Choose your mirror: the adolescent heroine in five fantasies by women authors

Abstract

This thesis discusses five novels by women authors. All have adolescent females as central characters, and contain a non-real experience or occurrence. I suggest that these novels are examples of a hitherto critically unremarked genre. The novels discussed are Kate Crackernuts (K.M. Briggs, 1963, 1979); The Changeover (Margaret Mahy, 1984); Melusine (Lynne Reid Banks, 1988); Freaky Friday (Mary Rodgers, 1972) and Elephant Rock (Caroline Macdonald, 1983). My first essay (Chapter Two) deals with the earliest of the group, Kate Crackernuts, a re-telling of a folktale. I show that the novel fails to create a consistent and convincing heroine, because, despite the fact that the heroine's relationship to the non-real clearly displays resistance to patriarchal values, the effect of those values on female characters is ultimately suppressed. In Chapter Three I discuss The Changeover and Melusine, focusing on a crucial image common to the novels. Both heroines achieve autonomy when, watched by a suitor, they dive into water. In both instances water is associated with entry into the non-real and with a disturbance of the norms of social order. I show that The Changeover and Melusine, through their use of the non-real, disturb traditional patriarchal values represented by the invasive gaze of the suitor. The novels discussed in Chapter Four, Freaky Friday and Elephant Rock, address the mother/daughter relationship. The non-real element in these two stories is associated with an attempt by the heroine's mother to pass on to her daughter adult female knowledge about relationships with men. I show that both the success of this mother/daughter dialogue, and the consistency of characterisation of the heroine, depend on the degree of authorial acknowledgment of the effects of patriarchal values on both mother and daughter. The discussions of all five novels are informed by the argument that literary fantasy is an expression of dissatisfaction with social structures, and that these texts are examples of 'feminist' resistance to male-oriented social structures. I show that all five novels contain markers of resistance to, and anxiety about, the effect of patriarchal values on the ability of female characters to act independently. These markers take the form of narrative gaps and non-real occurrences or 'powers.' In each novel the markers can be traced to a crisis that is associated firstly with a question of social order, and secondly with female sexual maturity and the gender role expectations that accompany sexual maturity. In Kate Crackernuts and Freaky Friday the point of actual confrontation with the forces of social order is never reached and the social implications of female sexual maturity are constantly evaded. The Changeover, Melusine, and Elephant Rock, by contrast, confront the effects of traditional gender role expectations on feminine identity, thus allowing disturbance of the prescribed social order. These three novels maintain a consistency of logic and of characterisation that is precluded in Kate Crackernuts and Freaky Friday by evasions and narrative gaps.