I first fell for the urban fantasy heroine in my local Waterstones when I was 17. She’d found her way into the horror section, where I spent most of my time, and it was love at first sight. Her name was Elena and she was a werewolf.
I didn’t know what urban fantasy was at this point, had never even heard the term, but from this moment I was hooked.
Elena Michaels was created by author Kelley Armstrong and featured in the first Women of the Otherworld novel, Bitten, released in 2001. In this series I met werewolves, witches, demons, necromancers. And I wanted more.
More and more of these books started creeping onto the horror shelves. I wandered into another Otherworld, this time Yasmine Galenorn’s, where I met the three half-human, half-Fae D'Artigo sisters.
Then I met and fell hard for Rachel Morgan. I remember being bought the first book in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows series, being struck by the bright yellow cover, but being convinced this book wasn’t for me after just the first page. But a chapter in? I was addicted. Rachel, the protagonist of the series, and her friends vampire Ivy and pixy Jenks, became my family. I devoured every novel, novella, short story and graphic novel until the series ended in 2014. When Kim Harrison returned to the world of The Hollows last year it really felt like having my family back.
I went on to meet Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Rachel Vincent’s Faythe Sanders, Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson, Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville, Rachel Caine’s Joanne Baldwin.
Then in 2016, after I’d completed my Master’s in the Gothic, I started thinking about a PhD. I started thinking about researching urban fantasy. And from the very first, the heroine became central to my research. The strong female protagonist had first lured me into the genre and to me she seemed integral to urban fantasy.
One of the first books I read when starting my research was Joseph Crawford’s The Twilight of the Gothic?: Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance 1991-2012 (2014), and he wrote that all urban fantasy heroines are so alike that they ‘swiftly start to blur together’ (p.147). He argues that the urban fantasy heroine is always a ‘tough, assertive, sexually attractive, capable’ young woman with supernatural powers, often hiding her ‘inner vulnerability beneath a veneer of hardness and cynicism’, and that she is a skilled fighter with an ‘ever-escalating body count’ to her name. She will inhabit an ‘urban fantasy world’ that features ‘vampires, werewolves, shape-changers and magicians’. She will work as a detective, bounty hunter or covert government operative, and become ‘regularly entangled in violence and mysteries in the line of duty’. She will have ‘one or more supernatural love interests’, and ‘explicit sex scenes generally follow sooner rather than later’ (p.147).
Now this sounded just like the urban fantasy heroine I knew and loved. But are they all so alike?
I can’t agree. For me, each heroine offers something unique. Her supernatural skill, her world and work, her friends and lovers – each offer something different to the story of the heroine. Rather than seeing these similar features as limitations or shortcomings, I believe that these are the traits that truly define the genre.
However, as well as being considered too alike, the urban fantasy heroine also finds herself criticized for two of her main characteristics – her outer strength and her inner vulnerability. She is at once too masculine, too tough, too violent, yet also weak, submissive and insecure. Some urban fantasy heroines of course fit this stereotype, but I would argue that the best work to subvert it. These offer us heroines who refuse to accept the status quo. She uses her strength and refuses to submit. Gender inequality and sexism, racism and classism are all topics that the best urban fantasy will confront, with the heroine disrupting and challenging the prejudice and hatred present in her world. Her strength and skill allow her to do this, and her inner vulnerability, which is often caused by the prejudice she herself has received, allows her to relate to these injustices.
So while she may be tough, assertive and capable, she is also determined to stand up for others. She wants to make a difference in her world. She will fight for right, stand up to bullies and triumph over evil.
And despite her supernatural nature, she is also very human, because she lives in two worlds. A world of monsters mixed up with humans. She learns that humans can be just as monstrous as the monsters. She and many of the monsters that make up her world are just like us. She has a past; she has vulnerabilities. She is scared at times. But she never gives up.
She has taught me so much: Kelley Armstrong and Elena taught me about refusing ‘to let my past explain my present’ (Stolen). Laurell K. Hamilton and Anita taught me that ‘girls can do anything they want’ (Obsidian Butterfly). Kim Harrison and Rachel taught me to ‘do what you need to do to be happy and deal with the consequences’ (The Witch With No Name).
She will never be perfect and there will always be criticisms, but I’m so glad I opened that first book, because I think that the urban fantasy heroine can teach us a lot about ourselves.
Guest Contributor Bio
Sarah Sproston is a fifth year, part-time PhD student at the University of Wolverhampton. She has a BA in English from the University of Wolverhampton and an MA in English Studies: The Gothic from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her current area of research is the urban fantasy genre and her other areas of interest include the Gothic, paranormal romance, fantasy, young adult literature and series fiction. Follow Sarah on Twitter @urbanfantasyphd.
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