Dolores Claiborne

While scholars frequently criticize many of Stephen King’s depictions of women in his early novels, they also observe that his representations have become more nuanced over time. Yet, as Kathleen Margaret Lant and Teresa Thompson note in their edited collection on King’s treatment of female characters: “Although King must be praised for [his] accurate and potent rendition of Everyman in the late twentieth century, his representations of Everywoman often provoke hostility as well as admiration” (Imagining the Worst: Stephen King and the Representation of Women. Bloomsbury, 1998). Early works, therefore, often present conflicting representations of female characters. King’s first novel, Carrie (1974), for instance, focuses on the coming-of-age of Carrie White, a teenage girl raised by her tyrannical and extremely religious mother, depicting Carrie as both a sympathetic, bullied child and a serial killer who fails to control her telekinetic power. King’s Misery (1987) features Annie Wilkes, an obsessed fan who kidnaps a writer and forces him to produce a novel. Her character has been criticized for playing into stereotypes of both those engaged in dangerous celebrity worship and unhinged maternal figures.

King’s later novels, however, tend to present more complex female characters. Indeed, after acknowledging that many of his earlier women characters lacked believability and relied on stereotypes, King sought to create more human women within his works. In the 1990s, King focused more fully on women’s experiences of domestic and sexual violence, constructing characters that directly engaged with society’s prescribed roles for women and the continued misogyny of modern Western culture. Dolores Claiborne, for example, provides readers with a sympathetic husband-murderer whose life is circumscribed by patriarchal expectations and her husband’s domestic violence. Dolores Claiborne’s companion novel, Gerald’s Game (1992), explores the memories of Jessie Mahout Burlingame, a character Dolores encounters during the eclipse just before she murders her husband. In both Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne, the protagonist’s ability to work through her trauma at the hands of her abuser highlights both her personal resilience and the structures of power that facilitate Violence against Women, while shoring up the agency of their male abusers.