Chapter- 2

The Origin and Development of

Bildungsroman Novels
 Chapter-2

The Origin and Development of Bildungsroman Novels

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

In the above cited quotation, Robert Frost demands that the choices that one

makes will contribute directly to the destination of that individual. Each individual

makes various choices throughout his life but the decisions taken during the critical

time, especially during adolescence, play a major role in the development of one’s

character and individuality.

The conflict between an individual and society has remained a fundamental

concept in literature for centuries. The individual is born into a society that has an

established and defined social order. One gets a pressure during his life to fit into a

mould that society has put forward as a social norm. However during the individual’s

growth from childhood to adulthood, the individual realizes his or her full potential

and along with that a desire to be free and achieve true freedom. This is often done

through a process known as self-actualization. In the 1820s, German philologist

Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern coined the term Bildungsroman for this concept and

a literary genre was born.

Morgenstern specified that any work within the genre could be identified as a

Bildungsroman because “it depicts the hero’s Bildung [development] as it begins and

proceeds to a certain level of perfection.” (Booker 84) A Bildungsroman gives the

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individual a voice, as novels within the genre focus on the development of the

individual and his or her moral growth from youth to adulthood. Bildungsroman

novels are often written by authors that refuse to go by societal norms, both in their

professional and personal lives and therefore it is no coincidence that Bildungsroman

novels are very often autobiographical and contain elements lifted from the author’s

own personal experiences.

Bildungsroman: Context

Genres are considered to be arisen out of other already existing genres. Genres

used to develop from their original concept and also get changed in their

development. They even get transformed and sometimes fade away completely from

the literary scenario. A Bildungsroman is a novelistic genre that arose during the

German Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, following the dissolving of the

feudal system and the spreading of democratic ideas. Reacting against the rationalism

of the early enlightenment, writers such as Samuel Richardson in England and Jean-

Jacques-Rousseau in France began to explore human passions in their work. The

bourgeois nuclear family took shape, characterized by new emphasis on love and

companionship in marriage, increased attention to children, and the growing

conviction that only men should enter public life while women fulfilled their destiny

in the home.

Authors broke away from their former dependence on aristocratic patronage to

write for a rapidly expanding audience of bourgeois readers who found new models of

sentiment in the novels of the period. The German Pietist movement also helped pave

the way for a newly introspective literature, encouraging individuals to look within

themselves for evidence of their salvation and to write about their personal religious

experiences. By the end of the century, it seemed to many individuals that they were

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living in an era of unprecedented historical change in which the only certainty was

that their world would be different from that of their parents, rocked by the

cataclysmic events of the French Revolution, guided by sentiment, and steeped in the

latest literature, authors began to write the narratives of personal development that

have come to be called the Bildungsroman.

When translated directly, Bildung means education and learning, but its actual

meaning is much more comprehensive. In 1784, Immanuel Kant, stated in the opening

line of his famous essay: “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?” that

Enlightenment was “man’s emergence from self imposed immaturity.” (Summerfield

173). He believed that the goodness of a person is based on his or moral law. He

simply meant that the goodness in a human being is the will to overcome obstacles,

temptations, and pressures from outside forces. In a more modern sense, the ability to

face and overcome peer pressure and influence from members of the same group in

the determination of one’s identity is essential to the moral development of an

individual. As mentioned in the Encyclopaedia of German literature,

Historically, the concept of Bildung represented the confluence of

a secularized version of the Pietist conception of man as a
creation in the image of God with the universal understanding of
the human agent as a subject who was regulated by innate,
rational capacities. The political task implied in the ideals of
Bildung in the late 18th century was, therefore, to reform the state
citizen relation in such a way that the state’s primary purpose
would be to provide the conditions for the full self-realization and
freedom of its citizens, who, in turn, would serve the state as free
subjects. Bildung was at its origin thus deeply implicated in the
broader republican ideals of the Enlightenment and reflected a

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 profound faith in the harmonious reciprocity of individual and
collective self-legislation. (Konzett 107)

In the simplest sense of the word, Bildungsroman is the name affixed to those

novels that concentrate on the development or education of a central character. The

Bildungsroman as a genre has its roots in Germany. Jerome Buckley notes that the

word itself is German, with “Bildung” having a variety of connotations: "portrait,"

"picture," "shaping" and "formation," all of which give the sense of development or

creation “the development of the child can also be seen as the creation of the man.”

(13-14) “Roman” simply means "novel”.

The birth of the Bildungsroman genre is generally marked at the release of

Johann Volfgang von Goethe’s second novel titled Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

in the year 1795. However, the designation Bildungsroman was first used by the

critic Karl Morgenstern during his lectures at the University of Dorpat in 1819. He

clearly stated that the genre was to portray the hero’s Bildung (formation) in all its

steps and final goal as well as to foster the Bildung of the readers. On the contrary, the

term Bildungsroman was not commonly brought up in literature studies until the

philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey applied the term in his Das Leben Schleiermachers

(1867-1870), that the concept of the Bildungsroman gained wide critical acceptance.

Dilthey’s research claims that the first novel that initiated the genre was Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, published in 1795.

Dilthey’s understanding of the Bildungsroman emphasizes the idea of

masculine maturation propelled by a chronological progress for a higher stage. The

Dilthey-derived definition of the genre is linked firmly to the ideal of self-cultivation,

the main epistemological legacy of the German Enlightenment to which Goethe’s age

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owes its intellectual and philosophical inspiration. Dissonances and conflicts are

assumed as necessary points of educational passage. Such a strong belief in progress

has become a quintessential component for the genre that has been called loosely the

“novel of education” (Erziehungsroman) in its widest sense. Noting that the concept

of Bildung relies on notions such as cultivation, refinement, awakening and (both

upward and forward) movement, critics have renamed the Bildungsroman the “novel

of formation” with special emphasis on the completion of character; indeed,

“formation” is closest to what the German word, Bildung, literally means.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is

recognized to be the first novel of the Bildungsroman genre. Goethe portrays the

protagonist, Wilhelm, as a young male who comes across two paths of either

continuing his family's business or directing himself to the career of being a theatre

actor. Wilhelm marries an actress going against his father's wishes, but leaves her

when he realizes that she is with another man. On his journey, Wilhelm encounters

several companions along the way who educate him about the aspects of life,

transitioning into adulthood and as a human being. The supporting characters

inexplicitly teach Wilhelm these aspects as they come and go, significantly unfolding

the story even more. Goethe’s protagonist then attempts to find a way into the Tower

Society—a group of enlightened aristocrats—which his acceptance into the group

begins to tie up the story’s loose ends. 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 Goethe’s model was emulated by many notable

writers and has had a strong influence on the development of the novel.

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 Other celebrated examples in German are Tieck’s Sternbalds Wanderungen

(1798), Keller’s Der grune Heinrich (1854), Freytag’s Soll und Haben (1855),

Stifter’s Der Nachsommer (1857), and Raabe’s Der Hungerpastor (1864). Those

published during the twentieth century novels are Thomas Mann’s Konigliche Hoheit

(1904), Der Zauberberg (1924) and Joseph und seine Bruder (1933-42). Some other

works include, The History of Agathon by K. Wieland, The Life Story of Tobias Knaut

by I. Vetsel, Franz Shternbald’s-Traveling by L. Tieck, Hyperion or the Hermit in

Greece by J. Hölderlin, Lyutsynda by F. Schlegel, Titan by J. Richter and others.

Although the genre arose in Germany, it has had extensive influence first in

Europe and later throughout the world. Thomas Carlyle translated Goethe’s novel into

English and after its publication in 1824, many British authors wrote novels inspired

by it such as: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain,

George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, James

Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Somerset Maugham’s Of Human

Bondage and a host of others.

Critics continue to debate whether the term can be applied to other European

literatures or whether it is a peculiarly German genre. Late 19th century German

critics maintained that the Bildungsroman expressed ‘typically German’

characteristics of inwardness and self-reflection. Increasingly, nationalist German

literary historians in the early 20th century drew parallels between the hero’s

maturation in the Bildungsroman and Germany’s rise to economic and military power.

Scepticism on the part of many post-war German critics, on the other hand, has not

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hesitated to discuss novels by Jane Austen, George Eliot, Gustav Flaubert, and many

others as examples of the Bildungsroman.

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 tasted by crises and love affairs then finally finds the best place to use

his or her unique talents. Sometimes the protagonists return home to show how well

things turned out. Some Bildungsroman novels 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.

The Bildungsroman was especially popular until 1860. Its German affiliation,

however, caused anti-German sentiment during the world wars to contribute to the

demise of its influence, along with the emergence of a multitude of modern

experiments in novel writing. Nonetheless, James Joyce wrote his Bildungsroman, A

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in 1916, and the genre has continued to be

adopted, with distinguishing variations, by writers of many nationalities.

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Defining the Term Bildungsroman:

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the Bildungsroman as “a novel about

the moral and psychological growth of the main character.” (2009) This is a very

popular form of storytelling whereby the author bases the plot on the overall growth

of the central character throughout the timeline of the story. In his A Glossary of

Literary Terms, literary critic M. H. Abrams states that the Bildungsroman illustrates

“the development of the protagonist’s mind and character, in the passage from

childhood through varied experiences - and often through a spiritual crisis - into

maturity, which usually involves recognition of one’s identity and role in the world.”

(255) As the story progresses, the subject undergoes noticeable mental, physical,

social, emotional, moral, and often spiritual advancement and strengthening before

the readers’ eyes.

Oxford dictionary of literary terms defines the Bildungsroman as, “a kind of

novel that follows the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or

adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity.” (35) Cuddon in his

Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory states about the

Bildungsroman novel saying that, “it refers to a novel which is an account of the

youthful development of a hero or heroine (usually the former). It describes the

process by which maturity is achieved through the various ups and downs of life.”

(82)

Thus, one can see that there is not any particular definition is available for this

type of genre but for a novel to be considered a Bildungsroman it must adhere to strict

rules that have been set forth by scholars. These rules can be interchangeable but most

scholars agree on the definition set forth by Jerome Buckley in his Season of Youth

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where he states that for a novel to be classified as a Bildungsroman it must include a

set list of characteristics: “childhood, the conflict of generations, provinciality, the

larger society, self-education, alienation, ordeal by love, the search for a vocation and

a working philosophy.” (18) These strict rules have been set forth due to the fact that

the term has been used so broadly by modern scholars that it has started to lose its

meaning. Bildungsroman has become an umbrella term for a novel of formation, a

novel of education, novel of culture and is more commonly today referred to as a

coming-of-age story. With the arrival of the term coming-of-age, Bildungsroman has

started to lose its meaning as these two terms are often grouped together. While these

two terms share some qualities, such as both describing the journey from childhood to

adulthood, they are fundamentally different in the way that the desired end result is

not the same. A Bildungsroman must end with the protagonist having found what he

is looking for and having gained clarity and maturity. The coming-of-age genre is not

as rigid.

The canonical definition of the novel proposed by Georg Lukacs exactly

invokes what the Bildungsroman is made of: “The inner form of the novel has been

understood as the process of the problematic individual’s journeying towards himself,

the road from dull captivity within a merely present reality... towards clear self-

recognition”; according to Lukacs, “the content of the novel is the story of the soul

that goes to find itself, that seeks adventures in order to be proved and tested by them,

and, by proving itself, to find its own essence.” (80; 89). While Lukacs undertakes to

differentiate the novel from the other literary genres prior to the novel such as the

epic, quest romance and picaresque adventure story, his definition of the novel

depends on, to a considerable extent, some archetypal narrative elements culled from

various kinds of narrative genres.

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 According to Dilthey the typical Bildungsroman traces the progress of a young

person toward self-understanding as well as a sense of social responsibility. In

Wilhelm Meister, one can see how the society guides and saves the individual. This is

not a contradictory concept, as the individual does not succumb to society; instead he

works within society not only for his own good, but for the good of the society. As

Franco Moretti remarks,

[s]elf development and integration are complementary and

convergent trajectories, and at their point of encounter and
equilibrium lies that full and double epiphany of meaning that is
“maturity”...To reach the conclusive synthesis of maturity,
therefore, it is not enough to achieve “objective results, whatever
they may be- learning a trade, establishing a family. One must
learn first and foremost, like Wilhelm, to direct “the plot of [his
own] life so that each moment strengthens one’s sense of
belonging to a wider community. (Summerfield 28)

Susan Gohlman also adds that, according to Dilthey,

The Bildungsroman has a universality, which autobiography does

not, in that, as it follows a representative youth, this individual
becomes type and his experiences become symbols. Thus, in
autobiography the author and the protagonist have the same
points of view while in the Bildungsroman the author creates an
ideal, which allows for symbolic interpretation. ( Summerfield 1)

Gohlman’s introduction to the concept of the Bildungsroman is the

acknowledgement of the spiritual component to the protagonist’s development, as she

quotes the definition provided by the Deutsches Literatur-Lexicon, according to

which the Bildungsroman is to be considered as, “ein Roman, der die seelische

Entwicklungeines Menschen von den Anfangenbiszur Reifeverfolgt” (a novel which

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follows the spiritual development of a person from the beginnings up to maturity)

(Ibid.)

Youth is a necessity within the genre as the main goal is the mental growth of

the main character and when a person reaches that mental growth they are generally

thought to have reached adulthood. There is a constant clash between the individual

and society in Bildungsroman novels and it is a dilemma that Moretti calls a

“bourgeois dilemma, the clash between individual autonomy and social integration.”

(67). Bildungsroman characters often mature in a different manner from their peers as

they often feel isolated from society and even their own families. Social factors such

as religion and politics often contribute to their isolation. What has contributed to

making this genre unique is how much the end result depends on the ultimate

happiness of the hero or heroine.

Throughout history, happiness has generally not been thought of as something

human beings have to achieve in order to live a good life. However, in a

Bildungsroman novel happiness is something that is achieved when the main

character has finally found his or her identity and place in the world. Youth has a

meaning “only in so far as it leads to a stable and final identity” (Moretti 6) and when

that has been achieved, youth as defined by the human condition has ended.

The Variations in Bildungsroman Novels:

There are many variations and sub-genres of Bildungsroman that focus on the

growth of the individual. They are explained here:

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American Novels

The American type of Bildungsroman is a combination of the German

Bildungsroman and the Spanish picaresque. The American Bildungsroman follows

the pattern of moral growth for the protagonist as he discovers his identity in conflict

with social norms. The picaresque elements are blended into the story as hero being a

traveller who has an outsider’s perspective on what he encounters. The examples

include, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

English Novels

In an English Bildungsroman, the protagonist is often a poor orphaned boy

whose goal is to become a cultured gentleman of means. As part of his self-education,

he moves from his provincial home to an urban setting. While the German

Bildungsroman emphasizes internal conflicts within the main character, the English

Bildungsroman uses the outside world to threaten the hero’s quest for identity. Many

English Bildungsroman novels draw from the author’s own experience.

Entwickslungroman

Another name for Bildungsroman is the general term Entwickslungroman, or

‘novel of development’. This name applies to novels constructed to follow the

personality development of the protagonist. However, it is sometimes reserved for

only those works that describe the hero’s physical passage from youth to maturity

without delving into his psychological progress. In other words, Bildungsroman- type

novels that pay less attention to the hero’s intellect and emotions than more fully

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developed works fit into the category of Entwickslungroman. It is a story of general

growth rather than self-cultivation.

Erziehungsroman

The term Erziehungsroman means, “novel of education”, this variation is a

more pedagogic form of the Bildungsroman. It is not only concerned with the formal

education and training of the protagonist, but the novel also intends to teach certain

lessons about values to the reader as well.

Künstlerroman

The German term Künstlerroman is an important sub-type of Bildungsroman

that means ‘artist novel’. According to M.H. Abrams, Künstlerroman novel,

“represents the development of a novelist or other artist from childhood into the stage

of maturity that signalizes the recognition of the protagonist’s artistic destiny and

mastery of an artistic craft.” (255) This kind of novel focuses on the development of

an artist and shows a growth of his or her Self. In this case, the protagonist achieves a

place and opportunity in which to practice his or her art.

Cuddon in his Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory mentions

that, “This kind of a novel was particularly popular in Germany and dates from very

late in the 18th c. and the beginning of the 19th c. It thus coincides with the start of the

romantic revival, a period when the artist was held in high esteem, and the man of

genius became an exalted figure.” (446) Goethe was the first to develop this kind of

novel with his Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Other well-known examples include:

Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), Eduard Morike’s Maler Nolten

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(1832); Franz Grillparzer’s Novelle Der arme Spielmann (1848); Gottfried Keller’s

Der grune Heinrich (1854-5); Jacob Wassermann’s Das Gansemannchen (1915);

Thomas Mann’s Novelle Tonio Kroger (1903) and his Doktor Faustus (1947).

In English literature, Dicken’s David Copperfield can be considered an early

example of this type. The twentieth century novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man by James Joyce is the most famous example of Künstlerroman novel. Cuddon

also says that the central character can be an artist of any kind, e.g., Leverkuhn in

Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus is the musical composer; Lantier in Zola’s L’Oeuvre

is the painter and Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

formulates his own aesthetic theory, which is known as ‘art for art’s sake’.

Female Protagonist

The female protagonist of a Bildungsroman encounters problems specific to

growing up female in a male-dominated world. Early female Bildungsroman with

female protagonists mostly follows the traditional pattern that the mature female sees

marriage as her fulfilment. Intellectual and social development is often achieved

through the mentorship of a knowledgeable and sophisticated man. In some early

nineteenth-century female Bildungsroman, the female’s education occurs through an

older and wiser husband. Later novels portray women entering marriage as the

culmination of the mutual growth that occurs in a loving relationship.

While a male protagonist in a Bildungsroman may meet his pivotal crisis in

the course of his professional career, the female protagonist’s turning point may result

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from a romantic entanglement. Her journey of discovery may be more internal, or

psychological, than that of her male counterpart.

Medical Subgenre

As defined by Anne Hudson Jones for Lancet, in this subgenre a young

physician, often but not always an intern or resident, sets out to find his special calling

and to master his craft. Whether he journeys from city to city or from rotation to

rotation within the same hospital, his quest is the same. Two examples of this

subgenre are Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith and Samuel Shem’s The House of God.

Social Protest Subgenre

The Bildungsroman may be a work of social protest when its female or male

hero is a dispossessed or marginalized person. The female Bildungsroman may

concern itself with gender issues in patriarchal society, as in Jane Eyre. In other cases

Bildungsroman explore the difficulties of growing up as a member of a minority

group and may involve the fight for civil rights. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

belongs to this group. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Alice Walker’s The

Color Purple combine female and minority issues interwoven in works of social

protest.

Zeitroman

This variation of the Bildungsroman blends the development of the era in

which the hero lives with his or her personal development. The protagonist thus

serves as a reflection of his or her times. This type of novel provides an interesting

study of the effects of historical context on character. For example, Stephen Crane’s

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The Red Badge of Courage dramatizes the effects of being a Civil War soldier on the

protagonist.

Hence, if one expands the genre to include all forms of development,

Bildungsroman then encompasses most of the novels ever written. Bildungsroman

within the context of our study rather has to do with special forms of development

with the proviso that a protagonist develops passing through the key elements and

factors that influence such formation.

The Bildungsroman Novels in Indian Writing in English:

After 1950s, the interests of the Indian novelists shifted from the public to the

private sphere, their main aim being the delineation of the individual’s quest for the

self in all its varied and complex forms. Indian novel in English has become a primary

instrument of art to unfold the emergence of the self as historical entity and has

highlighted aesthetically designed conjunction between the self and society.

Indian English novelists have persistently dealt with the very important aspect

of human predicament. The search for one’s identity is a common and recurrent theme

in Indian English fiction. There have been novels of introspection, personal and

confessional in nature, there have been rewritings of history and restatements of the

past. There has also been the Bildungsroman where in the individual has worked

towards his selfhood. But the Bildungsroman in Indian writing in English has worked

differently. Nayantara Sahgal’s The Day in Shadow where Smirit selfhood begins to

emerge only after an unhappy marriage and motherhood, as in Desai’s Where Shall

We Go This Summer? where Sita finds herself through the rejection by her daughter,

or Arun Joshi’s ‘The Foreigner’ in which individualism and selfhood were elements

foreign to the Indian sensibility and are worked through either (I) Urban contexts or
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(II) religious identities or (III) isolation from conventional structures. At one level,

“the bildungsroman is contrary to the Indian concept of character which projects

consistency and statist, a mature adulthood rather than a self-knowledge born of

struggle.” (Ram Sevak 59) Thus, ‘Search for one’s Self ’in Indian English fiction

culminates in an identification of individual Self with the Absolute.

The concept of the ‘Self’:

The word ‘Self’ is discussed frequently in philosophy, religion, literature and

also in other disciplines. The problem of definition is made more difficult due to its

different associations in the East and the West. For instance, philosophers like David

Hume of the West, and religious systems like Buddhism in the East reject the notion

of Self even at the transcendental level. Both Hume and Buddhism are unwilling to

agree that the human being is a real and unified entity. Both schools reject the notion

on logical grounds and both subscribe to the view that for practical purposes the

concept of self is necessary. It is interesting to note that David Hume denies ‘self’ or

personal identity in line with his general epistemological and logical premises. Yoel

Hoffmann comments on Hume’s idea of the self that “in his writing on ethics and

religion, however, he does not deny the concept of person. It is rather the concept of

identity in its logical implication…that he finds problematic.” (Abraham 2)

However, even after the exclusion of such schools occupying the periphery

like Buddhism and Humean empiricism, a good case can be made in favor of the

existence of self. Here the appropriate and logical starting point is one’s immediate

personal experience. The sense of self-awareness is a shared experience. One cannot

doubt one’s existence, since to doubt one’s existence is to affirm the existence of the

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doubter. Thus the consciousness of a person supplies the notion of a being-awareness

spontaneously and immediately.

When one visualizes the human being, one imagines shape and structure of a

human body but in addition to the body, one is aware of the ‘alive-ness’ of the person

– the entity that keeps the body ‘alive’ and makes it operate in various ways. One

perceives this aliveness in the activities demonstrated by the person like their seeing,

talking, listening, walking, eating etc. On a deeper examination of the aliveness, one

can sense the subtler activities of the person – the person’s feelings, thinking,

believing etc. It is impossible to imagine a human being – a person that is alive

without this two aspects namely the body and the aliveness. Thus, a human being is

coexistence of the body and jivana. This jivana refers to itself as ‘I’ (Self). All human

beings can see that he or she has an awareness of ‘I’ and the awareness of the body.

Once the fact of one’s own existence is accepted, one might begin analyzing

its nature, its real essence. The avowed materialists would identify self with their

physique, but their position is obviously untenable, for even after the dismemberment

of many organs of the body consciousness persists. Even after the whole body is

paralyzed the awareness of personality is retained. So are the senses, even after the

loss of which the sense of ego remains. In sleep, the physical body is as good as dead

to the external world, but the personality remains intact. Hence it is reasonable to

suppose that Self is a distinct and conscious entity which acts through and in

conjunction with the body. If identification of Self with body does not stand to reason,

nor could it be identified with feelings. Can one say that Self is a bundle of feelings,

the sum total of all his loves, passions, desires and anxieties to which one gives

oneself in? But common experience tells us that passions are too transient to be

enduring. The fact that there is something that is conscious of the emotions in an

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individual is too strong an experiential conviction for denial. Here too one has to look

for the ‘feeler’ of emotion.

Some identify the Self with intelligence. Intellect, as understood here is

comprehensive enough to include thought, ideas, memory, perception, reason and

will. Among these, thoughts and ideas are too fleeting to get themselves identified

with Self. With regard to the power of reason also a gradual transformation takes

place. A six month of child is capable of neither independent reasoning nor conscious

exercise of will but hardly anyone would deny Self to the child. An individual may

spend months in a state of coma, with virtually none of his intellect or will

functioning, yet the personality abide. The sense of ego which was dormant all the

while returns as the individual recovers. Hence the intellect is an instrument for the

self to use, howsoever organically the two are connected. It is the knower of the

knowledge when one says, “I know that I know.” Hence the ‘self’ is the ‘I’ sense

which is the “real and permanent feature of one’s being, which underlies all one’s

successive changes.” (Abraham 3) This experiential perception led man farther. And

to understand and unfold the mystery of the substratum of one’s being became

tantalizing to all major civilizations.

The East and the West carry different views in relation to the self. In the

typical western conception, the self is the psycho-physical wholeness of man. It is a

sufficient and independent unit, where as in the Indian thought, self is understood in

psycho-spiritual terms. The philosophical views on the concept of self in the Indian

tradition are best illustrated in the Upanishads which verbalize the theoretical and

speculative strands of Indian Holy books. The Upanishads set forth the fundamental

concepts of Indian thought which still dominate the Indian mind. And the single most

elaborately discussed subject in it is the self, for the highest wisdom that everybody

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would cherish to attain is to know the self. Thus, according to the concept of self in

the Indian tradition, the human being is never an isolated individual but is related to

the Absolute and also to fellow beings.

Once the nature of self is described, the next concern is access to it. To know

is to realize it, and realization is liberation. According to Abraham, “Liberation is a

passage from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, and hence a state of

mind, independent of the spatio-temporal contingencies.” (7) A liberated individual

has a blissful life resulting from detachment. Chandogya Upanisad says, “…as water

does not cling to the lotus leaf, so evil deed does not cling to one who knows it (self)”

(Ibid.). The realization of the ‘self’ effects a change in the individual. He does not

crave for material goods and comforts. He is not tormented and distressed by the

insecurity and doubts of other individuals. Evil does not have power over him. The

attainment of spiritual wisdom does not make the individual shun the world, but he

lives in the world more authentically and fully.

The access to this freedom and liberation is through jnana or knowledge. This

knowledge includes the Truth that the existence is in the form of co-existence

(oneness of life). It is in harmony. One does not have to create this harmony. It

already exists. One only has to understand it to be in it. This means that having the

knowledge of existence and knowledge of the Self (I) gives one the knowledge of

human conduct.

Search for One’s Self in Indian English Novels:

Since times immemorial the search for self has been an integral part of the

Indian consciousness. Under the impact of the inherent spiritual leanings of Indian

culture, this search has traditionally taken the shape of a spiritual quest. Innumerable

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stories in the oral narrative tradition survive to substantiate this claim. One might say

that the Indian conception of the self- the substratum of individual soul and the

Absolute as one- is a powerful archetype that insistently surfaces in the dominant

modes of literature of all times. Novel as a significant mode is not an exception in this

regard. The search for one’s self in the Indian English novel, although sharing its

nomenclature with the European novel, takes on a different form.

The novel need not concern itself so much with historically and socially

conditioned man, as with his spiritual heritage. It is true that Indian English fiction

exhibits a variety of motifs- R.K. Narayan’s love for the comedy of man with a

Shakespearean tolerance, Mulk Raj Anand’s option for the underprivileged,

Nayantara Sahgal’s and Khuswant Singh’s concern for body politic, Anita Desai’s

urban man, Kamala Markandaya’s exploitation of psychological realism etc. are but a

few examples of a wide spectrum of interests. Meenakshi Mukherjee, referring to

Indian fiction observes, “The novelist has been increasingly less concerned with the

unchanging moral verities and their presentation in a timeless setting and more with

the precise location of historical man in the flux and flow of society.” (Abraham 11)

However one might be tempted to withhold an unqualified assent to the above

assertion. It may be argued that the past, one’s heritage, is far more potent than one is

aware of and is prepared to acknowledge. This is validated sufficiently enough by a

long line of fictional work: Dhan Gopal Mukherjee’s My Brother’s Face (1925); M.

Anantanarayan’s The Silver Pilgrimage (1961); Sudhin N. Ghose’s tetralogy of

novels: And Gazelles Leaping (1949), Cradle of the Clouds (1951), The Vermillion

Boat (1953) and The Flame of the Forest (1955); short stories and novels of Raja Rao;

G.V Desani’s All About H Hatterr: A Gesture (1950); Arun Joshi’s novels which

though do not directly and explicitly deal with the past heritage, exhibit a palpable

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proclivity towards the metaphysical world. The emphasis is on the past so that it could

be proved that the past is still alive and well in our veins and that it gets filtered

through the imagination of the novelist to be a living force in literature.

One would agree with Prof. Daya Krishna when he says that in Indian

literature great care has gone to avoid action and that when it became unavoidable

they saw to it that “the means used for suggesting action were as indirect as possible.”

(Abraham 13) However, it is not so much a deliberately executed twist towards

reserve by the artist as a spontaneous response. This may not be less pleasing to the

critics of Indo-Anglian fiction which they dismiss as mimicking the Western models.

The novel by an Indian writer, instead, “demands direct involvement in values and

experiences which are valid in the Indian context.” (Ibid.)

Indo-Anglian literature as a whole has been singular in this quest for the inner

self, along with the concern for the ego. In the early men of letters like Tagore and Sri

Aurobindo, who were mystics as well, the interest was overriding. But as one turns to

the novelists proper, there are a number of novelists concerned with the theme of

quest and spiritual fulfillment. Raja Rao’s novels leave us with the impression that

Indian life can be understood in terms of its metaphysics only. For instance,

Meenakshi Mukherjee considers The Serpent and the Rope and The Cat and

Shakespeare are based on philosophical treatises. The search for identity in The

Serpent and the Rope takes on the age-old form of a spiritual quest which takes the

protagonist to the ultimate step of merging his self into an Omni divine consciousness.

The treatment retains the popular trappings of this ancient theme- the river

symbolizing the flow of life, the inevitable journey of the grihastha, and ultimately

enlightenment through the Guru.

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 Another novelist notable in her concern with the mixture of the metaphysical

and social is Kamla Markandaya. The quest in Markandaya is neither exclusive nor so

explicit as in Raja Rao. She tries to bring out situations that become the matrix where

psychological groupings merge into spiritual doubts, similar to those of Arun Joshi.

The Silence of Desire (1960), Possession (1963), and the more recent The Nowhere

Man (1972) in different ways focus on the inner life of the individual.

G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatter, with all its horse play and low comedy, is

a quest novel in the serious vein. H. Hatter ends up as a Hindu monk and starts

practicing transcendental meditation so that he can attain to the Truth. Significantly,

in one of his interviews Desani fervidly asserted that “the mission of man is to know

the fourth reality, the Budhha or the Brahman, to attain nibbana…”(Abraham 17) and

candidly admitted that spiritual quest has been its own subject of investigation.

In Arun Joshi, this quest acquires existential overtones. Significantly, Som

Bhaskar, the protagonist of The Last Labyrinth is set on his path of quest by

Sakyamuni’s message: “There are beings who perish through not knowing the

Dharma”. Som Bhaskar’s is a journey through the maze of life, a search for harmony

and peace to the last labyrinth which is not death but the Absolute. This is the

singularly perceptive concern in Arun Joshi’s other works especially The Strange

Case of Billy Biswas and The Foreigner.

Sudhin N. Ghose’s tetralogy of novels deals with a nameless protagonist

whose life from childhood to youth is traced with a judicious mixture of the fantastic

and the realistic. The tetralogy ends with the realization of the protagonist that his

salvation lies in scouring deep into the spiritual realm. In Ghose’s world history is not

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a series of flashes of a phantasmagoria projecting kings and warriors, achievements

and failures, but a record of man’s endeavors to reach the Absolute.

Thus, the Indo-Anglian fictional world presents a number of protagonists who

are pilgrims, searching for Self, identity, peace and the Absolute. Shyamala A.

Narayana asserts that, “This pilgrimage, this quest for the Absolute, is a central

preoccupation of the best Indian-English fiction” (140).

Therefore, it is observed that the Indian writers, too, wrote novels on the

theme of the development of the protagonist, yet it is a controversial and difficult to

select novels which can be fully considered in the category of the canon of

Bildungsroman genre. There is yet no study done on such controversial topic. Now,

Bildungsroman is known as an umbrella term and there are many variations for this

kind of novels. In the different periods of time, the writers took the freedom to treat

the genre on their own peculiar way. For Bildungsroman novel, in particular, it also

should fulfil other characteristics of the genre besides the various themes it includes.

Thus, the term Bildungsroman is applied to many novels of all times. Though

it is not a dominant genre, it has a universal appeal because it deals with the universal

experience of growing up or coming of the age. The readers observe the protagonist’s

journey towards maturity and learn from his experiences. A literary piece of work

contains certain basic elements such as plot, character, point of view, setting, tone,

and style. In particular kind of literary work, any one of these elements can be

emphasized over the others. In the case of the Bildungsroman, character is primarily

emphasised more than anything and the structure of the story tends to follow the

standard pattern: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.

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