AustLit

Through an examination of the main female characters in Touching Earth Lightly by Australian author Margo Lanagan and Wolf by the British author Gillian Cross, Harris discusses the ambiguity confronting young women as they negotiate the path from adolescence to adulthood in societies where the boundaries between adolescent and adult are increasingly blurred. She points out that in British and Australian coming-of-age, or rite-of-passage narratives, 'the positions of young female protagonists are often ambiguous' (42) while the use of realism functions as a powerful ideological tool that can influence readers to 'unknowingly accept a particular ideology' (49). Harris contends that Cross's Wolf involves the young reader in a process of deconstruction which allows them to challenge dominant perceptions of reality and learn the necessary skills to 'understand the workings of ideologies and the ability to assess the paradigms offered to them'. On the other hand, she views Lanagan's novel as reinforcing a conservative determinist philosophy which 'restricts success to a range of appopriate behaviours' and 'supports conformity by disempowering the protagonist' at the novels closure (49).