Unfair Ground: Girlhood and Theme Parks in Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

This essay explores the representation of adolescence in three contemporary American novels set in theme parks. It argues that, as a microcosm of American society, the theme park reproduces the norms of gender and sexuality even as it reveals them to be constructed. In contrast to the way that theme parks foster coming of age for boys, Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (1995), Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness (2004), and Karen Russell's Swamplandia! (2011) demonstrate the limitations imposed on girls. Although female protagonists challenge gender norms, heteronormativity proves impossible to resist, despite being disempowering or disappointing. Thus, by demonstrating that coming of age in America takes place on unfair ground, the novels point to the continuing importance of feminism in the face of post-feminist myths of equality.