Prisoners' progress: development in the female Bildungsroman.

Abstract

Charlotte Bronte Kate Chopin, and Alice Walker each employ a common metaphor to articulate their characters' stories of development. Jane Eyre constantly escapes a series of impending enclosures. Edna Pontellier emerges, as in birthing, from suffocating confinement. Celie, who understands slavery in two ways, as a Black and as a woman, liberates herself from bondage with power she draws from bonding among women. This thesis illustrates, using three novels from widely separated time periods and featuring three very different protagonists, a characteristic of a significant, but often neglected, literary genre. The female novel of development is distinguished from the male literary tradition not so much by structure or plot or even theme, but by the social and cultural imperatives inherent in a structure or plot or theme which attempts to express a woman's development. Jane, Edna, and Celie all share a common developmental task. They must assert their individuality, their autonomy, and their independence in a patriarchal system unwilling to accept such.