Victoria Kennedy | Wilfrid Laurier University (original) (raw)
Uploads
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles by Victoria Kennedy
Women: A Cultural Review, 2019
This paper argues that the development of the identity of the professional woman writer as a ‘lad... more This paper argues that the development of the identity of the professional woman writer as a ‘lady novelist’ in the mid-eighteenth century has had a lasting and detrimental impact on the status of women's writing that lingers through to the present, particularly in the critical discourse surrounding chick lit. The first part of this paper discusses the figure of the lady novelist and traces her centrality to criticisms of women's writing from the eighteenth century through to the twenty-first. The second part of this paper then examines the haunting presence of the lady novelist in the metafictional works of seven representative women writers: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), and Candace Bushnell's The Carrie Diaries (2010). By drawing a through-line that connects these texts, I argue for a renewed understanding of the ways in which Western women writers from the eighteenth century to the present are unified by a pervasive anxiety about being a ‘lady novelist’.
Cinephile, 2015
In “Mad Men and Images of Women: Imitation, Nostalgia, and Consumerism,” I argue that, while the ... more In “Mad Men and Images of Women: Imitation, Nostalgia, and Consumerism,” I argue that, while the show’s critical commentary on images of women touches many narrative strands, it is especially prominent in Peggy’s narrative arch, which follows her indoctrination into the culture of images through her transformation from “ugly” secretary to fashionable copywriter. What is compelling, however, about the show’s cultural impact is that, despite Peggy’s centrality to the series, many of the major ancillary products associated with the show reject Peggy as an acceptable image of woman, and by extension, reject the commentary associated with her narrative. Instead, the products and advertisements put forth by companies like Mattel, Estée Lauder, and Banana Republic assert both visually and rhetorically that female consumers and spectators must identify with one of two polarized positions of womanhood, usually represented by Betty and Joan. The consumer of these ancillary products is compelled, like Peggy, to remake herself according to the images presented. By examining the images and rhetoric surrounding the show and its ancillary consumer products, I attempt to understand the relationship between nostalgia and critique in Mad Men as it has played out both onscreen and off-screen.
American, British, and Canadian Studies, 2017
In early 2014, several articles appeared proclaiming the rise to prominence of a new subgenre of ... more In early 2014, several articles appeared proclaiming the rise to prominence of a new subgenre of the crime novel: “chick noir,” which included popular books like Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, and Before We Met. However, there was also resistance to the new genre label from critics who viewed it as belittling to women’s writing and to female-focused narratives. Indeed, the separation of female-centred books - whether “chick lit” or “chick noir” - from mainstream fiction remains highly problematic and reflects the persistence of a gendered literary hierarchy. However, as this paper suggests, the label “chick noir” also reflects the fact that in these novels the crime thriller has been revitalized through cross-pollination with the so-called chick lit novel. I contend that chick lit and chick noir are two narrative forms addressing many of the same concerns relating to the modern woman, offering two different responses: humour and horror. Comparing the features of chick noir to those of chick lit and noir crime fiction, I suggest that chick noir may be read as a manifestation of feminist anger and anxiety - responses to the contemporary pressure to be “wonder women.”
Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought, 2016
In recent decades, literary critics have become increasingly interested in the ways that contempo... more In recent decades, literary critics have become increasingly interested in the ways that contemporary historical novels are used to write “history from below.” In On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1978), Adrienne Rich describes a process she calls “re-visioning,” a process that is defined as “looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction” (35). Many female authors of contemporary historical novels engage in exactly this process, looking back in time and reinserting the histories of women into the dominant narrative of history in which they are often excluded or marginalized. Novelists like Philippa Gregory, Diana Gabaldon, and Tracy Chevalier have made feminist politics clearly visible in their bestselling historical novels. And yet, for all their potential and visible disruptions of patriarchal ideology, many of these popular novels also make use of literary archetypes, tropes, and narrative patterns that reinstate hegemonic ideologies about individual identity and social structure. Using Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) as a case study, this paper argues that popular women’s historical novels often exist in tension between the pulls of revisionary feminist historiography and the popular romance narrative.
Book Chapters by Victoria Kennedy
Outlander’s Sassenachs: Essays on Gender, Race, Orientation and the Other in the Novels and Television Series, 2016
A chapter I contributed to the collection Outlander’s Sassenachs: Essays on Gender, Race, Orienta... more A chapter I contributed to the collection Outlander’s Sassenachs: Essays on Gender, Race, Orientation, and the Other in the Novels and Television Series (2016) counters the prevailing view that Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series is an example of feminist historical fiction. Shortly after the 2014 premiere of the Starz adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, a Buzzfeed article proclaimed the series “The Feminist Answer to ‘Game of Thrones.’” Indeed, the first season of the show has inspired a wealth of media articles that have introduced the rhetoric of feminism to a narrative that had not received much critical attention in its print form. While the Internet debate about the politics and popularity of Starz’s Outlander series in relation to other television phenomena continues, my chapter returns to the novels to consider the relationships between feminism, historical fiction, and popular narrative forms. I position the series in the context of early 1990s feminist backlash and explore the tensions between nostalgia and feminist politics in the series. Since Claire time travels between two different historical periods, the eighteenth century and the twentieth, she functions as a means of highlighting the sexist abuses women faced historically—abuses that the twentieth century feminist movements sought to challenge. Yet, there are also many troubling moments in the narrative when Claire’s twentieth-century feminist ideology gives way to the patriarchal ideology she encounters in her eighteenth-century life. Most notably, the series depicts her learning to understand justifications for the corporal punishment of disobedience in women and children, coming to accept unwanted sexual contact not as marital rape but as expressions of her husband’s love, and becoming accustomed to having her body used as a tool for pleasure or manipulation by men. Arguing that proclamations of the series’ feminist politics are somewhat overstated, I analyze the conflict between Claire’s feminist identity and the development of a nostalgic historical romance narrative. Moreover, I analyze how the nostalgia evident in the texts is also evident in the Starz television adaptation, particularly with regard to the way domestic and sexual violence are depicted in the series and the way these issues are discussed by the series’ producers and stars.
Reviews by Victoria Kennedy
Selinger's collection Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? came... more Selinger's collection Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? came out of a 2009 conference at Princeton. The title of the collection (and of the conference) comes from bell hooks' " Love as the Practice of Freedom " (1994). In her essay, hooks argues that " the moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others " (298). Romance Fiction and American Culture takes up this argument to interrogate whether and how this freedom through love can be seen in the creation and consumption of romance narratives in American culture. The collection consists of twenty essays and is divided into four parts: (i) Popular Romance and American History, (ii) Romance and Race, (iii) Art and Commerce, and (iv) Happy Endings. The book promises to consider romance narratives in a specifically American cultural context from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. While I question the extent to which the collection achieves its goal of situating romance criticism in an American context, the essays Gleason and Selinger have selected are diverse in a way that is both refreshing and invigorating in romance studies. Topics explored include: transatlantic romance reading; lesbian romance fiction; black romances; romance in the context of HIV/AIDS; erotica; Orientalism; romance cover art; Christian and Evangelical romance; BDSM; queer romance; and polyamory. The editors stake the originality of the collection on three areas: its national focus on romance and American cultural history, its consideration " at length " (3) of race and romance in six out of the twenty essays, and its exploration of the often overlooked topic of " business " in romance—both as a theme of romance novels and as the business of selling romance novels. Noting the ways in which critics like Pamela Regis and Catherine Roach have defined the genre in terms of essential components—the foremost of which is the happy ending– Gleason and Selinger open their collection by observing that " there is nothing eternal, universal, or inevitable about the idea that the 'romance novel' is or should be a distinct, readily definable genre " (8). While Regis' Natural History of the Romance (2003) proposes defining the romance novel so rigidly that Rebecca (du Maurier, 1938) and Gone with the
The Journal of American Culture, 2016
Women: A Cultural Review, 2019
This paper argues that the development of the identity of the professional woman writer as a ‘lad... more This paper argues that the development of the identity of the professional woman writer as a ‘lady novelist’ in the mid-eighteenth century has had a lasting and detrimental impact on the status of women's writing that lingers through to the present, particularly in the critical discourse surrounding chick lit. The first part of this paper discusses the figure of the lady novelist and traces her centrality to criticisms of women's writing from the eighteenth century through to the twenty-first. The second part of this paper then examines the haunting presence of the lady novelist in the metafictional works of seven representative women writers: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), and Candace Bushnell's The Carrie Diaries (2010). By drawing a through-line that connects these texts, I argue for a renewed understanding of the ways in which Western women writers from the eighteenth century to the present are unified by a pervasive anxiety about being a ‘lady novelist’.
Cinephile, 2015
In “Mad Men and Images of Women: Imitation, Nostalgia, and Consumerism,” I argue that, while the ... more In “Mad Men and Images of Women: Imitation, Nostalgia, and Consumerism,” I argue that, while the show’s critical commentary on images of women touches many narrative strands, it is especially prominent in Peggy’s narrative arch, which follows her indoctrination into the culture of images through her transformation from “ugly” secretary to fashionable copywriter. What is compelling, however, about the show’s cultural impact is that, despite Peggy’s centrality to the series, many of the major ancillary products associated with the show reject Peggy as an acceptable image of woman, and by extension, reject the commentary associated with her narrative. Instead, the products and advertisements put forth by companies like Mattel, Estée Lauder, and Banana Republic assert both visually and rhetorically that female consumers and spectators must identify with one of two polarized positions of womanhood, usually represented by Betty and Joan. The consumer of these ancillary products is compelled, like Peggy, to remake herself according to the images presented. By examining the images and rhetoric surrounding the show and its ancillary consumer products, I attempt to understand the relationship between nostalgia and critique in Mad Men as it has played out both onscreen and off-screen.
American, British, and Canadian Studies, 2017
In early 2014, several articles appeared proclaiming the rise to prominence of a new subgenre of ... more In early 2014, several articles appeared proclaiming the rise to prominence of a new subgenre of the crime novel: “chick noir,” which included popular books like Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, and Before We Met. However, there was also resistance to the new genre label from critics who viewed it as belittling to women’s writing and to female-focused narratives. Indeed, the separation of female-centred books - whether “chick lit” or “chick noir” - from mainstream fiction remains highly problematic and reflects the persistence of a gendered literary hierarchy. However, as this paper suggests, the label “chick noir” also reflects the fact that in these novels the crime thriller has been revitalized through cross-pollination with the so-called chick lit novel. I contend that chick lit and chick noir are two narrative forms addressing many of the same concerns relating to the modern woman, offering two different responses: humour and horror. Comparing the features of chick noir to those of chick lit and noir crime fiction, I suggest that chick noir may be read as a manifestation of feminist anger and anxiety - responses to the contemporary pressure to be “wonder women.”
Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought, 2016
In recent decades, literary critics have become increasingly interested in the ways that contempo... more In recent decades, literary critics have become increasingly interested in the ways that contemporary historical novels are used to write “history from below.” In On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1978), Adrienne Rich describes a process she calls “re-visioning,” a process that is defined as “looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction” (35). Many female authors of contemporary historical novels engage in exactly this process, looking back in time and reinserting the histories of women into the dominant narrative of history in which they are often excluded or marginalized. Novelists like Philippa Gregory, Diana Gabaldon, and Tracy Chevalier have made feminist politics clearly visible in their bestselling historical novels. And yet, for all their potential and visible disruptions of patriarchal ideology, many of these popular novels also make use of literary archetypes, tropes, and narrative patterns that reinstate hegemonic ideologies about individual identity and social structure. Using Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) as a case study, this paper argues that popular women’s historical novels often exist in tension between the pulls of revisionary feminist historiography and the popular romance narrative.
Outlander’s Sassenachs: Essays on Gender, Race, Orientation and the Other in the Novels and Television Series, 2016
A chapter I contributed to the collection Outlander’s Sassenachs: Essays on Gender, Race, Orienta... more A chapter I contributed to the collection Outlander’s Sassenachs: Essays on Gender, Race, Orientation, and the Other in the Novels and Television Series (2016) counters the prevailing view that Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series is an example of feminist historical fiction. Shortly after the 2014 premiere of the Starz adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, a Buzzfeed article proclaimed the series “The Feminist Answer to ‘Game of Thrones.’” Indeed, the first season of the show has inspired a wealth of media articles that have introduced the rhetoric of feminism to a narrative that had not received much critical attention in its print form. While the Internet debate about the politics and popularity of Starz’s Outlander series in relation to other television phenomena continues, my chapter returns to the novels to consider the relationships between feminism, historical fiction, and popular narrative forms. I position the series in the context of early 1990s feminist backlash and explore the tensions between nostalgia and feminist politics in the series. Since Claire time travels between two different historical periods, the eighteenth century and the twentieth, she functions as a means of highlighting the sexist abuses women faced historically—abuses that the twentieth century feminist movements sought to challenge. Yet, there are also many troubling moments in the narrative when Claire’s twentieth-century feminist ideology gives way to the patriarchal ideology she encounters in her eighteenth-century life. Most notably, the series depicts her learning to understand justifications for the corporal punishment of disobedience in women and children, coming to accept unwanted sexual contact not as marital rape but as expressions of her husband’s love, and becoming accustomed to having her body used as a tool for pleasure or manipulation by men. Arguing that proclamations of the series’ feminist politics are somewhat overstated, I analyze the conflict between Claire’s feminist identity and the development of a nostalgic historical romance narrative. Moreover, I analyze how the nostalgia evident in the texts is also evident in the Starz television adaptation, particularly with regard to the way domestic and sexual violence are depicted in the series and the way these issues are discussed by the series’ producers and stars.
Selinger's collection Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? came... more Selinger's collection Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? came out of a 2009 conference at Princeton. The title of the collection (and of the conference) comes from bell hooks' " Love as the Practice of Freedom " (1994). In her essay, hooks argues that " the moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others " (298). Romance Fiction and American Culture takes up this argument to interrogate whether and how this freedom through love can be seen in the creation and consumption of romance narratives in American culture. The collection consists of twenty essays and is divided into four parts: (i) Popular Romance and American History, (ii) Romance and Race, (iii) Art and Commerce, and (iv) Happy Endings. The book promises to consider romance narratives in a specifically American cultural context from the late eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. While I question the extent to which the collection achieves its goal of situating romance criticism in an American context, the essays Gleason and Selinger have selected are diverse in a way that is both refreshing and invigorating in romance studies. Topics explored include: transatlantic romance reading; lesbian romance fiction; black romances; romance in the context of HIV/AIDS; erotica; Orientalism; romance cover art; Christian and Evangelical romance; BDSM; queer romance; and polyamory. The editors stake the originality of the collection on three areas: its national focus on romance and American cultural history, its consideration " at length " (3) of race and romance in six out of the twenty essays, and its exploration of the often overlooked topic of " business " in romance—both as a theme of romance novels and as the business of selling romance novels. Noting the ways in which critics like Pamela Regis and Catherine Roach have defined the genre in terms of essential components—the foremost of which is the happy ending– Gleason and Selinger open their collection by observing that " there is nothing eternal, universal, or inevitable about the idea that the 'romance novel' is or should be a distinct, readily definable genre " (8). While Regis' Natural History of the Romance (2003) proposes defining the romance novel so rigidly that Rebecca (du Maurier, 1938) and Gone with the
The Journal of American Culture, 2016