Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood

Phillips, Leah (2023) Female Heroes in Young Adult Fantasy Fiction: Reframing Myths of Adolescent Girlhood. Library of Gender and Popular Culture . Bloomsbury, Great Britain. ISBN 978-1-3501-1933-8

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Abstract

Female Heroes considers how the female-heroes of mythopoeic YA are reframing what it means to be an adolescent girl. To name a few of these heroes (and the ones I focus on), I offer Alanna the Lioness, a cross-dressing female-hero emerging from Tamora Pierce’s Tortall Universe. This universe, or imaginary world, has been a part of our consensus reality since the early 1980s, when it kick-started mythopoeic YA, as I discuss in Chapter 2. I also submit Cinder, a cybernetic Cinderella, and Iko, her android friend. These female-heroes emerge from Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles (2012–2015). This futuristic imaginary world and its female-heroes illustrate mythopoeic YA’s generic flexibility and inclusivity – which are also integral to how female�heroes reframe adolescent girlhood. Finally, I name Daine the Wildmage, a shape-shifting demigoddess who, like Alanna, is from Pierce’s Tortall. Daine’s story takes place after Alanna’s, according to their world’s timeline and ours, although book order does not dictate reading or listening order, a significant intervention in linear, teleological storylines. In distinct yet not unrelated ways, these female-heroes are pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a hero, girl and even human. They do so by including the body – fleshy, material, prone to change and capable of producing new bodies – within what it means to be a hero. This inclusion makes it possible for them to disrupt and dismantle one of Western Culture’s most dominant and enduring narratives: the heroic romance, a form of quest myth permeating every layer of Western belief and culture.

Item Type:	Book
Depositing User:	Ms Raisa Burton
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2024 13:47
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2024 13:47
URI:	https://marjon.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/17846

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