Writing Adolescence: Coming of Age in and through What Maisie Knew, Lolita and Wide Sargasso Sea

doi:10.14324/111.1755-4527.003

Abstract

Highlights

Adolescence, the transition from childhood to adulthood, is a turbulent time of rapid physical growth and sexual development
Erikson became intrigued late in his own career with the question of how some adults continue to re-invent themselves in later life.[74]
All three of the writers in this study re-constituted their identities during adulthood, and moved forwards into renewed and re-potentiated phases in their work

Summary

Introduction

Adolescence, the transition from childhood to adulthood, is a turbulent time of rapid physical growth and sexual development. In their autobiographies James, Nabokov, and Rhys each describe transitional, defining experiences during adolescence It is when these authors are adolescents that they realise the significance of writing to them, and begin to feel a sense of their identity as writers. Erikson suggests that one’s sense of identity continues to develop throughout the life cycle, stating that while adolescence ‘is the stage of an overt identity crisis, identity formation neither begins nor ends with adolescence: it is a lifelong development’.[31] In ‘From a Diary’ Rhys briefly recollects her actual adolescence, when she first travelled to England from Dominica It seems that the period in which the diary was written coincided with another significant shift in identity for the author.[32]

The Novels of Adolescence

Conclusion