I am happy to announce that I recently had a journal article accepted for publication. My essay, “George MacDonald’s Frightening Female: Menopause and Makemnoit in The Light Princess,” will appear in a forthcoming volume of North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies.
The North Wind journal is edited by John Pennington and Fernando Soto and is housed at St. Norbert College, a private, four-year college, located in De Pere, Wisconsin. The journal dates back to 1982 and has an online digital archive that will also soon include articles from Orts: The Newsletter of the George MacDonald Society dating back to 1980.
The essay is an excerpt from my dissertation “The Buried Life of the Facts of Life: Female Physical Development in Nineteenth-Century British Coming-of-Age Literature.” I argue George MacDonald’s representation of the female coming-of-age body and aging, menopausal body reveal how his modern fairy tale, The Light Princess, utilizes long-standing social codes imposed on women’s reproductive capacity. In his depiction of Makemnoit–the bitter and aged woman who curses the young princess’ body with weightlessness and levity–MacDonald’s narrative illustrates cultural fears surrounding menopausal or reproductively atypical women.
Jactionary: February 2015
I am happy to announce that I recently had a journal article accepted for publication. My essay, “George MacDonald’s Frightening Female: Menopause and Makemnoit in The Light Princess,” will appear in a forthcoming volume of North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies.
The North Wind journal is edited by John Pennington and Fernando Soto and is housed at St. Norbert College, a private, four-year college, located in De Pere, Wisconsin. The journal dates back to 1982 and has an online digital archive that will also soon include articles from Orts: The Newsletter of the George MacDonald Society dating back to 1980.
The essay is an excerpt from my dissertation “The Buried Life of the Facts of Life: Female Physical Development in Nineteenth-Century British Coming-of-Age Literature.” I argue George MacDonald’s representation of the female coming-of-age body and aging, menopausal body reveal how his modern fairy tale, The Light Princess, utilizes long-standing social codes imposed on women’s reproductive capacity. In his depiction of Makemnoit–the bitter and aged woman who curses the young princess’ body with weightlessness and levity–MacDonald’s narrative illustrates cultural fears surrounding menopausal or reproductively atypical women.