The Quest for Female Empowerment in William Morris's Late Prose Romances

This essay investigates the theme of female empowerment in William Morris's late prose romances: The Wood Beyond the World (1894), The Well at the World's End (1896), and The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897). The comparative analysis of these narratives offered here demonstrates how Morris, a Victorian writer, gradually liberates his heroines from stereotypical constructs of femininity generated by the tradition of chivalric romances and Victorian sensibility.