Finding the faces of our mothers : every day feminism in Stephen King's 'Dolores Claiborne' and 'Gerald's game'

Abstract

The historical validity, feminist aspects, and social implications of Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game are analyzed to demonstrate how the novels reflect the nature of women's rights and struggles from the 1950's until the early 1990's. The patterns of survivor abuse stories are unearthed through both social science research and feminist literary criticism. By drawing connections between the two novels and their connection to the larger world of feminist issues, the argument is made that these and other popular novels are fruitful for cultural analysis because popular fiction reaches far more readers than academic texts and are thus able to initiate social change on a larger scale.