Reflection and Reflexion: Female Coming-of-Age: the Mirror Stage and the Absence of Mirrors in Robin McKinley's <i>Beauty</i> and <i>Rose Daughter</i>

  • Evelyn M Perry Framingham State College

Abstract

In Robin McKinley's novels Beauty and Rose Daughter (both retellings of Madame Leprince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast"), McKinley describes adolescent coming-of-age as a psychological development both traumatic and identity-shaping; its ultimate success allows young adults to understand their actions as individuals as well as members of the adult community. Both McKinley's versions of adolescent coming-of-age in the traditional tale are structured to double Lacan's theory of a child's psychological development--the transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic Order-- in that they contain a second set of Lacan's three stages.

Author Biography

Evelyn M Perry, Framingham State College
David Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Issue
Vol. 8 No. 1 (2004)
Section
Jabberwocky
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