Women representation and intersemiotic relations in Sharp Objects and Gone Girl

Abstract

This paper is part of a scientific initiation study that aims to research women's representation in literature, cinema, and television. The research corpus is composed of Gillian Flynn's books Sharp Objects (2006) and Gone Girl (2013), as well as its homonymous syncretic versions, organized respectively by Jean Mark Vallée (2018) and David Fincher (2014). It is noted that in all Flynn’s literary works and its homonymous syncretic versions the striking female figures predominate. This is true to Sharp Objects (2006) and Gone Girl (2013) protagonists. In these two works, the protagonists share characteristics, the most important being their distance from society’s social and patriarchal constructs, even if in different ways. Having that in mind, this paper was built from the following research question: How do the intersemiotic relations between Sharp Objects (2006) and Gone Girl (2013) work’s functions regarding the female figure’s presence? Therefore the paper intends to understand how the female figure representation is wrought in the book’s television and film adaptations. The paper is structured through a bibliographic methodology that englobes Hutcheon (2011) and Martin (2006) as both contribute with considerations regarding intersemiotic relations and economic reasons for adaptations. Besides, the work of Pinsk and Pedro (2012) is also important because it discusses social constructs and roles attributed to women throughout time.