C.S. Lewis’s 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (1950) and J.K. Rowling’s 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' (2003) were written in very different historical and socio-political contexts, which would initially lead to the assumption that these texts display very different ideologies. By means of a textual analysis, fantasy theory and a consideration of their individual context, this thesis sets out to examine the representation of young children in these fantasy works, especially as to ideas of (gendered) identity formation and growing up, in order to demonstrate that they in fact display identical and conservative ideologies. Furthermore, it discusses whether these conservative fantasies could be considered subversive despite being dismissed as such by theorists such as Rosemary Jackson and Lucie Armitt.