1 “The New Feminine Ideal in Kate Atkinson’s Emotionally Weird.” 13 th International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities. University of British Colombia, Vancouver, Canada, 17-19 June 2015. Like many postmodern novels, Kate Atkinson’s Emotionally Weird is structured as a dialogue with previous novel traditions in addition to many other genres. It stages a confrontation with literary history, especially, with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel, the realist novel, to mark itself off from its predecessors. In this confrontation the individual and by extension gender difference occupies a central place. Based on the assumption that the female ideal is a constitutive feature of the novel genre, this study discusses how Atkinson rewrites the feminine ideal in the realist novel. The analysis of the novel shows that the new female ideal in women’s writing is the woman writer who casts out family relations and biological definitions of identity and produces herself in discursive practises. The feminine ideals of the realist novel, which are defined in socially approved marriages, are being modified within the contemporary epistemology that defines the individual as a discursive product. Emotionally Weird offers the woman writer as the ideal, viable form of female existence. This new feminine ideal cuts the umbilical cord with her biological origins and is weaving literary cords with fellow female writers and readers. Keywords: Women's Writing, Female Characters, Rewritings, Feminine Ideal, Woman Writer The postmodern novel’s use of parody indicates that the inherited narratives have become inadequate and we need new narratives to make sense of the changing world. As Bakhtin says of the function of parody, the parodical writings test belief systems and values, turn the narratives inside out to expose their failure as valid forms of representation in the new world. In these intertextual confrontations, female characters occupy a central place. In many women’s writing, the female characters of the realist novel are being tested, revised and corrected for the contemporary world. Kate Atkinson’s Emotionally Weird, too, is structured as a dialogue with previous literary traditions in addition to many other genres to produce the valid form of the feminine ideal for the postmodern world. The construction of the new feminine ideal takes the form of a quest of identity, crystallized in Euphemia Stuart Murray’s 1 search 1 I will use the short form Effie for the narrator and the long form Euphemia for her mother to avoid confusion.