Volume 5. Issue 1. May 2021

Dragons, hedge-witches, dashing princes, and a menacing forest: Naomi Novik’s Nebula-winning novel Uprooted (2015) draws on many traditional Slavic and Franco-Germanic fairy-tale patterns, archetypes, and tropes. Continuing the adaptation work of many female writers before her, Novik places women at the heart of her novel, offering its female figures – protagonist Agnieszka, village girl Kasia, scandalous queen Hanna, and the monstrous Wood-queen – roles and powers beyond those which their fairy-tale ancestors could possess. Crucially, Novik attempts to destabilise the dynamics of consumption intrinsic to fairy-tale, in which women are objectified, made passive, and consumed by male gazes and desires.
Drawing on the work of folklorists like Cristina Bacchilega and Marcia R. Lieberman, alongside (eco)feminist theory and popular culture scholarship, this article considers the efficacy of Novik’s intervention into these physical, sexual, and figurative consumptive patterns. I assert that through moments of rupture, regeneration, and transformation, Uprooted attempts to break free from the gendered restraints of the fairy-tale model. This transformation is often intrinsically connected to nature: the sentient Wood, Uprooted’s antagonist, is both a corrupting and empowering force, giving Kasia, for example, superhuman strength whilst Othering her from society. Using the scholarship of J. Halberstam, Val Plumwood, and Elizabeth Parker, among others, I thus consider whether naturalisation – a transformative mode typically used to delegitimise and disenfranchise women’s agency and sexuality – and the embracing of dangerous natural forces allow Novik’s women to subvert archetypal fairytale stereotypes. Ultimately, however, Uprooted’s interventions into fairy- and folk-tale are not entirely progressive or successful. The novel’s male characters perpetuate damaging stereotypes and consumptive behaviours, including attempted sexual assault; many of its women are punished for expressing their sexuality, ultimately remaining bound to oppressive heteronormativity and male desires. Even after gaining magical or monstrous power, Novik’s women cannot fully escape objectification or consumption.