Dystopian Cinderellas: "I Follow Him into the Dark"

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 <em>Matched, Delirium, Uglies, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner,</em> and<em> The Knife of Never Letting Go,</em> 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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English Literature

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Lear, Courtney

Contributors dc:contributor

• Toni Culjak
• Terry Martin
• Christine Sutphin

• dystopian
• feminist
• young adult
• bildungsroman
• panopticon
• post-apocalyptic
• Children's and Young Adult Literature
• Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/147

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-1159