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Description
This paper examines Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl through the theme of identity construction and crisis, arguing that Amy Dunne’s destructiveness arises from the crises produced by the roles imposed on her by family, beauty standards, media, and marriage. Raised as “Amazing Amy”, a profitable product in her parents’ books, she learns to perform rather than develop a stable identity, initiating a lifelong crisis of selfhood. Naomi Wolf’s claim that “women’s beauty has been used as a form of currency” resonates with Amy’s life, as Desi reshapes her body and withholds money to enforce his ideal of beauty. Mass media further supply the script of the “Cool Girl / Cool Wife”, which Amy defines as the eternally smiling woman who never gets angry—another performance that deepens her identity crisis.
Following Judith Butler’s view that “performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual”, Amy’s successive roles — “Amazing Amy”, “Cool Amy”, and “Diary Amy” — become naturalized until she admits that “much of her identity has been constructed for her”. When these roles collapse, the crisis of identity erupts into manipulation and violence: she disappears, writes a diary to frame Nick, hides with Desi and kills him, and finally returns to Nick after his televised confession, fabricating pregnancy so they remain “in the prison of their marriage”.
Amy’s trajectory illustrates both a crisis of identity (performing roles, loss of self) and a crisis of gender norms (destruction when women refuse prescribed roles). Gone Girl demonstrates how gendered performativity commodifies women, erases individuality, and produces crises that explode in deception, manipulation, and murder. The “Real Amy” never emerges; what remains is a destructive version of herself, forged through repeated crises created by the very structures that promised acceptance.
| Keywords | Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl, Amy Dunne, identity crisis, gender performativity, Judith Butler, Naomi Wolf, Cool Girl trope |
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| Sara.hadaoui@gmail.com |