| This descriptive, investigative study thematically analyzes adolescent literature, twenty novels with female protagonists, from two time periods, 1942--1946 and 1992--1996. Using the concept of power in poststructural feminism, the protagonists are compared to examine changes, if any, that occurred during the fifty-year interim. Five recurring literary themes are examined: power of quest, power of friendship, the power of role models, the power of death, and the power of education. Eight novels were selected from the early five-year period, and twelve, from the corresponding contemporary five-year era. The beginning date of 1942 is the year that Daly's Seventeenth Summer was published, which many consider the advent of adolescent literature. A parallel study juxtaposed modern novels published exactly fifty years later, a literary anniversary of sorts.; The findings of this study suggest that the young heroines in the works of these two eras maintain a certain spirited demeanor, regardless of period. Three areas of contrast are the dependence of the girls of the earlier period on males versus the independence of the girls of the contemporary era, the restricted number of quests in the earlier works versus the variety and number of the contemporary quests, and the predominance of death in the later works versus the rarity of it in the earlier works. |
