Over the last decades, genre fiction has witnessed the invasion of a host of female authors writing from a self-consciously feminist perspective who have shaken the structural and ideological foundations of genres such as romance, detective and science fiction. Some genres such as adventure, however, have remained recalcitrantly impervious to change and the ideological premises from which adventure operates remain essentially masculinist. Taking some recent examples of treasure-hunting adventure narratives as case studies, my aim in this paper is to analyse how adventure has incorporated superficial textual changes while failing to effect a profound transformation in the nature and form of its discourse, remaining a mummified stronghold of patriarchal conventions which are becoming increasingly outmoded
