Breaking the Angelic Image: Woman Power in Victorian Children’s Fantasy

Honig’s short, pleasantly written book is a consideration of the images of women–as mothers, spinsters, girls, and supernatural women–in 19th-and early 20th-century fantasy novels for children… . Honig sees fantasy as a means of freeing women from the Victorian social restraints–at first, imaginatively. Choice

This is the first book-length study of nineteenth-century children’s fantasy from a feminist viewpoint. Honig focuses on a number of major works that are representative of the best of their era–including such classics as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll; The Golden Key, The Princess and the Goblin, and others by George MacDonald; the works of Mary Louisa Molesworth; Peter and Wendy by James Barrie; The Five Children and Itand The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit. Through a close reading of these fantasies Honig demonstrates that although Victorian women were still being repressed in the home and the marketplace, the female figure in literature played a role that was quite different from the traditional stereotype of the meek, submissive wife and mother.