SOURCE: "The Female Bildungsroman: Tradition and Revision in Oliphant's Fiction," in Margaret Oliphant: Critical Essays on a Gentle Subversive, edited by D. J. Trela, Associated University Presses, 1995, pp. 66-89.

In the following essay, Peterson examines Oliphant's experimentation with the form and content of the Victorian bildungsroman, focusing in particular on the Carlingford novels (1861-76), on Hester (1883), and on Kirsteen (1890).

Modern critical discussions of Victorian bildungsroman distinguish sharply between male and female versions of the form. The male version, so standard distinctions suggest, uses a vocational crisis as its central dilemma, tracing the development of its hero as he seeks to find his place in the world, whether that be through accommodation, rebellion, or withdrawal; the female bildungsroman, in contrast, traces "a voyage in," substituting an intense self-consciousness or the psychological development of its heroine for the more active engagement with society of her male counterpart.¹ The male bildungsroman...