Harzewski, Stephanie. Chick Lit and Postfeminism

<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. 

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