Breaking the Angelic Image: Woman Power in Victorian Children's Fantasy (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780313261275)

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 as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll; The Golden Key, The Princess and the Goblin, and others by George MacDonald; the works of Mary Louisa Molesworth; Peter and Wendy by James Barrie; The Five Children and Itand The Enchanted Castle by 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.

Author: Edith Lazaros Honig
ISBN-10: 031326127X
ISBN-13: 9780313261275
Publisher: Praeger
Language: English
Published: 10/24/1988
Pages: 168
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.44d