The Depiction of Class in Gilmore Girls: The Emancipated Version of a Slumming Drama

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Leipzig (Amerikanistik), course: Fictions of Class, language: English, abstract: This paper aims to analyse how and why the TV show Gilmore Girls has contributed to a new development in cross-class fiction. To answer this question satisfactorily, the concepts of the slumming drama (Gandal 2007: 12) as well as ‘new womanhood’ and ‘middle class’ will be explained precisely and applied to the series. In order to give the reader an idea about the show’s content and to enable an easier comprehension of the analysis, the paper will start with a short introduction to the major story-lines.