In this chapter, Ahmed establishes her central figure, the feminist killjoy, by tracing how ideals of female happiness have been used to sustain gendered expectations across different historical contexts. Her discussion of the “happy housewife” connects the mid-20th-century American ideal to an older history in which women’s happiness is tied to fulfilling prescribed roles. Her analysis begins with second-wave feminist writer Betty Friedan’s critique of the “happy housewife” and then turns to Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 18th-century educational treatise Émile, where the character Sophy is educated to secure the happiness of men. This move allows Ahmed to develop the concept of “conditional happiness,” in which a person’s happiness becomes conditional on contributing to the happiness of others. Conditional happiness begins to develop The Exclusionary Nature of the Good Life by showing how socially approved forms of happiness can assign unequal roles to those expected to sustain them. Rousseau’s account therefore helps Ahmed show that the association between female happiness, duty, and service predates the 20th-century image of the happy housewife and has a longer ideological history. This historical argument also challenges Lesley Johnson and Justine Lloyd’s claim that the unhappy housewife was merely a “myth of a myth” created by feminists (53), showing that feminist critiques of domestic happiness responded to established cultural scripts about what should make women happy.

Ahmed develops the figure of the killjoy by analyzing literary figures who depart from prescribed paths of female happiness. She uses George Eliot’s protagonist Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss to develop the figure of the “female troublemaker,” showing how a girl can become troublesome when her desires exceed the possibilities considered appropriate for her. Maggie’s story illustrates how qualities like imagination, persistence, and intellectual curiosity bring her into conflict with expectations of female duty and happiness. Her unhappiness allows Ahmed to examine the restrictions placed on what women are permitted to desire and the consequences of departing from those expectations. Maggie’s struggle therefore develops Ahmed’s earlier argument about happiness scripts: Following an approved path can require women to limit their possibilities and subordinate their own desires to the happiness expected of them. Ahmed’s reading of Maggie shows how resistance to these restrictions can itself be interpreted as troublesome, particularly when a woman refuses the path already designated as a source of happiness. The troublemaker, and by extension the killjoy, can then be blamed for disturbing happiness when her refusal draws attention to the restrictions on which that happiness depends.

Ahmed develops the killjoy figure further by examining how race shapes who is perceived as the source of bad feeling. Ahmed connects the feminist killjoy to the racialized stereotype of the “angry Black woman” (67), drawing on the work of Black feminist writers bell hooks and Audre Lorde, whose work examines how racism and sexism shape women’s experiences differently. Ahmed shows that racialized expectations can position a woman of color as an affect alien within predominantly white spaces, where her presence or expression of anger may be experienced as disturbing an assumed atmosphere of solidarity. The discomfort generated in such encounters can then become attached to the woman who exposes racial difference, allowing racism within the space to remain unexamined. Ahmed’s discussion of the “angry Black woman” stereotype further shows how anger at racism can be interpreted as a characteristic of the person expressing it (67), making her appear responsible for the tension surrounding her. This extends the logic of the feminist killjoy: The person who draws attention to an existing source of unhappiness can herself be treated as its cause. Within feminist spaces, this dynamic exposes the limits of a shared happiness based on an assumption of common womanhood that does not account for racial differences and inequalities.

Ahmed develops feminist consciousness as an awareness of how socially prescribed happiness can conceal the conditions that produce unhappiness. The process of “consciousness-raising” can therefore involve recognizing how restrictions and inequalities shape experiences of happiness and unhappiness. This consciousness takes different forms depending on the histories and social positions through which unhappiness is experienced. Ahmed’s reading of Clarissa Dalloway, the protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, connects feminist consciousness to an awareness of possibilities restricted by gender. Her readings of Black feminist narratives, including Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon, show how histories of racism, displacement, and separation can make the recovery of family and genealogy politically significant. These differences prevent feminist consciousness from being reduced to a single account of what liberation or happiness should entail. Through this development, Unhappiness as Political Resistance becomes more clearly defined: Unhappiness can register an awareness of, or refusal to overlook, the inequalities and restrictions concealed by socially approved forms of happiness. Citing radical feminist writer Shulamith Firestone’s call for a “smile boycott” (69), Ahmed examines the political possibilities of refusing the expectation to display happiness when such a display would require overlooking injustice. The chapter ultimately locates the possibility of solidarity in recognizing how unhappiness can be socially structured, allowing differently positioned “affect aliens” to find points of connection without assuming that their experiences are the same.