Abstract
This chapter considers the emergence of a popular literary type: the girl action hero. While she has earlier and even ancient antecedents, since the 1990s a newly action-oriented girl hero has become especially significant in fiction oriented towards children and young adults. She is not only resilient but wilfully determined; while she will take responsibility for others, she decides which others and under what conditions. She is brave, resourceful and in the end powerfully effective when seeking her own ends; where she is self-sacrificing, she chooses action for the greater good, comprehending what it costs her. She may be proud, but she rejects vanity and, quite explicitly, any suggestion that commodified femininity will represent or enable her capacities; she is the agent of her own aspirations and seeks to modify the actions of others to suit her own. This chapter will look at how this figure differs from fictional girl protagonists before her, and how these virtues are represented in some exemplary popular fiction. It will also examine how this girl hero works in dialogue with other popular media and with feminist cultural critique.
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Driscoll, C., Heatwole, A. (2016). Glass and Game: The Speculative Girl Hero. In: Gelder, K. (eds) New Directions in Popular Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52346-4_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52346-4_13
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