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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

I.¿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 Helpers

Sublime ­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-Heroes

The 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 Contributors

Index