Poison Ivy; villain, hero, feminist? Analysis of Female Empowerment in the DC Comic Book Universe

Juliána Pavlinská, University of Prešov, Slovakia;      Abstract: This paper studies the character of Poison Ivy as a figure of female empowerment in the DC Comic Book Universe. It explores the history of her character, the impact she had on the DC universe and suggests the importance of comic books in literary analysis. The first part shortly summarises the main points of the second, third and fourth-wave feminism, their main ideas and goals. In the second part, a brief history of female characters in comic books in the U.S. is given. The third part consists of the analysis of Poison Ivy as a feminist character based on chosen comic books. The article concludes with the commentary on the importance of Poison Ivy as a representation of the feminist movement and the suggestion of the importance of comic books as a part of the wider literary base examined and accepted by women’s studies and literary studies as appropriate literature for analysis.