Gender and Female Villains in 21st Century Fairy Tale Narratives

Natalie Le Clue is currently teaching in the department of Media and Communication at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Her research focuses on television studies with a particular emphasis on fan studies, fairy tale mythology, and elements of new media.Janelle Vermaak-Griessel is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication at the Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, and teaches in a varied range of disciplines including, but not limited to, scriptwriting, film Studies, communication studies and written communication.

• Introduction; Natalie Le Clue and Janelle Vermaak-Griessel GenderChapter 1. “‘To destroy. To hate. To sow seeds of chaos. You know, just girly things’”: Evil Queens, Femslash Fandom and Monstrous Happiness; Alice M. KellyChapter 2. Scary Good: Queering the Villain-Hero Dichotomy in Contemporary Fairy Tale Retellings; Alba Morollón Díaz-FaesChapter 3. A Tale of Two Mothers: Recombining Villainy and Motherhood in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019); Rebecca RoweChapter 4. When the Magic Mirror Lies: Gender, Vanity, Body Dysmorphia, and the Wicked Queen; Sara AustinScreen NarrativesChapter 5. ‘Pretty ballads hide bastard truths’: Patriarchal Narratives and Female Power in Netflix's The Witcher; Kirsty WorrowChapter 6. Positioning Mrs. Coulter in BBC/HBO His Dark Materials; Giulia BigongiariChapter 7. Female Power and Corruption: Snow White and the Evil Queen Through the Ages; Sarah FaberChapter 8. The Reimagined Female Villain in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire; Amit KardoshCharacter ReformationsChapter 9. The Stepmother Problem: How an Information Deficit in Film Creates Female Villains; Rebecca GaddChapter 10. These Violent Delights’: Remodeling the fembot archetype in Ex Machina and Westworld; Kirsty WorrowChapter 11. The Fairest Evil Looming over Earth: Representations of the Evil Queen in 21st Century “Snow White” Adaptations; Svea HundertmarkChapter 12. “Evil isn’t born, it’s made”: Redefining the fairytale villain for contemporary television storytelling; Natalie Le CluePhysicalityChapter 13. Maimed Wings and Broken Hearts: Physical Disability, Social Exclusion, and Maternal Love in Disney's Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil; Hannah HelmChapter 14. “Poor, unfortunate souls”: Fan Perception of Ursula the Sea Witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989); Janelle Vermaak-GriesseChapter 15. A Rhetoric of Evil: The clichéd motif of the Evil Queen; Natalie Le Clue and Janelle Vermaak-GriesseConclusion