Olivia Petter: Debut novel is about the female experience — please don’t reduce it to a ‘sad girl’ cliché

Think of any “sad girl” in a film. You know the one: she wears baggy jeans and band T-shirts, slams doors and sits alone in canteens. And she’s almost always reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, a semi-autobiographical text that has become the ultimate signifier that a female character is either troubled, tragic or tormented.

Gold Rush is now out. She explains why she won’t be applying literature’s most annoying trope to her work, even if others might try to Olivia Petter Think of any “sad girl” in a film. You know the one: she wears baggy jeans and band T-shirts, slams doors and sits alone in canteens.

And she’s almost always reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath , a semi-autobiographical text that has become the ultimate signifier that a female character is either troubled, tragic or tormented. There’s 10 Things I Hate About You , in which Julia Stiles’ sardonic character, Kat, pores over Plath’s pages, and cult Eighties comedy, Heathers, when Heather Chandler is found dead with a copy beside her. It’s even referenced in Family Guy and The Simpsons, with Lisa Simpson reading it.

And it’s in Netflix’s Sex Education, courtesy of the moody Maeve Wiley..