Wednesday, May 11, 2011

More on XIXth Century Female Characters

One of the most common responses that female characters of the XIXth century novels of growth and development have to being abandoned by their beloved, humiliated by acquaintances and rejected by family members is to seek employment. Even Fernan Caballero's goody-two-shoes character Gracia Vargas says, "I have hands, I can work" and rejects a former fiance who comes back to her in favor of independence and security (these are the actual words she uses) that work provides for her. Fernan Caballero was one of the most rabid conservatives of her times. She reminds me of Ann Coulter whenever I read her novels. Even she, however, created female characters who see work outside the home as a panacea for all women's problems.

There is nothing even remotely resembling this attitude among female characters of Bildungsromane published in the last three decades. What happens is the exact opposite. In Espido Freire's Irlanda, the main character murders her cousin who tells her that a woman can acquire power by becoming an executive or a banker. Freire is a young, quite progressive writer. She is no Fernan Caballero, and I'm sure that she is no fan of Ann Coulter either. And still, the very idea of having a life outside the home drives her character into a murderous rage.

I only discussed these two writers here but there are many more who do the same thing both in the XIXth and the XXth century. (And not only in Spain, of course.)

3 comments:

Tim said...

And another word for my list of german words used in the engish language. Thanks !

Lindsay said...

That's really weird!

I wonder if the same thing has happened in English literature ... the female-oriented Bildungsromane I can think of right now from the 19th century --- Elizabeth Barrett Browning's long poem "Aurora Leigh," Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Villette, Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey --- mostly feature women defying their families/society in general in order to work and live independently, or sometimes, like in George Eliot's novels The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, they feature women who are smart, educated and would like to do some meaningful work in the world even if they can't make the complete break with family and community that would allow them to be totally independent.

(Either way, independence and work are important themes, whether the heroine manages to attain them or not).

I am not as well-read in modern (English-language) Bildungsromane, though; can you think of any books that might fit this category? Twilight occurred to me, but I am not sure it is actually a Bildungsroman. (If it is, it would totally be emblematic of a transition between work and love as Things That Are Important to Literary Heroines!)

Clarissa said...

" Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Villette, Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey --- mostly feature women defying their families/society in general in order to work and live independently, or sometimes, like in George Eliot's novels The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, they feature women who are smart, educated and would like to do some meaningful work in the world"

-That's exactly what I'm saying and these are precisely the works of literature that I'm quoting to prove this point.

Twilight is definitely a female Bildungsroman that exemplifies this tendency. And just look at how popular it is.

Of course, I'm mostly concentrating on Spanish literature in my book, but there will be examples of similar tendencies in English-speaking literature by the time I'm done.