I’ve been thinking about how portal fantasies - you know, where a character travels through some sort of portal into a fantasy world - often have girls as their main characters. Alice falls down the rabbit hole, Dorothy gets tornadoed to Oz, Coraline crawls through the secret door to the Other World, Lucy is the first Pevensie to go through the wardrobe, Wendy specifically is invited to accompany Peter to Neverland.
I know this is r/books but this trend seems to extend to movies too. Pan’s Labyrinth, Spirited Away, and Labyrinth all have girl protagonists. I’m having a hard time even thinking of boys in portal fantasies. Bastian (Neverending Story) is one, although the movie version doesn’t really show him portaling until the sequels. I guess The Pagemaster (1994 movie that maybe just rips off Neverending Story?) could count. And the other Pevensies and Darlings accompany their sisters through the portals, but they’re secondary to the girls.
I wondered if anyone here had any theories about why portals seem to draw in so many girls. I have some of my own but I’m curious what others think.
Good point, only just realized it after you pointed it out. Come to think of it there are quite a few western male-led narratives that you could call portal fantasy. People have already mentioned John Carter of Mars, but HP Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, the Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, and even HG Wells The Time Machine would all arguably qualify. The one difference I immediately recognize is that the worlds men go to tend to be dangerous or outright hostile places. The Barsoom of John Carter is a wasteland to be conquered, but the Night Land, the Dream Lands, and the far future of the Time Machine are all nightmarish or apocalyptic worlds to be escaped from or conquered, not inhabited.
In contrast, the worlds of female Portal Fantasy tend to be “cozier” for lack of a better term. Both Alice and Dorthy come to inhabit and kind of like the worlds they end up in, and even make friends with the inhabitants. Heck there’s even a few where our protagonists end up staying in the other world at the end. Girls in general just seem to get comfier worlds.
Maybe this is just due to the way men and women fantasize about new places. Men tend to gravitate towards stories of survival or conquest, of being challenged by another world and overcoming or escaping it (go read the Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen btw, boy gets zapped 5 million years into the future and end up boy-scouting his way through the wilds). In male portal fantasy the setting itself is frequently the antagonist. Female led portal fantasy though tends to be much more about inhabiting the new world and learning to appreciate it. The setting might be challenging, but its not outright hostile. Conflict is driven less by the setting itself being dangerous and more by the protagonist’s ability to adapt to it.
What conclusion to draw from this? Uh, not sure. Boys like danger, girls like wonder?