Unhinged Women In Fiction And Why Women Just Can’t Get Enough Of Them

There’s a moment in Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts when the protagonist looks at herself in the mirror and says, “You’re a fucking mess.” That line hit me harder than I could have imagined. It felt like the writer had some secret access to my thoughts, and my inner monologue had finally made it to print. I’ve said those words to myself more times than I’d like to admit on a public forum, and I’m quite sure I’m not alone.

It’s no surprise that Eliza Clark’s debut novel made waves as soon as it hit the shelves. Boy Parts traces the life of Irina, an artist who is both magnetic and monstrous. The book is disturbing, witty, and utterly unflinching in its portrayal of what might just be literature’s most unlikeable woman written to date.

The Women Who Stopped Behaving

During the pandemic, I came across another book, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It’s one of those books that you recommend to friends and then immediately wish you hadn’t because it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea.  But Moshfegh’s story, too, has since ascended to cult status. A cornerstone of what readers now call unhinged female literature.

When I fell down the rabbit hole of Reddit discussions and BookTok threads, I realised something simple but profound: women are tired of performing. Tired of curating the versions of themselves that best fit societal expectations. Tired of following ten-step skincare routines, fitting into the moulds of the ‘boss woman’, ‘perfect mother’ and everything else that is seemingly impossible for one person to humanly achieve. 

Build a career, be successful, nurture your family, get a hobby, workout, meditate, journal, and look perfect while doing all of this. But whatever you do, just don’t fall apart. Because no one wants to see a woman unravel.

And yet, we have these characters in the pages of these books who are unfiltered, impulsive, erratic, yet completely alive in the glory of their flaws. It’s almost like they are giving a finger to the need to be performative. And perhaps that’s why more and more women seem to find comfort in these utterly messy characters. 

The Rise of the Unhinged Women Trope

The growing popularity of these so-called ‘unhinged’ heroines is hard to miss. Bookstores now have curated sections dedicated to them. Critics have tried to label the phenomenon; some call it Femgore, while others refer to it as the Unhinged Women trope. But whatever the name, one thing is certain: contemporary literature by women, about problematic women, is having a moment. Yellowface by R.F. Kuang debuted at #1 on the Sunday Times list. Bunny by Mona Awad was named one of the best books of 2019. My Year of Rest and Relaxation only grew more beloved with time.

Together, these novels, My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh, Bunny by Mona Awad, Boy Parts and She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark, A Certain Hunger byChelsea G Summers, Animal by Lisa Taddeo, Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, and many others, have become go-to texts of the unhinged-girl canon. They’re the books women pick from book stores, excited to celebrate heroines who are feral, funny, vindictive, and breathtakingly real.

Before the Unhinged Women

But before today’s cult favourites, there was the original Madwoman in the Attic, the epitome of female rage locked away so the world wouldn’t have to witness her refusal to behave. Bertha Mason, the mad wife in the attic from Jane Eyre, is one of literature’s most haunting figures. She is the shadow self of Victorian womanhood, who didn’t get a voice till many years later in Jean Rhys’ work, Wide Sargasso Sea. While some critics have read Bertha Mason as Charlotte Brontë’s own repressed anger, others interpret her as Jane’s alter ego: the untamed, raw, impulsive self that the writer refuses to acknowledge in her work and also perhaps herself. She is everything Jane cannot be as the quintessential Victorian beloved heroine – wild, disobedient, defiant and for that, she has to be hidden and demonised for the world. While Bertha’s flames consume Thornfield, quite literally, in a way, they also consume the ideal of the “good woman” trope.

A Certain Hunger

Just like rage, hunger becomes another theme of female rebellion in books. A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers and Butter by Asako Yuzuki explore the politics of women’s hunger, not just for food but for pleasure, for autonomy, for experience. Their protagonists consume in ways that challenge how women are conditioned to embrace starvation as a way to keep themselves thin. The heroines of these books are a far cry from the perfect size 0 waif-like pop culture figures who have compelled entire generations of women to develop chronic body dysmorphia and eating disorders. 

In A Certain Hunger, desire takes the shape of devouring, with descriptive scenes of the protagonist’s hunger. Dorothy Daniels doesn’t just hunger for food; she hungers for sex, power, and control, expressing it through fetishes and the kind of erotic agency that’s rarely granted to women without punishment. Even when sexual agency or fetish is explored in movies like Babygirl, helmed by Hollywood royalty Nicole Kidman, it comes across as a whimper, not a statement. In contrast, a book like Butter dares to go to uncharted territories of sensuality, the act of eating as rebellion, and the female body as something to be indulged rather than disciplined. All very uncomfortable conversations that are broached with deep sensitivity that is only possible when a woman is writing about a woman.

And then there’s Lisa Taddeo’s Animal, possibly the most shocking and difficult read in this entire list. Like the much-debated Bollywood movie of the same name, ironically enough, this book too has a deeply flawed female protagonist who is angry and hideous but also deeply vulnerable because of the experiences that shape her. This book is raw and, at times, unbearable as a read, but space for such flawed women can only exist within the pages of a book. I can’t help but wonder if she’d be equally celebrated like the flawed male character in the movie of the same name. Highly unlikely. 

The Freedom of Coming Undone

In many ways, these new heroines are the spiritual descendants of the madwoman, but this time, they’re telling their own stories. They are not locked away or defined by a man’s perspective. While they all have a backstory, it doesn’t become a crutch for them to redeem or explain themselves. And that in itself feels like a quiet revolution. These books don’t ask us to admire these female protagonists; they’re not made to be role models. They are deeply flawed, with zero moral compass, sometimes shaped by past traumas or simply wired in ways that defy reason. But that’s exactly what makes them irresistible. For many women readers, they offer a strange kind of relief, almost an escape into characters who mirror their own desires, their pettiness, their hunger, their simmering rage, and their exhaustion of being performative. These books serve as a reminder that sometimes a woman coming undone isn’t so ugly after all. It’s actually the most honest thing she’ll ever do in her lifetime.