![]() Even while they disavow one-size-fits-all judgments, novels help us clarify our convictions. While many nonfiction accounts tend to be strident and moralizing, novels (and other fictional genres like movies and television) are able to contemplate the intricacies of individual relationships. They are fundamentally feminist novels.Īs critic Parul Sehgal recently argued, fiction is able to explore the thorny ethical issues of #MeToo with the nuance they deserve. These are novels about reflection and recalibration-in them, women’s past decisions are reweighed, their former relationships are reevaluated, and their once-steadfast beliefs are overturned-but they each reaffirm the importance of female freedom and agency. These new novels take the all-too-familiar misconduct of men as their launching point but focus their attention on the emotional consequences for women. Each of these works distinguishes itself from the centuries-old tradition of novels about sex, power, and sexual violence ( Clarissa, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Lolita) by refracting these issues through the eyes of women. There is also a growing collection of “#MeToo novels,” including Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, Kate Walbert’s His Favorites, Idra Novey’s Those Who Knew, and Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa. Many of these reignite rage at old abuses, but they also deepen our understanding of power imbalances between genders. ![]() Kelly, Lorena, Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator), movies ( The Tale, Bombshell), television ( The Morning Show, Dietland, GLOW, The Good Fight, Tuca and Bertie), and podcasts ( Catch and Kill, Chasing Cosby). In response to the never-ending parade of predators, #MeToo stories have emerged across many forms of cultural production: documentaries ( Surviving R. ![]() Next to Toews’s impassioned reminder that women remain desperate for freedom from violence and for basic control over their lives, Popkey’s insistence on women’s desire for subjugation is misguided at best, and reactionary at worst. But while Women Talking offers a blueprint for a just future, Topics of Conversation reveals what is at stake if we lose sight of our objectives. ![]() These novels underscore the need to collectively restate our commitment to the most basic, yet still unfulfilled, goals of feminism: the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. In doing so, they clarify issues that the #MeToo movement exposed as urgent. Both works use private conversations between women who deal with men in intimate settings to examine enduring, if only more recently visible, feminist concerns: What do women want, and how can they get it? Although the two novels are set in vastly different social worlds-Popkey focuses on white, college-educated American women Toews writes about the illiterate female members of a conservative Mennonite colony in Bolivia-they are united by their interest in understanding the ways women respond to their subordination. Women talking about the consequences of male behavior is now the subject of two novels: Topics of Conversation, Miranda Popkey’s widely praised debut, and Women Talking, by feted Canadian author Miriam Toews. Mostly, we asked questions: Why is this reckoning only happening now? How should these men be punished? What about “innocent until proven guilty”? Are we-especially we who engage in intimate relationships with men-denying ourselves sexual agency? We listened, we sympathized, we reflected, we disagreed. ![]() Remember that boss? That boyfriend? That professor? Anger propelled these conversations, but it didn’t circumscribe them. We considered old events in the new light. We set aside our usual topics and talked instead about men. In the months after #MeToo caught fire, my conversations with friends failed the Bechdel Test. ![]()
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