Rewriting Heroism: Ethics of Care, Magical Literacy, and Intersectional Resistance in Nix’s Lirael and Clare’s City of Bones
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21928/juhd.v12n3y2026.pp49-56Keywords:
Ethics of Care, Heroism, Magical Literacy, Intersectional Resistance, Lirael, City of Bones, Young Adult FantasyAbstract
Within present-day debates on feminist Re-conceptualizations of heroism in young adult fantasy, Nix’s Lirael and Clare’s City of Bones foreground care, relationality, and narrative praxis as resistance. Focusing on the intersections of magical technique and ethical orientation, the study reveals the ways in which practices of magical literacy and care transform inherited heroic paradigms and thus reconstruct feminine modes of heroism. Lirael and Clary Fray resist socially constructed, and institutionally sanctioned, forms of resistance in favor of emotional endurance, self-authorship, and united means of action that problematize masculinist tropes of conquest. Their magical techniques—archiving and rune-writing—are sorts of feminist revisions of subjectivity and social order, sharing affinities with Cixous's écriture féminine and Spivak's perspective of strategic resistance. From an intersectional feminist perspective (Gilligan and Crenshaw), they emerge as initiatory figures that shift the concept of heroism into care, relational ethics, and narrative repair, thus disturbing heroic absolutism. The argument further suggests the inadequate considerations of racialized and disabled identities in the texts, hinting that Okorafor and McLemore could serve as useful comparisons. Finally, Lirael and Clary impart a fledgling grammar of heroism that emphasizes emotional sovereignty; healing magic, memory, and story enforce interdependence over domination.
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