The Supernatural Woman and Wartime Female Agency in The Foreshadowing (2006)
- DOI
- 10.2991/assehr.k.200729.010How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- agency, power, supernatural, war, gender
- Abstract
Female characters in patriarchal settings must often navigate through society using their own agency. One form of power with which they are sometimes endowed is supernatural power. The Foreshadowing (2006) is a children’s novel set in England and France during World War I. Unlike most war-themed children’s literature, the main character is a teenage girl named Alexandra. This novel is also notable for its use of supernatural power as a source of agency. Using a theory on gender hegemony proposed by Schippers [1] and another on female agency proposed by Trites [2], this study examines Alexandra, her father, her mother, Tom, and Jack. We show that the novel is ambivalent in its portrayal of supernatural power in relation to female agency. On one hand, the novel demonstrates that supernatural power is a powerful tool that threatens the patriarchal system represented through the father. With the help of her supernatural power, Alexandra uses her agency to overcome the boundaries placed on her by the gender roles of that era. On the other hand, the novel itself is still limited by the era’s gender roles because it allows no possibility for the female character to take an active part in the war.
- Copyright
- © 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Anindita Larasati AU - Dhita Hapsarani PY - 2020 DA - 2020/07/30 TI - The Supernatural Woman and Wartime Female Agency in The Foreshadowing (2006) BT - Proceedings of the International University Symposium on Humanities and Arts (INUSHARTS 2019) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 49 EP - 54 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200729.010 DO - 10.2991/assehr.k.200729.010 ID - Larasati2020 ER -