The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884 in England and
Canada and in the United States a few months later, in 1885. Like the Bildungsroman hero,
Huck leaves home to find an independent life, has a surrogate father in Jim, is in conflict with
his society, and reaches maturity when he repents his treatment of Jim and puts fairness
and friendship over expected behavior. Though considered by some to be a masterpiece
of American literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn initially scandalized reviewers
and parents who thought it would corrupt young children with its depiction of a hero who lies,
steals, and uses coarse language. In the last half of the twentieth century, the condemnation of
the book continued on the grounds that its portrayal of Jim and use of the word ‘‘nigger’’ are
racist. While some justify the book as a documentation of the racial notions prevalent at the
time of its writing, the novel continues to appear on some lists of books banned in schools across
the United States.
Great Expectations
Great Expectations, published serially in 1860 and 1861 by Charles Dickens, follows the tradition
of the Bildungsroman. The young protagonist, Pip, leaves his rural home to become a
gentleman and win the girl of his dreams. While most Bildungsroman heroes have to make their
own way, Pip has a mysterious benefactor who provides the wealth that Pip thinks will make
him happy. However, in the course of finding his true values, Pip comes to realizes that happiness
comes not from money but from the appreciation of good friends, regardless of their social
status, and from personal integrity. This novel has become an all-time classic that is still
required reading in many high school curricula.
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte¨ ’s Jane Eyre, published in 1847, is one of the first Bildungsromans with a female
protagonist. In this Victorian English novel, the female hero is constrained by social expectations
determined by gender-specific beliefs. At age ten, Jane is sent to residential school where she
acquires skills she later uses as a governess and a village schoolteacher. In its use of natural
elements and the supernatural, the novel is both romantic and Gothic. Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman
in that it traces Jane’s development
from a dependent child to a mature and independent woman. The novel dramatizes the love
affair between Jane and Edward Rochester, who is married at the time they meet. Rochester keeps
his insane wife sequestered in his estate, and after she dies, he and Jane marry. Charlotte Bronte¨
was attracted to the married headmaster of the school in Brussels where she went to study
French and to teach in 1842–1843. This unhappy experience, along with the author’s memories of early school years at Cowan’s Bridge, contributed autobiographical elements to Jane Eyre, her first published work of fiction, which was an immediate success.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce’s masterpiece is Ulysses, but his autobiographical Bildungsroman is A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916. When Joyce’s hero Stephen Dedalus
grows up, he says farewell to his home country and to his family and religion as well. The Norton
Anthology of English Literature describes this
novel as portraying ‘‘the parallel movement toward art and toward exile.’’ This novel of
rebellion insists that the artist is an outcast and that his alienation is a necessary component of
his being creative.
Sons and Lovers
Another autobiographical Bildungsroman, Sons and Lovers was D. H. Lawrence’s third and most
notable novel. Published in 1913, it is the coming-of- age story of PaulMorel, the son of a coal miner
father and a controlling and ambitious mother who gives up on finding any fulfillment in her
marriage. She turns her possessive attention to her children, especially Paul. The resulting struggle
for sexual power and individual identity causes Paul difficulties in finding his professional
place and establishing a healthy relationship with a woman his own age. This novel dramatizes
some of the psychological points Freud explored under the label Oedipus complex.
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu