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Female developments in the modern novel: Neera, George Eliot, Susanna Tamaro, Sibilla Aleramo, Doris Lessing, and Gertrude Stein (Italy, Zimbabwe).

Thesis information

*Author:   Downward, Lisa.;
*Advisor(s):   Pike, Burton
*Degree:   Ph.D.
*School:   City University of New York.
*Year:   2003

Full Abstract


This dissertation questions the validity of the term “female Bildungsroman” as a response to the Bildungsroman's presumed failure to account for female development. It begins with a dismantling of simplistic male/female paradigms of the Bildungsroman and a rejection of a fixed categorical divide between the genders. As a result, what emerges is the Bildungsroman as a spectrum which reflects different degrees of exchange between the developing protagonist and his/her world.;Part one focuses on the two primary and contradictory concepts of “Bildung” which surfaced in 18th century Germany and a close reading of the prototype of the genre: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. As Goethe's irony is emphasized, the novel's display of multiple and changing roles, which make fixed and stable gender identities difficult to identify, is accentuated. Part two considers female developments in two 19th century women authors: Neera and George Eliot. In part three, Nancy Chodorow's Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory and Marianne Hirsch's The Mother/Daughter Plot serve as theoretical points of departure for a discussion of a variety of 20th century writers such as Susanna Tamaro, Sibilla Aleramo, Doris Lessing, and Gertrude Stein. Other topics include autobiography's relationship to the Bildungsroman, and a common theme that emerges in novels concerning female development: a preoccupation with repetition.  
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