Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Imagining Being an American Book

Harlequins, Gothic novels and soap operas are looked as women's means of coping and eventually fulfilling social expectations. The harlequins are tools to transform the young woman anxiety generated by a meeting with the man, the taking in of the blatant aversion of the man and its transformation into something else, that allows the continuity of current social structures. The Gothic novel, claims the author, allows the woman to face the unknown of her own marriage, and all her fears that the husband might indeed be her enemy. That and the distancing from the mother figure, serving to reassure the heroin that she will not face the same fate as the previous generation of women. The soap opera is - according to the present book - a fluid type of storytelling reinforcing the role of the woman in the family, as pillar. The infinite story lines of the soap opera preserve the unbeknownst character of the lived time.
The author's attitude to all these types of mass literature is almost reverent. She shows in the introduction some of the critics that were raised against this type of oeuvre, but dismisses them as not perceiving the importance of the pieces. If one desires to study how and why women comply with the petty roles assigned by society, this is the book. My question is why should one pretend that coping is desirable?