Rage: As a Gateway to look at Amy Dunne as a new version of Femme Fatale in Gillian Flynn’s

Gone Girl

Abstract

This paper aims to focus rage as a constructing element for the formation of Amy Dunne

as a new version of femme fatale in Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The classic noir and neo-noir’s

femme fatales are too old to study Amy Dunne’s character. The paper involves Joan Riviere’s

theory of Womanliness as a Masquerade to argue how Amy Dunne act as a new form femme

fatale by constantly changing her masks in different situations while showing how she cannot fit

in the earlier versions of femme fatale. Amy used to suppress and express her rage according to

the need of time so that she can meet the standards of patriarchal society and for her own

benefits. In addition to this, works of Lisa Coulhard and Carol J helps to analyze Amy Dunne’s

rage for no apparent reason, her unfeminine behavior when it comes to her aggressiveness and

her violent nature.

Introduction

The American author Gillian Flynn was born on February 24, 1971 in Kansas City,

Missouri. She was the daughter of two professors; her mother was a reading comprehension

professor while her father was a film professor. Flynn graduated in English and journalism from

the University of Kansas and got her master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern

University, Medill School of Journalism in 1997. In between her graduation and master’s she

took a two years gap to work as a writer for a magazine under HR professionals.

Flynn moved to New York City, after discovering that she was not suitable to become a

crime reporter. She joined Entertainment Weekly magazine, and worked for them for ten
consecutive years, visiting various film sets throughout the world. The last four years of her in

Entertainment Weekly, she was the TV critic for one of the best all time favorite show: The

Wire.

Gillian Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects (2006), was the winner of first ever novel to

win two Britain’s Dagger Awards in a single year, involves an alcoholic crime reporter, who

comes to her hometown to investigate a murder mystery but at first she has to fight and confront

her own demons. Her second novel Dark Places (2009), was the New York Times bestseller,

comprises the story of a woman with traumatic childhood memories of her mother and two

sisters being murdered, on which she investigates and finds her brother to be innocent of the

crime. Flynn’s third novel Gone Girl (2012), was a huge international success which has spent

more than one hundred weeks on the bestseller lists of New York Times. People Magazine

named Gone Girl one of best novel of the year 2012.

Gone Girl involves a story written from two different points of view i.e. the protagonist

point of view and the antagonist point of view. The plot starts with the romantic angle between

Amy Dunne and Nick Dunne, which first started at a party and lead to a marriage after eight two

years of dating. The happily married couple’s happiness does not last long as on one winter

night, Amy finds out that Nick is cheating on her with having an affair with one of his students.

The emerging rage in Amy leads her to take revenge from Nick.

On Amy’s and Nick’s fifth wedding anniversary, Amy makes herself disappear and is

considered to be missing. All the blame is to be put on to Nick as she has left clues with proves

that he is responsible and is investigated by the police. Nick defends himself but is not able to as
all the clues are going against him. The media, the neighbors, and all the people connected to

them started believing that Nick has to do something with Amy’s disappearance.

On the other hand, Amy in her rage is purposely missing and is planning further for her

―mysterious disappearance‖ (Flynn, 29). She keeps on leaving clues which goes against Nick and

his family. On her run, she goes out of money and contacts Desi Collings, a high school sweet

heart, who gives her protection and shelter. Being bored with all this, she seduces him and then

kills him, later proving that it was an act of self defense. Amy returns home after all this in blood

as a victim and a weak woman though Nick knows that she is not weak at all and this all has to

do something with Amy herself. There life afterwards will not be the same as it was before and

they both know this.

The novel portrays Amy Dunne’s character full of rage which leads her to take revenge

from her own husband. She is to be seen engrossing in a type of political struggle by denying

holding the darker sentiments. Earlier women rage was connected with their anger being

controlled, punishing them in some sort of way or the ultimate death. But now feminists are

raging and they forbid their emotions or negative sentiments to be brought back into the

patriarchal society. Amy Dunne break the post feminist thought that feminism is not required at

the conclusion to come clean in the end as she herself being a feminist comes clean in the end

despite of whatever she has done wrong. The negative notions portrayed by Amy are on the

verge and are always there to emerge at certain situation. The contention of this paper is to see

how rage helps Amy Dunne to be a new version femme fatale, other than the femme fatales of

classic noir and neo-noir. In addition to that how new form of femme fatales removes various

masks to reach the patriarchal norms. Lastly, it also focuses on how rage provokes Amy’s violent

behavior and her inability to take proper repercussions of her unfeminine doings.
 The paper will be divided into five parts. The first part is about the introduction of

author, novel, contention and within it are the research questions. The second part will include

critical reviews on the novel and on the theoretical framework and the third is research

methodology. The fourth part comprises the discussion on the contention and answers to the

research questions. The fifth one is the conclusion.

Literature Review

On the very opening page of the novel Gone Girl, Nick Dunne draws a complete picture

of his wife Amy with the minute depiction of her brain, that whenever he thinks about his wife,

he always thinks about her head first, her brain and all the coiled part in the brain. He further

says that the questions he has asked her during the period of their married life are that what is she

thinking? How is she feeling? Who is she? What have they done to each other? And what will

they do in future? (Flynn, 3).

Amy’s husband Nick is not the first one to think deeply about the complexity of a

mysterious women brain. Though the plot line of Gone Girl signify that a man should worry

about what a female holds inside her mind. After the publication of the novel, the critics and

readers have labeled Amy Dunne’s character as terrifying. The US magazine ―Vanity Fair‖

reviewed Amy Dunne as ―The Most Disturbing Female Villain of All Time‖ (Rich). Many

researchers have worked on the character of Amy Dunne as being a character full of terror and

having the element of rage. Emily Johanson in her article gives a comparative analysis of Amy

Dunne with the female villains of the gothic genre and claimed Gone Girl as a ―neoliberal gothic

novel‖ (Johanson, 35). According to Johanson the reason behind Amy’s frightening character is

her firm devotion to the neoliberal values and norms (Johanson, 42). Kenneth Lota, a researcher
in her research on Contemporary American Fiction looks on Amy Dunne as a femme fatale as

her terrifying nature is the result of her capability to ―manipulate the people around her

according to the very dichotomous thinking that produces gender roles in the first place‖ (Lota,

163). I am of the same opinion held by the above two scholars as Amy Dunne is a unique

character in comparison to the other females exposed in other novels.

Noir emerged as a genre in 1940s. According to Helen Hanson in her article it ponders

upon the constantly varying socio–cultural gender roles… (Hanson, xv). Noir as a genre sustain

its significance by proceeding and adapting to various methodologies to deal with the cultural

anxieties of the specific time of the history. Though highly objected by the feminists, noir

maintains its position as a prominent genre for analyzing the character of the females. Noir’s

most famous female character is the femme fatale. Helen Hanson describes the femme fatale in

Hollywood heroines as ―sexually and generically, transgressive: a female figure refusing to be

defined by the socio-cultural norms of femininity, or contained by the male addressed, generic

operations of film noir narratives in which her fatality resulted in her ultimate destruction‖

(Hanson, xv). The character of Amy Dunne is not like that of the above description of a femme

fatale, so she emerges with her own definition of it.

In a chapter to Women in Film Noir by E. Ann Kaplan, Janey Place agrees by saying that

spider woman and nurturing women goes in comparison with one another in noir to differentiate

appropriate and inappropriate behavior of the female. She defines spider woman as someone

dangerous, full of rage, sexually active who indulges herself in darkness on purpose and is the

―psychological expression of (man’s) own internal fears of sexuality, and his need to control and

repress it‖ (Place, 53). She also notes that the dangerous woman main objective is to get an
independent life which is ―often presented as self-absorbed narcissism‖ (Place, 57). In contrast to

the spider woman, Place defines nurturing woman as she:

…offers the possibility of integration for the alienated, lost man into the stable

world of secure values, roles, and identities. She gives love, understanding (or at

least forgiveness), asks very little in return (just that he come back to her) and is

generally visually passive and static (Place, 60).

The image of spider woman or femme fatale is often shattered whereas the nurturing

woman flourishes but it is the character of the negative capabilities and seductive personality

femme fatale which kept a longing affect on the readers. The constant change of time has

allowed femme fatale to make changes to meet America’s sociopolitical scenarios. Femme fatale

is classified in two different cycles by Samantha Lindhop in her book. The first cycle known as

classic noir emerged in 1940s and 1950s whereas the second cycle called neo-noir emerged in

1980s and 1990s (Lindhop, 1). She observes that both classic noir and neo-noir femme fatale

shows a kind of reluctance to accept the ideas of femininity and is represented as carrying

―unnatural phallic power‖ (Lindhop, 23), such as physical fighting or smoking and having the

―ability to bring ruin and misery (in some form or another) to the men who cross her path‖

(Lindhop, 23-24). The classic noir of femme fatale portrays a huge amount of sexuality in

contrast to the neo-noir femme fatale. She notes down that writer and movie makers were forced

to censor the femme fatale’s sexual and disrupted actions (Lindhop, 25). She states that the codes

given to writers and motion pictures included that evil should not be portrayed as something

attractive and one should not be able to empathize with the wrongdoer. The fatale woman end is

either of being punished or death or is discovered in the end that she is innocent and a victim.
The code also included not to include themes involving social, political, sexuality, vulgarity,

adultery etc (Lindhop, 25).

The above mention codes were of the classic noir femme fatale, which were replaced the

neo-noir femme fatale in 1986. The new codes involved open sexual aggressive behaviors,

females being more independent and getting away with the crimes they have committed by

acting as a victim in the end (Lindhop, 51). Kate Stables in her chapter to E. Ann Kaplan’s book

states that the femme fatales of the 90s eagerly inhabits the cultural domains: the things which

motivated them were the lust for power, money and sex (Stables, 170).

Amy Dunne stands at a distance from the neo-noir cycle because as a woman she is

portrayed more by her competitive nature, toughness and intellect, keeping aside her sexuality

and who at the end escapes punishment. Her character shifts to a new form of femme fatale, one

that is close to post feminist values as the classic noir femme fatale is too old for her and the neo-

noir differs to portray her whole character. Amy Dunne creates a new kind of femme fatale for

herself and is regarded as the femme fatale of this era.

Research Methodology

This paper uses textual analysis as a research method, involving Joan Riviere’s theory of

Womanliness as Masquerade to argue how Amy Dunne as a femme fatale constantly changes her

mask in different situations to meet the patriarchal standards as well as for her own benefits. In

addition to that the works of Lisa Coulhard and Carol J will help to analyze Amy Dunne’s rage

for no reason and unfeminine behavior and why her violent nature is different from any other

female character in the history of English novels. Lastly, other secondary sources about

feminism, femme fatale, patriarchy etc are used to support the arguments.
Discussion

The character of Amy Dunne falls into a new category of femme fatale which is close to

the post feminist principles. She shows traits of a post feminist person as according to the

feminist Angela McRobbie, Amy took advantage from the women’s liberation movement’s

victory (McRobbie 32). Amy graduated from Harvard with the degree of journalism and was a

famous writer, writing personality games for a magazine before everything falls into pieces.

Amy at first lived in New York City as rich, independent, successful women whose being single

worried her parents and friends. Amy tries to run as far as she can to not indulge herself in a

relationship because she did not want to lose her independence. Having the traits of a post

feminist person, she should have the option to marry or not to marry. Eventually, the social

pressure on Amy made her marry Nick Dunne. She writes in her diary that she has become a

strange kind of thing as she has become a wife. She was asked to drop her feminist card and was

merely there to balance Nick’s checkbook and to trim his hair (Flynn, 38).

After her marriage, Amy becomes a person whose life revolved around her husband.

Amy admits in her starting entries of the diary that a successful modern marriage is all about

performing gender roles developed by the society. Amy believed in the concept of marriage

being a compromise but it was her who was making all the compromises while Nick was doing

whatever he wanted even Amy compromised on not having meals of her own choice (Flynn, 40).

Amy even leaved her family after they both lost their jobs, so that Nick could be with his sick

mother by moving into his hometown (Flynn, 6). Nick in his hometown Missouri expected Amy

to nurse his mother while he plays games and hangouts with his friends (Flynn, 157). In a very

short span of time Amy became a nurturing woman for both Nick and his mother from the

independent, successful woman she was.

 Amy was in the habit of writing down her emotions in the diary which she was not able

to express in front of anyone. Her diary contained her frustration about Nick and her marriage.

She knew Nick was cheating on her by having an affair with his student but still she kept quiet as

a society expects a woman to be quiet and calm (Flynn, 65-69). Her diary plays a role of a

masquerade. In order to hide her true self, Amy wears a mask to show the hyper-feminine side of

a woman who calmly forgives every mistake her husband makes and ignores her partner’s

sexism. The idea of womanliness as a masquerade emerged in 1930s by a British feminist and a

psychoanalyst Joan Riviere when he first said that woman having masculine traits hides their

masculinity with a mask of womanliness to avoid anxiety and punishment from a male being

(Riviere, 70). Women do this to display their feminine nature. Riviere explains hers concept by

giving an example of a woman who knows technical works and does that all by herself in her

home but once a proper technician is called she has to hide her knowledge from him (Riviere

73). This kind of mask is put to avoid any kind of discomfort from a man’s side who cannot see a

woman in competition. Amy puts a mask of womanliness in her diary to show herself an

obedient wife and a victim but in reality she is an extraordinary woman with rage and is on the

verge to develop a plan to frame her husband for her own death. She makes a plan without any

errors to be not caught by the police, and writes in her diary that she has a phobia to see blood

(Flynn, 67), while later she cuts her own arm to stage her murder and disappearance. She even

writes about how much she is scared of Nick that she had to buy a gun (Flynn, 197). Amy

portrayed herself as a weak woman but in reality she was an evil person, who could do anything

out of rage. Mary Ann Doane, a feminist adds on to the concept of womanliness as a masquerade

in her book that putting up a mask is one of the chief characteristic of femme fatales as they rely

on upper limit of femininity to ―evade the man, the word, and the law‖ (Doane, 26). Being a
femme fatale, Amy uses the mask to fall into the category of a victim for a monstrous crime

rather than being punished for her own disappearance, murder and planting false evidences. The

characteristic of femme fatale also includes being clever and cunning and these both qualities ran

in the blood of Amy.

The second half of the novel depicts the true face of Amy Dunne as she puts off her face

and admits her fake disappearance, murdering Desi Collings and framing Nick for her murder

because of the constant rage after finding that Nick was having an affair with a student. To frame

her husband she starts to think of a story, a story with no faults that would destroy her husband

for cheating on her. She makes a story that would remind people about her perfection and would

make her a hero and victim at the same time (Flynn, 316). She knew the ultimate result of her

story because everyone loves a dead girl. Amy being image cautious women did not wanted her

image to be ruined no matter what. It is depicted in the novel that whatever she did, she kept her

image first. During the confession part, she also accepts that for the past seven years, two years

of dating and five years of marriage, she was pretending to be the ―Cool Girl‖ (Flynn, 222), that

Nick liked. She says,

The Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman…drinks cheap beer…

and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth…while somehow maintaining

a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot…Cool Girls never get angry…and

let their men do whatever they want…Men actually think this girl exists…Every

girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren’t, then there was something

wrong with you (Flynn, 222-223).

 From the above mentioned definition of a cool girl, Amy comes to a conclusion that these

kinds of cool girls does not exist in reality, but are merely a social construct, so that women are

always dependent on a male figure. Her point of view is that being a modern woman, it is

required to change several masks at the time of need. Men like women as a cool girl because

these kinds of woman are less threatening to them. Similarly, when Amy took off the mask of

cool girl, she straightaway challenged the patriarchal order. She is to be believed than when she

is not playing the cool girl part, she can plan anything out of her rage to destroy anyone who

pushes her to that extent.

Amy stands way far from the neo-noir femme fatales as those are hyper-sexualized while

she is hyper-competitive. Amy’s character is of a dangerous one as the element of rage is fixed

within her and she has the urge within her to ruin anyone who stands in her way of

independence. She is like this from her birth as she says that she was the seventh child to her

parents while others were miscarried or were stillborns. She was the one to come out alive from

her mother’s womb. According to her being a child after seven dead children was kind of a

challenge for her as those seven dead babies were perfect even without doing anything, so she

had to be perfect despite of anything.

Amy had an obsession to be the best no matter what. She becomes so wild that she does

not see what is being destroyed on her path to perfection. Though, she was haunted by the seven

dead babies as she would never reach to their level of perfection. The other thing which bothered

Amy was the Amazing Amy, a series of children books written by her patterns. Amazing Amy

was a character who was better, flawless and always made right decisions as compared to Amy.

Amazing Amy married Able Andy, another fictional character before Amy and journalists
questioned Amy if she became jealous of them. These things developed rage inside her and she

used violence to overcome it.

The type of behavior Amy adopts to take revenge out of rage from her victims is quiet

uncommon. Her rage takes several forms in the novel Gone Girl. The very first victim of Amy

was her childhood friend named Hilary from school. They both seemed to be really good friends

until other students at the school preferred playing more with Hilary than Amy. Her rage made

herself threw down the stairs and blamed that thing on Hilary. The innocent boy was forced to

move out of the state. Not just this, Amy found that boy again and wrote him letters about how

he destroyed their friendship (Flynn, 292). The second victim of Amy was Tommy, whom she

dated for a short span of time and after that accused him of rape. Due to the different nature of

Amy, Tommy was no longer attracted to her so one time she made him involve in a sexual

intercourse and in the morning she accused him of raping her (Flynn, 277).

In the above two cases it is not Amy’s ability to lie so confidently and trap her victims

but it is her rage that leads her to destroy her victims, making her an aggressive woman. The

most aggressive behavior of hers can be seen with her teenage sweetheart Desi. When Amy’s

plan to frame Nick for her murder moved a little side track and she found herself penniless, she

called Desi to rescue her from the situation. He took Amy to his lake house where she felt like

she was being controlled by him as by Desi deciding what she will eat and wear etc (Flynn, 349).

Amy says that she disgust Desi now and it is very difficult for her to hide her anger from him and

if he soon does not amend his ways, the punishment will attack him within no time (Flynn, 362).

In an interview in which Nick begs Amy to return home, she changes her plan not to

further frame Nick by returning home. In executing her new plan she has to show herself as a
victim, so this time she frames Desi for kidnapping her and continuously raping her multiple

times (Flynn, 375-380). She returns home drenched in blood being a victim of the story that she

murdered Desi Collings in self defense as he had assaulted her many times.

Amy being aware of the cool girl was similarly aware of the rape revenge narrative.

Carol J. Clover defines rape revenge narrative as in which women seek their own revenge—

usually on their own behalf…‖(Clover, 138). Amy used this rape revenge narrative and

recognized it to make amends in her relation with Nick. The episode in which Amy slips the

throat of Desi and afterwards felt no guilt challenges the convention that not just man can portray

such a violent act but a woman can also do such thing as Amy gave an example of it. Readers

could see Desi’s blood all over Amy’s and she casually with no fear leaves his lake house and

drives to her own place.

The violence portrayed by Amy Dunne challenges the patriarchal system. Lisa Coulhard,

a professor at University of Toronto in her essay ―Killing Bill: Rethinking Feminism and Film

Violence‖ describes women’s violence as ―…depiction of female violence is entwined with

discourses of idealized feminine whiteness, heterosexuality, victimhood, sacrificial purity,

maternal devotion, and eroticized, exhibitionistic, sexual availability‖ (Coulhard,158). She is in

favor of the fact that ―the violent woman of contemporary popular culture does not upset but

endorses the status quo‖ (Coulhard, 173). My findings on the novel Gone Girl contradicts the

views of Coulhard on the violent woman as Amy Dunne is of the opinion that gender roles

promoted by the quo are made by the patriarchal society and she uses them for her own benefits.

Amy is of the ability to work within the patriarchal norms while wearing a masquerade and

disrupt the whole system. Her scheme of mind made her escape all the punishments for her

crimes.
 At the end of the novel Amy comes out of the lake house as a hero. Nick being released

of all the charges and everyone believes Amy killed Desi in self defense. Nick and Amy back

together and expecting a child seems a happy note for them but Nick knows that Amy is lying

about Desi and she purposely framed him for her murder. Amy being the heroine and coming out

of an impossible incident is all on the televisions and now Nick cannot leave her because she has

told her own version of story. She constantly reminds Nick that being a writer he cannot write

anything about her lies as she is writing a love story on them and people would not believe his

version. At the end she talks about unconditional love that this kind of love requires both of the

partners to behave at their best and make compromises. According to her, unconditional love is

undisciplined love and this kind of love is disastrous (Flynn, 414).

Amy ends the novel by promising that she would not change herself and will take all the

control over Nick as if her new plan is on the verge to be executed. They both are pretending to

be a family because Nick is threatened by Amy that she would expose him off by her false

accusations as media is on her side. Nick is stuck with her, though he did not want to be with her.

It is clear that there would not be a happy end for both of them and it is matter of time before

Amy’s rage takes a new turn and she wears another mask to show her true colors because Amy is

a feminist and feminists are raging in this time of era.

Conclusion

The neo-noir cycle emphasizes on the anxieties caused by the postwar and the talks about

women’s lust for power, money and sex, while Amy Dunne stands alone from all this as a

femme fatale which is caused by her rage. Her intellectual ways, remorse violence, nature to

remain in competition and that her rage surrounding the entire system, makes her a single unique
 individual and forms a new kind of femme fatale. Amy being the femme fatale wears certain

mask in different situations to hide her true colors is described by the theory of womanliness as

masquerade by a feminist and psychoanalyst Joan Riviere. Amy wore the cool girl mask to

deceive society that she is following the societal norms and she also reveals through her

character that a modern female requires to constantly change her masks according to the need of

situation. For the seven years, she is been with Nick with the cool girl mask on but after that it

was high time for her to show her actual face. She decided that she no longer will hide her anger,

she will let her rage out on anyone who comes between her path and she will not allow Nick to

have control over her. Amy Dunne has emerged as a very unique character to fall under the

category of femme fatale because of her rage as other women are being silenced by punishment

or death but not Amy as she escaped punishment for the crimes she committed as well as got

control over Nick’s narrative.

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