Women and Soap Opera
A Study of Prime Time Soaps
1. Edition December 1990
224 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is the first major study of the roles of women in prime time
soap operas. In a comparative analysis of British and North
American television soaps, Christine Geraghty examines the
relationship between the narratives on the screen and the women
viewers who make up the traditional soap audience.
Within the structure of many of the most popular soaps, such as
Dallas, Dynasty, Coronation Street and EastEnders,
the split between public and personal life, reason and emotion,
work and leisure is turned into a lynchpin of the plot. The author
argues that these themes are also linked to broader social
divisions between men and women, divisions which soap operas both
question and develop as a source of pleasure.
Geraghty analyses the critical role of women characters in the
families and communities of soaps and suggests that the utopian
possibilities of soaps can be used not just to maintain the status
quo, but to promote change and influence attitudes and prejudices.
She examines the way in which soaps have been transformed in the
last decade, looking at how issues of class, race, sexual
orientation and feminism have been handled in the programmes. She
argues that in pursuing new audiences more recent soaps such as
Brookside may have put at risk the pleasures they have
traditionally offered their women viewers.
Women and Soap Opera is a detailed, thoughtful and
wide-ranging analysis which will become a central work in
women's studies and media and cultural studies courses.
Introduction 1
1 Soap Stories 9
2 The Aesthetic Experience 25
3 A Woman's Space 39
4 Family Matters 60
5 The Construction of a Community 84
6 Utopian Possibilities 107
7 Sex, Race and Class: the Pressures for Change 131
8 Women's fiction No More? 167
Conclusion 195
Notes 199
Index 208
accessible account of a decade of feminist media scholarship which
is informed by an exhaustive knowledge of, and pleasure in, the
soaps of the period'. Charlotte Brunsdon, Film Studies,
University of Warwick
'Women and Soap Opera is the most complete, deeply
thought through and far-seeing work yet written on soap operas.
Christine Geraghty's prose is elegant, lucid and accessible without
sacrificing complexity ... finely nuanced and
thought-provoking.'
Maria La Place, University of California
'As one of the pioneers of the study and appreciation of soap
opera, Geraghty writes from a long term-engagement both with the
form and with the individual programmes she discusses.' Screen,
1992
'The book is well-written and researched, summarizing much of
the previous feminist work in the field... suitable for the
general, as well as the academic reader.' American Library
Association
'A useful overview of the literature an soaps and related
women's genres.' Media Information Australia