The Right to Dream: Gender, Modernity, and the Problem of Class in Kate O'Brien's Bourgeois Bildungsromane

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Naoise Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Aristocratic Culture ◽  
Modern Form

Feminist critics have celebrated Kate O'Brien's pioneering approach to gender and sexuality, yet there has been little exploration of her innovations of the coming-of-age narrative. Creating a modern Irish reworking of the Bildungsroman, O'Brien's heroines represent an idealized model of female identity-formation which stands in sharp contrast to the nationalist state's vision of Irish womanhood. Using Franco Moretti's theory of the Bildungsroman, a framing of the genre as a thoroughly ‘modern’ form of the novel, this article applies a critical Marxist lens to O'Brien's output. This reading brings to light the ways in which the limitations of the Bildungsroman work to constrain O'Brien's subversive politics. Their middle-class status remains an integral part of the identity of her heroines, informing the forms of liberation they seek. Fundamentally, O'Brien's idealization of aristocratic culture, elitist exceptionalism and ‘detachment of spirit’ restricts the emancipatory potential of her vision of Irish womanhood.

scholarly journals Young Undocumented Migrants in Contemporary Fiction Films: Guten Tag, Ramón and Ya no estoy aquí

Norteamérica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Quintana Vallejo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Undocumented Migration ◽  
The Right

The last fifteen years have seen a rise in critically-acclaimed fiction films depicting undocumented migration from and through Mexico. By analyzing two illustrative examples—Guten Tag, Ramón (2013), and Ya no estoy aquí (2019)—this paper uses the framework of the coming-of-age genre to dissect the characteristics of this new contemporary cinematographic type, thus pondering its inner-workings and appeal. Moreover, the paper contrasts different factions of the critical reception these films in order to examine why such films are met with both punitive disdain and enthusiastic celebration. The differences in tone between these two films show how the themes of migration, poverty, and violence can be interpreted in varied ways that serve to call attention to their urgency. From the lighthearted humor of Guten Tag, Ramón to the poignant solemnity of Ya no estoy aquí, the cinematographic genre, so close to the archetypal plot of coming-of-age narratives, denounces both the indifference of the Mexican middle class and the xenophobic settings that seek to undermine the right to migrate.

scholarly journals Voice and Silence in Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. BB102-BB118
Author(s):  
Helma Van Lierop-Debrauwer
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Young Adult Literature ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Voice And Silence

In 2014, the American writer Jacqueline Woodson published Brown Girl Dreaming, the story of her childhood in free verse, which was classified as young adult literature. Most US reviewers characterized and appreciated the book both as a human rights narrative of a young brown girl’s coming of age against the socio-political background of racism and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States of the 1960s, and as a personal history of her development as a writer. In this article the major focus will be on how Brown Girl Dreaming as both a political memoir and an autobiographical narrative of identity formation is fleshed out. On the basis of my analysis of these two plot lines, I will further argue that its categorization as young adult literature disguises that the novel addresses a dual audience of adult and young readers. In my argumentation related to the political and personal character of the novel, as well as in my discussion of the crossover potential of Brown Girl Dreaming, I will focus on the presence of voice and silence.

Coming of Age in the Solitude of the Lost Land: Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home

Hawwa ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 268-288
Author(s):  
Marta Cariello
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Arab American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
A Site

This contribution analyzes Palestinian-American Randa Jarrar’s semi-autobiographical novelA Map of Home(2008). The novel is read through various, overlapping lenses: the use of the semi-autobiographical form and the related challenge, brought about by the woman migrant writer, to the genre itself of autobiography and its relevance to individual and collective identity formation, the deconstruction of fixed, universal subjectivity and the challenge that exile narratives bring to the narration of nations, the specific positionality of the author that brings into play not only Arab and Arab-American identity construction but more specifically the narration of the Palestinian people. Finally, aMap of Homeappears as a site for Jarrar to produce a specific articulation of an Arab, Arab-American and Palestinian self through a female genealogy of agency.

Owning "the dreadful truth"; Or, Is Thirty-Five Too Old?: Age and the Marriageable Body in Wilkie Collins's Armadale

2010 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Niles
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Perceptions Of Aging ◽  
A Site

Lisa Niles, "Owning 'the dreadful truth'; Or, Is Thirty-Five Too Old?: Age and the Marriageable Body in Wilkie Collins's Armadale" (pp. 65––92) Wilkie Collins's Armadale (1864––66) offers a sensational critique of the increasing popularity of cosmetics usage in 1860s London and its relationship to perceptions of aging and the marriage market. Looking younger than her thirty-five years, Collins's antiheroine Lydia Gwilt challenges the terms upon which Victorian society constructed a middle-class, marriageable female identity. In Lydia, Collins produces a character that succeeds in a competitive marriage market by performing a simulacrum of youth. And the narrative suggests that her beauty depends not merely upon Nature but also upon her knowledge of the arts of its preservation, particularly as Gwilt is associated with Mother Oldershaw, a fictive double for Madame Rachel, the infamous London cosmetics purveyor who stood trial for fraud in 1868. By examining the novel alongside Punch cartoons, trial transcripts, beauty manuals, and reviews, I claim that Lydia Gwilt's character resists a simplistic cosmetics-as-fraud reading and exposes a public whose desires are predicated upon the fraudulent practices it critiques. The artificial threat that cosmetics serve functions as a site through which to explore the real threat——the criminality of a body that successfully passes as younger in a marriage market dependent upon regularizing youth and demarcating age. To be thirty-five and look it is unremarkable, perhaps pitiable; to be thirty-five and not look it is a crime.

scholarly journals "Blown away like apples by the fickle wind of the Twentieth Century”: Counterculture Resistance and the Wilderness Condition in Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America // Resistencia contracultural en Trout Fishing in America

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Jill E Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Specific Setting ◽  
Richard Brautigan ◽  
Pastoral Mode ◽  
Drop Outs

Abstract Many critics consider Richard Brautigan’s 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America a coming-of-age account of a wayward, outsider narrator discovering that the pastoral mode is no longer viable in mid-century America.  However, these readings often ignore Brautigan’s explicit political affinity and his conscious engagement with a specific setting—southern California in the mid- to late-60s.  This paper explores Brautigan’s Counterculture ethic, which critiques the mindless prevalence of mainstream, middle-class America’s habit of consumption, production, and destruction of the natural world.  Linking the lack of individual free will with the postwar technology boom, Brautigan engages with the natural landscape and in communities of one’s own making.  As a result, the novel is peopled with alienated drop-outs, the victims of America’s technocracy.  The “trout fishing in America” refrain, with its many incarnations, is one of the modes through which these characters’ operate within Counterculture principles, namely through their self-imposed poverty and criticism of the way America uses and abuses its citizens and the natural world.   Resumen Muchos críticos consideran la novela de Richard Brautigan Trout Fishing in America (1967) un relato iniciático de un narrador forastero y obstinado  que descubre que el modo pastoril ya no es viable en los Estados Unidos de mediados de siglo. Sin embargo, estas lecturas a menudo ignoran la afinidad política explícita de Brautigan y su compromiso consciente con un escenario específico - la California sureña de los últimos años de los años 60. Este ensayo explora la ética contracultural de Brautigan, que critica la preponderancia ciega de la clase media de los Estados Unidos y su hábito de consumo, producción y la destrucción del mundo natural. Conectando la falta de voluntad propia con el "boom" tecnológico posterior a la segunda guerra mundial, Brautigan se implica con el paisaje natural y en las comunidades de creación propia. Como resultado, la novela está llena de  bohemios alienados, las víctimas de la tecnocracia estadounidense. El refrán "trout fishing in America," con sus muchas encarnaciones, es una de las formas en las que estos personajes actúan dentro de los principios contraculturales, concretamente  a través de su pobreza auto-impuesta y del criticismo de la manera en que los Estados Unidos usan y abusan de sus ciudadanos y del mundo natural.  

scholarly journals THE DISCONNECTED VOICES OF MOTHERHOOD AND DAUGHTERHOOD IN TONI MORRISON’S PARADISE: JOURNEY FROM UNCERTAINTY TO CHAOS

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-222
Author(s):  
Ahdiyeh Alipour ◽  
Zanyar Kareem Abdul
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
True Love ◽  
Mother Daughter Relationship ◽  
Mother And Daughter ◽  
The Way

This paper is an attempt of analysing the problematic mother-daughter relationship in Paradise (1998), a female coming-of-age novel by Toni Morrison. In the novel, a black woman and her daughter had an uneasy relationship. The daughter strived to shape her own identity and future, but her uneasy relationship with her mother profoundly affected her choices and the way she lived. Undoubtedly, the patriarchal environment that had moulded the female identity and shaped a woman’s world resulted in a dysfunctional relationship between mother and daughter. Although the seed of maternal love existed in her heart as in all mothers, she was often incapable of transferring this love into words and actions, overwhelmed as she was by the pressures patriarchal society. The oppressive pressure on black women is depicted far surpassed that on the whites, and the former were ostracized from society merely because of who they were and by the colour of their skin. This paper explores how patriarchy and conventional beliefs could influence the mother-daughter relationship and prevented the expression of a mother’s true love, consequently depriving them of the opportunity or ability to perform physiologically and psychologically as mothers, biological or otherwise, in black communities. To liberate herself, the daughter had to struggle in the swamp, which her ancestors had created by the force of convention and patriarchy. However, when she eventually discovered the way to free herself from the swamp, she felt no welcome from society and so continued to remain isolated and ostracised.

Analytical Study of Violence Theme in Victoria Schwab’s This Savage Song

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Study ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Vicious Cycle ◽  
Aggressive Approach ◽  
Research Article ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Right

This research article focuses on the theme of violence and its representation by the characters of the novel “This Savage Song” by Victoria Schwab. How violence is transmitted through genes to next generations and to what extent socio- psycho factors are involved in it, has also been discussed. Similarly, in what manner violent events and deeds by the parents affect the psychology of children and how it inculcates aggressive behaviour in their minds has been studied. What role is played by the parents in grooming the personality of children and ultimately their decisions to choose the right or wrong way has been argued. In the light of the theory of Judith Harris, this research paper highlights all the phenomena involved: How the social hierarchy controls the behaviour. In addition, the aggressive approach of the people in their lives has been analyzed in the light of the study of second theorist Thomas W Blume. As the novel is a unique representation of supernatural characters, the monsters, which are the products of some cruel deeds, this research paper brings out different dimensions of human sufferings with respect to these supernatural beings. Moreover, the researcher also discusses that, in what manner the curse of violence creates an inevitable vicious cycle of cruel monsters that makes the life of the characters turbulent and miserable.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Financial Returns ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
International Audience ◽  
National Identity Formation

The conclusion reaffirms the essential role played by cinema generally, and the coming-of-age genre in particular, in the process of national identity formation, because of its effectiveness in facilitating self-recognition and self-experience through a process of triangulation made possible, for the most part, by a dialogue with some of the nation’s most iconic works of literature. This section concludes by point out the danger posed, however, by an observable trend toward generic standardization in New Zealand films motivated by a desire to appeal to an international audience out of consideration for the financial returns expected by funding bodies under current regimes.

Patterns: Rosamond Lehmann

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vike Martina Plock
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
To The Lighthouse ◽  
Fashion Magazines ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Rosamond Lehmann

This chapter analyzes the role of fashion as a discursive force in Rosamond Lehmann’s 1932 coming-of-age novel Invitation to the Waltz. Reading the novel alongside such fashion magazines as Vogue, it demonstrates Lehmann’s awareness that 1920s fashion, in spite of its carefully stylized public image as harbinger of originality, emphasized the importance of following preconceived (dress) patterns in the successful construction of modern feminine types. Invitation to the Waltz, it argues, opposes the production of patterned types and celebrates difference and disobedience in its stead. At the same time, the novel’s formal appearance is nonetheless dependent on the very same tenets it criticizes. On closer scrutiny, it is seen to reveal its resemblance to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). A tension between imitation and originality determines sartorial fashion choices. This chapter shows that female authorship in the inter-war period was subjected to the same market forces that controlled and sustained the organization of the fashion industry.

Criss-Cross: Identity and Transformation in Re-reading Billy Elliot

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-551
Author(s):  
Jacqui Miller
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

Billy Elliot (2000) has been widely recognised as an important British film of the post-Thatcher period. It has been analysed using multiple disciplinary methodologies, but almost always from the theoretical frameworks of class and gender/sexuality. The film has sometimes been used not so much as a focus of analysis itself but as a conduit for exploring issues such as class deprivation or neo-liberal politics and economics. Such studies tend to use the film's perceived shortcomings as a starting point to critique society's wider failings to interrogate constructions of gender and sexuality. This article argues that an examination of the identity formation of some of the film's subsidiary characters shows how fluidity and transformation are key to the film's opening up of a jouissance which is enabled by but goes beyond its central character.

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