Funny women

The disappointment of second place at the Dionysiac festival might have been easier to bear had Sophocles known his Oedipus would eventually give credibility to a slew of neuroses and skew the literary canon forever. Even Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth would be lined up for a session on the couch. But he could never have imagined, while twiddling his stylus, that his version of the tragic hero would become the template for modern man.

Likewise, as she twizzled her olive pick in some uptown bar back in ‘97, Candace Bushnell probably had little idea she was about to unleash a myth just as potent, taxomizing female social relations for the next decade … and counting. You could no longer be the quiet one in a friendship group who wanted a boyfriend; you were Charlotte. You weren’t simply someone who liked their job; you were now Miranda. Even literary heroines were subjected, Elizabeth Bennett became a prototype Carrie; Bertha Mason, another Samantha (but still in the attic).