Gender Roles for the New House Wife in Fincher's 'Gone Girl' Anonymous College

Amy and Nick Dunne in the film Gone Girl (2014) are first seen as a perfect match, where their easygoing, yet still romantic, love seems too good to be true. The plot escalates quickly to a suspenseful sequence of events where Amy flees her home and frames her murder to hopefully lead to the conviction of Nick Dunne. Director David Fincher incorporates several flashback scenes that display the couple’s chemistry and companionship, which enables the audience to wonder what went wrong in the marriage. Amy Dunne exemplifies a modern housewife stereotype, where their role has evolved away from the physical limitations to the home, but involves the shaping of their personality to satisfy their husband’s interests, limiting conflict and thus leading to a happy marriage. The struggles regarding gender roles in relationships can be identified in many melodramas, however Amy is not just caught in the conflict, but blatantly fights it.

The melodramatic mis en scène during Amy Dunne’s monologue directly confronts this gender conflict with excessive action and speech to break away from the “cool girl” façade. This could be a bit clearer Before her monologue, Amy states that marriage was not hard work, as the audience watches her and Nick...