The Iron Woman

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The Iron Woman shows Lucy a fiery tunnel cut into the river revealing its various inhabitants writhing, contorting and crying in pain; Otters, Kingfishers, Frogs, all presenting their unique wounds from a polluted environment. Most important of all, at the end of this hellish parade, a baby "simply crying - the wailing, desperate cry of a human baby when it cries as if the world has ended".

Young female protagonists, such as Lucy, are often read as being counterparts to real-life heroines. In the words of Ingrid E. Castro, “Constructions of YA fantasy protagonists, who are usually strong, motivated, young, and female, increasingly overlap with real-life media images of powerful girls” ( 2021, p. 202). Literature provides a safe space for exploring female identities and imagining the future. Today there is a long list of female ecowarriors in YA fiction who might inspire young women: from Walt Disney’s Pocahontas, or Princess Leia, to Tenar in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea to the likes of Lucy, or more recent heroines such as Katniss Everdeen, the young female protagonist of Suzanne Collins’s trilology The Hunger Games (2008–2010), or Samantha Steadman in Joanne MacGregor’s Eco-warriors series (2011–2016). Massey, Geraldine, and Bradford, Clare. (2011). Children as Ecocitizens: Ecocriticism and Environmental Texts. In Kerry Mallan and Clare Bradford (Eds.), Contemporary Children’s Literature and Film: Engaging with Theory (pp. 109–126). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Gifford, Terry. (1995). Green Voices: Understanding Contemporary Nature Poetry. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kerslake, Lorraine. (2020). Ted Hughes: The Importance of Fostering Creative Writing as Environmental Education. Children’s Literature in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09427-4.After playing this game for two rounds, the dragon is so badly burned that he no longer appears physically frightening. The Iron Man by contrast has only a deformed ear-lobe to show for his pains. The alien creature admits defeat. When asked why he came to Earth, the dragon reveals that he is a peaceful "star spirit" who experienced excitement about the ongoing sights and sounds produced by the violent warfare of humanity. In his own life, he was a singer of the " music of the spheres"; the harmony of his kind that keeps the cosmos in balance in stable equilibrium.

In 1999, Warner Bros. released an animated film using the novel as a basis, titled The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird and co-produced by Pete Townshend. Dexter, Miriam Robbins. (2010, Spring). The Ferocious and the Erotic: ‘Beautiful’ Medusa and the Neolithic Bird and Snake. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 26(1), 25–41. Gifford, Terry. (2008). Rivers and Water Quality in the Work of Brian Clarke and Ted Hughes. Concentric, 34(1), 75–91.Although it was published in 1993, Hughes had already begun writing The Iron Womanin the mid-1980s, at the same time as he was writing Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being,which was finally completed and published in 1992.Although the two books apparently have little in common, Hughes’ children’s writing allowed him to write without the restraints of his adult’s writing and as Neil Roberts has suggested “Despite being made of iron, the Woman is perhaps Hughes’s most direct representation of the Goddess” ( A Literary Life, 2006: 177). Whilst the healing quest in his adult work is essential but unrealizable, since redemption can never be obtained, The Iron Woman can be read as a mythical personification of the “Goddess”. In this sense she was for Hughes probably the most complete healing myth that he ever created, and enacts how the balance between nature and humankind, inner and outer worlds are finally achieved so that the reconciliation between culture and nature can take place. Le Géant de fer, transl. into French of The Iron Man by Sophie de Vogelas; illus. by Philippe Munch; Folio cadet 52. Éditions Gallimard Jeunesse, 1984 ISBN 978-2-07-031052-4 Relke, Joan. (2007). The Archetypal Female in Mythology and Religion: the Anima and the Mother of the Earth and Sky. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 3(2). Accessed January 5, 2017, from http://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/401/html. Like Carson, Hughes also believed that humans and nature were part of the same web of life and that you could not harm a part of nature without harming the whole. Raising environmental awareness and instilling in the reader a sense of connection with the natural world was part of the poet's project. From the very beginning of his career, he strived to make his environmental thinking public, and throughout his life he was actively involved in a number of educational projects and charities, many of which were directed at children and young adults. Footnote 2 However, it is not only hope that these young women provide but potential solutions to the ongoing issues of climate change, standing up, like Lucy, to the threats from patriarchal systems or neoliberal capitalism and the effects of the Anthropocene. Their call to action can inspire change and empower other women, challenging traditional gender roles. As Castro claims: “In this cultural moment of political “girl power”, girls are reshaping concepts of gender in line with their cultural, historical, material and social circumstances” (Castro, 2021, p. 202).