Miranda priestly leadership scholarly articles

School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Miranda Priestly, the remarkable antagonist in Lauren Weisberger’s best-seller The Devil Wears Prada, has been widely considered to be a typical tyrannical female leader since the novel was published. Her forceful image and her impolite language features have attracted researcher’s attention, but the puzzle remains of why Miranda is a fashionable devil of great charm. To figure it out, this paper investigated the characterization of Miranda by exploring the explicit and implicit aspects of the novel’s characterization as well as the multiple faces of Miranda Priestly. It was found that Lauren mainly used the protagonist Andrea’s description, dialogues between Andrea and other characters, Miranda’s remarks and behaviour to create the character, Miranda. She is a multifaceted person and her complexity made her a realistic round character. She has become a representative sample of a bossy female leader owing to her perfectionism, unreasonableness, arrogance and self-centredness. However, Miranda is still a lovable character for the following reasons: First, the things she does are contradictory and ironic. Second, her perfectionism made people work at Runway in a comical way. Lastly, Miranda’s great talent as a fashion magazine editor, her marvellous achievements as well as her perfectionism can compensate for the suffering she has caused. The findings are believed to make a positive contribution to practical knowledge of building a bossy female leader character.

Miranda Priestly, The Devil Wears Prada, characterization

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, August 2021, Vol. 11, No. 8, 554-569

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