The Function of Fantasy as Anti-Stereotyping Device in Selected Post-Revolution Fictions

Gender Stereotypes are a collection of common cultural Clichés of male and female behaviors, attributes and activities usually resulting in sexism. Finding gender patterns commences from the early years of childhood; beside the other socializing means, children’s books have a significant role in transferring social norms and gender identity formation in children. Various studies show that the realistic fictions in children’s literature have produced a stereotype and discriminating image of the male and female. Different factors, such as genre tradition, author’s sex, time of creation of the work and fantastic degree of the work have a perceptible impact on the degree and the kind of sexist stereotypes. Among these various factors, the article tries to evaluate the influences of fantastic atmosphere and characters on the gender stereotype. A study of the selected fantastic fictions published by three well-known writers of children’s literature shows that the degree of gender stereotypes presented in the works has a direct relation with reality or meta-realism (Fantastic vision). There are no gender stereotypes in the fictions which have no element of the usual real world. In the mixed fictions combined of two imaginary and real worlds with fantastic creatures and human beings, the gender stereotypes appear only in non-fantastic part of the work and in the fictions in which realism is dominant, the gender stereotypes are more obvious than two other ones.