Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development

by Susan Fraiman

Is there a female bildungsroman? Can the story of Elizabeth Bennet's development be yoked to a genre conceived in terms of Wilhelm Meister and David Copperfield? In Unbecoming Women, Susan Fraiman unpacks the ideological baggage of the category bildungsroman, and turns to novels of development and conduct books by women for a new poetics of growing up. Fraiman's careful readings of major novels by Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot, suggest that a heroine's progress toward such a goal is by no means assured: mapping the way to womanhood is not a single, well-marked path but a continual crossroads. Unbecoming Women challenges received views about fictions of becoming.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Feminism

189 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Susan Fraiman is a professor of English with a focus on feminist theory.

Reviews

[Bebbie Racette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mainly read this for the chapter "the Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet", but I liked it! Very interesting points and generally a good read

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a helpful and interesting counterpoint to my thesis, if I recall...