AustLit

Mill's reads Garth Nix's fantasy novel Sabriel using Frued's notion of the 'uncanny' to explore the contradictory and paradoxical use of water as a metaphor for life and death in the novel. Mill's maps out how the novel subverts the typical pattern of the quest narrative in a number of ways, however she argues that while the imagery 'is not reducible to binary opposites', essentially 'the world of Sabriel is morally simple' (p.19). Furthermore, she states that in this novel, the return of the repressed signifies the 'uncanny return of the father' while the underlying pattern is one of 'daughters assuming the father's functions' and as such, the representation of women in the text works to reinforce the 'inherently ancillary role' alloctaed to women in a male-dominated culture. (pp.15,19).