bibliogramma | Catherynne Valente: The Refrigerator Monologues

Catherynne Valente's novella The Refrigerator Monologues is a savage deconstruction of one of the nastier snd more misogynist tropes in genre fiction. Actually, it dominates literary fiction too. The woman in the refrigerator.

As reviewer Carrie S. explains in her discussion of the novella on the website Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, "The trope name comes from the unfortunate girlfriend of Kyle Raynor (the Green Lantern) who comes home one night to find his girlfriend murdered and her body stuffed in his refrigerator. This leads Kyle to finally fully assume his role as Green Lantern as he seek vengeance and then goes on fight other battles, now secure in his superhero role." [1]

More broadly, the term refers to the countless women in books, comics and films who are raped, mutilated, killed, or otherwise violently disposed of as a device to facilitate the hero's character development.

In Valente's hands, feminist deconstruction of this trope takes the form of interlocking narratives voiced by the women of Deadtown, the place where the superheroes' refrigerated women go after their task of inspiring a man has been completed. It doesn't matter that some of these women are superheroes in their own right. They are the refrigerator women, and they exist as the leftover pieces of the stories of men.

It is a difficult narrative to read, story after story of betrayal, pain, abandonment. I'm not a big comics fan, so I didn't necessarily know which particular comic book narratives each section of Valente's work is based on. But it didn't matter. These stories stand on their own merits, and the stories they tell are ones you've seen or read a hundred times. But never quite like this, from the woman in the fridge, full of grief and rage.

[1] http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/refrigerator-monologues-catherynne-m-valente-annie-wu/