ABSTRACT
This chapter tracks the evolution of thought from Transcendentalism down through the ideas of Simone Weil and Joan Didion to Lady Bird, which is posited as Greta Gerwig's treatise on self-determination. This philosophical thread, which is informed by Luce Irigaray's ideas of verticality, describes a practice of self-reliance that is intuitive and individualistic but bound to the creation of a community or culture that is also considered in terms of the various film genres that have recently focused on female coming-of-age stories. The book therefore concludes by examining Lady Bird's capacity for empathy and allyship, reading her grand Romantic gestures as evidence of Lady Bird as a work in progress on her way to self-determination for a new century.
