Paradoxical Pleasures - Female Submission in Popular and Erotic Fiction

In recent bestselling novels such as E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey and Vina Jackson's Eighty Days series, female desire is presented as submissive and masochistic. By placing these books in a broader cultural frame however, Anna Watz exposes how female submission has been disseminated as a consumer product. Navigating the minefield of women's pleasure in popular culture, she frames the female masochist in relation to the backlash against feminism and the resurgence of sexism in post-feminist culture. Watz also describes how renewed debates about sex and sexuality have tended towards 'sex negative' and 'sex positive' attitudes, and the impact that neo-liberalism and consumerism in the 2010s, along with feminism's recent popular revival has had on them.

Summary

In recent bestselling novels such as E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey and Vina Jackson's Eighty Days series, female desire is presented as submissive and masochistic.

Product details

• Authors: Anna Watz, Watz Anna
• Publisher: Tauris, I.B.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2016
• EAN: 9781784530709
• ISBN: 978-1-78453-070-9
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture; Library of Gender and Popular Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Gender studies: women, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Gender studies: women and girls, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form