(TW: DV) What is with all the super popular contemporary novels featuring violence against women?

Submitted by travelling_cirque t3_122ca2u in books

I've noticed an overwhelming amount of highly popular contemporary novels featuring domestic violence, such as Where the Crawdads Sing, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, literally everything ever written by Colleen Hoover (not a fan of her), The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, etc.

A small number of books do a good job of discussing the topic, but SO MANY seem to just use it as an incredibly cheap, crappy way to force in some character development (Tomorrow..), or put in a shocking scene when the author doesn't know what to do with the plot. It kinda feels like people think that if a book makes them cry then it must be a good book, but that just really isn't the case for me.

And at this point, half of the books that other people are recommending to me are just full to the gunwales with DV, and I'm tired of it!

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CrazyCatLady108 t1_jdprem0 wrote

that is not really limited to only contemporary works.

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sisharil t1_jdpugrr wrote

Violence against women has been a common problem for millennia, much like war and politics. It stands to reason it would be a common topic to write about.

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HauntedHovel t1_jdqfifo wrote

One of the big uses of fiction is to provide a safe space for people to explore their fears, and a lot of women are scared of gendered violence - these books are far more popular with women. Popular fiction with this theme usually provides a situation where that fear is provoked in the reader but somehow overcome or resolved in the story, which is comforting, even when the reader knows it’s unrealistic.

A lot of fiction is built around this. We don’t expect men to want to be beaten up just because they play combat games or action flicks, they watch them partly because they wonder if they could face that situation. People watch supernatural horror because they remember being afraid of the dark, not because they want to be killed by a monster.

Of course there is some writing aiming for sadistic titillation or to express misogyny but the target audience for that usually isn’t into reading fiction, it requires empathy.

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amplifylight t1_jds2j2u wrote

Yep. And it’s worth noting that all the novels listed by OP are written by women.

If this theme seems more prominent today than previously then perhaps it’s because the novels that get attention today are more likely to be written by women than those that were written in (say) the 1950s. But this has long been a notable theme in literature. I believe it’s fair to say that all three Brontë sisters wrote about domestic violence.

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Pipe-International t1_jdpuxdq wrote

Because it sells. All the books you mentioned have been big sellers. I’m not so weirded out by the authors who are obviously writing to market, but the readers who make them best sellers.

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SmoothPimp85 t1_jdpygl8 wrote

It's good that you're not into dark fantasy, especially pre-2010s.

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gnatsaredancing t1_jdq4z93 wrote

It's called tunnel vision. I'm a 41 year old life long voracious reader and I've never read a book that featured notable violence against women.

I bet if I tried, I could read nothing but books that feature violence against women, or heinous racism or people who owned dogs though. And then pretend like it's a defining trend for books.

People tend to take note of the things they want to take note of.

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdqboqb wrote

I can name only two popular fantasy books I have read without sexual violence against women. Some time ago someone in the fantasy reddit asked for a book without sexual violence and many people recommended books that in hindsight turned out in fact have sexual violence.

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Generic-username_123 t1_jdx4u4f wrote

True, especially the part that you could read nothing but books that feature violence against women or heinous racism. There seems to be an endless supply of them. In part because it has become popular to explore these horrible experiences in hopes to prevent them. That said, it is also way to define one group of people as bad and another as good; oppressors and the oppressed. The problem is it becomes easy to get stereotype all people of a certain group as oppressors. It is typecasting and no better than the awful typecasting of the past when blacks in film and TV were usually depicted as criminals or pimps and women as nagging housewives. Every identity should be able to see positive depictions of their identity in books, films and television.

I find such violence against women or people of different races abhorrent and prefer not to read fiction or watch media that includes such depictions. You would think this material would appeal most to misogynists or racists, but it often appeals to people who like seeing their identity harmed because of what it says about the group doing the harming. This can be unifying because it creates a common enemy according to Professor Jonathan Haidt.

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GrudaAplam t1_jdpr235 wrote

Maybe highly popular contemporary novels are no longer your thing.

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Hot-Yogurtcloset-904 t1_jdpyauy wrote

I really liked Crawdads but I refuse to read Colleen Hoover

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdqbs7m wrote

I would also recommend avoiding Outlander...

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travelling_cirque OP t1_jdqrpvy wrote

God I didn’t even want to bother including outlander in my list because practically every single character gets raped. Do it once, okay. Do it twice, a little odd, but whatever. Three times? Do you seriously have NO other ideas for how to make a character go through a tough time? And then she just makes the characters move on and forget it ever happened!

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdr0azw wrote

The show is tamer, but still bad in that regard....literally every main character got raped in that show

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travelling_cirque OP t1_jdril6r wrote

“The show is tamer… every main character gets raped”

That’s an accurate assessment for the book given I believe multiple main characters get raped multiple times in the book, right?

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tecphile t1_jdrji5d wrote

Yes, I believe Claire has three instances in the first book some.

I will say this; I think Gabaldon is a talented writer and she creates great characters. But she uses her parlour trick too many times.

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdrnwku wrote

>Superb_Tiger_8376

Oh, she is very talented, and she does a lot of research. I respect that, but I think the book series should have been finished with book 6. I think she is just dragging it out unnecessarily.

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdrnsbe wrote

It is tamer in the sense that there are less scenes in the show with rape and often the scenes are better portrayed on screen than in the books.

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GrandEasterly t1_jdpr01g wrote

Becky Chambers (Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet) wrote a sci fi series she self published and from what I recall of my read through is that it has female centred storylines, an appreciation of diversity, no damsel in distress tropes and it avoids the DV angle. Her characters aren't "damaged" but they are human/humane and have their own histories.

I'm not a huge fan of the sci fi in that book, but I'm not unhappy with it. I think it's more an opening to a bigger story.

Either way, try it out. Her fans may show you a gateway to other similar stories.

She definitely seems like one of the more positive story authors I've come across and that in itself is valuable.

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Comfortable-Gold-982 t1_jdpzh7z wrote

I preferred her 'To be taught if fortunate' personally, but in terms of passing the 'please can we stop making women victims for 5 fucking minutes?' Vibe check: Goblin Emperor, The night circus, the girl King, she and her cat were all good. In terms of 'violence but with some genuine meaning behind it, Christina Henry writes strong but ultimately human women overcoming issues through a variety of different traits, and whilst some if the suffer domestic violence, the story centers on how it is overcome (and it's only 2 of hers thus far).

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[deleted] t1_jdr68l9 wrote

[deleted]

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N8blood t1_jdr9wer wrote

David Foster Wallace once said, “Good fiction's job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

I'm one of those Malazan fans. And I'm "contemptuously sneering" at you and your fragile sensibilities. If you want the fantasy genre to conform to your "blinders on" worldview, hate to break it to you but fantasy isn't for you. Besides seems like you don't do much reading anyway.

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Batwoman_2017 t1_jdps79t wrote

Women need to suffer to gain the reader's respect /s

Also, shock value matters a lot in readability. If someone didn't beat the crap out of the heroine, you would want to know how she handles the fallout right? Does she get revenge? Does she commits murder? Does the abuser get their comeuppance?

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AtraMikaDelia t1_jdpts6e wrote

The problem with shock value is that it only has value if its actually shocking.

Obviously whether or not a person finds something shocking, or just thinks its a worn out trope, is something that is going to depend on the individual and what they have read/watched, particularly recently. If you keep reading the same type of books where you can predict the general idea of what's going to happen easily, then you're not really going to be shocked by it after a certain point, and the books will becomes a lot less interesting.

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EduBA t1_jdpsdu6 wrote

Try Caroline Graham's The Ghost in the Machine, an antidote with a nice fat shaming rant at the end.

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ersatzbaronness t1_jdpz1ci wrote

Unless women are victims we aren't real and can't be sympathized with, duh. </s >

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdqbcfz wrote

Why are you surprised by that?

Ever seen a movie? Violence against women is portrayed as normal in movies. Especially, sexual violence. We are all indoctrinated to think it is normal. You do not know how many people I have met who told me GoT is a realistic depecition of the middle ages and how it could not have been written any other way. Or look at House of the Dragon: Alicent Hightower the original character is an unpleasant step mother figure in the original source material and very unlikable but the show writers only managed to come up with one way to make her likable to the audience: by changing her age to 15 when she marries 40 year old Viserys in the show compared to how she was 19 in the source material and married 28 year old Viserys. And in the source material she was not raped. They added a rape storyline for that character with the only purpose to make her more sympathetic and every time I bring up the fact I get downvoted and called an idiot. Ironically, the same people threw a hissy fit when Sansa was raped in the show universe.

That said: I have no issue with Alicent being portrayed as more sympathetic but hat could have done without making her a rape victim or maybe maybe the author did not want Alicent to be portrayed as sympathetic because people like her exist in reali life. Women who help men to suppress other women, who slut shame other women for not obeying the patriarchy laws. Foord for thoughts.

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nolwat22 t1_jdqqxby wrote

I said this before and got downvoted to hell, but I’ll say it again. Like any other artist, authors tend to pull from things they’ve experienced in life when making their art. So maybe these authors have experienced some terrible things and include it in their writing

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N8blood t1_jdrukjw wrote

All the super popular contemporary novels also have men suffering abuse and dying gruesome deaths. It goes both ways.

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noscopy t1_jdx4ffo wrote

You must not have heard of them yet. There is a growing theology for young white men who don't have, but recently found out, there was never a way for them to accomplish their dreams/expectations. The recent attempts to balance gender equality is taken as a direct threat to their existence. The easiest target is women, who are much more vocal and visible working for equally.

In summary, women are the cause of their problems. Their solution i to them is obviously controlling, attacking, and degrading them.

I almost forgot! Most of them are virgins that go by the phrase of INCEL, which is short for INVOLUNTARY CELIBACY I'll just let you think about that for a moment.

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travelling_cirque OP t1_jdx9vii wrote

Not sure what girls on booktok daydreaming about being abused by Ryle from It Ends With Us has to do with incels but ok.

Also could have done without the condescension.

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No_Bid_1382 t1_je5va5y wrote

The books listed by OP were all written by white women...

Leave it white women to totally sidestep any responsibility for bigotry, never change

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Julieann1970 t1_jdqcf08 wrote

This type of book needs a victim and women are an easy stereotypical victim of a lazy (or perhaps clever) author, who wants to make money using titillation from the books target audience. I am not sure of the size of the audience, but guess that it is sufficiently large to turn a good profit.

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[deleted] t1_jdq83gs wrote

Misogyny sells. (Cough The Expanse cough)

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdqbu60 wrote

Is it really that bad? I have only read the first book and the weird obsession of the detective for that girl creeped me out or was that in the show? I forgot...lol

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[deleted] t1_jdqm70b wrote

It’s kind of veiled. It is creepy.

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Superb_Tiger_8376 t1_jdqn36l wrote

I see. Only saw the TV show which was better imo.

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[deleted] t1_jdqngcq wrote

The show writers wrote an entirely different story, almost. It’s good people are starting to realize that.

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beeznerys t1_jdpts3f wrote

Usually it's because the author has a fetish for it other times it's so they can live out a hero fantasy or they'll get more attention for featuring controversial topics.

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