New cultural models in women's fantasy literature.

This thesis examines the way in which modern women writers use non-realistic
literary forms in order to create new role models of and for women.
The work of six authors are analysed in detail - Angela Carter, Doris Lessing,
Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Kate Wilhelm. I argue that they
share a discontent with the conventions of classic realism, which they all
regard as perpetuating ideologically-generated stereotypes of women.
Accordingly, they move away from mimetic modes in order to formulate a
discourse which will challenge conventional representations of the 'feminine',
arriving at a new conception of the female subject.
I argue that although these writers represent a range of feminist
responses to the dominant order, they all arrive at a s1mil~r conviction that
such an order is male-dominated. All exhibit an awareness of the work of
feminist critics, creating texts which consciously interact with feminist theory.
I then discuss how these authors use their art to examine the
their own situation as women who write. All draw the attention to the existence
of a tradition of female censorship, whereby the creative woman has experienced,
in an intensified form, the repression experienced by all women in a culture
which privileges the male over the female. All these writers exhibit a desire to
escape such a tradition, progressing towards the formulation of a utopian female
subject who is free to be fully creative a project they represent
metaphorically in the form of a quest.