Unlikeable Female Characters: Flawed Female Characters and the Power They Hold

by Anna Bogutskaya

The film and the reactions to it, both positive and negative, were quick to demonize Alex Forrest.

But there were two people making decisions at that lunch, and only one of them was married. The cultural reaction to Fatal Attraction tells us so much about how people still love to hate and fear the Crazy Woman.

Feminist writer Susan Faludi, in her groundbreaking book of essays Backlash, condemns the film as widely misogynistic and emblematic of a particular misogyny of the 1980s, one that condemned the single, career-minded, modern woman who had erupted after the third wave of feminism with the best, most wide-ranging tool available: the movies. The ending of Fatal Attraction, the pointed choice of having Beth kill Alex in her home, was decried by Faludi: “It’s a nightmare from which he [Dan] wakes up sobered, but unscathed. In the end, the attraction is fatal only for the single woman.”

Audiences loved to hate Alex and used her as a cultural scapegoat for the dangers of singledom, independence, and careerist or sexually emancipated women—but, much like Glenn Close, I love Alex Forrest. The film portrays her downfall into obsession in a slick, compelling way, the layers of coolness and success that she’s wrapped in at the start being broken down one by one.

The Crazy Woman is a woman obsessed. The object of her obsession is often romantic, but not always. Even with Alex Forrest, you could argue that she’s obsessed with an ideal that has been sold to her, an ideal that Dan inhabits and doesn’t appreciate: the wholesome family life, big house, cute kid, pet bunny. She’s also been sold the ideal of modern womanhood, the smart, independent, sexy woman’s life she inhabits—but which is also turned against her. How is she supposed to win?