| dc.description.abstract | My dissertation surveys British, American, Australian, and New Zealand young
adult texts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries featuring female
protagonists who are fantastic monsters. Addressing such texts as Margaret Mahy’s The
Changeover, Justine Larbalestier’s Liar, and Diana Wynne Jones’s The Time of the
Ghost, I examine the metaphorical use of monstrosity in literature to address the
“problem” of female adolescence, specifically in relation to female physical
development, sexuality, and agency. With chapters on witches, werewolves, and ghosts,
I investigate the ways in which the characters’ understanding of their monstrosity
intersects with their emerging gender identity. I interrogate what these representations
of monstrous young women reveal about social and cultural perspectives on femininity
and the developing female body. As supernatural entities, monsters extend the
possibilities of human experience, demonstrating physical and psychic powers that
disturb the established order. Framing the female protagonist as a monster, however,
indicates a fear of her potential to disturb and destroy. Thus, I argue that while the
proliferation of monstrous female protagonists encourages female agency by making the
monstrous powerful, familiar, and enticing, the trend simultaneously demonstrates the
ways in which these seemingly subversive characters are contained within moral and
social frameworks of femininity. | en |
