Quest of Her Own

Lori M. Campbell is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.

“This reviewer cannot find a weak link in this selection, which is all the more important because fantasy literature has often been overlooked in academic circles. One can hope this collection indicates a change in that attitude, or will help to being one about...recommended”—Choice.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroductionI. Pathfinders: Empowered Women from Romance and Folktale to the Birth of Modern Fantasy Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes in Fairy Tales(Jeana Jorgensen)Neglected Yet Noble: Nyneve and Female Heroism in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur(Kristin ­Bovaird-Abbo)“Radiant and terrible”: Tolkien’s Heroic Women as Correctives to the Romance and Epic Traditions(Jack M. Downs)Female Valor Without Renown: Memory, Mourning and Loss at the Center of ­Middle-earth(Sarah Workman)II. Underestimated Overachievers: Unlikely and Unstoppable Female Heroes“Weak as woman’s magic”: Empowering Care Work in Ursula Le Guin’s Tehanu(Erin Wyble Newcomb)“Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky”: Neil Gaiman’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Coraline(Melissa Wehler)Dancing with the Public: Alethea Kontis’s Enchanted, Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder(Casey A. Cothran)“This huntress who delights in arrows”: The Female Archer in Children’s Fiction(Zoe Jaques)III. Show-Stealers: Heroic Female Sidekicks and HelpersSublime ­Shape-Shifters and Uncanny ­Other-Selves: Identity and Multiplicity in Diana Wynne Jones’s Female Heroes(Apolline Lucyk)A New Kind of Hero: A Song of Ice and Fire’s Brienne of Tarth(John H. Cameron)And Her Will Be Done: The Girls Trump the Boys in The Keys to the Kingdom and Abhorsen Series by Garth Nix (Lori M. Campbell)IV. Unwilling ­Do-Gooders: Villains and ­Villain-HeroesThe Problem of Mrs. Coulter: Vetting the Female ­Villain-Hero in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (Amanda M. Greenwell)“All little girls are terrible”: Maud as ­Anti-Villain in Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making(Jill Marie Treftz)The Unbreakable Vow: Maternal Impulses and Narcissa Malfoy’s Transformation from Villain to Hero in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series(Sarah Margaret Kniesler)Conclusion(Lori M. Campbell)About the ContributorsIndex