“Wanted Dead or Alive”: The Female Outlaw and Callie Khouri’s Thelma and Louise

This essay analyzes Callie Khouri’s Thelma and Louise, drawing comparisons to the outlaw Belle Starr who had violated acceptable codes of behavior for late nineteenth-century American women. Employing the analysis of the "Bandit Queen” persona, Paige discusses which components of the outlaw figure are manipulated and which remain intact as the outlaw is made feminine and rejects not only conventional law but also the patriarchal conventions of womanhood, conventions established in the world these outlaws inhabit.