Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw: The Female Quest for Identity

This book draws upon the social roles of women reflected in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones series (1996-2013) and Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City (2001), and serves as an opportunity to present the female characters in both novels as modern feminist icons. The first chapter of the book focuses on critical feminist theory and examines the concepts of social role, sex and gender, as well as complementing the commentary of Simone de Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, Judith Butler and Betty Friedan. Further discussion within the subject of women’s studies in chapter two delineates women's roles in the family, as reflected by the female characters in Fielding’s and Bushnell’s novels. The third chapter aims to investigate the process of female characters adjusting to the working environment and the way feminism is entangled within the characters’ performance in the labour market. The final chapter touches upon the subject of love and romantic entanglements experienced by Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw with a distinctive reference to feminism and the characters' quest for identity.