The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter

Unruly women have been making a spectacle of themselves in film and on television from Mae West to Roseanne Arnold. In this groundbreaking work, Kathleen Rowe explores how the unruly woman--often a voluptuous, noisy, joke-making rebel or "woman on top"--uses humor and excess to undermine patriarchal norms and authority.

At the heart of the book are detailed analyses of two highly successful unruly women--the comedian Roseanne Arnold and the Muppet Miss Piggy. Putting these two figures in a deeper cultural perspective, Rowe also examines the evolution of romantic film comedy from the classical Hollywood period to the present, showing how the comedic roles of actresses such as Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and Marilyn Monroe offered an alternative, empowered image of women that differed sharply from the "suffering heroine" portrayed in classical melodramas.

Author: Kathleen Rowe, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 01/01/1995
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 8.95h x 6.01w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780292770690

About the Author
A former newspaper reporter and editor, Kathleen Rowe teaches film studies at the University of Oregon, where she is Assistant Professor of English.