ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Luna Lovegood, a very popular secondary character who can be interpreted in different ways. In 2007, Nathan Rabin coined the debatable term “manic pixie dream girl” for a special kind of female stereotype. Focusing on Luna Lovegood from this angle, the chapter discusses various aspects of the character with reference to postfeminist theory and the problematic concept of girl-power, which raises questions of power, agency and change. There has been a tendency in earlier research into the Harry Potter phenomena to read female characters like Luna as “either/or”: either traditional and stereotypical, or subversive and revolutionary this chapter argues that, in order to understand both the impact and the meaning of these characters, they need to be read as ambivalent and contradictory. Luna is discussed as a character that both embodies traditional femininity and subverts stereotypical gender patterns, but is more an advocate for individual change than for a societal one.
