“I’m the Bitch that Makes You a Man”: Conditional Love as Female Vengeance in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl

Abstract

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl presents a satirical response to violence against women perpetuated by patriarchal simulations in the media. Her goal throughout the novel is to provide an outlet for female violence and presents revenge as a response to a consumer culture that impedes female happiness through the construction of emphasized femininity, inequality in marriage, and ‘raunch culture’. Amy Dunne breaks under the pressure generated by hyperrealities and narcissistic desires of America’s consumer culture that suffocate the traditional bonds of marriage, and her deviance is a reaction to a patriarchal social structure that reinforces gendered illusions of self-actualization and allows male entitlement to remain unchallenged.