TRANSFORMATIONS: FAIRY TALES, ADOLESCENCE, AND THE NOVEL OF FEMALE DEVELOPMENT IN VICTORIAN FICTION (AUSTEN, BRONTE, ELIOT)

Fairy tales of transformation depict in symbolic form the process of maturation and provide young readers with ways of exploring and coping with the mysteries of this process. Modern psychoanalysis even suggests that these tales can aid in establishing adult psychosexual definition. While some tales feature passive heroines waiting to be transformed by a handsome prince, those of the animal groom pattern have heroines who transform not only themselves but also their prospective husbands. However, it is clear that the metamorphosis of the beast into an appealing lover is actually the result of changes in the heroine that enable her to perceive him differently.;Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, and George Eliot created female protagonists who grow and change through their own initiative, and whose adventures correspond to those of the fairy-tale heroines. Austen's heroines commonly follow the Cinderella pattern, but Elizabeth Bennet is revealed more fully as Beauty to Darcy's Beast. Jane Eyre provides the most complete working-out of both the Cinderella motif and that of the animal groom stories. In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte develops the "Beauty and the Beast" motif in a two-generational sequence, as the second generation succeeds in making the transformation to adulthood which the first failed to do. And George Eliot uses the animal groom pattern in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch to provide theme and structure, having moved beyond both the simple Cinderella story and the frequent surface references which call attention to the motifs in the earlier works.;This study explores the psychological implications of these fairy tales of transformation as these motifs are used by female nineteenth-century novelists in the development of their female protagonists. Throughout, the emphasis is on transformation, as both the tales and the novels examined focus on the life stage of adolescence. The fairy-tale characters who best illustrate this are Cinderella, who is elevated to the status of princess, and the protagonists of "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Frog Prince," who assume responsibility for transformations which affect both themselves and others.