Law and emotions in The Split

Abstract

The representation of female lawyers in film and television has long been indicative of wider issues of patriarchal crisis. Seminal works by Cynthia Lucia (Framing Female Lawyers, 2005) and Orit Kamir (Framed: Women in Law and Film, 2005) have alerted us to the ambivalent representations of female lawyers as personifications of progress, embodiments of social justice and epithets of powerful career women. Women lawyers, Lucia contends, regularly end up on trial themselves for violating norms of femininity and rebelling against patriarchal authority. This paper analyses the representation of female lawyers in the BBC drama The Split (2018–2022) and suggests a more positive reading of female ambivalence. The paper is informed by law and visual culture theory, professional identity theory and community of coping theory to shed light on the emotional complexities, tensions and conflicts that divorce lawyers manage daily.