ADOLESCENCE AND "THE STRUGGLE FOR ASCENDANCY": THE CHARACTERIZATION OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS OF ELIZABETH BOWEN (IRISH)
Abstract
In her best novels, Elizabeth Bowen's concern for what she called "the moral element" in fiction derives to a great degree from her presentation of adolescent sensationalism. Her best work shows what she called the "immediacy and purity of sensation" in women who are adolescent regardless of their chronological age. Such protagonists allow Bowen to dramatize what happens when experience forces adolescents to examine their roles in society. One of Bowen's most popular protagonists, sixteen-year-old Portia in The Death of the Heart, is the most traditional adolescent sensationalist. In other novels, Bowen shows the tragic elements of adolescent sensationalism in older women. Lois in The Last September is unable to make the commitment necessary to become adult; Karen in The House in Paris does not want the responsibility of motherhood which sensationalism brought her; Stella in The Heat of the Day discovers the price of maintaining her moral code at the expense of love; and Dinah in The Little Girls learns after fifty years that the sensations of childhood must be let go. Through her representations of these lives, Bowen judges her characters and their times; this study explores the nature of those judgments.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Modern literature|British and Irish literature
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