Reimagining Her Quest: Representations of the Material in Girls' Fantasy Literature
Open Access
- Author:
- Slagle, Colette
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 13, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Scott Smith, Outside Unit & Field Member
Kimberly Powell, Major Field Member
Gail Boldt, Major Field Member
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kimberly Anne Powell, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- children's literature
girlhood studies
fantasy
materiality
feminist
quest
hero - Abstract:
- Feminist scholars have long remarked upon the predominance of male quests and male heroes in fantasy literature, frequently critiquing the prototypical quest structure’s suitability for stories featuring girls or women at their center. While several studies address the “female hero”—typically lumping women’s and girls’ quests together—no study has yet attended to girls’ quests specifically. Similarly, scholarship on child heroes tends not to distinguish between genders, often privileging boy heroes while girls remain an afterthought. Reimagining Her Quest: Representations of the Material in Girls’ Fantasy Literature seeks to fill this gap, contending that a girl’s quest must attend to her age as well as her gender (which also intersect with other axes of difference, such as race, sexuality, class, ethnicity, nationality, dis/ability, etc.) in its construction. Reimagining Her Quest engages with feminist scholarship in children’s literature, fantasy studies, girlhood studies, geography, and new materialism to examine girls’ quests. I consider how representations of the material (e.g. space, place, objects, and the body) are used to imagine alternate constructions of girlhood and, in doing so, create new narratives. Instead of arguing for a universal girl’s quest structure to replace the existing masculine model, this dissertation explores how contemporary authors reimagine quest narratives that speak to girls’ situated experiences. Each chapter attends to a particular element of the prototypical quest narrative—the hero, the return home, the quest object, the storyworld(s), and the materiality of the text itself—to demonstrate how girls’ quests variously critique, rework, and subvert generic conventions. Not only do these fantasy quests better reflect girls’ experiences, they also envision alternate, affirming possibilities for girls that extend beyond their lived realities.