Revenge is a bitch, but then so is Amy Dunne.

In “Gone Girl,” Amy commits murder and fraud, staging an elaborate ruse that paints an alternate reality, all in the name of punishing her cheating husband. Every unimaginable length she goes to perpetuates the same, worn-out stereotype — women are crazy.

This woman, appalled by her husband’s actions and overcome by rage, creates a scheme that includes draining liters of her own blood, mutilating herself with a wine bottle and slamming a hammer in her own face. She inflicts more pain on herself than she could ever inflict on her husband, Nick. But in the fashion of a true sociopath (and bitter ex), Amy sees things in terms of her own anger and self-gain.

When it comes down to it, Amy is just like every cliché-bearing woman scorned — she is defined by a man. Sure, she abandons the image of the titular cool girl — the woman who embodies everything her boyfriend wants her to be — but she is hardly the poster child for women’s rights.

Even though she claims that the version of herself she shared with Nick was false, the version she shares with the audience is a result of Nick. Maybe she is inherently malicious, but it is still Nick’s actions that brought her to this level of spite. The same goes for the men who have supposedly wronged her in the past — their actions, those not to her liking, drove her to acts of human indecency. Her sense of self and main motivation is derived from the man she shares a relationship with. Without Nick or some other male to manipulate, she is nothing.

Amy lives in a parallel universe — she is the fictional product of her parents in their literature series “Amazing Amy,” but she is also a fictional product in and of herself, made real only through the actions and desires of her romantic partner. She is dependent in the truest sense of the word.

In a brutally stereotypical final plot twist, Amy does what crazy, emotionally dependent women have done for decades — she gets pregnant to ensure that her husband will stand by her. And despite the grand deception she has created, and the defamation of Nick has undergone as a direct result of her actions, it works like a charm. Amy ensnares Nick once again. Who is she without him?

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2014 Arts Issue. Email Isabel Jones at [email protected].