A Chick Lit Essay

Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel “Bridget Jones’s Diary” is widely recognized as a perfect example of ‘Chick Lit,’ and like most novels of the genre, it features a single working female protagonist Bridget Jones who is thirty years old, and it also presents her point of view. This novel is about a single working woman struggles with love, family relationship, and chases the self-improvement in order to meet the standard that the society has given to the unmarried women. Therefore, this novel fits all the characteristics that a Chick Lit genre novel should have. Literature is a way to let the reader explore the society. Chick lit is literature since it does reflect the society and human society. It exposes how women being pressured and prejudiced

This theme symbolizes that women are pressured to be in a certain way by society. By analyzing this theme, it can be obviously seen that Chick-lit does reflect the society. Firstly, this theme is explored through Bridget’s obsession with her appearance. From her new year’s resolution, she lists certain specific resolutions on losing weight like “reduce the circumference of thighs”, “eat more pulses” which are beneficial to keep fit and also “go to gym” (Fielding, 3). In addition, in her diary, the things that have been recording are neither the weather nor her mood but her weight and calorie. From here, the body image can be seen as the protagonist’s major mission and something she thinks highly of in her life. What urges the protagonist to value her body image? The answer for this can be discovered from the fact that Bridget realizes she “[has] been traumatized by supermodels” because of a magazine calls “Cosmopolitan Culture” (Fielding, 3). “Cosmopolitan”, a social media. It can be generally said that those social media pressured and regulated women to be in a certain way. This can be presented as social pressure to women. Secondly, this theme can also be seen through the fact that Bridget is pressured to get married In this novel, a double standard that society is holding between women and men has been exposed. This dual standard indicates society pressures women to get married at an appropriate age. When

This theme represents humanity’s endless craving. By probing this theme, it shows that those Chick lit genre novels do reflect human experience. The well-known example from Bridget Jones’ Diary corresponds to this theme is the contradiction about getting married. Three typical marital statuses: single, divorced and married have been showed in Bridget Jones Diary. The protagonist Bridget represents single people who are not satisfied with their single life, looking forward to “form functional relationship” (Fielding, 3) and getting married, while one of Bridget’s “smug married” friends Jeremy has an affair during the marriage. In addition, Bridget’s mother, who has been married for “thirty-five years” complains about working for the family “ without a break” and “bringing up children” for such a long time(Fielding, 53). Those people have been categorized into three types by their marital status and human’s unrealistic expectations have been directly showed depends on their views on their status. The people who are married, trying to escape from the marriage, while those single people are craving for ending their lonely single lives. It exposes that human always unsatisfied with what they have: the freedom of being single, the smooth and steady life comes from the marriage. This kind of expectation corresponds to the thought that “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”. In general, the unrealistic