Literary Criticism 

Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” shows struggles married couples face. The two main characters Amy and Nick are married and come from very different backgrounds. Nick comes from a poor family, and his in-laws make accusations about him and his intentions with Amy. Nick becomes reliant on Amy’s income, which mimics real life marriage.  Amy consistently challenges traditional norms, “Moreover, she asserts that the actions of the female character, Amy, challenge the traditional beliefs and the common norms of the dominant power. Thus, Amy’s actions are a source of inspiration for other women to change their miserable conditions in a society mainly dominated by the male.” 

Flynn creates Female villains that who are complex and whose actions challenge social norms. She writes stories that make her female characters not fit any expectations, including feminism. Using gritty details and stating harsh truths of reality is what helps Flynn’s works stand out. She doesn’t glorify the fact that women can be cruel to one another. Writing female characters as villains can be challenging, “Female characters who are monsters are considered mad, and madness in women is a quality outside patriarchal expectations, so depending on how the writer goes about characterizing a female villain, she may be labeled with only one term, mad or monstrous, but assumed she is both for living contrary to misogynist constraints.”

Flynn crosses writing boundaries when it comes to patriarchal standards. She is also skilled at strategic plot twists, and is extremely popular for how she tells stories. Flynn challenges many sensitive topics in her works, “One reason for Flynn’s strong readership may be due to telling stories which can strike uncomfortably close to the domestic space, as she writes from a global feminist viewpoint about mother-daughter power struggles, poverty, lack of father figures and infidelity.”  Flynn uses male standards against her readers. She uses standards already set in place in society against the reader. This technique helps build suspense and plot twists. 

Critics of Gillian Flynn often dislike her works because of how society is formed. While Flynn as a person may be a feminist, her as an author hates women. She is extremely talented at stating issues in the real world with women’s relationships. Flynn can analyze female behaviors extremely well, and pinpoint universal experiences that women have. Flynn writes her characters so they all work together. Typically one main character we respect, and then others to help display contrast of what women wish they were and what they actually are. The only logical characters are men, who feel real emotions and are logical. 

Flynn instills that women hate themselves and they hate each other; society also consistently stacks the odds against women. When something bad happens to women, no one cares, which is a common theme in Sharp Objects. Flynn's characters remind women that they need to wake up and realize society is against them. Women deal with pain in different ways, “Yes, at some level Camille – the result of a truly autistic form of mothering – represents how women deal with pain. We turn it inward. We obliterate ourselves.” Flynn strategically places characters to make it clear that some women manipulate others or the law to get their way. 

In Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl the space between Amy and Nick helps establish the plot. Nicks movement especially helps because law enforcement catches onto him, and he becomes a main suspect of his wife’s disappearance. Also, during their marriage, they move from the big city of New York back to Nick’s home town in Missouri. This creates distance in their marriage, “Amy’s rejection of the town reveals a rejection of her husband.” Amy didn’t care to learn about Nick’s childhood, while Nick desperately wanted to relive it. These differing opinions of their home eventually lead up to the mystery plot of the story.

As the novel “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn switches back and forth between Nick and Amy’s perspective, it helps establish the plot by narrowing down on the mystery, while also giving both sides of the story. These differing point of views initially start when the couple moves back to Missouri after losing their job, Nick loves the idea and Amy rejects it immediately. Nick loves the idea of a small town and Amy loves the big city. The opposing point of views help establish tension between the two early on in the book, which will help develop the plot later on.