Books about women growing up in different societies

Over half of my english credits for this year involve me reading 5+ novels to do with the theme "Women growing up in different societies/time periods"

By "Women Growing Up" I mean women/girls who have changed in some way as they grow older i.e. develop new ideas, learn new things etc.

My aim is to explore the differences of growing up in different societies and how these differences are portrayed in literature.

So this is where I need your help, I have only come up with three novels so far; To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery) and Little Women (L.M. Alcott)

My english teacher wants me to pick some books that are a bit harder than Little Women and Rilla of Ingleside, but I just love those books so much, espcially Little Women (my fave!)

Any ideas for novels I could read please tell me! Movies, Poems and Short stories on this subject will help too but I do need at least 5 novels.

Thank you so much for helping me out with this!

There Eyes Were Watching God

Nectar and the Sieve-kind of remember what this is about, you might want to check.

Persepolis I & II -- Satrapi

Seconding Persepolis, and maybe also Memoirs of a Geisha?

I took an entire course on this theme; it was called Women on the Road.

The one I remember best is called Women of Algiers in their Apartment by Assia Djebar. It's about how Muslim women cope with life after French colonialism.

Also check out Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China. It's about a girl growing up in China in the '40s and '50s. She's so traumatized by the political turmoil going on around her that she becomes schizophrenic. That's what the title refers to...Mulberry is the girl's real name and Peach is her alter ego.

You might also want to check out Wife by Bharati Mukherjee. It's about an Indian girl given away in an arranged marriage. She and her husband immigrate to America to live. The novel deals with issues of alienation, isolation, and violence.

Good luck!

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore.

I was going to Thier Eyes Were Watching God but I see someone beat me to it. But it truly is an excellent book on the subject I think.

I also think that Death of the Heart is a good one. I loved that book.

How about 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath?

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston could be very useful; its all about a chinese girl growing up in America, having to deal with both her american identity, and the weight of Chinese culture behind her - its very good!

Try the following:

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

Family Happiness (sometimes called Happy Ever After) by Leo Tolstoy

Oh yeah Cat's Eye is a good one, I am in the process of reading it now, nearly finnished with it.

Alice Munro - Lives of Girls and Women. Though, all her books are good - if you want one centered around fewer characters, try Who Do you Think You Are?, which is probably her most novel-esque work, though it still is short-storied in format.

Awesome, thank you so much for all of your help!

It is not a novel but you might find it interesting. I am currently in a Women in Literature class and we had to read experts from Harriet Jacob's Life as a Slave Girl. What I read was interesting and good.

How about the Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)?

Purple Hibiscus - About a girl growing up in Africa.

I lthink 'Prep' by Curtis Sittenfield and 'The Getting of Wisdom' by Henry Handel Richardson portray the transition between childhood and adulthood best and most realisticly for women.

Both The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch (both by George Eliot, which could be useful for comparison) would be apt choices as they each feature a female character - Maggie in the former, Dorothea in the latter - striving for education and something more than what society, especially their immediate families, attempt to reduce them to. Also, though not a novel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel is a brillaint detailing of the female experience in Somalia and Saudi Arabia and might be worth a read, it's a great book regardless.

"The House of Exile" by Norah Waln. I think it is autobiography, rather than fiction, concerning a young American growing to womanhood in a Chinese family in the 1920s. It is a remarkable story, giving a vivid picture of a society, seemingly eternally established but on the brink of change. Because of the circumstances, the author is able to present an outsider's view and also the view from the inside. At the same time the story is one of a person growing from childhood into womanhood.

Might be an unusual suggestion, but Fingersmith by Sarah Waters is excellent for a modern period novel (Victorian). It follows two women and their upbringing, one from poverty and the other from a middle class background who was raised in an institution until taken in by family.

It does of course have a homosexual theme for parts of the novel, but it isn't a predominant theme unlike some of her other work. I think there are only 2 or 3 scenes throughout the whole book that have any sexual content.

Just as a reminder to everyone contributing... This thread is over three years old.

:D