When Bridget Jones 's Diary was published in 1996, Helen Fielding was praised by masses of readers and reviewers for the authenticity of the narrative voice. However, not everyone was willing to accept the hapless comic heroine as the typical thirty-something single woman of the 1990s, and more demanding critics noted the ways in which Bridget 's character and her story are problematic, particularly from a feminist point of view. Bridget sets goals - to get to work on time, to stop smoking, to lose weight, to read The Famished Road - and proves incapable of accomplishing any of them. Her diary revels hilariously in her insecurities, her mistakes, and her failures even as it qualifies her successes; as a result, critics suggest that the humor of the novel is not consciously created by Bridget but rather is generated at her expense. She is criticized for the characteristics that
When Bridget Jones 's Diary was published in 1996, Helen Fielding was praised by masses of readers and reviewers for the authenticity of the narrative voice. However, not everyone was willing to accept the hapless comic heroine as the typical thirty-something single woman of the 1990s, and more demanding critics noted the ways in which Bridget 's character and her story are problematic, particularly from a feminist point of view. Bridget sets goals - to get to work on time, to stop smoking, to lose weight, to read The Famished Road - and proves incapable of accomplishing any of them. Her diary revels hilariously in her insecurities, her mistakes, and her failures even as it qualifies her successes; as a result, critics suggest that the humor of the novel is not consciously created by Bridget but rather is generated at her expense. She is criticized for the characteristics that ostensibly render her the object of the novel 's humor, especially her failure to remake herself and control her life. However, these criticisms are based
References: The romance element of Possession has made it, too, vulnerable to criticism for its portrayal of women, but Anita Brookner 's Fraud (1993) presents a disheartening alternative