ABSTRACT
Carmolina dons a specially made wedding dress and a string of baby pearls and watches her ailing grandmother being lifted in a chair in front of a procession of family attendants and observers from the neighborhood. When Grandma Doria is placed in front of Carmolina, the symbolic ritual begins, for it is during this scene that the grandmother gives her granddaughter a future legacy: an identity distinct to herself, not completely divorced from her family antecedents, but nonetheless separate from her ill sister and from her dying grandmother. The traditional Bildungsroman thus features a male protagonist, who often moves from the country to the city, encountering people and problems that will eventually lead to his maturation. The contemporary feminist movement has been instrumental in identifying what Susan Fraiman calls a “renovated paradigm” that is, a revised genre featuring the development of a female protagonist.
