The Myth of Persephone in Girls' Fantasy Litera, Blackford Paperback..

Taylor & Francis

In this book, Blackford historicizes the appeal of the Persephone myth in the nineteenth century and traces figurations of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades throughout girls\u2019 literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She illuminates developmental patterns and anxieties in E. T. A. Hoffmann\u2019s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women, Emily Bront\u00EB\u2019s Wuthering Heights, J. M. Barrie\u2019s Peter and Wendy, Frances Hodgson Burnett\u2019s The Secret Garden, E. B. White\u2019s Charlotte\u2019s Web, J. K. Rowling\u2019s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Stephenie Meyer\u2019s Twilight, and Neil Gaiman\u2019s Coraline. The story of the young goddess\u2019s separation from her mother and abduction into the underworld is, at root, an expression of ambivalence about female development, expressed in the various Neverlands through which female protagonists cycle and negotiate a partial return to earth. The myth conveys the role of female .