Compare and contrast the ways in which Bronte and McEwan present the journey from childhood to adulthood through their protagonists in Jane Eyre and Atonement.

Both writers use the openings of their narratives to foreshadow the struggle that their protagonist will have to endure during their journey from youth to maturity. Bronte’s narrative decision to use symbolism in the book, in which Jane is reading, acts as a prolepsis to the struggles of her journey. Bewick’s History of British Birds describes how the words ‘gave significance to the rock standing alone in a sea of billow and spray’. The desolate imagery of ‘a sea of billow and spray’ adds to a motif of cold and ice, which appears throughout the novel, often appearing in association with barren landscapes or seascapes, symbolising emotional despondency, loneliness, or even death. Arguably, the symbolism used in Jane’s book acts as a prolepsis to the emotional desolation Jane feels later on, when Bertha's introduction reveals to Jane the impossibility of marrying Rochester, highlighting a major obstacle in Jane's journey. The motif of ice and cold is further developed when Jane describes her state of mind, saying ‘A Christmas frost had come at mid-summer’ and ‘a white December storm had whirled over June’. Furthermore, the choice of text creates an interesting juxtaposition between Jane’s yearning for freedom and her physical and spiritual isolation at Gateshead. However, it could alternatively be argued that the symbolism of freedom, that is so often associated with birds, is a prolepsis to the end of the novel where she finds her own independence. Jane states to Rochester in the final stages of the novel, ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me’ but a ‘free human being with an independent will’. Overall, in chapter 1, it is clear that all of the elements are in place for a classic ‘Bildungsroman’, a journey that often begins as a response to discontentment and removes the protagonist from the home or family setting, and ends with them being eventually accommodated into society. Bronte carries readers through Jane’s ‘healthy self-interest and rebellious questioning of rules and conventions’ but it is the struggle of this journey that Bronte foreshadows early on. Like Jane Eyre, Atonement is also an example of a ‘Bildungsroman’ that explores the psyche of a ‘young girl at the dawn of her selfhood’^. . At the beginning of the novel, Briony is presented as a girl who likes the idea of a world controlled by her own thoughts and fantasies, and how the society she lives in now offends her ‘sense of order’. This allows McEwan to establish the founding aspects of a ‘Bildungsroman’ by placing his protagonist in a state of discontent, therefore starting the process of Briony’s own journey to maturity. Furthermore, the novel could also be categorized as a ‘Künstlerroman’ as years later, Briony writes a novella entitled Two Figures by a Fountain. Briony’s novella is itself metafictional, mirroring the postmodernist features McEwan’s Atonement holds as well. Like Bronte, McEwan also uses the opening of his text to foreshadow Briony’s future journey to adulthood but it is McEwan’s use of a semantic field of corruption that incorporates symbolism, therefore acting as a prolepsis for the disreputable times to come. Chapter one sees the narrative describing how ‘In the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn, fool’s gold, a rain-making spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel’s skull as light as a leaf’. The semantic field of corruption is depicted through the lexical choices of ‘mutant double’, ‘fool’s’, ’rain’ and ’skull’ as if the narrative is describing the turn of events that will happen to Briony on her own journey to atonement. For example, the term ‘mutant double’ could be interpreted as a symbol for how Briony misinterprets the events regarding Robbie and Cecilia in the first part of the novel. Furthermore, the ’fool’s gold’ and ’rain’ could symbolise the disrepute Briony will suffer from as a result of her misinterpretation and the 'skull’ could further add to this idea of her notoriety, or alternatively foreshadow the deaths of Robbie and Cecilia. The idea that Briony is listing objects that are associated with her childhood, such as ‘funfair’ and a ‘spell’, alongside the chosen semantic field, creates the contrasting idea that her childhood is already discarded before she makes the mistake that will affect her for years to come. However, by the end of the novel, Briony admits that she no longer has the courage of such ’pessimism’ and therefore lets ’the lovers live’ in her unpublished novel, Two Figures by a Fountain. This alternatively serves as her final act of atonement, proving that her journey from youth to maturity has been completed, despite its harshness. McEwan once commented that ‘what redeems Briony in Atonement is the fact that she had led an examined life. Her great misdeed pursues her through the years. She will not let herself forget – and this is her atonement’ .The fact that McEwan describes Briony’s ‘great misdeed’ as [pursuing] her through the years’ only confirms the argument that without the hardship that resonated alongside her journey to adulthood, that journey would not have been completed. It can be said that this argument features in both novels, as without the struggles of her desolate childhood and her realisation about the impossibility of marrying Rochester, Jane’s eventual finding of her independence would not have developed