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 was hoping there already was an academic paper and that this sub would point me to it 😭 If I had pursued that master’s in English lit I might have written it but maybe someone else will pick up that torch
I don’t have one to hand but I’d see if you could find something through the Mythgaurd Institute. They tend to go in for this kind of thing. You could check out A Short History of Fantasy by Farah Mendelsohn and Edward James. It does touch on the history of portal fantasy as a subgenera but it doesn’t go very in depth as it’s not the main focus.