other two, one being that the narrator speaking switches between husband and wife, Amy Dunne and Nick Dunne. The premise of the story is that Amy and Nick initially both meet and live in New York City and work there as writers. After marrying quickly, the couple loses their jobs and decides to relocate to Nick’s hometown North Carthage, Missouri where he will be able to assist in taking care of his mother. This move is just the beginning of problems that develop in the relationship, as Amy slowly grows to resent Nick for making her leave the city and Nick begins to notice negative shifts in Amy's emotions. The first half of the novel takes the reader on a trip; between reading Nick’s narrative and Amy’s diary, the reader gets a vision in their head as to what the couple is like, but it is merely a cloak. Amy goes missing on the couple's anniversary and then we slowly learn the marriage is falling apart. Nick has been cheating on Amy and is now seen as the prime suspect in Amy’s disappearance and potential murder but it’s revealed that Amy has planned this all herself. With the help of an ex-boyfriend, Amy stays hidden but eventually finds herself trapped by him and kills him, so that she can return home to Nick. While it appears the couple is back to normal, everything is not as it seems behind the closed doors. This novel is able to capture a wide range of emotions by allowing both Amy and Nick to tell their individual stories. One of the strategies used to empower Amy’s character is displayed through Amy’s “cool girl” speech she gives. In this she talks about the idea around a “cool girl” in a relationship and how essentially every man just wants to be with a woman that likes whatever they like and never puts up an argument. The entire monologue by Amy in this section is empowering because, at this point in the novel, the reader already knows of the twisted decisions Amy has made, and she becomes more of an unlikable and unreliable character. Through this speech, however, Amy really embodies the feminist theme that exists subtly within the novel, which peeks through quotes like, “How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women”” (Flynn 30).
Besides this, another strategy that is used is empowerment through humiliation. In the beginning of the novel, Nick thinks that Amy is leading him on a scavenger hunt but he gets to one clue that, to his dismay, proves Amy’s knowledge of his affair with a former student. After this, the entire relationship starts to crumble; it’s Nick who is left humiliated in the media. While this technique doesn’t necessarily empower the reader, Amy’s character is extremely empowered by these actions. In her mind, Nick is getting what he deserves:
“You are a man. You are an average, lazy, boring, cowardly, woman-fearing man. Without me, that's what you would have kept on being, ad nauseam. But I made you into something. You were the best man you've ever been with me. And you know it. The only time in your life you've ever liked yourself was pretending to be someone I might like” (Flynn 56).
By putting Nick down below herself, Amy establishes herself as the dominant and therefore feels power.
Flynn’s next novel Sharp Objects follows the troubled narrator, Camille Preaker, who is just getting back to her career as a journalist in Chicago after a stay at a psychiatric hospital. Her hometown of fictional Wind Gap, Missouri is being tormented by a serial killer going after young pre-teen girls. Camille’s editor wants her to return home to cover the story. Living in Wind Gap is Camille's mother Adora and her younger half sister Amma whom she barely knows. Adora is neurotic and a hypochondriac and hasn’t gotten along with Camille ever since her late daughter Marian passed. Amma is thirteen but very good at manipulating the people and situations around her. Camille struggles with an extreme form of self harm as she finds solace in carving words into her own skin and during the novel she makes sure to always keep herself totally covered as her body is covered in scars, another example of humility, but, in this case, it has to do with self. Besides this, Camille struggles with substance abuse and remaining effects of growing up with her mother. Overall, Camille's family is really disturbed and the novel is able to highlight this multiple times while Camille is forced to figure out who is terrorizing the town.
Besides the terrors and the suspense of the novel, Flynn still manages to incorporate strategies of empowerment through femininity. In fact, femininity itself manges to be an overarching theme especially between Camille, Amma, and Adora. In the case of Amma and Adora, Adora is obsessed with keeping Amma as young as she can for as long as she can. This means dressing Amma in dresses and bows, buying her dolls and a dollhouse, and watching over her excessively, essentially taking away her power. As a young teenager, Amma loves being spoiled and being the center of attention but this, in turn, destroys her freedom causing her to long for a way to find a balance. For a short period of time, Amma is able to find this balance with Camille. One of the most developed strategies of empowerment used is highly emotional female relationships. While the relationships wouldn’t be considered the healthiest, the novel aims to highlight a family of women and their interactions. An example of the female relationships is prominent in, “I pulled the covers up and curled away from Amma, mumbling a good night. I heard her drop her clothes to the floor and in a second the light was off and she was in bed curled behind me, naked except for her panties. I wanted to cry at the idea of being able to sleep next to someone without clothes, no worries about what word might slip out from under a sleeve of pant cuff” (Flynn 12).
Camille struggles immensely in the novel, finding her hometown to be very triggering to her desire to self harm and to drink. Besides this, Camille is lonely. She doesn’t allow herself to become intimate with anyone because of the shame she feels from her body because of the words that cover her body. However, the most empowering moment for her in the novel is when she allows herself to become intimate with a man and completely undress. Sexuality for Camille becomes her empowerment, she is made to feel sexy and wanted by someone. Her feelings are demonstrated in this passage “His hands ran all over me, and I let them: my back, my breasts, my thighs, my shoulders. His tongue in my mouth, down my neck, over my nipples, between my legs, then back to my mouth. Tasting myself on him. The words stayed quiet. I felt exorcised” (Flynn 14). The words Camille refers to are the words she has marked her body with; throughout the novel she acknowledges that, at different times, it’s like she can feel a certain word flare up in particular situations. After she has this experience, Camille is determined more than ever to finish and solve the horrors around her, having gained the confidence she had been lacking for so long.
Flynn’s novel Dark Places contains perhaps the most violent and disturbing storyline making the strategies of empowerment that much more empowering- having to come out from a vicious cycle. Dark Places focuses mainly on Libby Day who, growing up, was known as being the sole survivor of the “Satan Sacrifice” that took the lives of her mother and two sisters. The act was believed to be committed by Libby’s older brother Ben, and, as a seven year old girl, Libby testified in court that her fifteen year old brother was responsible. After the tragedy, Libby was showered in attention and eventually got a book deal that kept her financially stable until the point in her life in which the novel begins. Libby is running out of money. She has no job, no friends, and has secluded herself angrily from society. She is approached by a member of “The Kill Club” who believes Libby’s brother Ben is innocent of these crimes and they want her help to prove it. While Libby still believes Ben is responsible, she ultimately decides to delve into the worst memories she has for the right price.
The novel is narrated mainly by Libby but also switches to Libby’s mother Patty’s perspective from the past and from Ben’s perspective in the past. The story follows Libby in her journey to learn more about the event while following the events from other perspectives that led up to the horrific massacre. The novel has a wide range of themes that are introduced, but when narrowing in on empowerment it is Libby that experiences perhaps the most dramatic emotional change. At the time of the novel, it had been years since Libby had actually allowed herself to think deeply about the event, yet she still hadn’t allowed herself to move on and create a life for herself. In the opening of the novel Libby says, “I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. It’s the Day blood. Something’s wrong with it” (Flynn 1). Once she begins working with the Kill Club, however, she finds herself becoming invested in learning the truth of that day.
As a child, Libby was defenseless and had no real understanding of her situation, which caused her to grow up always assuming the position of a defenseless child. Libby is ultimately empowered by facing her past and by confronting not only the bad things that happened in her life, but also the bad things about herself. This change is observed in this passage “Far down by the pond, a woman and girl watched a dog splatter in the water, the girl windmilling her arms around her waist, bored. I studied it all for a few minutes, keeping my brain steady, staying away from the Darkplace. No screams, no shotguns, no wild blue jay cries. Just listen to the quiet” (Flynn 43). She is finally able to be free of the anger and the guilt that has followed her for all of her life; this is incredibly empowering for anyone.
The empowerment strategies Flynn uses are more uncommon than the strategies we have observed in the texts we’ve read. Flynn’s strategies not only have the ability to empower her characters, but also the reader. Strategies like empowerment through humiliation, while not seen as positive, are relatable to a lot of people in real life, particularly to women who have been cheated on like Amy or prefer to be the dominant in a relationship. Whereas strategies like embracing one's sexuality or reliving traumatic events can be incredibly positive and life- changing moves of empowerment to be made in ones life. Flynn also works to show that once her characters have started to make the changes in their lives to empower themselves, not everything in life gets better right away. There is no quick solution to pain or mental sufferings, but, by showing characters overcoming these obstacles and displaying the changes that take place after, it could give potential hope to someone else reading who may be in a similar situation. Flynn creates characters that have many different dimensions allowing her stories to connect with readers on different levels. While her female characters are flawed, she paints a realistic portrayal of traumatic experiences and the growth that emerges from them, so that the antagonistic qualities of her characters serve a meaningful and impactful purpose beyond the novels.
Works Cited
Flynn, Gillian, 1971- author. Gone Girl : a Novel. New York: Crown, 2012. Print.
Flynn, Gillian. Sharp Objects: A Novel. New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2006. Print.
Flynn, Gillian. Dark Places. New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2009. Print.