ABSTRACT
The success of these early texts, especially Bridget ]ones's Diary, revealed a market for stories about-and for-young, single women grappling with modern life and relationships. A whole host of Bridget imitators and successors emerged in the next years, including Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic (2001 ), a particularly blatant-and arguably less charming and substantial-product of the Bridget formula. Chick lit soon became so popular that whole publishing lines were devoted to the genre. In 2001, Harlequin launched Red Dress Ink, an imprint focused mainly (at least in the beginning) on the adventures of single, urban twenty-and early
194 • A. Rochelle Mabry
Like their forebears, chick lit and chick movies usually focus on a female main character and use a variety of strategies to make her desires and motivations the focus of the story. Bridget Jones and many of the chick novels produced by publishing imprints like Red Dress Ink are written in first person, in the heroine's voice, conveying the notion that these novels, although fictional, are authentic, in-depth accounts of women's experiences. This move toward first-person narration is an especially significant
196 • A. Rochelle Mabry
The novel version of Bridget ]ones puts this first-person voice into diary form. The style and structure of the novel further reinforce the notion of intimate, personal women's writing. Although some passages read like any other traditional works of fiction (they are first-person, past-tense accounts of events that have already occurred), many sections are written in an immediate, abbreviated style that makes it seem as if Bridget writes about her experiences as they happen. This style runs throughout the "diary entries," including the one in which Bridget begins a relationship with her boss, Daniel Cleaver.
