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Female Care in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials : Fluid Womanhood in Late Modernity

초록/요약

This dissertation uses a framework of ethics-of-care theories by Nancy Chodorow, Nel Noddings, and Joan Tronto to analyse three main female characters from Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. The girl, Lyra, and the two adult women, Marisa and Mary, display a way of caring that deviates from what is usually perceived as female care. The traditionally often seen mothering role by girl characters in children's literature that demands proximity of the caregiver to the care-receiver is replaced by caring in a broader, more abstract manner, which Tronto described as public care. This way of caring is similar to the way boy characters go out to save the world, i.e., go out to care for humankind. The willingness to care in this new manner is triggered by episodes in the characters' lives that call for a mature attitude, yet in embarking on this novel way of caring, they return to a state of innocence. The three characters show similar and multiple developmental stages, which leads me to believe that the concepts of innocence and experience are no longer related to age and do not show a linear direction. Rather, the characters fluctuate between the two states. In doing so, they cause the concepts of girlhood and womanhood to get blurred. This phenomenon is what many sociologists have proposed to be called late modernity. Throughout their lives, these female characters keep reflecting on the need for their care and keep changing their actions accordingly. This makes the characters adjustable enough to survive in this so-called liquid late-modern society.

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