... the seventeenth century, but by the mid eighteen hundreds it had become firmly established in England as well. Such important Victorian novels as Great Expectations, base themselves on this form, which continues as an important literary sub-genre even today. The Bildungsroman typically told the story of ... a man growing from boyhood to adulthood. Charlotte Bronte's appropriation of the form for her heroine, represents one of the many ways in which her novel, Jane Eyre, challenges the accepted Victorian conceptions of gender hierarchy, making the statement that a woman's inner ... popula...

• Word Count: 1705
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography