Gender and Genre in Young Adult Dystopia: Collins’s Hunger Games and Oliver’s Delirium

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between gender and genre in two Young Adult (YA) dystopian series, drawing on two key concepts. The first is the assertion (made, among the others, by critics Tom Moylan and Raffaella Baccolini) that critical dystopias, unlike classical dystopias, present a tendency towards the blending of different genre conventions. The second is the opposition, highlighted by Roberta Seelinger Trites, between two literary patterns which characterise YA fiction: depending on the level of maturity that the protagonist reaches by the end of the novel or series, it is possible to define a work as Bildungsroman (coming of age novel) or as Entwicklungsroman (novel of development). Based on these premises, I first argue that The Hunger Games and Delirium present features thanks to which the former can be considered a Bildungsroman and the latter an Entwicklungsroman, making these dystopian series good examples of the mixture of genres which characterises critical dystopias. Secondly, I show how the identification of the two female protagonists as main characters of a Bildungsroman or of an Entwicklungsroman is strictly linked to their gender, in aspects concerning both their subjectivity and the bonds they create or develop.