Dystopian Cinderellas: "I Follow Him Into the Dark"
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Central Washington University ScholarWorks@CWU All Master's Theses Master's Theses Spring 2015 Dystopian Cinderellas: "I Follow Him into the Dark" Courtney Lear Central Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, and the Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Lear, Courtney, "Dystopian Cinderellas: "I Follow Him into the Dark"" (2015). All Master's Theses. 147. https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/147 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses at ScholarWorks@CWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@CWU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Central Washington University ScholarWorks@CWU Electronic Thesis Depository Student Scholarship and Creative Works Spring 2015 Dystopian Cinderellas: "I Follow Him into the Dark" Courtney Lear Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, and the Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship and Creative Works at ScholarWorks@CWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis Depository by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@CWU. DYSTOPIAN CINDERELLAS: “I FOLLOW HIM INTO THE DARK” __________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty of Central Washington University ___________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts English (Literature) ___________________________________ by Courtney Rae Lear June 2015 i ABSTRACT DYSTOPIAN CINDERELLAS: “I FOLLOW HIM INTO THE DARK” by Courtney Rae Lear June 2015 Research indicates that adolescents use fiction as a template for mitigating problems in their own lives based on the ways that fictional characters handle conflict. Dystopic narratives extrapolate on the potential sociopolitical consequences of contemporary social issues that adolescents face. In recent years, authors of young adult fiction have proliferated dystopian novels about disciplinary societies that conform to Michel Foucault’s Panoptic frameworks. Using the novels Matched, Delirium, Uglies, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, and The Knife of Never Letting Go, this project will demonstrate that the agency of female protagonists of young adult dystopian novels is curtailed by heteronormative constraints which reward women for being nurturing and punish them for being aggressive in Panoptic societies. If adolescent readers internalize the constructs in these novels, they will not question the problematic absence of empowerment or lack of diversity that currently plagues female protagonists and supporting characters within the genre. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Toni Culjak, whose limitless patience and attention to detail demonstrated a commitment to my success that went far above and beyond the call of duty. I want to thank her above all else for helping me find the voice that I thought I had lost forever. I would, also, like to thank Dr. Terry Martin for the insightful comments she left on my drafts and the skills she taught me that have proven invaluable to my burgeoning teaching career. I would, further, like to thank Dr. Christine Sutphin, whose insightful queries and steadfast support helped me turn my first graduate paper into my first independent study project, and then my first conference paper, and finally into my first Master’s thesis. I greatly appreciate Dr. Suzanne Little’s contributions of time and perspective, especially regarding the psychological development of adolescents. I am grateful for the commiseration and support of my fellow graduate students Karlyn Koughan-Thomas, Clara Hodges, Julie Teglovik, and Molly Mooney. I would like to thank each of them for their unshakable faith in my ability to finish this project. I would like to thank Jessica Sheppard for her friendship and for the endless supply of black bean tacos that she conjured out of thin air. I would like to express my gratitude to Kristin Trease and Jamie Brian, who reminded me that “friends don’t let friends hide away when they need each other.” I would like to thank my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College, for preparing me to write a “dissertation” as a Master’s candidate. Lastly, I would like to thank my family: my mother, Debbie Lear, my father, Rick Lear, and my brother, Kyle Lear for their continued support and faith in my abilities and for their belief in me even when I did not believe in myself. They all have helped me achieve the potential they always knew I had. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES” ....................................... 1 II “I MAY BE ACCUSED OF ARROGANCE . .” ..................................... 22 III “. STILL I MUST DECLARE WHAT I FIRMLY BELIEVE. .” ........ 87 Matched ............................................................................................... 101 Delirium .............................................................................................. 127 Uglies .................................................................................................. 147 The Hunger Games ............................................................................. 167 Divergent ............................................................................................. 192 IV “I DO NOT WISH THEM TO HAVE POWER OVER MEN. .” .......... 222 The Maze Runner ................................................................................ 232 The Knife of Never Letting Go ............................................................ 258 V “. BUT OVER THEMSELVES” .......................................................... 287 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................... 302 v CHAPTER I “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES” Since the turn of the twentieth century, dystopian fiction has exploded in popularity. Contemporary booksellers eagerly await new publications with which to stock their shelves. From the influential We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921) to the classics of the genre, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931), 1984 by George Orwell (1949), and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953), dystopian fiction has traditionally enabled authors to “extrapolate on current social, political, or economic trends” by constructing failing or failed societies that have in some way veered from the utopian ideals upon which their governments were originally founded (Serafini and Blasingame 147). Fictional dystopian societies are described “in considerable detail and normally located in a time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably worse than the society in which the reader lived” (Sargent 9). To disrupt the reader’s current perceptions of that space, the societies fall victim to natural, technological, or ideological disasters that force their citizens or leaders to rebuild in the wake of their downfalls (e.g. dystopian Chicago divided into factions split by character traits, or post-war United States split by utilitarian functions). In many young adult dystopian novels, the protagonists are male adolescents who successfully wield their agency as a tool with which they can destabilize and undermine existing sociopolitical structures (i.e. totalitarian governments, specious scientific experiments, or corrupt ideological tenets); however, female protagonists and their attempts to subvert these same ideals through the use of similar strategies are more i problematic and, as such, invite careful critical analysis. Although they are supposed to be “central characters,” the construction and agency of female protagonists in dystopian fiction that is written in the United States remains antiquated despite the futuristic nature of the genre. This problem seems to be a reflection of contemporary acceptance of the validity of traditional gender roles. Nikki Jones, author of “Working ‘the Code’: On Girls, Gender, and Inner-City Violence,” provides evidence that “[i]n mainstream American society, it is commonly assumed that women and girls shy away from conflict, are not physically aggressive, and do not fight like boys and men. ‘mean girls’ who ‘fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives’ reinforce common understandings of gender-based differences in the use of physical force” (qtd. in N. Jones 63). Female protagonists who live in heteronormative societies which demand strict adherence to traditional gender roles for the sake of survival are therefore “subject to evaluation in terms of normative conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities” and “under pressure to prove that [they are] ‘essentially’ feminine . despite appearances to the contrary" (West and Zimmerman 140). In other words, while the protagonists’ attempts to challenge the dystopia may be successful, their attempts to subvert the gender paradigm within the dystopia ultimately fail because the genre’s conventions bind them in heteronormative ways that affect the degree to which their characters are truly progressive agents of social change. Thus, in dystopian novels, the reproduction of heteronormative gender roles appears to be an essential component