ABSTRACT
An Unmarried Woman is one of a number of 1970s Hollywood films which could be read to address and construct, however obliquely, changing conceptions of the appropriate modes of femininity in contemporary western culture. Films such as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974), Three Women (Robert Altman, 1977), Looking for Mr Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977), The Turning Point (Herbert Ross, 1978), Julia (Fred Zinneman, 1978), Girlfriends (Claudia Weill, 1978), Old Boyfriends (Joan Tewkesbury, 1979) can be loosely grouped together through their use of central female protagonists.1 In the main, they can be seen as aimed at a specifically female audience, in a period where there has been increasing differentiation of target audiences.2
