Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career and Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart: An Observation of the Role of ‘Family’ in the Shaping of Childhood Using John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment

Abstract

Making use of John Bowlby’s theory of attachment this article explores different aspects regarding the role of family in the shaping of childhood, focusing on the experiences of the protagonists of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901) and Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart (1943) to measure the impact their families have had in their upbringing and how this has shaped their lives and personalities. For that matter, we will also discuss the notion of ‘childhood’, defining and contextualizing it in order to analyze these two works and their protagonists.