This study explores the latent operation of Western gender norms in popular female-centred Young Adult (YA) dystopian texts. By examining adolescent female protagonists and the nature of their social havoc-making, this study investigates how reconstructed and recalibrated definitions of femininity ultimately re-inscribe a patriarchal status quo. The five havoc-making heroines under consideration are: Katniss Everdeen of Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games” trilogy, Saba in Moira Young’s “Dustlands” trilogy, Deuce in Ann Aguirre’s “Razorland” trilogy, Tris Prior in Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” series, and finally, Cassie Sullivan in Rick Yancey’s THE 5TH WAVE. Although these YA havoc-making heroines rebel against oppressive governmental regimes, I recognize the implicit and explicit construction of their bodies and their behaviours through male-influence. Their male counterparts play a large role in shaping how these heroines look and behave—they perform and appear as masculinized warriors and as feminized delicate beauties in accordance with the political and personal desires of male characters. Through such constructions, these contemporary havoc-makers demonstrate a collision of heroisms: they look and act as conventional action heroines and romance heroines. Including theoretical texts from the 1990s and onward that feature feminist scholarly writing on the textual and filmic representations of women—such as Dawn Heinecken’s THE WARRIOR WOMEN OF TELEVISION and Sherrie A. Inness’ TOUGH GIRLS—I investigate how these young heroines are shaped as per the genres of Action/Adventure and Romance fiction. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This study looks at depictions of Young Adult heroines in popular YA dystopian fictions. Works under consideration: Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy, Young's "Dustlands" series, Aguirre's ENCLAVE, Roth's DIVERGENT and Yancey's THE 5TH WAVE.

This study of Canadian adventure romance for adolescents seeks to demonstrate the cultural significance of the genre through close readings of James Houston's Frozen Fire and The White Archer, Monica Hughes's Hunter in the Dark and Ring-Rise, Ring-Set, as well as Markoosie's Harpoon of the Hunter. By means of a semiotic-structuralist approach I examine the texts as a signifying system conveying discourses that constitute a code of connection to the social context of contemporary young-adult readers.Structured on the formula: separation-initiation-return and informed by the symbolism of death-rebirth, the stories hold out the promise of a life-enhancing return. Roland Barthes's definition of myth as a mode of signification underpins my discussion of how the narrative conventions become vehicles of existential truths by replicating and intensifying adventurous experiences. With the quest for identity and the polarization between two worlds as structural determinants, the selected books juxtapose the values of Western civilization with those expressed through the Canadian North and its indigenous population. As a defining category of Canadian identity, the northern wilderness provides the space and the challenges for the protagonists' initiatory experiences. My application of the dichotomy self-other to the selected books provides a number of polarized positions such as civilization-wilderness, white-native, male-female, and conscious-unconscious, polarities through which the different discursive levels of the texts are generated. Arguably, the formulaic character of the journeys into the unknown allows the stories to signify on various levels, thus inviting both psychological and ideological readings of the texts.It is primarily through a recycling of narrative conventions that Houston and Hughes invest their work with significance. By focusing on the structural and thematic similarities of adventure romance, my examination attempts to elucidate the parallels to mythic adventure and archaic rites of initiation with the aim of validating the role of the genre as symbolic representations of the process of maturation and vicarious rites of passage. The conclusions I draw have a bearing on much of Houston's and Hughes's fiction, on the genre of romance as a whole, and to some extent on the adjacent genres of fantasy and science fiction. / <p>Behandlar James Houston, Monica Hughes och Markoosie.</p> / digitalisering@umu