Jennifer Johnston, a contemporary Irish novelist, has written nine novels thus far encompassing a wide thematic range. While her protagonists include both male and female, in the three novels, The Old Jest, The Christmas Tree, and The Invisible Worm we witness the emergence of a new kind of heroine: the female Bildungsroman protagonist. I begin my study with a discussion of the traditional Bildungsroman as a male project, which traces the growth and self-development of an adolescent as he approaches maturity. A reformulation is then established allowing for a female version of the genre while differentiating between stories of the failure of development, such as Jane Eyre, and Johnston's stories where development is realized. I propose to demonstrate how Johnston's works exemplify the Bildungsroman form and also explore questions relevant to female development such as the protagonist's relationship to work, to love, to family, to tradition, and to writing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.61281 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Church, Joanne |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001314220, proquestno: AAIMM80280, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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