Abstract:
The paper draws attention to the fact that the introduction of gender perspectives into the studies of the Bildungsroman, or novel of development, has opened up the possibility of delineating specific female versions of the genre, ranging from the classic female Bildungsroman, through the feminist Bildungsroman to the postfeminist coming-of-age novel. The following discussion of heroines in British novels of development focuses on the changing socio-cultural factors that have influenced the representations of women’s emancipatory struggles in works by female authors over recent centuries. The selected examples reveal that the transformations of the classic female Bildungsroman which emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have brought about a series of significant innovations that include not only new types of heroines whose self-realization can be achieved in ways unthinkable for their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors but also more significant thematic and formal variations on the genre.
Keywords: gender, British literature, the novel of development, protofeminism, feminism, postfeminism
For citation: Šnircová S. Gender and Genre: From the Female Bildungsroman to the Postfeminist Coming-of-Age Novel. Current Issues in Philology and Pedagogical Linguistics. 2021, no 3, pp. 243–253 (In Engl.)
Acknowledgement: The research presented in this paper has been supported by VVGS UPJŠ project vvgs-2020-1637 Sustainable institutional change through gender equality plans in small and mid-sized universities granted by PavolJozefŠafárik University in Košice
Bionote:
Soňa Šnircová
Department of British and American Studies,
Faculty of Arts, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice;
9 Moyzesova, 04001 Košice, Slovakia;
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3849-0175
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