‘대중적 페미니즘’과 새로운 리얼리즘:『브리짓 존스의 일기』의 서사 전략

Popular Feminism and the Narrative Strategy of Bridget Jones’s Diary

Chick lit is genre fiction, which portrays metropolitan female experiences, including job career, courtship, and consumerism. It has developed from the changed social and economic conditions of contemporary women, such as the shift in education, marriage, employment etc. Chick lit typically features a female protagonist going through everyday problems and challenges, revealing contemporary women’s deep-seated anxiety. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary has been regarded as a foundational text of chick lit genre. Bridget, the female protagonist, is a self-professed ‘child of Cosmopolitan culture.’ It begins with New Year’s Resolution lists and detailed records of dietary entries, weights and calory intakes. Bridget’s goal is to control herself and what influences her to change are various forms of domestic advice manuals of consumer culture--women magazines, diets guide, self-help books etc. The most striking feature of this novel is that Bridget refuses to remake and control herself and finally refuses to become a model consumer. This paper explores how Bridget Jones’s Diary functions as a parody of the culture of self-improvement and satire of contemporary consumer culture by employing effective narrative strategies, At the heart of this narrative strategies lies postfeminist attitude of contemporary women’s movement. Bridget’s Jones Diary exemplifies what we call the popular feminism. Popular feminism champions the ordinary experience and desire rather than the enlightenment ideal of women’s freedom of the early generation of women’s movement. It also acknowledges popular culture as a complicated site where identities are constituted, negotiated and reconsidered.