Hadi (Novel) and The Contemporary Bildungsroman: Female Bildung and Narrative Strategies in Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal

Abstract

This thesis is comprised of two parts: a creative project and a critical project, each of which is intended to stand alone. Though both concern themselves with the Bildungsroman, they were conceptualised independently of each other. i) Hadi Hadi is a coming-of-age novel. It is a story of fathers and sons, and of brothers. Hadi, the youngest of three brothers, is a teenage poet struggling to establish his creative voice. His father, Gazanfar, is an unsuccessful poet. Having nurtured and supported his youngest son’s talent, he refuses to relinquish creative control over his work. Hadi, who loves his father, is conflicted, how can he please his father, and yet pursue his own dreams? Gazanfar’s blind ambition divides the family. Excluded, the eldest son Rehan is jealous of Hadi’s close relationship with their father. Rehan wants to see Hadi fail and seizes an opportunity to sow discord between their father and Hadi. Their mother, Khaldah sees the damage her husband is doing, but is helpless in the face of his ambitions for Hadi, and for himself. Hadi used to be able to rely on his friends, Manzoor and Shamila, for support, but Manzoor’s romantic feelings for Shamila upset Hadi and he begins to question his own feelings for Manzoor. The novel is interested in the entanglements which both stymie and prompt Hadi’s artistic impulse, and follows the consequences of his artistic ambitions. ii) The Contemporary Bildungsroman: Female Bildung and Narrative Strategies in Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal This thesis argues that the conventional plot-driven Bildungsroman form and the Bildung narrative, grounded in their male-centric beginnings, limit the female Bildung narrative. Drawing on two contemporary female coming-of-age novels, Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal and Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, my narratological approach, contextualised within a feminist reading, illuminates the ways in which the female Bildung is confined by the conventional Bildungsroman form. Collectively, these contemporary novels hinder and resist the conventional, forward moving, heteronormative female Bildungsroman and trouble the idea of a stable, developing Bildungsroman with the female protagonist. Furthermore, they present alternative narrative formations for the contemporary female Bildungsroman. In these formations, narrative and storytelling resist confinement, to write outside of the limiting structures imposed on the female Bildung. They enable a female Bildungsroman to open up into its own space, rather than be confined to an inherited space.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	John Mcauliffe (Supervisor) & Geoffrey Ryman (Supervisor)