Girls Underground

I recently decided to do a little statistical analysis of the GU examples I have read or watched – almost 250 of them so far! Thought I would share some results here in case anyone else is interested.

I have listed 160 books, 73 movies and 12 TV shows/series (about a quarter of which I classified as Honorable Mentions). Books are obviously the primary GU medium, and as I already knew, most are in the young adult/middle grade fantasy category. About 75% were written by female authors. Well over half of the movies are in the horror genre. Looking through the titles across mediums, I found 31 examples with “titular girls” (name of the girl in the title) and 8 more that simply had the word “girl” in the title. (This is a good way to find potential GU examples when you’re looking for them; sometimes the Adversary’s name is in the title instead.)

The girl goes literally underground in at least a third of the stories (I didn’t always note this, especially early on, so I bet the percentage is even higher), and the story takes place entirely in an underground world in 11 of them. Twice as many as that take place mostly within a single house. While the archetype is based on the idea that the girl travels to another world, this is only technically true in little over a third of the examples – it’s almost as common for magic to bleed into this world, or for her to live in an already magical world (though in those cases, she often will still travel somewhere different within that world).

The girl is most often either a pre-teen (10-13) or teenager, though about 20% are adults, and a few are younger children. The Adversary is a male in 59% of the total examples, and female in 23% – the rest are either a group or ambiguous. But the ratio of male to female Adversaries is highest among older teens, and lowest among children and pre-teens.

There are a few names that are especially popular for the protagonists of Girls Underground stories. Alice is the most frequent, but this is probably due to the connection with Alice in Wonderland – a lot of GU authors are clearly aware of the archetype on some level, and the similarity of their work with the classics of the trope. Particularly exciting for me personally was finding that there are 5 Sarahs and 5 Kates (along with 3 Katherines) – which account for both my first and middle names! Laura/Laurie, Lily/Lilian, and Sophie/Sophia also make 5 showings each. And Claire/Clara, Lisa/Liza, Meg, Alex, Hannah and Heather have 3 or 4 each.

“Deliberately undertaken physical journeys into and back from an underground locale are apparent in a significant number of often highly celebrated works for young readers, and undergrounds as backdrops, other forms of subterranean journey, and more metaphorical forms of katabasis*, are present in many more.”

Came across an interesting book recently – Uncharted Depths: Descent Narratives in English and French Children’s Literature by Kiera Vaclavik. I read it hoping that it would cover some Girls Underground territory, but unfortunately there wasn’t much overlap, other than the inclusion of Alice in Wonderland. Vaclavik’s scope is somewhat too narrow for my interests – comparing a small selection of stories from the 19th century or earlier to the classic narratives of the Odyssey, Aeneid and Inferno. When, during a discussion of gender, she finally looks at the differences in the stories featuring specifically female protagonists (which fall under the fantasy/fairytale heading rather than adventure), the verdict is relatively grim. The girls still require courage and strength for their journeys, but they almost always set out on instruction from others, and exhibit passivity throughout (the notable exception being Alice herself). And, only young girls seem suitable for such stories, not older ones. But, at least they exist, considering the culture in which such stories were written.

“Always young and often dreaming, the female travellers are largely passive and their behaviour circumscribed. Nevertheless, to cast female figures in such a role at all is remarkable, and, given that adult literature would lag far behind in this respect, fantasy for young readers can be regarded as a privileged space in which to reconfigure or at least to rethink the gender roles and relations of traditional katabatic narratives.”

It would be interesting to see what Vaclavik would make of the many Girls Underground examples from more recent children’s and young adult literature. As my exhaustive coverage has shown, modern Girls Underground most definitely exhibit volition in their adventures – and indeed, can be any age. The one such example she does touch upon – the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials – is on my list already.

*A katabasis is a journey to the underworld or underground.