Moula 1

“Chapter”
Moula Evangelia
The shaping of female consciousness in
Bildungsromane from contemporary Greece

Introduction
The representation of female voice and consciousness has for long been simply
unthinkable until approximately the seventies (Lanser, 1992: 189). Traditionally
Bildungsroman excluded women, as it was considered only in malecentered
terms (Showalter Elaine,1980: 9-35). In the majority of the literary tradition of
the previous century (Showalter, 1977: 180) as well as of the modern fiction of
today even when the heroines reach the much desired point of self- discovery,
they retreat and withdraw from their ambitions. The literary genre applied to
women had mostly been Entwicklungsroman than Bildungsroman, meaning
that it described only the natural development of a girl, without the necessary
mental or psychological one (White,1981: 36). So, we deal with a genre that
pursues the opposite of its generic intent-it provides models for “growing down”
rather than for “growing up” (Pratt, 1981: 16).
In the contemporary female Bildungsromane written by women, a most
powerful and dymanic femininity is sought, on the contrary to its static and
elementary representation in the male Bildungsromane (Morgan, 1972: 184).
But is this also our case, or does this tendency in Greek literature consist an
exception to the rule?
Sources
The novels chosen and used as sources in this study -14 Bildungsromane and a
novella with the same structure - cover a quite long period of modern Greek
literature, we would dare say almost its major part, in a way that they depict
vividly the historical and the literary reality of modern Greece. Although we
don’t claim that literature mirrors life, there are certain analogies between the
real and the literary universe. Bildungsroman is a genre of threshold literature,
that appeals to a dual audience, adolescents and adults as well. Bildungsroman
in Greek literary tradition was established in the 30s (Sahinis, 1983: 15-29),
when the genre flourished worldwide as well (Karpozilou,1994: 211).
Moreover, though male Bildungsroman describes mainly the period of
apprenticeship of the young protagonist till the first years of his adult – mature

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life, female Bildungsroman comprises a much broader age range (Felski, 1989:
126-127). Initiation into adulthood, entry into marriage or social involvement,
quest for sexuality, personal transformation- rebirth (Pratt, 1981: 168) are the
archetypal patterns in female Bildungsromane.
Six of the novels (Ninet, (At High school, 114)1, Margaret, The
roaring of the waters, A little time before 18, Could you teach me how to smile,
please?) belong to Young adults’ literature, one of them is the only book for
adults ever written by a famous children’s literature writer (Achilles’ fiancée),
two of them are the most popular adolescent novels ever published in Greece
(Contre temps, Straw Hats), the novella (The dying world and the coming
world) comes from a collection of short stories addressing young people and
four of them (The drifted astray, 20th century, The ancient Scoria, Helen or
Nobody) are novels for adults. If we try to discern between literature for adults
and that of young adults the criteria would turn out to be relative and vague. If
we took the complexity of the plot, the level of the language, the length of the
story, the profundity of the meanings or the subjects discussed as the
determinant qualities of our study, we would find it almost impossible to
classify accurately the texts chosen.
The novels are:
Naku Lilika, (1935) The drifted astray (Parastratimeni), Athens, Estia.
Axioti Melpo, 1982 (1946), 20th century, (Ikostos eonas), Athens, Kedros.
Kranaki Mimika, 1982 (1947), Contre temps, Athens, Estia.
Lymberaki Margarita, 2005, (1946), Straw Hats (Psathina Kapela), Athens,
Kastaniotis.
Kazantzaki Galatia, 1963, The dying world and the coming world (O kosmos pu
petheni ki o kosmos pu erhete), Politikes ke logotehnikes ekdosis.
Duka Maro, 1979, The ancient Scoria (I arhea skurja), Athens, Kedros.
Zei Alki, 1997, (1987) Achilles’ fiancée (I aravoniastikja tu Ahilea), Athens,
Kedros.
Sari Zorz, 2007 (1993), Ninet, Athens, Patakis.
Mastori Vula, 1991, At High school (Sto gymnasio), Athens, Patakis.
Mastori Vula, 1993, 114, Athens, Patakis.
Kokkinaki Nena,1995 (1994), Margaret (Margarita), Athens, Patakis.
Tinga Tula, 2001(1996), The roaring of the waters (I Voi ton idaton), Athens,
Patakis.
Dikeu Eleni, 2005 (1994), Could you teach me how to smile, please? (Mu
mathenete na hamojelao sas parakalo?), Athens, Patakis.
Galanaki Rea, 1998, Helen or Nobody (Eleni i o Kanenas),Athens, Agra.
Kokkinu Maria, 2005, A little time before 18 (Ligo prin ta 18), Athens, Kedros.
Female writing

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All the novels chosen are written by women writers and aim principally at
women’s audience, as they adopt women protagonists. Their discourse is
orientated toward women’s response. Female addressivity supports the posture
that “language, for the individual consciousness lies on the borderline between
oneself and the other. (McCallum, 1999: 293) and this is especially valid for the
female language2. Female writing is not of course just charming and discreet3, as
it was once thought to be, though it does possess specific features that
distinguish it from male writing. Zervou uses the term: “feminization” of the
writing, meaning the adoption of a female point of view in narration (Zervou,
2005: 100). In women’s writings indirection, ambiguity, ellipsis, euphemism,
reticence and other buffering techniques had been celebrated as aesthetic
principles, because women did not dare create authorial narrators in the past
(Lanser, 1992: 62-63). Nowadays when we talk about female writing we have
many more elaborated techniques in mind, among which the most representative
is stream of consciousness. The whole stream of consciousness movement is “a
turn from an exaggeratedly masculine literature to a feminine one” (Lanser,
1992:102). The principles that originate from the ethics of interpersonal
relations, motherhood, cooperativeness, devotion, understanding, loyalty,
communality, solidarity etc. are also the fundamental concepts that qualify and
differentiate female writing (Vandergrift, 1996: 17-20).
So an at least minimum corpus of common experiences, feelings, needs
and points of view construct a bridge that fills the time gaps and makes the
hermeneutic differences converge to the common denominator of female
consciousness within the frame of the Greek patriarchal society. The ideological
structures of the novels reflect the value system of Greek society, which
although subsumed to Western ethics (Sakalaki, 1984: 10), its conservative,
petite- bourgeois profile results in several ideological divergences. Of course we
notice certain variations deriving from the specific historic context and its role
in the formation of an individual's attitude to gender roles.
No matter the time distance between each novel’s publication, or even
the historical period of each novel’s reference, recurrent motives and certain
narrative techniques allow us to deduce that there are common loci,
characteristic and representative of female consciousness that reflect on
women’s writings.
Motifs
Mother- daughter relationship
According to Psychologists, the pre-oedipal relation with the mother plays a
definitive role (Chodorow, 1974). Daughters internalize mother’s model and
they merge one into the other. Mothers rarely show willingness to help their
daughters become independent in the process of their individualization.

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In few cases there are to be found mothers who break the stereotype
and promote positive mother- daughter relation models.
On the other hand disharmonious relations with the mother or early
mother’s loss cause traumas in young girls’ hearts and become obstacle in the
way to their fulfillment.

Interpersonal relations
Women organize their psycho- social identity around the axis of
affiliation and not that of achievement (Pollak – Gilligan, 1982). The ethical
responsibility towards the others and the priority of their interpersonal relations
are the principles upon which the female consciousness is built (Gilligan, 1982:
127). This connectedness is nevertheless a virtue, as well (Baker, 1976), not
simply an unconscious urge, but a conscious choice, that comes from emotional
redundancy. Interpersonal relations range from friendships and love affairs to
familial relationships.

Tomboy motif
Trying to define themselves, girls, they sometimes reject the feminine behavior,
showing this way their repugnance to the female destiny and therefore adopting
a naughty, turbulent attitude more suitable for boys. This stage is almost
predictable and does not predesignate their adulthood. It is mostly an expression
of their innate tendency to dispute against parental authority or a way to release
their physical spiritfulness.

Letters and diaries

Some forms of literature prompt our intellectual and emotional insights and
stimulate our response more readily than others. The epistolary is such a form.
Traditionally associated with women and with the “private” as opposed to the
“public” sphere, the letter form engages many feminist issues (Bower, 1997: 3).
Epistolarity used to give women a voice that modeled not public proclamation
but private confidence. Certain taboos against women’s public writing along
with the practice by which novels were presented as the true stories of the
narrating protagonists, made epistolarity the only way for women’s writing in
the 18th century (Lanser, 1992: 33).
In modern writings women use other techniques as well, like
monologue, that is considered to be the oral equivalent of the letter (Lanser,
1992: 208). Girls’ and women’s need to meditate and communicate with the
others is being expressed in their writings. Their inner self comes to being, is
formulated, concretized and becomes self-conscious and palpable to us, through

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the letters and the diaries of the literary protagonists. At times, letters can be so
private as to appear almost indistinguishable from diaries.
Moreover, with its emphasis on the act of writing and writing as an
action, the letter permits exploration of postmodernist questions. Letters and
diaries are embedded texts within the main text, a kind of writing in the square,
a mimesis of the real act of novel writing, creating a kind of mise en abyme.
Fictitious letter writers attempt to create and revise both self and
addressee. In the private space of letters, women, so often silenced 4 in public
life, have personal freedom in which to rewrite the self and even, sometimes, to
rewrite others.

Doubles and supplementary characters

Doubles (Mccallum, 1999: 75) are used to explore the idea that personal identity
is shaped by a dialogic relation with an Other and that consciousness is a site of
multiplicity and fragmentation. It destabilizes notions of consciousness as
unified, or coherent, or as existing outside a relation to an Other. It does this by
representing an internal fragmentation and alienation of the subject and/or an
internalization of the intersubjective relation between the self and the other. To
the extent that the concept of the split subject is contingent with the relation
between the self and the Other, the distinctions between these two functions
blur. The double is frequently both an Other and another aspect of the self, an
internalized other. The motif of the two friends, who supplement one another, is
also very common in Bildungsromane.

Art
Women’s potential sometimes expresses itself through art. Art had always been
a field where women were allowed to do so. Their innate charm and elegance is
supposed to find an outlet through artistic activities. This fact is usually depicted
in a specific branch of Bildungsromane, the Kuenstleroman. The madwoman of
Gilbert and Gubar’s thesis (1979: 43) is the creative female artist, who has been
numerously represented in myths and fairy tales, as silent or silenced. So, even
if they are artistic masters, art for women mostly remains a lonely path to walk,
a surreptitious way to self expression and almost never a spurs. Women usually
use art as a means to unleash emotional pressure or express themselves or as a
means to gain money and survive mostly for a transitional period of their lives.
In two cases, two literary characters get honors and become distinguished, but
this is only an exception
Sometimes heroines find their way out, choosing solitude or
alternative, free from bonds love affairs. They provide a bright spot in an
otherwise bleak landscape of marital politics. A quality of consciousness that is
essentially antisocial characterizes the most admirable heroines.

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Dreams and fantasies

Dreaming, day dreaming and illusions are also a recurrent element, that marks a
temporary disorientation of the heroine, the vacillation taking place in her value
system as well as her changing perception of reality and functions as a
transitional stage in the shaping of her consciousness (Felski, 1989: 144). The
distinguishing characteristics of dreaming- fluidity and mobility- a locus in the
unconscious indifferent to the symbolic laws of logic, have much in common
with the characteristics of the feminine imaginary as described by Irigaray.
Irigaray challenges the singularity and universality of language and knowledge
(Luce Irigaray,1977: 67), she attempts to leave behind the conceptual universe
of the Logos and she creates a new ideological place, pre- oedipal or post-
patriarchal female imaginary, a place of desire, the repressed unconscious of
culture (Luce Irigaray,1985: 55).Women indulge themselves in mental
wanderings, in a romantic and idealistic way.

Negation of female identity

An undeclared war usually takes place in women’s consciousness, a war
between their nature and the way they experience or perceive female identity.
As femininity is identified with debility, subjugation and sexuality, it repulses
them and they sometimes deny their own self.

Writing = Living
The equation, not to say identification of writing with living relates to the fact
that women in patriarchal societies are deprived of their right to speak and
articulate their own voice. Young protagonists write in order to exist, to
communicate with the readers, to transform the act of writing into a less autistic
and narcissistic one. This repeated motif becomes a surplus (Suleiman Susan
Rubin, 1983: 54-56)5 which underlines a basic component of the texts’ ideology.
According to Kristeva the uniquely female language, the Semiotic,
derives from the pre-Oedipal stage of development before the child enters the
patriarchal symbolic order and functions as the 'Other' of real language,
monopolized by men (Kristeva, 1984). So writing seems the only semi- public
rostrum, from where they can utter their voice and take a glance at their lives.
Writing and living interlock and cooperate. Female “escape through
imagination” (Meyer Spacks,1975) is not escapist but strategic, a withdrawal
into the unconscious for the purpose of personal transformation. In other words,
as Héléne Cixous puts it, women's writing constitutes “the possibility of change
itself... the movement which precedes the transformation of social and cultural
structures.” (Cixous H., 1976).

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Empowered politicized heroines

Politicization as a novelistic motif first appeared after the 60ies (Sakalaki, 1984:
244) and it concerned mainly men (Sakalaki, 1984: 229). In texts with
ideological thesis, where the heroines serve a social goal and strive against
social inequalities or other kinds of oppression, we meet empowered heroines
(Suleiman, 1983: 56). Their political consciousness mostly maturates after their
initiation in love and their interference with the political sphere takes place
mostly through men (three out of four). Consequently, they manage to go
beyond their gender and class boundary and adopt a powerful and active role. It
seems like a mediated experience. They become agents mainly under the orders
or the instructions of a man that inspires them.
On the other hand, they are more reflexive and open minded and they
dare question authority. So, in two cases women embrace socialism, and
communism as alternate systems, only to find that these systems, too, are
undermined by the sexual politics of patriarchy (Pratt, 1981: 49). However, they
finally come to a deeper understanding of themselves and opt themselves out of
politics, turning down the doctrinal norms of action for a more personalized way
of reacting and interacting with the social sphere. In other words, they politicize
their personal experiences (Tziovas, 2005: 445).
This feature combines the two main tendencies of feminist thought, the
one that supports the need of women’s participation in the public sphere and the
other that yearns for the awakening of the real, primordial – edemic and
suppressed female self (Tziovas, 2005: 451).
In the other three cases women support communism and choose the
vigorous involvement in social – political struggles than the secure and settled
life, promised by societal norms.

Heroines as readers
Reading literature, poetry or philosophy is a leit motif in women’s and
children’s literature. The references to other books create an intertextual net,
where heroes discuss with each other, ideas intersect and get cross-fertilized
(Zervou, 1996: 142) 6. Moreover, the allusive presence of cultural data becomes
a weapon in the hands of women writers who make the best possible use of the
given western cultural inheritance and deconsecrate it from within. The
protagonists’ literary preferences also reveal their personality, they imply their
sensibility and they even more indicate at least to some extent the way their
consciousness has been shaped and developed.
The contraposition of the literary preferences represents the antithesis
the characters and their different literary interests bring forth and their factual
and intrinsic incompetence to communicate.

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Techniques
Gender played and still plays, a complicated role in the construction of the text.
In women's fiction that deals with society, incapable of either fully rejecting it
or fully accommodating to it, the outcome has to do with the disjunctions of the
narrative structure, tone ambivalences, and inconclusive characterizations.
There is a constant slippage, a blurring of the logic and boundaries
between fantasy and reality, past and present, a continuous interplay between
psychic and everyday life (Wilkie – Stibbs, 2002: xiv). These protagonists are
encoded in the narrative as the fragmented subject of Postmodernism in
Jameson’s definition of it (1981)7. This fragmentation reflects on the
disintegration of language and narration and the emergence of the psychic
landscape in which the characters operate.
In third person narratives, the focalising female character, though
central to the narrative, is usually positioned at the margins of the particular
social milieu. Although events are narrated from the perceptual point of view of
the female character, as if seen through her eyes (Stephens, 1992: 27) and the
internal focalisation8 technique is important for the construction of characters as
“ideologues” and for the representation of their subjectivity and
intersubjectivity, women rarely become ideologues9, articulating their own
words. “Culture” agrees Firestone “is so saturated with the male bias that
women almost never have a chance to see themselves culturally through their
own eyes”. Even when they fight against the normative values, they get
defeated, because these values derive from their subconscious realm.
Nevertheless, there are certain moments, when psycho- analysis (Cohn, 2001:
54-88) allows us to see through their minds and have a glimpse at and a better
understanding of their inner self. This feature gives women the possibility to
come to terms with their subjectivity, through a harmonious amalgamation of
the narrating and the narrated I.
Another recurring technique in third person narration is free indirect
speech. It is a “literary device” (Fludernik, 1993: 73), whose purposes
prominently include automatic gear shifting between narration and characters'
minds, usually in the interests of empathy and narrative inconspicuousness Its
structural indeterminacy accentuates forms of gender indeterminacy. Its
indeterminacy of voice undoes the categorical polarization of authors, narrators
and characters; as a rhetorical figure it mediates between, through, and across
voices seeking to be heard (Mezei, 1996: 67). Texts typically move in and out of
characters' consciousness from psycho-narration to free indirect speech and
back.
Some female characters postulate their right to exist consciously, they
trace their memories, explore their feelings and dare present themselves in the
first person. Women become conscious subjects by the very act of speaking and

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therefore writing. For when one becomes a locutor, when one says I and, in so
doing, reappropriates language as a whole….it is then and there, according to
linguists and philosophers, that occurs the supreme act of subjectivity, the
advent of subjectivity into consciousness. It is when starting to speak that one
becomes I. It is in and through language that man constitutes himself as a
subject, because language alone establishes the concept of “ego” in reality
(Wittig, 1985: 6).
Female ego conquests more and more the narratological territory of the
Bildungsroman and first person narrators risk their reliability in the name of
immediacy and intimacy. Unreliability can occur along three axes: the axis of
facts/events, the axis of knowledge/perception, and the axis of values (Martin &
Phelan,1999). Here the unreliability originates from the fact that conscious and
unconscious events cooperate and collide at the same time.
All the first person narrators are middle- aged retrospective narrators,
mature and wise, that intervene in their past, comment and judge it, in a
distancing way10, while the narrating I criticizes the narrated one. The narrating
I, is qualified not only to narrate, but also to recreate and recast the past into a
new mold. The horizon of the narrated I’s experiences is not committing
(Stanzel, 1999: 142). Self-consciousness anyway is a “rather nasty trick and the
search for meaning in our lives, which occurs at the behest of the interpreter,
nothing more than a game, fun to play but bearing no relationship to reality
whatsoever”. Kotre distinguishes two opposing elements in “the interpreter's”
remembering: archival storage and self-mythmaking— “The remembering self,
both as keeper of archives and as a myhtmaker,” he concludes, “fashions a
remembered self. I establishes me” (Kotre,1996: 118).
Usually the external descriptions of the protagonists’ appearance are
absent and their image is being shaped mostly through the emersions of their
inner life and consciousness, that is substantiated into seemingly unimportant
details and impressions (Mike Mary, 1995: 228). Time becomes the pure
essence of reality, which may be described as “a succession of qualitative
changes, which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outline”
(Kumar, 1963: 9-10). Moreover we can notice an inclination of Greek women
writers to give their protagonists names symbolically charged, from Greek
mythology or History (Antigone, Helen, Daphne, Alexandra, Polixeni, Clio).
This endows the heroines with a special splendor, while they remind allusively
their predecessors.
What is evidently missing from the novels we discussed, is the most
characteristic feature of women’s writing, the stream of consciousness, with the
exception of Ancient Scoria. This can be explained through the particular
intellectual conditions in contemporary Greece. Here, the long clinging of the
literary tradition to the epistemologic field of Romantic Humanism and the

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sovereignty of the generation the thirties, led to the imposition of a unified

literary writing, a counterpoise to the prevailing polyphony. Thus, while the
most polyphonic literary genre, the novel, was coming to age in Europe, the
Greek intellectual leadership undertook a systematic expedition for the
achievement of linguistic conformity, aiming at the promotion of the concept of
Greek cultural continuity and homogeneity (Tziovas, 2002: 172-191).
Conclusions
Girls grow up under the primordial impulse of their gender destination, which is
nothing but a social construction. The traditional values about femininity and
maternity are the constructive elements of their socialization. Family, love and
beauty are almost always ranked at the highest positions of their value scale
(Sakalaki, 1984: 232/239). The relation with a strong and at the same time
socially subordinated mother is of outmost importance
Prohibitions, deprivations and limitations shape female social behavior,
though the privileges offered to them through education rarely have a social
effect. Professionalism for women seems to be the very opposite of marriage
and motherhood. These two goals shape almost always the substratum of their
ambitions and dreams. The family strategy focuses mainly on the control of
their sexuality, which fills them with guilt and restrains their creative
potentialities. When they excel in a traditionally male field, subconscious guilt
makes them retreat in other fields, so as to counterbalance their success with self
sacrifices. They consider power incompatible to their nature, something that
repulses men away. So, they disclaim their right to subjectivity and consent to
their living a pretentious life (Beauvoir De, 1949, I: 23), under the dominance of
the phallic look (L. Irigaray, 1974). They cannot surmount the psychological
barrier called “motivation to avoid success” (Horner, 1970: 46), as success is
supposed to be interwoven with aggressiveness and antagonism. Female
consciousness is shaped according to the malecentred standards and oscillates
between the desire of self determination and the guilt and fears deriving from it.
Female Ego and needs are not set as default and normal, but as the Other of the
man’s, always incomplete according to the scale set by men (Gilligan, 1982:
18).The mechanisms of social control reinforce the long established immanency
and internalized self control, imposed from the early years on female
consciousness.
To avoid aphorisms, we must admit that there are a few literary
examples where female consciousness breaks the chains of the patriarchal
society, adopts a critical stance and redefines itself, turning down the ready-
made schemata offered by the male dominated world.
Girls’ reactions can scarcely be characterized as revolutionary – except
a few cases that under specific historical circumstances and their involvement
with politics radicalized their behavior-. This revolution though almost never

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comes to the substantiation of their inmost desires. Women writers try to reject
the 19th century tradition of possible endings, marriage and death and suggest
alternative possibilities for women (DuPlessis, 1985) not always showing
clearly the way through which the emerging modern female consciousness
could be transformed into a new effective social identity (Achilles’ fiancée, The
ancient Scoria).
Female consciousness appears to be intersubjective and fluid rather
than isolated, crystallized and self-dependent, standing in the middle of the
postmodern centrifugality of the personality and the liberal-humanistic regard of
the self as an integrated and autonomous entity. Female consciousness is not set
as an unchangeable unhistorical essence, nor as a lonely Ego trying to define
itself as something extra ordinary or unique11. Transcending this dichotomy,
women discover themselves through their relations, their gradual development,
the role playing and the heterogeneity of their inner selves (Docherty, 1991:
187), a process that keeps the narration open.
After having read thoroughly the texts we can locate a remarkable
difference between the four most recently published Y.A. novels and the rest of
them. These are not exactly Bildungs but Entwicklungsromans, that follow the
heroine through the period of adolescence. Dealing with contemporary girls,
they display a significant change in female consciousness. Girls reject parental
standards, they are more cynical and down to earth. They worry about their
professional future and still look for love. Politics is only a peripheral interest of
theirs and they plan their future in a self-centered way. What is left untouched
from the past is the suppression of their sexuality. Female sexuality
understandably seems to mean danger to many female authors rather than
power; male sexuality is power. Female aspiration is a joke. Female rebellion
may be perfectly justified, but there's no good universe next door, no way out.
Young potential revolutionaries can't find their revolution (Meyer Spacks, 1975:
200). Prejudices and conservative ideas still haunt the process of their
consciousness formation and undermine their possibility to achieve self
confidence and feel equal to men. In these cases the heroine has so thoroughly
internalized societal norms that she is fighting against behavior patterns encoded
in her own consciousness (Anna of 114).
From time to time we notice a remarkably affirmative change in
women’s consciousness, that mostly concerns individual cases rather than being
a norm. These cases reflect female writers’ wish to transform their protagonists
into agents and protagonists of their own lives, in order to, starting from the
literary universe, influence the existing ones. There is also a certain distinction
between the young heroine's quest for social integration and the older woman's
quest for selfhood, a quest for spiritual rebirth (C. G. Jung, 1969: 114) 12, so as to
become master of her self.

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The dynamic protagonists of the 30ies and 40ies can be interpreted and
attributed to the writers’ personalities. Lilika Nakou always created positive
standards for women (Anagnostopoulou13) and Melpo Axioti’s and Galateia
Kazantzaki’s communist ideology led them to a similar choice. The other
positive protagonists, that try to redefine themselves actively, come from the
eighties and nineties and are created by politicized writers as well (Alki Zei,
Maro Duka).
To conclude, literature sets an analogy to life. So, exactly as in life,
women sometimes conform to the given standards and they idealise marriage
and motherhood, some other times they demand equal access to the symbolic
order, according to the claims of liberal feminism, and a few women reject the
male symbolic order in the name of their right to be different, following the
principles of contemporary radical feminism (Moi, 1985: 12).

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1
We examine these two novels as if they were one, because the latter is the continuation of the former.
2
“Every word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound influence of the answering word that it
anticipates” (Bakhtin, 1981: 280) . This concept is used to discuss the role of language in relationships between the self and
others, and the construction of implied readers in narrative within active subject positions.
3
Emmanuel Roidis, Αcropolis, 28 April 1896. According to the famous scholar, women were authorized to write only
about familial or maternal subjects and their main goal should be to support and inspire their men. See: Rizaki Irini, 2007.
4
Women are forced to silence because the factors that determine them and they are identified with, childbearing and the
body functions in general are thought to be dirty and obscene, they consist a taboo and lie on a private - personal field,
which is the very opposite of the public political discourse. (Elshtain Jean Bethke, 1981) .
5
About novels with ideological thesis see: Suleiman Susan Rubin, 1983: 54 -56.
6
Zervou describes the relation between the intertextual references and the narration in a scale as follows: mere interpolation,
comparison, incorporation in action, contradistinction (Zervou Alexandra, 2005: 142)

7
Jameson (Political Unconscious, 1981, Cornell University Press) describes the breakdown of the relationship between
signifiers
8
The term is meant to distinguish between the witness of fabula events and their narrator, the linguistic subject. In addition
to seeing, the focalizer may also hear, taste and feel the events of the narrative.
9
ideologue: the speaking person in the novel who in speaking his/her “own unique ideological discourse” represents a
specific ideological position or “language world view”: Bakhtin, M. M., 1981: 332 -333.
10
The terms “engaging” and “distancing’ narration have been first introduced by Warhol R. R.: 11 -18.
11
Humanist ideologies appeal to notions of a common core of humanity, or essential humanness (Soper, 1986: 12) and
insist on the inherent value of individual human beings. Thus, poststructuralist theorists such as Althusser, Derrida and
Foucault have dismantled humanist ideologies on the basis that they are logocentric. As Giddens has argued, the first “takes
consciousness for granted, as an inherent characteristic of human beings ” and hence assumes “that the subjective is not
open to any kind of social analysis” and the second “reduces consciousness to the determined outcome of social forces”
(Giddens, 1979 :120) .
12
Jung defines Wiedergeburt as involving either renovation or transformation of an individual so that all of his or her
faculties are brought into conscious play. This may involve a renewal without any change of being, inasmuch as the
personality which is renewed is not changed in its essential nature, but only its functions, or parts of the personality, are
subjected to healing, strengthening, or improvement.
Anagnostopoulou Diamanti, The emergence of gender identity in narrative works of women writers from the literary
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jenias tu trianda), Presentation in the Third Congress of the European Association of Neo - Hellenic Studies) http: //www.
eens congress.eu/?main__page=1&main__lang=de&eensCongress_cmd=showPaper&eensCongress_id=279

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