Emily Giffin and College Elitism

The term “chick lit” is often used deri­sive­ly to refer to a genre of lit­er­a­ture thought to appeal to young women; indeed, the Oxford dic­tio­nary goes so far as to clas­si­fy it as a deroga­to­ry turn of phrase. Typ­i­cal­ly, the chick lit genre revolves around roman­tic rela­tion­ships, such that I like to think of it as the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of the roman­tic com­e­dy. Now, all kinds of peo­ple have all kinds of opin­ions con­cern­ing the idea of chick lit, whether it is sub­stan­tive, or friv­o­lous, or trite. Per­son­al­ly, I would liken it to fast food — not like­ly to be com­plex or ful­fill­ing in the way of a gourmet sit-down meal, but still tasty and enjoy­able in its own right. That said, I do very much enjoy read­ing chick lit; but it must be said that books falling under the chick lit umbrel­la are unde­ni­ably lighter and less com­pli­cat­ed than, say, the heavy lit­er­ary mas­ter­pieces that are John Knowles’s A Sep­a­rate Peace or David Guter­son­’s Snow Falling on Cedars (two of my per­son­al favorites!). And I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly intend that as a crit­i­cism, because it is per­fect­ly fine: I often read chick lit in large part because I want some­thing lighter and less com­plex, or because I want some­thing fun rather than meaningful.

On that note, Emi­ly Gif­fin is one of the most pro­lif­ic and well-known chick lit writ­ers in the indus­try. Her debut book, Some­thing Bor­rowed, was adapt­ed into a movie, and sev­er­al of her oth­er works have been sim­i­lar­ly optioned. I have a num­ber of views on Emi­ly Gif­fin as an author — suf­fice it to say that, as of late, I have found her writ­ing to be per­for­ma­tive, unbe­liev­able, and holi­er-than-thou — but per­haps these par­tic­u­lar thoughts are best left for anoth­er day. The fact remains, though, that I have read all of her books and found each to be enter­tain­ing; and with the excep­tion of her most recent works, her nov­els are dis­arm­ing­ly and sur­pris­ing­ly relat­able, rife with moments of unex­pect­ed depth.

What’s in a Name?

Still, one par­tic­u­lar issue I take with Giffin’s writ­ing is her seem­ing obses­sion with send­ing her pro­tag­o­nists to elite uni­ver­si­ties — Rachel White attend­ed Duke as an under­grad­u­ate and then law school at NYU, while her friend Ethan is a Stan­ford alum­nus^[1]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Some­thing Bor­rowed.; Clau­dia Parr is a Prince­ton grad­u­ate^[2]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Baby Proof., while Tes­sa Rus­so attend­ed Cor­nell; Valerie Ander­son is a grad­u­ate of Har­vard Law School oppo­site Nick Rus­so, who attend­ed Har­vard Med­ical School^[3]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Heart of the Mat­ter.; and Nina Brown­ing went to Van­der­bilt^[4]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. All We Ever Want­ed., to name just a few examples.

I am hard-pressed to believe that the fore­go­ing spread of uni­ver­si­ty atten­dance is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pop­u­la­tion at large — for exam­ple, Stan­ford and Prince­ton, as under­grad­u­ate insti­tu­tions, boast accep­tance rates of only 5.2% and 5.6% respec­tive­ly as of 2020 — and so it seems clear enough to me that Gif­fin does not choose the schools that she does in order to make her char­ac­ters relat­able. I looked into Giffin’s col­lege atten­dance to see if her obses­sion with elite schools per­haps stems from her own per­son­al expe­ri­ence; Gif­fin is a grad­u­ate of Wake For­est Uni­ver­si­ty, and also of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia School of Law, both of which are fan­tas­tic schools — but she cer­tain­ly isn’t send­ing her char­ac­ters to either of them in droves, the way she likes to cart them off to, say, the Ivy League.

Per­haps Giffin’s fix­a­tion on send­ing her char­ac­ters to only the best uni­ver­si­ties would not be so unset­tling, if she left it at that; but in Baby Proof, Gif­fin seems to go out of her way to por­tray pro­tag­o­nist Clau­dia Par­r’s sis­ter, Daphne — an alum­nus of Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty, a per­fect­ly good school, though per­haps not the very first that comes to mind with respect to elite, exclu­sion­ary uni­ver­si­ties — as “sim­ple”^[5]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Baby Proof. and dull. At one point in the book, Clau­dia vis­its Daphne at her home; there, Daphne describes a book that she is read­ing for her book club as “thought-pro­vok­ing”, ^[6]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Baby Proof. prompt­ing the fol­low­ing response from Claudia:

“I glance at Daphne, think­ing that it is quite pos­si­bly the first time Daphne has referred to her thoughts as being pro­voked. My sis­ter is not at all dumb, but she is far from intro­spec­tive.”^[7]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Baby Proof.

On anoth­er occa­sion, Jess — Clau­di­a’s best friend, and a fel­low Prince­ton grad­u­ate, plus an alum­nus of Colum­bia Busi­ness School — flaunts her affair with a mar­ried man in front of Mau­ra — anoth­er of Clau­di­a’s sis­ters, who at the time is strug­gling with her own hus­band’s unre­pen­tant infi­deli­ty. Nat­u­ral­ly, Mau­ra takes Jess’s behav­ior per­son­al­ly and rebukes her in what is a rather poignant piece of dialogue…until Daphne miss­es the point, so fla­grant­ly that it is almost com­i­cal (which I sus­pect Gif­fin intend­ed it to be):

“ ‘I’ll remind you of that some­day,’ Mau­ra says, her voice shak­ing a lit­tle. ‘…I’ll remind you of that after you’ve just had his baby and you have post­par­tum depres­sion and feel fat as a cow and you are pump­ing milk into lit­tle plas­tic con­tain­ers in the mid­dle of the night while he’s run­ning around with some twen­ty-two-year-old named Lisette. I’ll remind you of that.’

‘Wait a sec­ond,’ Daphne says. ‘You did­n’t breast-feed.’ ”^[8]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Baby Proof.

Through­out the rest of Baby Proof, Daphne con­tin­ues to serve as the intel­lec­tu­al butt of Giffin’s jokes, for want of a bet­ter word: at one point, she is the only per­son at a table of Ivy League alum­ni who does not know the mean­ing of the term “eugen­ics”; at still anoth­er, Jess laugh­ing­ly describes Daphne as “bor­ing”^[9]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Baby Proof. — as if you need to attend an elite uni­ver­si­ty to be inter­est­ing or intelligent.

…And Why?

I am at a loss as to why Gif­fin feels the need to have her char­ac­ters attend such pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties. I might under­stand, if not sym­pa­thize, if she had attend­ed such uni­ver­si­ties her­self and was a zeal­ous­ly proud alum­nus; but this seems not to be the case. I don’t mean this as a slight to the schools she attend­ed, or to any school per­haps not at the imme­di­ate fore­front of the ranks of what might be con­sid­ered the coun­try’s hyper-elite aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions — indeed, I am a big pro­po­nent of the pub­lic school sys­tem, as well as of the idea that the uni­ver­si­ty that we attend has very lit­tle (if any­thing) to do with our intel­li­gence or capa­bil­i­ty. To that end, then, I am at an even greater loss as to why Gif­fin feels the need to por­tray char­ac­ters that have not attend­ed pres­ti­gious schools as being one-dimen­sion­al or simple.

Now, it may be worth not­ing that in her more recent works, Gif­fin has appar­ent­ly become more amenable to send­ing her pro­tag­o­nists to slight­ly less exclu­sion­ary schools: Love the One You’re With’s Ellen Gra­ham is a grad­u­ate of Wake For­est Uni­ver­si­ty like Gif­fin her­self^[10]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Love the One You’re With., while Ceci­ly Gard­ner of The Lies that Bind is an alum­nus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin^[11]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. The Lies that Bind. —  and both char­ac­ters are win­some­ly por­trayed as well-round­ed and bright, ambi­tious and mul­ti-faceted. I stress the lat­ter point because, for me per­son­al­ly, the prob­lem was nev­er Giffin’s  pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with elite uni­ver­si­ties; but rather, the unflat­ter­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion she would cre­ate between the alum­ni of such schools and the alum­ni of less con­ven­tion­al­ly pres­ti­gious insti­tu­tions. Per­haps, then, Gif­fin has revised her views about what a per­son­’s alma mat­ter says about their char­ac­ter and intel­li­gence. One can only hope.

Still, I can’t help but con­tin­ue to won­der why, exact­ly, Gif­fin was at one point so fix­at­ed on Ivy-League-tier schools. And on some lev­el, she still is, lend­ing cre­dence to the adage that old habits die hard: while Gif­fin has seem­ing­ly become more open to her pro­tag­o­nists’ attend­ing less exclu­sive schools, many of the char­ac­ters in her most recent releas­es con­tin­ue to be Stan­ford and Har­vard alum­ni.^[12]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. The Lies that Bind.^[13]Gif­fin, Emi­ly. Meant to Be. Maybe she wants to live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through her char­ac­ters, some­thing I cer­tain­ly don’t fault her for — who would­n’t want to attend a school of the likes of Prince­ton or Yale? Or maybe she has some oth­er per­fect­ly innocu­ous moti­va­tion, like want­i­ng to pick schools that she is con­vinced her read­ers will have heard of. And of course, there is always the sober­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that she real­ly is just some­thing of an elit­ist with respect to high­er learn­ing. Like­li­er than not, though, there’s no real rea­son; but I think it remains an issue worth flagging. 

The con­tent of this post con­sti­tutes an expres­sion pure­ly of my per­son­al opin­ion. The var­i­ous facts and quo­ta­tions ref­er­enced in sup­port of it have been cit­ed to their prop­er sources. If you see any errors in any of the fac­tu­al ref­er­ences made, please let me know.