Fantasy and Feminism an Intersectional Approach to Modern
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Bolton Institutional Repository (UBIR) University of Bolton PhD in Arts, Social Sciences and Education Fantasy and Feminism An Intersectional Approach to Modern Children’s Fantasy Fiction by Miriam Laufey Hirst May 2018 Contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 3 Chapter 1: Literature Review 14 Chapter 2: Heroes and Heroines 39 Chapter 3: Beauty 83 Chapter 4: Magic and Empowerment 124 Chapter 5: Outside the Gender Binary 166 Conclusion 196 Bibliography 207 Abstract This thesis compares modern children’s fantasy literature with older texts, particularly Grimms’ fairy tales. The focus is on tropes from fairy tales and myths that devalue women and femininity. In looking at these tropes, this thesis examines how they are used in modern fiction; whether they are subverted to show a more empowering vision of femininity or simply replicated in a more modern guise. Whereas other approaches in this area have addressed the representation of gender in an isolated fashion, this study adopts an intersectional approach, examining the way that different axes of oppression work together to maintain the patriarchal hegemony of powerful, white, heterosexual men. As intersectional theory has pointed out, mainstream feminism has tended to focus only on the needs and rights of more privileged women, who are themselves complicit in the oppression of their more marginalised “sisters”. Intersectional feminism, in contrast, seeks to dismantle the entire system of interlinked oppressions, rather than allowing some women to benefit from it to the detriment of others. The intersectional issues around feminism that this thesis addresses include race, disability, class, and sexuality. There is also an emphasis on female solidarity, which is championed as an effective strategy to weaken the hold of patriarchy and subvert it in its aim to “divide and conquer”. It is this intersectional approach to children’s fantasy literature that is seen as the thesis’s main contribution to knowledge. The primary texts under examination are mainly from the United Kingdom, but also include works from the United States, Australia, and Germany. All of them were originally published between 1980 and 2013. The thesis explores heroism, beauty, magic, and gender performance in these works, showing how such themes can be dealt with in ways that are either reactionary and detrimental or progressive and empowering. 1 Acknowledgements I would like thank my supervisors, David Rudd and Jill Marsden, who helped me turn a few vague ideas into a coherent thesis and were very patient with me. I would also like to thank Lindsay Walker for lending me her copies of the “Old Kingdom” series and constantly providing me with book recommendations. The blog “Writing With Color” has also been immensely helpful for finding resources and correct terminology. Thank you to Lísa Hlín Óskarsdóttir and Sæborg Ninja Guðmundsdóttir for reading some of my drafts that I was struggling with. Thank you also to Griffin Allen and Harry Kim for coming over to see me when I really needed help. My most heartfelt thanks go to Lee Hirst, who has patiently supported me these past few years, both financially and emotionally, and never seemed to get tired of the question “Does this line make sense?” You are the best thing in my life! 2 Introduction ...there can be no such thing as “power feminism” if the vision of power evoked is gained through the exploitation and oppression of others. (hooks, 2015, p. 6) I wanted to write a thesis about feminism, because being a feminist has been important to me ever since I realised how much my life has been impacted by sexism. My feminist education began at the time when social media was starting to become all-pervasive, so I learned about feminism mostly from the internet. It was not until I was undertaking research for this thesis that I read some of the classic theoretical feminist texts. While I learned a lot from them, I also often felt excluded from some aspects of feminism put forth in them. For example, many feminists claim that working outside the home is empowering for women, whereas housework and child-rearing are oppressive (Friedan, 1963, p. 15). As a working-class person who is also disabled, I see work outside the home as difficult and frequently unpleasant labour that is necessary for survival within a capitalist system, rather than as being voluntary and empowering. Some feminists also argue that it is demeaning for women to be treated as though they are disabled (May and Ferri, 2005, p. 120). The implication is that people who are actually disabled – such as myself – deserve to be condescended to and demeaned. This attitude is particularly troubling for disabled women. Additionally, assertions that reproductive rights only affect women exclude transgender people like myself, as I have a womb but do not identify as a woman, despite being treated like one by society. It is evident from these examples that some mainstream feminists only focus on the challenges of the most privileged women. While they claim to speak on behalf of all womankind, they actually exclude most of the women in the world. This exclusionary version of feminism has often been opposed by black feminists, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks, who recognise that white women are complicit in the oppression of women of colour. They recognise many different types of power imbalances, and the way they intersect. As hooks writes: The idea of “common oppression” was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women’s varied and complex social reality. Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a 3 host of other prejudices. Sustained women bonding can occur only when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to eliminate them. (1984, p. 44) The feminist forums I frequent on the internet are, therefore, usually based on principles of intersectionality. This means that they provide a space for women (as well as other genders) of all races, sexualities, and social classes to discuss how different types of discrimination and oppression work together to mark their experiences as members of minority groups. Intersectional feminism is the only type of feminism that seems to include me and most of my friends, so it is this version of feminism that will be the focus of this thesis. I also wanted to write about fairy tales, because I have always enjoyed them, even after realising how sexist and racist many of them are. As a child, I was not only familiar with the Disney films and other cartoons, but also with the uncensored first editions of the Grimms’ versions of many of the stories. The tales often raised questions for me that I found no satisfactory answers to. For instance, when I asked my parents why Rumpelstiltskin wanted the Queen’s baby, their reply, that he wanted to eat it, did not seem logical to me. But this illogicality was also part of the tales’ appeal to me. I saw the stories as open frameworks whose details I could fill in, using my imagination. Though I probably did not realise it at that age, the open weave of these tales is what has always given them their strength and appeal, especially in the oral tradition, before they were collected and written down by people like Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Thus, each new version of a tale reflects the social standards of the time and place at which the retelling takes place. According to folklorist Vladimir Propp, a “work of folklore exists in constant flux” (1999, p. 381). As he elaborates, anyone listening to folklore is a potential future performer, who, in turn, consciously or unconsciously, will introduce changes into the work. These changes are not made accidentally but in accordance with certain laws. Everything that is out-of-date and incongruous with new attitudes, tastes, and ideology will be discarded. (pp. 380- 381) As an example of how storytellers adapt fairy tales to fit their listeners’ sensibilities, modern retellings of the Grimms’ tales often gloss over the sex and violence that can be found in the first edition, as later editions were more 4 specifically aimed at children. However, although some details in the stories have changed over time in response to a changing society, others have remained the same, continuing to represent the society in which they originated. An example of this can be seen in “Cinderella”. One of the earliest versions of this tale is a ninth-century Chinese story about a girl named Ye Xian (Warner, 1994a, p. 202; Tatar, 1999, pp. 107-108; Anderson, 2000, p. 27). Like Cinderella, Ye Xian is identified by the prince through her lost slipper, which fits no other woman in the kingdom. In ancient China small feet were considered attractive in a woman (Hong, 1997, pp. 45-46), so having the smallest feet in the land marked Ye Xian as the “fairest of them all”. Even though modern Western society places less importance on the size of women’s feet, Cinderella’s tiny slipper is retained in contemporary European versions of the tale. The Grimms’ version even has the stepsisters mutilate their own feet in an attempt to fit this orthodoxy of beauty. Similarly, while Rumpelstiltskin’s obsession with the Queen’s baby made little sense to me as I was growing up in the 1990s, to medieval and early modern listeners of the tale, who were familiar with the folklore surrounding child- snatching fairies, it probably would have seemed perfectly natural and in accordance with their worldview.