Studies in the Novel

At the time of publication of Aleksandar Stević’s Falling Short: The Bildungsroman and the Crisis of Self-Fashioning, and, indeed, at the time of the review of this scholarship, the world was enveloped by an historic, global pandemic. Modernity faced a critical reckoning not seen in generations; no warfare or terrorism, nor climate change effect, has yet had as sustained or unique an impact on members of the public as COVID-19’s devastation. Why should I start this review with this acknowledgement? Notably, I both read Stević’s book and write this review from inside an existence now tainted from the social effects of this epidemic. There is no way to capture an understanding of art, or media itself, without a careful consideration of the society from which it came. And here is Stević’s most brilliant point: this is a book about a genre that never was (185).

The bildungsroman has been bedeviled by scholars for its inconsistencies and essentialized by its audiences as a ‘coming of age’ plot for its protagonist. Stević sharpens such discordant and rudimentary understandings of the genre by framing his work on the European nineteenth-century bildungsroman as a take on the protagonists’ failed socialization during a time of widespread social upheaval. More specifically, he considers the protagonists’ development within a context of revolutions, war, and industrial and technological innovations, which impacted an individual’s integration into society. It is among this upheaval that Stevic views the protagonist as a failure because an ever-changing, “modern” society has an ever-changing view of maturation. And so, with this definition of bildungsroman as our foundation, we begin Falling Short in every analysis of the genre. The opening of the book previews the close readings to come; chapters dedicated to key nineteenth-century texts that both affirm and challenge Stević’s hypothesis “that the defeat of the aspiring hero tends to reveal a broader crisis in the very assumptions that govern the processes of individual development and social integration” (2). Anticipating his audience’s questions about the “defeat” of our main character within his view of modern society, Stevic effectively answers by a considerate review of both major and minor scholarship on the bildungsroman.

Stević is quick to reference his trainings in both history and literature as the backbone of his thesis, and rightly so. His careful close readings of both scholarship and original texts mesh well with engaging prose that provides insight into the societies that gave rise to those works of literature (e.g., Balzac, Brontë, Butler, Dickens, James, Joyce, Proust). From this, we learn that within the construct of the long nineteenth century’s bildungsroman, the protagonist isn’t the crux of the novel; nor is his or her development truly at the center of the story. Rather, the bildungsroman is a genre about the complex modern society that crafted this individual—and, as such, the impossibility of the individual’s development. In each snapshot of modern society, successful development becomes a moving target that is impossible for our heroes to reach. Stević’s conceptualization of an entire genre as a failed genre, or a genre about failures, is enjoyable. Specifically, he notes in the opening sentences of Falling Short that the nineteenth century’s myopic focus on protagonists’ unachievable socialization results in “inverted and frustrated” narrative development (1). A yoke of literary criticism seems to have been lifted by way of this interpretation. The author points his audience to the understanding that, while failure is rife in childhood and adulthood, the bildungsroman is built upon the shaky foundation that success over failure is at the heart of the genre. We, as an audience, fall short of fully grasping the genre’s effects by our reluctance to take [End Page 203] a wider view of the stories told within a particular society at a specific time in history. It is these historical contexts...