Picture Credit: jspace3 on flickr

Everyone knows the conventional format of the 'coming of age' novel; Child finds itself in emotional, financial or physical turmoil, Child overcomes it and anticipates maturity, Child embraces maturity and becomes a well rounded Adult as a product.

This is pretty much your basic Bildungsroman, a novel of 'self-cultivation', whereby the protagonist meticulously analyses themselves in context to the situation they've been thrust into, how much money they have, or don't have, or whether they've perhaps lost a limb.

This type of novel seems to rely purely on biology, but is this essential in order to correctly represent the onslaught of maturity?

Does growing up necessarily have to follow a biological timeline? There are pieces of literature that track the time when maturity doesn't quite happen when you want it to.

Many books have shown this grasp of maturity to come prematurely, or happen long after when it should have. It can come from something as simple as a kiss, to a revolution that overturns a country and causes the character in question to snap out of the eternal youth that they have indulged in.

It can be for better or for worse, demonstrating the emotional and moral success that adulthood can bring, to the disillusionment that arises from its expectations.

The novels that come to mind when 'coming of age' comes into conversation are between the throes of teenage angst to great social commentaries that are often best demonstrated through the progression of a child to the adult.

Books such as Great Expectations and Jane Eyre often spring out of the woodwork when thinking of the most obvious, and often definitively age-specific books that illustrate the journey from youth to maturity.

In J.D. Salingers' 'The Catcher in the Rye', the reader explores the reluctance that its protagonist has when forced to embrace his maturity. Holden Caulfield became an iconic symbol for the teenage rebel in all of us, defying the educational and judicial system with pure apathy. 

By deliberately alienating himself, a form of self-protection ensues, a concept that many followers of the book identified with. Despite the fact that the cult status surrounding the work often overlapped the book itself, The Catcher in the Rye described the painful process of growing up, and also caused critics to rethink Caulfields' position as your typical, run-of the mill Bildungsroman character.

Caulfield ultimately rejected Maturity as he saw it and chose to adopt an almost nihilist approach to adulthood, commenting on its phoniness that eventually led to his acceptance of the futility of 'growing up'.

The turn of maturity comes as he realises that he had forced an opinion on himself that he did not fully prepare himself for, and accepts a sense of responsibility as a compromise.

The book comments on a sense of bewilderment from the expectations of society during that era, and the conformity of youth that surfaced after the age of war had passed.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee holds a different social context within the journey of the protagonist Scout from youth to maturity to that of Salingers' novel, which ultimately shows the change to happen asymmetrically with a biological timeline.

Set in pre-desegregated America, Lee sets the conscience of a nation within the constraints of Maycomb, a town that, at the time, was still very much a 'black-and-white' issue.

It can be argued that Scout's acceptance of the wider world, and her feelings of injustice at such a premature age was a due criticism to the stubborn 'old-world' morals that her elders still insisted on enforcing.

When considering the timeline that most Bildungsroman follow in terms of the characters' personal development, Scout, essentially, grows up faster than she should, her mental and moral capacity far surpassing her years.

It's all fair and good children growing up before their time, but plenty of pieces of literature demonstrate the either pathetic or evolutionary tide of maturity that can happen as an adult.

I'm not a big fan of the 'lad-lit' genre, particularly the type that Nick Hornbys' name drags along with it, but one of his more well known books About a Boy is a more modern interpretation of maturity coming along a lot later in life.

Hornbys' arrogant youth-of-a-man realises the stupidity of his self-enforced immaturity when he is thrust into a situation that he finds, more or less, a pain in the arse.

Will, the teenage-minded adult, is forced to accept his position in life, although Hornby misses the emotional and moral progression that he should have desired, rather than filling it with self-indulgent jokes that miss the point.

It isn't all downhill though. Sometimes the seemingly pathetic cease to be so. Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, dramatically different from his other novels, shows a change in more tender and subtle ways.

His novel is not primarily set to reveal any sort of social context in the maturing of Toru Watanabe, but uncovers issues that are closer to home, passing directly through the heart.

A retrospective text that details a relationship formed in the burdens of early adulthood, Norwegian Wood shows a realistic, yet also mystical version of romance that set a version of maturity that one could understand.

Toru's 'true' maturity comes disassociated from the restricted timeline of age, portraying an adult exposed to a world of mental illness, insecurity and uncertainty, weaved in with the pangs of love, and the acceptance of knowing when to let go.

Perhaps one of the texts that ultimately changed me the minute I became 'involved' with it.

To restrict the definition of a 'coming-of-age' novel to a biological timeline only suggests the existence of flaws in the nature of humanity. Not everyone 'grows up' and accepts maturity at the same time, and literature which illustrates this with a less than age-dependant structure exists purely to demonstrate this fact.

Identification with maturity is individual, and not generalised, therefore it is valuable to consider this when defining the genre, perhaps considering the person rather than the number of candles on their figurative birthday cake.

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