The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

Not only are women hailed to forget love's failures and pain in order to stay near love (a premise developed in chapter 5), but they are also figured to be "held by the promise of the normal as ideal" (211), regardless of the pain that might be present in relation to love's object, as Berlant argues in chapter 6. [...] literature marketed toward women's culture fosters a sense of belonging, or commonality, among women based on what they feel.