The Privilege of Madness Within Domestic Suspense

February 17, 24, March 3, 10, 17, and 24

The success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) heralded a new era of domestic suspense. Most of the novels that came to define this genre featured white women narrators behaving badly. While this convention invokes the precedent of the pathologization of hysterical women, we must also consider how this convention relies on contemporary white privilege. How do Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear (2026), Alice Feeney’s My Husband’s Wife (2026), and Meagan Church’s The Mad Wife (2025) use unreliable narration to suggest that madness is a privileged state?

About Veronica:

Katherine Murray is an M.F.A. candidate in Emerson College’s Popular Fiction & Publishing program. She earned her B.A. in English and Film and Television Studies at UCLA, then spent three years working in TV development before pursuing her M.A. in Literature and Critical Gender Studies at UC San Diego. She taught at UCSD for five years. Her academic publications focus on domestic violence, sports, and pop culture. She is a Senior Editor at Literary Mama and the Editor-in-Chief of After Midnight Literary Magazine. Follow her on Instagram @katherine.murray.author and Bluesky @katherinemurray.bsky.social.