Breaking the Angelic Image: Woman Power in Victorian Children's Fantasy [Hardcover]

Honig's short, pleasantly written book is a consideration of the images of women--as mothers, spinsters, girls, and supernatural women--in 19th-and early 20th-century fantasy novels for children. . . . Honig sees fantasy as a means of freeing women from the Victorian social restraints--at first, imaginatively.Choice

This is the first book-length study of nineteenth-century children's fantasy from a feminist viewpoint. Honig focuses on a number of major works that are representative of the best of their era--including such classics asAlice's Adventures in Wonderlandby Lewis Caroll;The Golden Key,The Princess and the Goblin, and others by George MacDonald; the works of Mary Louisa Molesworth;Peter and Wendyby James Barrie;The Five Children and ItandThe Enchanted Castleby Edith Nesbit. Through a close reading of these fantasies Honig demonstrates that although Victorian women were still being repressed in the home and the marketplace, the female figure in literature played a role that was quite different from the traditional stereotype of the meek, submissive wife and mother.

Mothers: When They Were Good, They Were Gone
Spinsters: Life Still Held Some Charm
Girls: Breaking the Angelic
Magical Woman: The Positive Force of Women Power
Bibliography
Index