Bildungsroman

 

Bildungsroman is the name affixed to those novels that concentrate on the development or education of a central character. German in origin, “bildungs” means formation, and  “roman” means novel. Although The History of Agathon, written by Christoph Martin Wieland , may be the first known example, it was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, written in 1795, that took the form from philosophical to personal development and gave celebrity to the genre.

 

More than any other type of novel, the Bildungsroman intends to lead the reader to greater personal enrichment as the protagonist journeys from youth to psychological or emotional maturity. Traditionally, this growth occurs according to a pattern: the sensitive, intelligent protagonist leaves home, undergoes stages of conflict and growth, is tested by crises and love affairs, then finally finds the best place to use his/her unique talents. Sometimes the protagonist returns home to show how well things turned out. Some Bildungsromans end with the death of the hero, leaving the promise of his life unfulfilled. Traditionally, English novelists complicate the protagonist’s battle to establish an individual identity with conflicts from outside the self. German novelists typically concentrate on the internal struggle of the hero. The protagonist’s adventures can be seen as a quest for the meaning of life or as a vehicle for the author’s social and moral opinions as demonstrated through the protagonist.

 

Notable works:

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884. Like the Bildungsroman hero, Huck leaves home to find an independent life along with 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.

 

The Bell Jar

Although Sylvia Plath is well known as a poet, her autobiographical Bildungsroman is one of the best-known works in modern American literature. Published in 1963, The Bell Jar tells the story of Esther Greenwood, a student editor on an internship at a women’s magazine in New York City. It follows the standard Bildungsroman pattern of the young person who goes to the big city to pursue professional aspirations. But there is no traditional happy ending. The psychological anguish of Plath’s later poetry is related to the confessional revelations of The Bell Jar, in which she describes the events that led to her nervous breakdown. One month after the English publication of this book in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, Plath committed suicide. The novel was published in England under Plath’s name in 1966 and in the United States in 1971.

 

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.

 

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was published in 1952 and won the 1953 National Book Award. Ellison’s first novel, it expresses in metaphorical language the Bildungsroman theme of searching for one’s identity. The nameless black protagonist, looking for his identity, comes to the realization that he has been living the roles prescribed for him by white society. But once he steps outside the assigned sphere, he becomes ‘‘invisible’’ to a dominant culture that does not recognize his individuality. Employing symbols of the traditions of the frontier, the black community, and music, Invisible Man achieved international fame and remains one of the most important American works of the twentieth century.

 

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.

 

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy introduced into Victorian literature the concept of fatalism. This belief assumes that humans are subject to arbitrary and random forces, such as chance and timing, which shape their destinies. Jude the Obscure, published in

1895, received widespread criticism because it attacks the Anglican Church, the elitist admissions policies of Oxford University (called Christ minster in the novel), and the rigid laws regarding marriage. As a Bildungsroman, the maturation story follows Jude Fawley’s route to destruction from what Hardy called in his preface ‘‘the tragedy of unfulfilled aims.’’ Fawley, by trade a stonemason, has spiritual and intellectual ambitions that are thwarted by his exclusion from the university and his disastrous involvement with two women, the vulgar Arabella and the intellectual Sue. He marries the first and has one child with her; he does not marry the second, and he has two children by her. Tragedy overwhelms Jude when his oldest child kills the younger ones and hangs himself. Jude himself dies miserably, an alcoholic.

 

Of Human Bondage

Like so many autobiographical Bildungsromans, Of Human Bondage (1915) draws from the unhappy early years of its author, W. Somerset Maugham. A popular twentieth-century English novelist, Maugham was a physician who abandoned medicine to write plays and novels. The hero in Maugham’s most famous novel is a medical student with a clubfoot who falls in love with a promiscuous Cockney waitress. A still-admired The famous 1935 film version of this obsessive and tragic love affair starred Bette Davis and Leslie Howard.

 

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 Paul Morel, the son of a coal miner father and a controlling and ambitious mother who gives up on finding any fulfilment 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.

 

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

Published in 1795 by Wolfgang von Goethe as Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, this prototype of the Bildungsroman was translated into English by Thomas Carlyle in 1824. With this book, Goethe established the Bildungsroman as a novel of personal rather than philosophical development for the main character. His hero wanders through a series of love affairs, friendships, and occupations before settling down to marriage and responsible adulthood. Goethe’s model was emulated by many notable writers and has had a strong influence on the development of the novel.