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.
I always assumed a large part of it was escapism and rooted in fairy tales. Historically women and girls don’t have a lot of power, so this offers a realm in which they can have more power or one in which power isn’t a systemic concern.
I also think it allows for more fantastical conflict resolutions and a degree of separation. You can’t accidentally melt a witch with water in real life and the imagery is less concerning than a bloody and violent death.
I think most kids also know, consciously or not, that a portal to another world won’t exist. At the very least it’s unlikely, so there’s no real world witches or bandersnatch to worry about.
I don’t think this is all necessarily intentional, but I think it’s something psychologically ingrained in our patriarchal society.