In 1999, comics writer and critic Gail Simone started a website called Women in Refrigerators to call attention to a troubling trope. In comics (and TV shows, movies, books, and other story media), hundreds of female characters get killed only to add pathos to the main character’s (almost always male) story. In The Refrigerator Monologues, Catherynne M. Valente lets these characters tell their stories from their own perspectives. The stories in this short novella are poignant, fascinating, and profoundly angry. I plan to push this book into the hands of every reader I come across for the next several months. This book is absolutely brilliant.
Valente created a universe that closely mirrors our superhero universes. There are analogs for Aquaman, Batman, the Joker, Harley Quinn, and the X-Men. Part of the fun is figuring out the references. The purpose of this universe is the opposite of those universes, however. In The Refrigerator Monologues, we spend our time in Deadtown, listening to a series of women tell their origin stories, talk about their deaths, and let us know how they feel about being killed off to motivate their boyfriends and husbands to take on the Big Bad in their stories. As Daisy Green says during her story, “It always stings when there’s this whole story going on and you’re really just a B-plot walk-on who only got a look at three pages of the script” (102*)
All of the stories are sharp and interesting, but three stood out to me. Julia Ash (an analog to Jean Gray, I think) has a very confusing story because she’s been retconned so many times by a villain actually named Retcon. Julia is a super-powered mockingbird (mutant), so powerful that even her partners fear her and want to keep her on a leash. She keeps changing her appearance and popping in and out of the afterlife because Retcon keeps rewriting her story. Then there’s Pretty Polly (a Harley Quinn) who is still in love with her Mr. Punch (Joker) even though he killed her. She is a chilling portrait of the disturbing psychology of the love-obsessed female villain who is never allowed to really develop self-awareness.
The character most talked about (rightfully) is Samantha, who becomes a literal woman in the refrigerator at the end of her chapter in her boyfriend’s story. While her boyfriend, Chiaroscuro, messes about with his super pals and fights crime, Samantha pays rent, keeps up the apartment, and tries to have a normal life. But then the plot swoops in and she dies because the Big Bad wanted to hurt her boyfriend. The other monologues in this book capture the range of wronged womanhood in comics, etc., but Samantha’s story really captures the sting Daisy mentioned and the sadness of being a bystander in someone else’s story.
The Refrigerator Monologues was the book I needed to read after Rebellion. In Rebellion, I felt like the women never really got to speak for themselves. In The Refrigerator Monologues, you’re given a front row seat while the characters tell you exactly what they thought and felt. This book turns the trope inside out to ask, “Why can’t the woman ever be the hero in her own story?** Why is the girlfriend always cannon fodder?”
* Quote is from the 2017 kindle edition by Simon & Schuster.
** Yes, I know about Wonder Woman. But how many refrigerated women are there compared to female heroes who have leading roles?
I really want to read this! I heard about it on All The Books and it sounded so interesting.
I’ve been a big fan of Valente’s for years, ever since I fell in love with Deathless. Radiance is just mind-blowing. I love how she can turn a genre inside out and still carry you away with plot.