In this booklet, Blackford historicizes the charm of the Persephone delusion within the 19th century and strains figurations of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades all through ladies’ literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. She illuminates developmental styles and anxieties in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and Mouse King, Louisa may possibly Alcott’s Little Women, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The mystery Garden, E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, J. ok. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. the tale of the younger goddess’s separation from her mom and abduction into the underworld is, at root, an expression of ambivalence approximately lady improvement, expressed within the quite a few Neverlands during which girl protagonists cycle and negotiate a partial go back to earth. the parable conveys the function of woman improvement within the perpetuation and renewal of humankind, coordinating normal and cultural orders via a hieros gamos (fertility coupling) ceremony. in the meantime, renowned novels resembling Twilight and Coraline are ironically clean simply because they recycle goddesses from myths as outdated because the seasons. With this e-book, Blackford bargains a attention of ways literature for the younger squares with broader canons, how classics flexibly and uniquely converse via novels that get pleasure from huge attraction, and the way woman traditions are embedded in novels through either males and women.