Feminist Narrative and the Supernatural: The Function of Fantastic Devices in Seven Recent Novels

Women authors have explored fantasy fiction in ways that connect with feminist narrative theories, as examined here by Katherine J. Weese in seven modern novels. These include Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle, Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Paradise.

The fantastic devices highlight various feminist narrative concerns such as the authority of the female voice, the implications of narrative form for gender construction, revisions to traditional genre conventions by women writers, and the recovery of alternative versions of stories suppressed by dominant historical narratives. Weese also frames the fantastic elements in the scope of traditional fictional structure.

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Katherine J. Weese is an English professor at Hampden-Sydney College. Her articles on the fantastic and feminist fiction have appeared in Journal of Narrative Theory, Modern Fiction Studies, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.