§16§A Vindication of the Redhead investigates red hair in literature, art, television, and film throughout Eastern and Western cultures. This study examines red hair as a signifier, perpetuated through stereotypes, myths, legends, and literary and visual representations. Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier provide a history of attitudes held by hegemonic populations toward red-haired individuals, groups, and genders from antiquity to the present. Ayres and Maier explore such diverse topics as Judeo-Christian narratives of red hair, redheads in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, red hair and gender identity, famous literary redheads such as Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking, contemporary and Neo-Victorian representations of redheads from the Black Widow to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and more. This book illuminates the symbolic significance and related ideologies of red hair constructed in mythic, religious, literary, and visual cultural discourse. §04§Chapter 1 Introduction: "Hair is the Woman's Glory" Unless It's Red Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 2 The Devil Has Red Hair: And So Do Other Dissemblers in Judeo-Christian Narratives Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 3 "Real Are the Dreams" of Red Hairy Incubi and Unheavenly Succubi Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 4 Les Roux Fatales: The Plaits of Pre-Raphaelite Redheads Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 5 The Agency of Red Hair on the Mage Gender Equivocal: Mr. Rochester, The Little Stranger, and The Danish Girl Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 6 "Here we are again!" Red-haired Golems Galore Including Those in Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 7 Tangled Webs of Red Hair from the Grimm Brothers to Kate Morton Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 8 Redheads in the East Brenda Ayres.- Chapter 9 Obvious Difference(s): Victorian Men of the Red-Headed Variety Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 10 Tough Little Girls: Little Orphans and their Red-haired Resilience Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 11 Ginger Teens: Bewitchment, §04§Wizardry and Shadowhunting in YA Fiction Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 12 Disney's Rebellious Royals: From Ariel to Merida Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 13 Brainy X(Files) and Marvel(ous) Women: Dana Scully and The Black Widow Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 14 Flaming Haired Women: Neo-Victorian Representations and/of Criminal Art Sarah E. Maier.- Chapter 15 Great and Terribly Beauties: Game of Thrones to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Sarah E. Maier. §02§§ Brenda Ayres, now semiretired, teaches online English courses for Liberty University and Southern New Hampshire University, USA. §§ Sarah E. Maier is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of New Brunswick Saint John, Canada. §Ayres and Maier have coedited several collections of essays. The most recent are The Theological Dickens (2021), Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Neo-Gothic Narratives: Illusory Allusions from the Past (2020), Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture (2019) and Reinventing Marie Corelli for the Twenty-first Century (2019).
