Representing Female Clumsiness: The Figure of Susan in ABC’s Desperate Housewives

The author analyses the clumsy character of Susan Mayer, an illustrator of children’s books, from the American TV series Desperate Housewives (2004-present), produced by ABC. More precisely, the author examines Susan’s conversational style and interactional behaviour towards the plumber Mike Delfino and the estate agent Edie Britt in a scene from the pilot show (2004). Through the linguistic theoretical frameworks of conversation analysis, pragmatics and stylistics, and through feminist television studies, the author tries to demonstrate that this scene describes her as a stereotypical female protagonist — the powerless woman in need of advice and guidance. This feature may be effective from a narrative and comical standpoint, but linguistic scrutiny shows that it has negative and clichéd connotations and, most importantly, is far from being an instance of an unbiased representation of a female figure.