Growing up in an Inhospitable World: Female Bildungsroman in Spain by Olga Bezhanova (review)

Olga Bezhanova’s Growing up in an Inhospitable World: Female Bildungsroman in Spain serves as a necessary addition to the limited body of research on the genre. This thorough study makes significant contributions to a broader range of scholarly topics including genre theory, the impact of social and political contexts on canonization, the relationship between the subject and history, narrative theory, and gender and sexuality in modern Spain.

Originating in Germany and focusing on a male protagonist’s coming of age in modernizing society, the genre of the Bildungsroman is inextricably linked to notions and experiences of gender and modernity, as well as to specific national literatures. As Bezhanova notes, the female novel of formation has been subject to a double erasure due to both the marginalization of Spain within Europe and to the marginalization of women in Spanish society. She succinctly outlines the history and historicization of the Bildungsroman and argues for a broadening of the genre beyond conventional national, historical, and gender boundaries.

Bezhanova’s study begins with a reevaluation of nineteenth century novels by Fernán Caballero, Pilar Sinués de Marco, and Concha Espina, traditionally viewed as antifeminist. Her analysis demonstrates that “far from being propaganda pieces aimed at keeping women in subjection, these novels discuss the obstacles that society places on the way to female development and offer ways of overcoming these obstacles” (54). By beginning with the text itself and moving outward towards the author and society, she is able to examine fruitfully a range of possible relationships among sociohistorical context, character building, narrative technique, genre, and gender.

Chapter 2 focuses on the emergence of a key moment in Spanish literature characterized by the female Bildungsroman during the backlash of female oppression orchestrated by Franco’s regime. Bezhanova argues that the repressive environment brought issues of female development to the fore, and that the Bildungsroman provided a safe generic space for exploring them. This chapter analyzes one of this movement’s seminal works, Rosa Chacel’s Memorias de Leticia Valle, in conjunction with less familiar novels such as Teresa Barbero’s El ultimo verano en el espejo, and traces relationships among these texts and Ana María Moix’s Julia and finally Esther Tusquet’s El mismo mar de todos los veranos, published in the changing times of 1978. These works demonstrate progression by emphasizing the role of sexuality in female development, yet follow a pattern of circularity rather than Bildungsroman’s traditional linear development towards maturity. As Bezhanova notes, this pattern reflects the impression that women do not yet feel fully empowered to pursue their own growth and remain thwarted by the obstacles society places in their paths. The narrative style of the texts is characterized by omissions, repetitions and flashbacks, thus mirroring the characters’ inability to take control of their own narratives both literally and metaphorically.

This pattern characterizes the female Bildungsroman through the end of the twentieth century, as seen in Almudena Grandes’s Las edades de Lulú and Espido Freire’s Irlanda. In chapter 3, Bezhanova reads the circular structure of these novels as reflecting the protagonists’ resistance to growth, which is in turn a reaction to the rapidly changing role of women in Spanish society. Bezhanova reads the themes of sexuality and violence that characterize these novels as strategies the protagonists employ to stave off their own development. In highlighting this refusal to grow up and take on what may seem to be a threatening freedom precisely when society is beginning to allow women to do so, Bezhanova makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the genre, its nuanced relationship to its historical context, and the range of individual responses to social conditions.

The 1990s see the emergence of what Bezhanova terms the “Reminiscent Bildungsroman,” explored in the fourth chapter of her book. Josefina Aldecoa’s Mujeres de negro and Marina Mayoral’s Recóndita armon...