The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development

by Elizabeth Abel (Editor), Marianne Hirsch (Editor), Elizabeth Langland (Editor)

Questions of female development shape women’s studies in many fields as women seek to define those forces which mold their experiences. Surprisingly, this is the first book to study systematically and from a comparative perspective the female novel of development, or Bildungsroman. Prevailing definitions of the Bildungsroman derive from the conceptions of development based on male experience. The book offers an expanded generic model that incorporates the distinctively female patterns of realization and failed realization which emerge from the limited social opportunities depicted in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel and from the particular features of women’s maturation as revealed by recent feminist psychoanalytic research.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published June 15, 1983

Reviews

[Michaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be honest, I skipped some essays for books that I'm planning on reading soon and I skimmed a lot of essays that aren't very relevant to my capstone because I have other things to read, but super interesting if you like literary analysis, gender studies, and psychology. I <3 women writers.

[Jax Goss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad. A bit old school feminism for my taste (being a mother and wife is Always Bad!), but still interesting.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another source I used when writing my thesis... eons ago.