Training and female journey in children’s literature between past and present

Abstract

The topc of journey as a metaphor of life is a literary topos that joins in children’s
literature too. This topic in books for children maintains a strong connotation of
“initiation”. However the main characters of these books have always been boys because the adventure has always been denied to girls. Only in the nineteenth and
twentieth century the image of a victim and passive girl gradually tends to leave
space to a figure of disobedient and independent heroine who becomes a “deviant”
model for girls. The contemporary narratives, as the stories examined in the article, convey by now a female protagonist artisan of her own destiny.