Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison . Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995.
Shepard thus constructs a world where girls are forced to become forensic detectives of their own lives. No adult can solve the mystery of Alison’s murder or the identity of “A” because adults are either the source of the secrets (e.g., Spencer’s father’s affair) or willfully blind. The novel posits that adolescent secrecy is a rational response to a caregiving vacuum. The Liars do not lie because they are pathological; they lie because telling the truth would dismantle the fragile architecture their families have built. pretty little liars book 2
The Architecture of Deception: Identity, Guilt, and the Panoptic Gaze in Sara Shepard’s Flawless Foucault, Michel
Gill, Rosalind. “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies , vol. 10, no. 2, 2007, pp. 147–166. (Applied to analysis of Hanna’s body commodification) Shepard thus constructs a world where girls are