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Maria Ines Lagos. En tono mayor: Relatos de formacion de protagonista femenina en Hispanoamerica. Santiago, Chile. Cuarto Propio. 1996. 170 pages. ISBN 956-260-082-3.
Maria Ines Lagos's study of "narratives of formation," En tono mayor, begins by positing that traditional definitions of the bildungsroman, written by males about males, are inadequate to define comparable femaleauthored texts about female characters. Instead, the latter comprise a separate subgenre in which the "growth process" of the female character is a regressive process of disillusionment as she learns to submit to the repressive mechanisms of society.
The introduction proposes that narratives of formation explore the construction of the gender system which produces what we view as sexual difference. Chapter 2 goes on to suggest that, for the male, adulthood signals independence and autonomy, whereas for the female it is marked by dependence and submission. Lagos concludes that...