In a sharp and witty new cartoon for The Guardian, celebrated illustrator and cartoonist Tom Gauld has turned his incisive humour towards the world of gendered marketing in publishing.
The single-panel cartoon, titled 'Classic Novels Reworked for Men', presents a fictional bookshop display that reimagines beloved literary masterpieces through a stereotypically masculine lens. Gauld's creation features absurd yet telling retitles designed to appeal to a perceived male demographic.
Gauld's Satirical Masterstrokes
The cartoon showcases hilarious reworkings of famous novels. Jane Austen's nuanced Pride and Prejudice becomes the action-packed Pride and Prejudice: Zombie Squad, while Emily Brontë's haunting Wuthering Heights is transformed into the utilitarian Wuthering Heights: A DIY Guide to Drystone Walling.
Other brilliant satirical retitles include:
- Moby Dick: The White Van – reimagining Melville's epic as a tale of a missing vehicle.
- Middlemarch: The Championship Years – turning George Eliot's complex study of provincial life into a sports memoir.
- Great Expectations: A Property Developer's Guide – reducing Dickens' social commentary to a real estate manual.
A Commentary on Gendered Marketing
Gauld's work cleverly lampoons the publishing industry's occasional tendency to repackage content with gendered covers and themes to target specific audiences. The cartoon highlights the often-reductive nature of such marketing strategies, particularly when applied to complex literary works that have traditionally appealed to all readers regardless of gender.
The piece continues Tom Gauld's reputation for delivering smart, literary-minded comedy that resonates with bibliophiles and casual readers alike. His regular cartoons for The Guardian have become a beloved feature for their intelligent humour and sharp observations about the literary world.
This latest offering proves that Gauld remains at the top of his game, using his distinctive minimalist style and dry wit to comment on contemporary cultural trends in a way that is both immediately funny and thoughtfully provocative.
