ABSTRACT
Critic Ruth Bordin states, "The phrase New Woman was coined originally by Henry James and intended by him to characterize American expatriates living in Europe: women of affluence and sensitivity, who despite or perhaps because of their wealth exhibited an independent spirit and were accustomed to acting on their own". In the simplest terms, the New Woman initiated the process of redefining what it means to be a young woman in the modern world. Thus, these New Women, both fictional and real, blurred the ostensibly clear distinctions between genders and spheres and, in the process, illustrated the potential of liminality as a path to empowerment. Like their New Woman predecessors, the female protagonists of contemporary young adult dystopias occupy liminal spaces as they seek to understand their places in the world, to claim their identities, and to live their lives on their own terms.
