<p>The following chapters access kitchen narratives through the lens of the Bildungsroman to help bridge an important gap in the reception and criticism of the theme. In particular, I examine the trope of food and the kitchen space in texts that also deal with coming of age, and how the criticism surrounding these texts has helped or hindered critical understanding of female experiences.</p> <p>In my Introduction I conduct a survey of the way literary criticism has approached culinary texts and women’s writing about kitchen spaces. I propose that viewing kitchen narratives in Latina authors’ texts as a form of female Bildungsroman serves as a platform for women to communicate their own stories in a way that highlights their contribution to a literary genre through their own personal experiences. In parts 1 and 2 of Chapter 2 I investigate further into the history of culinary writing in Latin America as well as how the Bildungsroman and the kitchen intersect in women’s writing respectively. In Chapter 3 I conduct a critical analysis of one of the most widely studied culinary fictions, Laura Esquivel's <i>Como agua para chocolate</i> (1989), and examine how this text and its scholarship have set the stage for food narrative criticism for women across Latina texts. Chapter 4 focuses on kitchen narratives in texts and how they can be viewed through the lens of the Bildungsroman utilizing Judith Ortiz Cofer's <i>Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood </i>(1991)<i>.</i></p>

This project examines the concepts of the female bildungsroman in literature. In particular it looks at two female characters created by George R.R. Martin, the sisters, Sansa and Arya Stark. The project focuses on the characteristics of the female bildungsroman and whether or not the female bildungsroman is a valid literary concept. This has been done by examining what is a bildungsroman and is there a difference between male and female bildungsroman. The goal is to show that the female bildungsroman is valid and that Sansa and Arya are perfect examples.

Bildungsroman is a literary genre developed from the ideas of the Enlightenment. The genre usually portrays young men coming into the society which raise the question: what literary possibilities exist for portraying young women coming into adult life? The purpose of this study is to analyze novels from two different time periods about girls growing up in an Irish environment to answer how their possibilities coming in to the society are portrayed. Questions that are being answered are: how do the novels discuss class, gender and relationships? How do the novels discuss society? The material consists of The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (1930–) from 2020 and Normal People by Sally Rooney (1991–) from 2019. The Country Girls was first published in 1960 and both novels used in this study are translated into Swedish. The study uses class and gender theoretical frameworks. The class perspecitve is mainly inspired by the theories of Pierre Bourdieu about different forms of capital, disposition and habitus but Ulrika Holgersson’s feminist framework for analyzing class will also be incorporated. For the gender perspecitve Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman’s idea of sex, sex category and gender will be used to discuss how characters organize their behaviour according to sex category. The gender perspective is also largely influenced by Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s theories regarding performativity. The method for this study is a comparative analysis based on close reading. This study shows that these novels use opposites and protagonists in different ways to discuss oppression in the Irish society and propose solutions to that issue. While The Country Girls suggests that men are the main oppressor of women Normal People also portrays a patriarchal society but where capitalism too plays a destructive part. The Country Girls proposes feminist transnational alliances to overcome oppression and Normal People uses masochism as a theme to show how what hurts can be transformed into pleasure.