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Bildungsroman is a literary genre developed from the ideas of the Enlightenment. The genre usually portrays young men coming into the society which raise the question: what literary possibilities exist for portraying young women coming into adult life? The purpose of this study is to analyze novels from two different time periods about girls growing up in an Irish environment to answer how their possibilities coming in to the society are portrayed. Questions that are being answered are: how do the novels discuss class, gender and relationships? How do the novels discuss society? The material consists of The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (1930–) from 2020 and Normal People by Sally Rooney (1991–) from 2019. The Country Girls was first published in 1960 and both novels used in this study are translated into Swedish. The study uses class and gender theoretical frameworks. The class perspecitve is mainly inspired by the theories of Pierre Bourdieu about different forms of capital, disposition and habitus but Ulrika Holgersson’s feminist framework for analyzing class will also be incorporated. For the gender perspecitve Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman’s idea of sex, sex category and gender will be used to discuss how characters organize their behaviour according to sex category. The gender perspective is also largely influenced by Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s theories regarding performativity. The method for this study is a comparative analysis based on close reading. This study shows that these novels use opposites and protagonists in different ways to discuss oppression in the Irish society and propose solutions to that issue. While The Country Girls suggests that men are the main oppressor of women Normal People also portrays a patriarchal society but where capitalism too plays a destructive part. The Country Girls proposes feminist transnational alliances to overcome oppression and Normal People uses masochism as a theme to show how what hurts can be transform

Bildungsroman is a literary genre developed from the ideas of the Enlightenment. The genre usually portrays young men coming into the society which raise the question: what literary possibilities exist for portraying young women coming into adult life? The purpose of this study is to analyze novels from two different time periods about girls growing up in an Irish environment to answer how their possibilities coming in to the society are portrayed. Questions that are being answered are: how do the novels discuss class, gender and relationships? How do the novels discuss society? The material consists of The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (1930–) from 2020 and Normal People by Sally Rooney (1991–) from 2019. The Country Girls was first published in 1960 and both novels used in this study are translated into Swedish. The study uses class and gender theoretical frameworks. The class perspecitve is mainly inspired by the theories of Pierre Bourdieu about different forms of capital, disposition and habitus but Ulrika Holgersson’s feminist framework for analyzing class will also be incorporated. For the gender perspecitve Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman’s idea of sex, sex category and gender will be used to discuss how characters organize their behaviour according to sex category. The gender perspective is also largely influenced by Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s theories regarding performativity. The method for this study is a comparative analysis based on close reading. This study shows that these novels use opposites and protagonists in different ways to discuss oppression in the Irish society and propose solutions to that issue. While The Country Girls suggests that men are the main oppressor of women Normal People also portrays a patriarchal society but where capitalism too plays a destructive part. The Country Girls proposes feminist transnational alliances to overcome oppression and Normal People uses masochism as a theme to show how what hurts can be transform

The article is questioning concepts of masculinities in Laurent Mauvignier´s novel Des hommes. The title can be read in a double context, On mankind and On men. We try to point out that both variants appear in the novel. First of all, we are eager to point out the links between gender and decolonization. As the colonies were a highly sexualized space where fetish, transgression and sexual deviance were possible, decolonization can be considered as a ritual castration. It is thus perfectly clear that de Gaulle with his new constitution in 1968 returned to a strong head of state, a man able to control the imaginary. The first part of our text Des hommes focuses on Feu-de-Bois a marginalized village-dweller, incapable of integrating into French society after his return from Algeria and Paris. Around his person a cruel portrait of the French countryside is being painted. The second part De l´Algérie emphases the collective experience of the Algerian war, Feu-de-Bois took part in. The Algerian war is being represented as a carnival of masculinities, an archaic form of combat man against man. The third part De la France focuses on Feu-de-Bois and his missing integration into French rural society after he returns from Paris, where he decides to live after his return from Algeria. Feu-de-Bois can be considered as emblematic for a whole generation of mal Frenchmen born in the early 1940´s, suffering from the war and from the end of the economic growth in the 1940´s 1970´s. The text therefore is also a text about a shift in the perception of masculinity in rural France.

The article is questioning concepts of masculinities in Laurent Mauvignier´s novel Des hommes. The title can be read in a double context, On mankind and On men. We try to point out that both variants appear in the novel. First of all, we are eager to point out the links between gender and decolonization. As the colonies were a highly sexualized space where fetish, transgression and sexual deviance were possible, decolonization can be considered as a ritual castration. It is thus perfectly clear that de Gaulle with his new constitution in 1968 returned to a strong head of state, a man able to control the imaginary. The first part of our text Des hommes focuses on Feu-de-Bois a marginalized village-dweller, incapable of integrating into French society after his return from Algeria and Paris. Around his person a cruel portrait of the French countryside is being painted. The second part De l´Algérie emphases the collective experience of the Algerian war, Feu-de-Bois took part in. The Algerian war is being represented as a carnival of masculinities, an archaic form of combat man against man. The third part De la France focuses on Feu-de-Bois and his missing integration into French rural society after he returns from Paris, where he decides to live after his return from Algeria. Feu-de-Bois can be considered as emblematic for a whole generation of mal Frenchmen born in the early 1940´s, suffering from the war and from the end of the economic growth in the 1940´s 1970´s. The text therefore is also a text about a shift in the perception of masculinity in rural France.