Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

183914

Made in suburbia

intra-suburban narratives in contemporary Australian women's fiction

Belinda Burns

pp. 163-179

Abstract

Within twentieth-century Australian fiction, suburbia has long been trivialised, satirised, or ignored as a site incompatible with a narrative of transformation, a location from which to flee. However, little critical attention has been directed on contemporary realist tales of the female protagonist located within the confines of suburbia—an increasingly contested yet arguably still feminine/feminised zone. This chapter examines contemporary representations and narrative trajectories of the suburban female protagonist in twenty-first-century fiction. Drawing on "postfeminist" literary theory and emerging reappraisals of the "everyday" and "home", the chapter presents evidence of intra-suburban narratives of feminine transformation, which contradict second-wave feminist flight trajectories, thereby reclaiming and elevating fictional suburbia as a critical space in which Australian women writers may locate their stories.

Publication details

Published in:

Das Devaleena, Dasgupta Sanjukta (2017) Claiming space for Australian women's writing. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 163-179

Full citation:

Burns Belinda (2017) „Made in suburbia: intra-suburban narratives in contemporary Australian women's fiction“, In: D. Das & S. Dasgupta (eds.), Claiming space for Australian women's writing, Dordrecht, Springer, 163–179.