Beyond Heteronormativity: Sexual Growth and Self-realization in the Queer Bildungsroman

This thesis examines how the Bildungsroman has been reconfigured to accommodate lesbian and queer subjectivity, using Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) as the central case study. It argues that the novel transforms the classical developmental narrative into a queer picaresque, replacing social integration with mobility, resistance, and open-endedness. The first two chapters establish the historical and theoretical framework: the exclusion of women and queer subjects from the traditional genre, and the emergence of the lesbian Bildungsroman as a critical intervention through the categories of body, class, and departure. The third chapter applies this framework to Brown's novel, showing how Molly Bolt's trajectory redefines growth as departure rather than accommodation. Ultimately, the thesis traces the tension between the novel's essentialist investment in lesbian identity and its documentation of wider queer possibilities, positioning Rubyfruit Jungle as a transitional text that both claims visibility for lesbian experience and exposes the limits of its own inclusivity.