Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures

"My guilty pleasure wasn't just reading low-brow fiction or even female-authored fiction, it was being femme itself." What is it about ribald romance novels, luxurious interior design, and frothy wedding dresses that often make women feel their desires come with a shadow of shame? In Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures, Arielle Zibrak considers the specifically pleasurable forms of feminine guilt and desire stimulated by supposedly "lowbrow" aesthetic tendencies. She takes up the overwhelming preoccupation with the experience of being humiliated, dominated, or even abused that has pervaded the stories that make up women's culture--from eighteenth-century epistolary novels to popular twentieth-century teen magazine features to present-day romantic comedies. In three chapters--"Rough Sex," "Expensive Sheets," and "Saying Yes to the Dress"--that mirror the plot structures of feminine fictions themselves, this book tells the story of the desires that only the guiltiest of pleasures evoke. Zibrak reexamines documents of femme culture long dismissed as "trash" to reveal the surprisingly cathartic experiences produced by tales of domination, privilege, and the material trappings of the heteropatriarchy. Part of the Avidly Reads series, this slim book gives us a new way of looking at American culture. With the singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism featured in the series, Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures reclaims women's experiences for themselves.

Literature & Fiction

Zibrak, Arielle

History & Criticism

NYU Press

"My guilty pleasure wasn't just reading low-brow fiction or even female-authored fiction, it was being femme itself." What is it about ribald romance novels, luxurious interior design, and frothy wedding dresses that often make women feel their desires come with a shadow of shame? In Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures, Arielle Zibrak considers the specifically pleasurable forms of feminine guilt and desire stimulated by supposedly "lowbrow" aesthetic tendencies. She takes up the overwhelming preoccupation with the experience of being humiliated, dominated, or even abused that has pervaded the stories that make up women's culture--from eighteenth-century epistolary novels to popular twentieth-century teen magazine features to present-day romantic comedies. In three chapters--"Rough Sex," "Expensive Sheets," and "Saying Yes to the Dress"--that mirror the plot structures of feminine fictions themselves, this book tells the story of the desires that only the guiltiest of pleasures evoke. Zibrak reexamines documents of femme culture long dismissed as "trash" to reveal the surprisingly cathartic experiences produced by tales of domination, privilege, and the material trappings of the heteropatriarchy. Part of the Avidly Reads series, this slim book gives us a new way of looking at American culture. With the singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism featured in the series, Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures reclaims women's experiences for themselves.

Writing Against Reform: Aesthetic Realism in the Progressive Era (Becoming Modern: Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century)

University of Massachusetts Press

Writing Against Reform

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zibrak, Arielle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Zibrak, Arielle