Adulthood, straight ahead! How adolescence lost its innocence to coming of age.

"Adulthood, straight ahead!"

How adolescence lost its innocence to coming of age.

Master Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis University of Amsterdam

Anna Lillioja 5960754 15-10-2015

Table of contents

Introduction 3

Chapter 1: Coming of age as an education

Education 14

Attaining a social role vs. self-realization 25

Chapter 2: Socialization of the adolescent

Community and socialization 40

Socialization to self-socialization 42

Separation of self and other 46

Chapter 3: Rite of passage

Rite of passage 53

David as tempter 55

Miss Stubbs as a guide 60

Reunification 71

Conclusion 75

Introduction

Meet Jenny. In one hour and forty minutes we will see how she struggles with teenage issues we might call usual, meets an older and extravagant romantic partner, starts and ends this relationship and finally develops into a young adult herself. At least, this is the premise of the movie that Jenny is the main character of, a movie that could be labelled as belonging to the genre of coming of age. What is this age, though, that we are supposed to come of? Is adulthood really a final sort of state, which we can attain? This idea seems to me ludicrous and very restraining, but still it exists strongly in the way we think and talk. In this thesis I will research the historical emergence of this idea, in which ways it is culturally represented and how and whether it can be

challenged and is challenged in the movie An Education (2009).

An Education, a film by Lone Scherfig, is set in the nineteen-sixties suburban London. The protagonist Jenny is sixteen and attends an all girls' high school. She is brought up by her parents in a sheltered community and is on the way to being an Oxford student. Her future seems to be planned out, at least that is how her parents and especially her father like to see it. She will go to Oxford and most favourably meet an eligible boy there, whom she can marry. The education itself is secondary to the environment and community of Oxford, at least for girls. Or so her father says. Her mother is more on the background and portrayed more in her emotional attachment to Jenny as her

construct it herself, instead of being moulded into a role her parents of school have envisioned for her. When she meets a man nearly twice her age, she starts to rebel against her upbringing. David, the older man, takes her to concerts and horse races and on a trip to Paris. Jenny enjoys this eventful life and questions the need for education. While first she was an eager student and the most promising and favourite pupil of her English teacher Miss Stubbs - a key figure in the film as we will see, she now appears less and less in class and her grades drop. At first her father is hesitant about David, but he succeeds to win him over with his charm. When David asks for Jenny's hand in marriage, he seems even more excited than she is, saying that there is no need for Jenny to even go to Oxford anymore to meet a man. But things escalate when Jenny finds out that David, actually, is married, has a child and has seduced schoolgirls in the same manner before. This development finally pushes her to ask her teacher for forgiveness and proceed with her

application to Oxford.

It can be said that this movie centres on Jenny's development from girlhood to womanhood and can be labelled as belonging to the film genre of coming of age. But what is this coming of age exactly? In the further

introductory part of my thesis I will give an illustration of the historical development of the notion of adolescence and how it has become

existed. The notion of coming of age is subject to historical change; a concept which has emerged alongside the divergence of childhood and adulthood and the growing importance of individuality and individual development over communal interests. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, adolescence went largely unrecognized as a stage of life. And it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that adolescence as a stage of life, was constructed. More precisely, as historian Joseph F. Kett writes in his paper, Discovery and invention in the history of adolescence, it was developed between 1890 and 1920 in the United States. He points to the two-volume book by psychologist G. Stanley Hall from 1904, Adolescence, as the pioneering body of work in the discourse of adolescence (605). Hall's work was the first work in

adolescent psychology in which the traces can be found of adolescence being an invention, but also a discovery. One thing that Hall notes, is that sexual development in this stage of life means confusion and stress and it should be important to not pressure teenagers by sending them to work or to let them undergo other experiences that ask for too much responsibility. Hall had many more theories on adolescence, including the idea that in transitioning from childhood to adulthood, an individual enacts the history of mankind itself. All in all, his work meant the first wording of a behaviour that was neither childish nor adult like. While changes in social life, like the gradual prolongation of education into the teenage years, also contributed to the emergence of

large part invented by psychologists like Hall, educators and middle-class parents (Kett 605). But the roots of the emergence or discovery of

adolescence lie in modernization. As Kett writes:

"Economic and social changes in the 19th century had an especially pronounced effect on age grouping. Before the middle of the 19th century, age was not an especially important or revealing correlative of social experience, and in fact most people routinely displayed an indifference to age [...] In the colonial era, many Americans did not know their age and [...] did not celebrate their birthdays." (606)

Children began working as soon as they were strong enough and people remained at work until they could not anymore. Schools and academies were attended when one had the chance to, and although this occurred mainly from childhood until the mid twenties, it was independent of the exact age. The timing of life experiences, thus, relied very little on age and more so on social class and gender (Kett 606-607). In the nineteenth century a few

developments took place that made life stages more pronounced. The schools were divided into grades by age groups and slowly also textbooks were being written for different ages. Paediatrics emerged as a medical specialty, which led to physicians correlating age with growth. And with the

watches, for example, became household items and were used in factories to set a period for each task (Kett, 606-607). As a result, people no longer only ware able to think in lifetimes, sunrises and sunsets, but were able to divide their time into seconds, minutes and hours, giving way to perceiving of their own lives differently. As with a day, which now could be divided into hours, a lifetime could be thought of as divided into stages.

Nancy Lesko, a modern day sociologist who specializes in the field of conceptions of children and youth in theory and practice, wrote a book on how the notion of adolescence has been culturally constructed from the nineteenth century until now (2001). Her work confirms the perception of our lives being divided into stages and the belief that we move from one stage to other, while trying to attain the next stage. Adolescence, though, seems to be a special kind of stage; not gaining its character from itself, but from being a transitory stage, a bridge from one stage to the other. Lesko writes that teenagers are often culturally viewed as being in transition to adulthood" or at the

threshold (2), much as Hall already described the new life stage of

adolescence by the liminality of it; adolescents being neither fully childlike nor fully adult-like. Their current state of adolescence is thus being reduced in meaning to a non-being, the transitory phase par excellence, before finally emerging into adulthood, which then marks the 'completion' of a person as a human being and individual; the end of the coming of age. This vocabulary,

enlightened state after a lengthy period of backwardness and a belief that teenagers are naturally emerging. The notion of emergence into their adult selves as a sort of final product, marks childhood and early adolescence as the phase where identity is being discovered and late adolescence as the phase where identity is finally 'set' into place so that the individual can emerge into adulthood, bearing this identity he or she has attained. This seems to me very problematic, since this representation puts a tremendous pressure on adolescents. They are told that this is the time in their lives they must develop into an adult. Physical adulthood may be defined by sexual maturity, but the more symbolical concept of adulthood remains very abstract; it even grows more vague because of the uprise of individuality. While first people had social roles set out for them and adulthood also came with fulfilling this social role, now these social structures have partly disintegrated and the options of 'who to become' are numerous. This new group of adolescents are thus more and more pressured to attain something that becomes less and less defined.

The developments in psychological en sociological thinking about the stages of life, and adolescence more particularly, echoed in the arts and are the backdrop to the literary genre of the Bildungsroman, as we know it now. The Bildungsroman is a representation of the coming of age process and originates in the end of the nineteenth century and the later coming of age film genre can be seen as its quite direct cinematic translation. The

which originally centred on the formation of a character, of an individual

personality in interaction and conflict with society as German literature scholar Manfred Engel defined the genre in 2008 (263-266). The focus is on the psychological and moral growth of this protagonist, from youth to adulthood, the transitional period referred to as coming of age. The goal or end-point of the Bildungsroman or the coming of age movie is maturity, a thing the protagonist achieves gradually and with difficulty. Wilhelm Dilthey, who first used the term Bildungsroman to categorize certain novels from the late 18th century onwards, wrote that the genre originated "in Germany from the tendency of our [i.e. the German] spirit towards a culture of inwardness" and that "the dissonances and conflicts of life appear as necessary transitional stages of the individual on his way to maturity and harmony" (272). It seems thus uncertain when the genre of the Bildungsroman emerged exactly and in its earlier years its focus was more on a psychological development in the main character in general. Later on this development was more and more linked to youth and it can be said that the genre relates very much to the emerging ideas of adolescence; adolescence as a transitory phase in development towards adulthood as Hall first described. And that it parallels the development towards a more individualistic society. The fact that these ideas and developments have become reflected culturally enforces the belief that our adolescence is a period in which we are expected to develop into

adulthood; a state of maturity and harmony as Dilthey put it into words. These ideas are quite problematic I would argue, since individualism also means that there is less of a communal and societally grounded idea of adulthood - as before adulthood could simply mean marrying or taking over a family business or trade. The way we talk about adolescents and depict them culturally - in literature and film - could very well put a tremendous pressure on young people to form themselves, while maybe not giving them exact directions, tools or a certain outlook.

Although time and place play a part in how we define and picture coming of age, common threads can be found between the depiction of coming of age in different cultures and times as Hardcastle, Morosini and Tarte have found in their study of coming of age in world cinema. Their publication Coming of Age on Film explores coming of age movies from different continents; their claims about adolescence and interrelations with time and culture. In these separate essays they have found differences, but also many commonalities between how films depict adolescence. They write that these resemblances point to the complex issues at stake in an

exploration of what it means to come of age (1). In most cases coming of age is portrayed as a transition in which the protagonist lives through a natural process of positive development. Yet, this development is often thwarted by time, place, politics, and other external and internal factors (2). The internal

and external factors can be many and varying, ranging from emotional distress (due to hormones) to difficulties at home or problems with peers.

It seems very interesting to study the representation of adolescence within the genre of the coming of age movie since film narratives -

independent of the coming of age genre - steer towards a progressive development of the main character and thus employ several filmic and narrative elements to portray the phases of this development. In addition, most coming of age films could be said to make a claim to portray

characteristics of adolescence and early adulthood that concern a larger group of adolescents than just the protagonist of the film. Adolescents and adults viewing these films are led to believe the narrative construction of adolescence in these films mirrors the real-life situation and may turn to the narratives of these films to gain insight into their own identity and its formation and development. This could be quite problematic since it puts tremendous pressure on adolescents and neglects the possibility that identities can be developed throughout one's life span. People who are considered not able to attain the desired, mature identity after the period of adolescence can be put aside as malfunctioning in our society. Filmmakers have an array of tools at their disposal to provide the viewer with a certain representation of a cultural phenomenon, but also to possibly criticize it; the narration of a film can be studied as a process of selecting, arranging and rendering material with the

as a model for the world or representation, as a structure where different parts make up the whole, and as a process to finally achieve specific time-bound effects on the perceiver as film theorist David Bordwell writes in his work on narration in the fiction film (xi-xii). Earlier theories on narration included the mimetic and diegetic theory of narration. Shortly, the first concerns what is shown to the audience and the second concerns what is told. Both of these theories do not account for the role of the viewer though, as the viewer is regarded passive. In Bordwell's theory the viewer is the one who constructs the story, with the help of the plot and the cinematic devices used to influence the plot. The viewer even is ascribed with the explicit task to make an effort toward meaning and his or her goal is to construct an intelligible story out of the elements given (Bordwell, 34). The end result, of course, is on the one hand always a reflection of the filmmakers' own socialization. On the other hand it relates to viewers' existing ideas on the subject and interacts with those. As Bordwell argues, these extra-filmic elements on the side of both the artist and perceiver are as much of importance as the filmic devices

employed. Not only is the structure of the work relevant, but also the

perceiver's relation to the work or how the social context for example shapes the form and function of the work. The work of film theorist David Bordwell will serve as an aid in analysing An Education. As we come along with the close-reading, I will get more into relevant parts of his theory where deemed

In short, I would like to research how the adolescent identity is portrayed in the movie An Education. The question I want to pose is how Jenny's development into an adult is pictured in the movie and in which ways this conforms to culturally existing norms and beliefs and in which ways it may challenge those. Furthermore, I will put a special critical focus on the belief in general that we come of age; that we attain the desired 'final form' of virtuous adults after the period of adolescence. The emergence of the coming of age genre, I argue, promotes the idea of the existence of this illusive state of adulthood. Adolescents are perceived of in their role, in which they pursue adulthood as their final form. Have young people really gained more freedom for individual development since the emergence of adolescence or is this development just illusive and presumptuous, since there exists no final form into which they should develop? I am curious in how much this movie

promotes existing ideas of adolescence and coming of age. Or could we read it differently and does it help us to be critical? I want to answer these

questions through a close reading of the movie; by looking at how the movie reflects developments in social history and whether the movie's narration supports these ideas or in some way invites us to challenge them and construct a story with a different meaning.

Chapter 1: Coming of age as an education

We will start with discussing the very telling title of the movie at hand. In this first chapter I will reflect on the link between receiving an education and coming of age; how these two, in this movie, are paralleled and intertwined and how the first serves as a metaphor for the latter. First I will look into the historical meaning given to education and how it has related to personal development. Then I will try to answer the question of what we could learn from character of Jenny on this subject. Is she merely a puppet in the show that represents a certain communities' ideas of coming of age or does she represent more autonomous ideas?

An Education is a title that is definitely not chosen randomly and, as it refers to a movie that centres on the coming of age of the main character, can be seen as to portray different aspects of the process of becoming an adult. To look back on the definition of the genre of coming of age, it is notable that the genre originates from the Bildungsroman, which on its turn is defined as a novel of formation or novel of education (Engel, 263-266). Considering the fact that here the bildung is explained in terms of education, it might be said that education is seen as an important part of coming of age or even as a synonym to coming of age. As the title of the movie, appearing in the opening titles and representing the whole movie, it can be said to be a textual

whole and about the context in which we should perceive it. If we regard education as a synonym to coming of age, we could also see the title of the movie as paralleling the genre: As the title invokes a certain context for the movie, so does the genre. As Bordwell elaborates on in his work, a genre evokes certain schemata in our cognition, which influences how we perceive of a film, something that can also be called intertextual or generic motivation (235-236). When we recognize a film as belonging to the coming of age genre, we already have a certain expectation of the plot of the film, since our previous experiences have given us an idea about how movies in this genre will develop. Next to that, filmmakers tend to use not only similar

plot-developments in the same genre. Colour schemes, for example, are often also similar in movies of the same genre. It could be said that a title of a film primes us to view the film in a certain way as well. In this case, the viewer might already expect that Jenny is going to be educated in some way and, recognizing the genre of coming of age, could also already understand that her maturing and her receiving an education are in some way interrelated. It can thus be said that the filmmaker invites the viewer to view the film and its main generic goal - the protagonist reaching adulthood - in the context of receiving an education.

One of the earliest and a very influential account on education and becoming a virtuous human being through education, can be found in the

The Republic Plato set out the educational system, how it would be in his ideal state. He emphasized three of the most important aspects of education. Firstly, the moral nature of education; the goal of education is not just

knowledge, victory or a good job. It is to become a virtuous human being. Secondly, the 'Socratic teaching method', which means that the teacher should be aware of the fact that his knowledge has limits. Knowledge does not come from mere teaching, but from a dialogue; a joint exploration of the subject. And thirdly, he conceptualizes different educational requirements for various life stages, reaching up until the age of fifty when one in theory was ready to rule (Bloom, 54; 91; 101; 128; 178). Plato's educational system might have been a life long education (for only the well-off), but in its essence it can be said to symbolize the development from a child into a good human being, or as Plato would say: a virtuous human being. His method stresses the importance of morality in education and the parallels between education and maturing. Thus, this earliest educational system may already be a

predecessor to our notion of coming of age as a process of attaining the state of a full-fledged, virtuous human being. Plato did already distinguish different life stages, but it seems that there was no special emphasis on one of the stages as the forming stage par excellence. Each stage had its own

importance and educational goals, while the modern educational system is focussed on youth and youth is culturally regarded and treated as the most

forming stage of life; coming of age movies almost always centre on an individual in his or her transition from childhood to adulthood.

As an example we can look at the films that Hardcastle, Morosini and Tarte discussed in their paper on coming of age in world cinema, which I discussed in the introduction. The protagonists in these movies are among other things described as thirteen, "in his mid-teens", "about 10", eleven, "young" and "teenage". The coming of age genre of film, thus, seems to exclude any formation in character outside of adolescence and enforces the idea that adolescence is the time when we develop into 'someone' and adulthood is an end-point. And receiving an education is inherent to this life stage, since the norm is that as an adult a person has finished their education and maybe even with that has become an adult and thus simultaneously has finished his or her coming of age.

Some schools more than others steer towards a certain development in the identity of their pupils, but all schools can be seen as inherently already being places of formation of personality and identity. If only because of the fact that schools are the places adolescents spend most of their time; being at an impressionable age and, as discussed, at the threshold or transition

towards becoming an adult that can be regarded as 'complete individual'. Everything that happens in this stage of life is thought to have impact on how the person is formed. As Michael Sadowski, professor in the Arts in Teaching

School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education: "As any teacher or parent knows, adolescence is a time when youth grapple with the question, 'Who am I?' in respect to their surroundings. If this is true, the adolescent identity is very uncertain, yet everything could also have a large influence on how they perceive of themselves. What a person experiences, of course, is dependent on his or her surroundings and with that the educational system has quite some power in trying to shape the adolescent in some way by determining the things that are learned, how they are learned and in which surroundings they are learned.

Education is as a theme woven through the plot of the film An Education. And I would argue that in this movie as well this literal form of education symbolizes and parallels Jenny's coming of age. Throughout the plot of the movie Jenny's education is made out to be the most important thread in her adolescent life and this narrative seems to invite us to perceive of the movie as a story of education. The movie starts with Jenny being at school, develops with Jenny abandoning school and ends with her finally returning to her education. At the same time, the goal we are to assume that she pursues by performing well in high school is to finally receive an

education from the prestigious Oxford University. Alongside the

aforementioned development of being part of school, abandoning school and re-embracing school, Jenny also questions the need and meaning of going to

of the film invite us to draw parallels between her education and her coming of age. The intro of the film shows images of girls learning to dance and to bake, sitting in class, playing sports and drawing baby-footprints on the windows of what appears to be an all girls school in the setting of nineteen-sixties'

England (Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4). In between these images we see the main character Jenny walking the streets of London in her school uniform (Figure 5). She is not in a hurry and walks pensively, we are to presume that she is returning from school and walking towards her home. The cutting of these images is part of the film style that is employed by the filmmakers and it can operate as one of the vehicles for narration. In the process of the viewing, the viewer is believed to construct assumptions, hypotheses and inferences (Bordwell, 37). The interplay of these images here and the fact that Jenny is wearing her school uniform invites the viewer to make assume that she attends that same girls' school and the title, although we do not necessarily need it for this understanding, infers that this is where she receives her education. The specific things the girls learn at that school are reflected upon her as a person by putting the images of the school activities next to images of her in which she is the only one in the frame and in centre point, thus portraying her in the individual aspect of the self. Shots of Jenny on her own are framed by the school scenes and it is made convenient to map

film, how Bordwell theorizes it, are the interaction of the syuzhet, the style and the fabula. Simply said, the syuzhet is the plot, the style in which way it is shown and told and the fabula or the story, finally, is constructed by the viewer with the help of the two former (Bordwell, 49-50). The syuzhet shapes our perception of the fabula by controlling things like how much of the

information we have access to and how much relevance we are invited to attribute to certain information. If the viewer is presented with several events, he or she will look for a link between the events, may it be causal, temporal or spatial. The filmmaker can play with this notion by selecting certain details to be shown, how they are shown and the order in which they are shown. The opening titles of An Education consist of several images inside the school and the image of Jenny walking home. This crosscutting of images invites us to draw links between all these images or as Bordwell writes: "crosscutting constantly draws marked comparisons" (239). We see Jenny wearing her school uniform and the other girls wearing their uniforms, which makes us assume she is one of them. Still, we also see Jenny on her own in a pensive state, versus her schoolmates all together, giggling and socializing. The viewer is from this beginning of the film on invited to draw parallels between Jenny as an individual and the school and the activities linked to school but is also primed with the idea that Jenny might be different from all the other girls.

Figure 1

Figure 3

Figure 5

The viewer understands that the system Jenny is part of, is probably shaping or trying to shape her identity towards becoming a well-rounded woman in the sense of that certain society of middle-class people who strongly value the education and future position of their children. Jenny, by this community's means as we are led to understood by these images, should become a woman that is intellectually capable, but also - and maybe most importantly - knows how to take care of the household and her children as we mainly see school activities pertaining to this field of knowledge. When Jenny walks down the street she seems to be pensive and the viewer may be prone to assign to her thoughts about school, her schoolmates and her education; she might be thinking how the things she experienced affect her and fit with her identity and

thus may be at that moment also amused by that same question of 'Who am I?'

The first scenes set the starting point for Jenny's own attitude

towards her education. The girls sit in class and their English teacher has just asked them a question about the novel Jane Eyre. No one, for Jenny, is holding up his or her hand in order to give the answer:

Teacher: Come on, girls. Anybody?

Anybody else? Jenny. Again.

Jenny: Isn't it because Mr Rochester's blind?

Teacher: Yes, Jenny.

As we can take from this scene, Jenny is an eager and intelligent student. We later learn that she is planning to study at the English department at Oxford. The choice of the filmmaker to showcase Jenny's eagerness in English class, could trigger us to assume that Jenny is self-motivated to pursue her degree at Oxford and that, at least in part, it is her choice. The fact that Jenny is a good student could have been illustrated with any other question and answer. Discussing Jane Eyre, though, is of equal importance. Jenny's knowledge of

the novel hints at her brightness in general, but the specific knowledge is linked to later events. As we will see, David, the older lover Jenny encounters is later compared to mister Rochester. Considering that, this former scene gains a certain ambivalence in regard to Jenny's interests and creates a link between the zyushet of Jenny's education at school and the zyushet of her coming of age (in which David is a key figure).

Attaining a social role vs. self-realization

The idea that education helps us to become a virtuous adult and human being is not new, as we have seen in Plato's The Rebublic. Ideas of what a virtuous adult is, though, have changed with time. As discussed in the introduction, with the process of industrialization in the West communal values have lost stance to individual values. While young people were first educated or raised to finally fulfil strict and existing social roles, now they become more and more occupied with opposing the community and differentiating themselves. In the interaction between Jenny and her father (as a symbol for the community she is a part of, or at least from) we can witness this development. I would argue that Jenny's father embodies the old values attributed to a young person's coming of age and Jenny embodies the new values of her own development as an adolescent. In the scene after the intro we witness a dialogue between Jenny and her father at the dining table:

Father: So, the only sound I want to hear

coming through this ceiling is the sound of sweat dripping onto textbooks.

Jenny: Cello?

No cello.

I thought we agreed that cello was my interest or hobby?

Well, it already is your interest or hobby.

So, when they ask you at your Oxford interview,"What's your interest or hobby?" you can say, "the Cello" and you won't be a lying. Look, you don't have to practise a

hobby.

A hobby is a hobby.

Can I stop going to the youth orchestra, then?

No.

No, no. The youth orchestra is a good thing. That shows you're a joiner-inner.

Ah. Yes. But. I've already joined in. So now I can stop.

No. No. Well, that just shows the opposite, don't you see? No, that shows you're a rebel. They don't want that at Oxford.

No. They don't want people who think for themselves.

No, of course they don't.

As we are to assume from witnessing this dialogue, Jenny's father seems to be more concerned with a certain image an Oxford student has and maybe the social role that comes with it. Jenny on the other hand is pictured as truly concerned with the education itself or the intrinsic pleasure of playing a Cello. The conflict between Jenny and her father here might thus not be foremost grounded in the fact that Jenny is being forced into a certain educational system, but mainly in the fact that a certain social role is being expected of her. Jenny and her father - her mother is quite on the background and seems to be fine with everything - seem to have differing expectations of her

education. Let us look back on Plato's model for education and its parallels in the modern coming of age concept. One of the key elements is that education

(in its literal sense and as a symbol for coming of age) is not only to gain knowledge, but to become a virtuous human being.

It cannot be said that either of them, Jenny or her father, do not have it as their goal for Jenny to become a virtuous human being. Although, their ideas of what a good human being is may be different. Jenny's father sees the completion of an individual in terms of fulfilling a certain social role that fits within the community that Jenny is from. Her education is a means of attaining this goal. This idea can be said to be an 'old' idea of how people shape their lives, or even how people's lives were shaped for them. Looking back on the history of the emergence of adolescence, as I discussed it in the introduction, adolescence as a concept came into being alongside the industrial revolution, the disappearance of social coherence and the growing importance of

individuality. To expand, before the eighteenth century good laws were highly valued in their objective to promote social welfare and coherence. Thinkers of that time, like Marx, Engels and Durkheim, saw the individual as negligible in the eyes of the nation and the individual only as the tool to express the thoughts of the whole. Self-realization, according to them was the realization of an individual as a successfully contributing part of the whole and not as standing by itself. The main idea was that the upcoming industrialization and the emergence of capitalism would result in alienation of workers from one another, their work and their social role; with decreasing social solidarity as

of community as anomie, a word meaning chaos in French (Capitalism, Modernization and Industrialization). In the times before capitalism, people thus also saw their development as a development towards being a 'good' part of the whole and their sense of self was very much related to their social role. Education was not but for the well off and maybe only served to confirm their status and for the continuation of an established hierarchy (Kett, 606-607). Since only the well off could get an education, it can be argued that it was automatically in part just a symbol of wealth and might not have said anything about a person wanting to attain virtuosity by educating himself. The fact that these people were educated was an affirmation of their social roles. Jenny's father's ideas about her education seem to mirror this old idea of the purpose of education quite a lot. He talks about her going to Oxford many times and mainly mentions the name Oxford, but never really mentions what she is going to study at the university or what the final outcome knowledge-wise could be for Jenny. In the following part of the script Jenny has Graham, her boyfriend from school over for dinner, after she has reaffirmed that he'd better wear his Sunday best, so her father would think he is a jeune homme serieux and not a teddy boy:

Father: So, where are you applying, Graham?

When will you be sure? You can't let the grass grow under your feet, young man.

I might take a year off.

What for?

Maybe do some travelling. Yeah. That sort of thing.

Travelling? What are you, a teddy boy? You know she's going to Oxford, don't you?

If we can get her Latin up to scratch.

So while she's studying English at Oxford, you'll be the wandering Jew.

Mr. Mellor, I'm not a teddy boy. I'm an homme serieux. Jeune. Um... No... Yeah.

An homme jeune serieux homme.

The father here is making it clear that going to Oxford is a very important part of Jenny's identity. Jenny is the girl who has got it together and thus is on the

Oxford and not letting any grass grow over it. Indecisiveness or any other path than applying to a prestigious University means in his eyes that you are a 'teddy boy', a term that might be the exact opposite of someone on his or her way to becoming a virtuous adult and also, as I will argue next, symbolizing a deviation from the existing social structures; teddy boys being the members of a rebel subculture in England in the 1950's and 1960's. These Teddy Boys wore clothes that were partly inspired by the dandies in the Edwardian time and were associated with the rock and roll movement, riots and sometimes a violent lifestyle. What is notable is that the Teddy Boys were the first group of youngsters in England to differentiate themselves as teenagers (History of the British Teddy Boy and Culture). Herewith the Teddy Boy as well symbolizes the emergence of adolescence and the interest to differentiate one from the group, and thus the growing importance of individual values - or at least the values of a smaller, more specific group - over communal interests and social coherence. Jenny's father opposing the Teddy Boy to Oxford sets the contrast between his conservative way of thinking about education and the emerging youth culture in England which may bring with it new ways of thinking about development and education of adolescents.

Jenny, although she is looking forwards to going to Oxford, has different expectations of her education and her future than her father and does not see the two as being in an undeniable causal relation to each other.

have a talk about Jenny's cello playing. David comments that she must go to a lot of concerts as a cellist, but Jenny replies that she does not, since her father thinks concerts are just for fun; they "don't help you get on." And David replies: "Well, I guess that's the fun part." This comment on Jenny's father relates to the idea that Jenny as an adolescent needs to 'get on', she needs to pursue something and make progress. The film pressurizes the coming of age story of Jenny. I would argue that the viewer is also made to expect that the events in Jenny's life should get her 'on', on one hand because the context of the coming of age movie invites us to perceive the story as a progressive development and on the other hand because the subject of this 'getting on' is constantly discussed by the characters like we saw from the previous excerpt, where Jenny's father ridiculed Graham's idea to travel instead of 'getting on' by going to college. The character of Jenny, though, seems to oppose this belief or at least question it - leaving room for the audience to question it as well. Next, the conversation between Jenny and David continues on the subject of her upcoming studies:

Jenny: If I get to University, I'm going to read what I want, and listen to what I want, and I'm going to look at paintings and watch French films, and I'm gonna talk to people who know lots about lots.

Yes.

Which University?

Oxford. If I'm lucky. Did you go anywhere?

I studied at what I believe they call the University of Life.

I didn't get a very good degree there.

Jenny does not say a word about what kind of future she is hoping to have by attending Oxford or which social role she will fulfil. Although she is going to study English, she does not state this and instead talks about all the other activities she is going to undertake because she will be a student and, presumably, also freed from the supervision of her parents. Her character is related to valuing the freedom to do as one pleases and gain through

intrinsically motivated actions. By Jenny saying "I am going to read what I want and listen to what I want" the importance of individual choices above the values of a certain community are emphasized, which in this case may also refer to the rejection of her father's values and the social role that is expected of her. What we are made to believe by this dialogue, is that Jenny, above all, expects of her education that she will be able to realize her self by pursuing

personal interests. Another notable quote from the above excerpt is that David says he went to the 'school of life'. The coming of age of Jenny we could also label as a school of life if we draw the parallel between her receiving an education and her coming of age; the latter being the figurative education she receives or the school of life. David, for Jenny, might in part be interesting just because of this. He embodies the rebel who did not go to school, because going to school for Jenny is to follow existing conventions. Ultimately, what Jenny expects from her adolescence is also to be schooled in life. And although the university might contribute to this, it is in the viewers' interaction with her character not to be perceived as a necessary element in her coming of age. What is of interest here is also the fact that Jenny is about to study English, but no special interest in the English language is shown in the plot of the film, but instead the film showcases her special fondness for everything French. When she is shown listening to French music in her room, which her father disapproves of and asks her to turn of (because she needs to write her English essay). While Jenny sings along to Sous le ciel de Paris by Juliette Gréco, her father's voice is heard from behind the door:

I don't want to hear any French singing.

French singing wasn't on the syllabus, last time I looked.

Again, Jenny's father is portrayed as not amused by anything that drifts from the expected, from the necessary and from the existing guidelines. For Jenny to succeed she needs to go to Oxford and for that she needs to get good grades in Latin, English and all the other required courses. A personal interest like the Cello or French music is only permitted if it contributes to her chances of being accepted to Oxford. So, in this case, her enjoying French music and singing to it is an unnecessary banality, while for Jenny on the other hand it is an interest that contributes to her development into the adult she wants to be. The following excerpt is part of a conversation Jenny has with her friends at school, and follows the dinner scenes where her father's standpoint has been made clear:

Jenny: Camus doesn't want you to like him. What he’s

trying to say is that feeling is bourgeois. Being engagée is bourgeois. His mother dies and he doesn’t feel

anything. He kills this Arab and he doesn’t feel anything.

Friend: I wouldn't feel anything if my mother died. Does that make me an existentialist?

Other friend: Une vache.

(they continue talking in a cafe, after school)

Jenny: Well, after I've been to University, I'm going to

be French, and I'm going to Paris, and I'm going to smoke

and wear black, and listen to Jacques Brel, and I won't speak. Ever.

C'est plus chic comme-ca.

In this excerpt there are a few interesting elements to be found that pertain to Jenny's idea of her development and education's and social community's role in this. Firstly, there is the element of Jenny saying that she wants to 'become French' again. She herewith once more denies that she is going to University to be shaped into a certain role by it. She will go there, enjoy her time there (read and socialize) and sees her experiences as individually shaping, but not as preparing for a function in society, since the outcome she envisions has no relation to what she will learn at Oxford. Secondly, we witness the girls

discussing Camus, a writer whose work they have just studied at school. The fact that this writer has been included in the film, invites the viewer to attribute meaning to it, since the viewer has the task to arrange the elements of the film into an intelligible whole (Bordwell, 47-50). The filmmaker has by purpose

chosen to include Camus in the zyushet and leaves the viewer with the task to fit this information into the story.

Of course, not every viewer might know who Camus exactly is and what his ideas were, so some of it is explained in the dialogue between the girls. Should we look deeper into the meaning we can attribute to Camus as an intertextual reference, we might attribute significance to the fact that this French author-philosopher was concerned with issues of community, individual freedom and rebellion. He published, for example, an essay on rebellion, titled The Rebel. He writes that rebellion is "founded ... on the categorical rejection of an intrusion that is considered intolerable..." (13). This intrusion is defined as either being an unjust demand on the conscience of a person or a claim on his or her life or existence. But while acting up against the infringement of his or her life, the rebel is simultaneously completely loyal to other aspects of himself and with that to the whole idea of humanity.

Rebelling is, according to Camus, a fundamental way of affirming one's existence:

"In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist." (Camus, 22)

The fact that Jenny and her friends are shown to discuss Camus' work is significant I would argue. Jenny, of course, is the personification of the rebel in this movie. She rebels against the infringement of her parents on her freedom of choice and the idea of 'that's just the way things are'. The above quote from Camus can be seen to illustrate the whole plotline of Jenny's development into a young adult. To (feel that she) exist(s), she must rebel, but in the end she still breaks it off with David, goes back to her teacher and continues to go to Oxford - maybe respecting the limits in herself and

accepting that minds must come to a compromise for everyone to fully exist. What Jenny says about Camus in this conversation is also interesting. She remarks that Camus does not care about what others think of him, maybe referring to what she herself would like to stand for. Moreover, she points out that Camus wants to say that feeling and being engagée is bourgeois.

Engagée translates from French as an artist or writer being morally or politically committed to some ideology; and thus dependent on a certain community's rules. This means that this writer or artist is thus not independent and free and with that not a rebel that in being a rebel confirms his or her existence. Being bourgeois, similarly, means to conform to certain

conventions and more precisely to the conventions of the middle-class. What Camus says, according to Jenny, is thus that being morally or politically committed to some ideology is the same as to conform to the conventions of

writing of Camus and also feels that she needs to rebel against conventions. For Jenny, the key to realization of herself as an adult is to pursue her interests over conventions and the interests of her community and with that come certain acts of rebellion - that confirm her existence as an individual. She does not see her education as something that will mould her into a certain role, but more as a playing field where she can gather different experiences and knowledge that are of interest to her and can form her into the adult she wants to be. What finally matters to her father is which social role Jenny will acquire by getting an education in general, be it in English or whatever other field. What matters to Jenny is that what she learns will interest her and form her into the person she wants to be. Although both of their goals might finally be for Jenny to become a virtuous human being, a division is observed, a division that can be seen to illustrate the changing landscape of human development and self-realization.

Chapter 2: Socialization of the adolescent

Community and socialization

In this second chapter I will look into the role of community and socialization in the development of an adolescent and how these values are portrayed in the film. I will try to draw parallels between the movie and its characters and the emancipation of the individual and therewith the disappearance of a certain social cohesion and community.

Community plays a large part in the coming of age process in An Education. The fact that Jenny is being brought up to the standards of the community she lives in and educated at a suitable school has a major influence on the formation of her adult self. As previously discussed, the development of an adolescent in a coming of age story is triggered by the connection and the conflicts the protagonist experiences with his or her surroundings (Engel, 263-266; Dilthey, 272). Jenny needs to come to terms with her surroundings - in which ways does she identify with them? What causes conflict and is she willing to solve these conflicts or are the adverse feelings part of her identity?

The educational institution in the movie symbolizes the values of a certain community, while Jenny is at once a member of that community and the embodiment of the individual opposing herself to the community. When

question of the teacher as first and eagerly, while her teacher responds in a manner that makes it clear Jenny always knows everything and is the first to give the right answer. Jenny is portrayed as a good student, who cares about her education and might thus agree on the way she is being formed by her school. Certainly, she seems to fit into this community and could even be regarded as exemplary for it. One of the main goals of Jenny's upbringing and education seems to be for her to attain a suitable and desirable social role, the adolescent stage of life being the time to do so.

In the introduction to their work on coming of age in world cinema, Hardcastle, Morosini and Tarte quote Patricia Meyer Spacks for a definition of Adolescence in the Humanities: "Adolescence is the time of life when the individual has developed full sexual capacity but has not yet assumed a full adult role in society" (1). This supposes the natural existence of a role for everyone to assume, once they have become an adult. As has become somewhat clear, this role has changed over the course of history. Maybe, for the older generation the role to assume was indeed a well-defined adult role. Before the industrial revolution everybody did have - the illusion - of a certain social role being their destiny (Kett, 606-607). Now, for Jenny - who is, as I argue, the embodiment of the new individualist generation, this role is not so much a certain adult role but more the 'role of an adult' in general. This role has become much more vague and open to own interpretation. Still, it is

become unclear, making them at once more free and more pressured. Herein might also lie the upsurge of youth rebellion and the segregation of this youth into a new age group of adolescents: The older generation still expects of the younger that they are to fulfil a certain role, while the youth has new ideas about this.

Socialization to self-socialization

The developments in our social reality that started at the end of the 19th century and which I would like to link to this film, do - as Durkheim and his contemporaries emphasized - have an effect on social cohesion (Capitalism, Modernization and Industrialization). While before people were bound

together by a certain structure in which everyone fulfilled their own role, now these structures fall apart. In the movie Jenny's father and the headmistress can be seen to symbolize the things as they used to be. They see the world and their community as structured by certain rules and roles that are filled by people. The upbringing or education they involve their children or pupils in is thus also aimed at preparing the child for this role that he or she is supposed to fill.

But with the rise of industrialization brings not only capitalism and individualism, but also the emergence of a new life stage, as we have learned from the introduction and previous paragraphs. This life stage is adolescence

against old and existing structures. This falling apart of the social structure can be understood as the division of the self and the other, especially if we consider the new value of individualism. The self no longer is realized mainly because of its relation to the other and to the community as whole, but because of itself and maybe even because of its contradiction of the other. When young people used to be socialized by their parents, now they

experience a form of self-socialization as Jeffrey Jensen Arnett argues in the chapter he wrote on the change from socialization to self-socialization in the Handbook of Socialization (208-209).

Socialization is, or at least always used to be, considered a key

element of the construction of the self and thus can be seen to play a big part during adolescence and in the coming of age tale; linking back to the

introduction of this paper which concluded that childhood and early

adolescence are considered the phases in which identity is being discovered and late adolescence as the phase where identity is finally 'set' into place so that the individual can emerge into adulthood, bearing this identity he or she has attained. Socialization involves processes of social reinforcement, habituation and the internalization of values, norms and symbolic meanings as Walter R. Heinz discusses in his work where he pleads that socialization theory is dead and new forms of (social) self construction arise, like self-socialization and 'life course.' As he writes, self-socialization and identity

childhood. In later years it was extended to adolescence. Still later, scholars argue that identity development is an on-going process throughout the lifetime or the life course and that it involves much more than socialization (41). He attributes these changes to cultural modernization, increasing flexibility of careers and weakening institutional control; things that promote an

individualization of the life course. Due to these changes it is needed to re-conceptualize the relationship between social-structures, cultural norms and personal agency (Heinz, 42). The meaning of socialization changes: "it shifts from parental instruction to individual construction, from internalized social control to self-initiated learning and development." Jeffrey Jensen Arnett wrote a chapter on the change from socialization to self-socialization in the Handbook of Socialization, pinpointing the same tendency:

"Thus the period of life lasting from the late teens through (at least) the mid-20s changed in less than a half century from being a period of entering and settling into adult roles of marriage, parenthood, and long-term work to being a period when young people typically focus on their self-development as they gradually lay the foundation for their adult lives." (Arnett, 208)

I would argue that in the movie An Education characters like Jenny's father and the headmistress show a preference to the old way of socializing a child;

society. Jenny can be seen as to embody the new development towards more agency for adolescents in self-construction and a shift from settling into an adult role to self-development.

Let us look back on the scene where Jenny and her father discuss playing Cello and studying at the dining table, one of the most telling scenes of the movie and worth discussing a second time. Jenny tells about the essay she has got due the next day and her father responds: "So the only sound I want to hear coming through the ceiling, is the sounds of sweat dripping onto textbooks." Jenny responds by asking: "Cello?" and her father decisively says: "No Cello" and shakes his head. The conversation continues with her father saying that the cello is a hobby and hobbies should not be practiced, although Jenny does need to go to the orchestra to show Oxford that she is a joiner-inner. Jenny and her father here are shown negotiating in which ways several aspects of her life contribute to her identity and the identity she is expected to have in the role she has or needs to attain. The viewer witnesses this

conversation and immediately the two characters and their opinions on the main subject of the film are set in place. The community of people that go to Oxford and whose children go to Oxford is of significance in this conversation. The Oxford community is, of course, according to her parents part of the community that Jenny is expected to belong to and form herself after. Her father seems to be concerned mostly with the part of Jenny's identity that is

a social surrounding, which is illustrated by the words 'joiner-inner' and saying what is expected of her by stating: "they don't want that at Oxford". The

construction of words 'joiner-inner' suggests a certain group which one needs to participate in and can be seen to link back to the idea of socialization and traditional communities, where everyone has a social role to fill (Kett, 605-607; Heinz, 41-42). The fact that the people at Oxford do not want something, moreover, seems to be a very legitimate argument for her father that Jenny should do or refrain from doing something. This, I would say, is an example of internalizing certain values and morals: The morals of Oxford are so, thus shall your morals be so as well as a future student of Oxford. And, once Jenny has 'acquired' herself the hobby of playing cello, there is no need in practising that hobby at home or for it to be intrinsically pleasuring. But going to the youth orchestra, on the other hand, is of importance, because that is where the cello-playing identity is confirmed to others and where it begins to have importance for her desired social role.

Separation of self and other

The tendency from socialization in a traditional society towards

self-socialization in a post-traditional, individualistic society can symbolically be imagined as the separation of the self and the other. Where in former days, the self and the other were undeniably linked and the self was realized in

from the other in order to confirm its existence. Here it is significant, I would argue, that the first scene in the movie and many scenes after that concern a parent-child interaction. Parents or care-givers of a child are the first people the child comes in contact and interaction with, and with that are the first 'other' a person experiences, forming a starting-point of the interplay of self- and other-perception. I think it is interesting to consider the separation of self and other as symbolic to the development of individuality and loss of social cohesion.

The intro of the movie, I would argue, might mainly have the purpose of explaining the context in which we regard Jenny. When we get to the

conversation with her father, we then are already primed with the idea that Jenny is an excellent student at a strict girls' school and we presume a future towards which she is headed.After this context is set in place, we return to the beginning of interaction and negotiation with other, the parent-child relationship. Jenny sits at the table at home, in between her parents, symbolizing the starting point of us as human; the child in the 'nest' of her conceivers (Figure 6). Lisa Guenther reflects on the writings of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in her work and relates the duality of self and other back to being born: We are as human beings all born to an Other and also are born as an Other to the mother has to welcome into her body, home and life. She describes birth as the gift of the Other. The gift brings us forth into a world

existence is never quite our own. The gift of birth, Gunther argues, in itself implicates us in a radical responsibility of others and that our time and existence is undeniably already bound up with that of the other (2-4). Since the beginning of our existence as human beings, thus, we exist in mercy of the other's existence and we must negotiate our existence and identity

through the other. Jenny would not be, weren't it for her parents who gave her the 'gift of the other' and must naturally come to terms with them regarding her identity. At birth the parent and child physically separate, but still in part are undeniably the same. So will the identity of Jenny always be because of them and thus in part also their identity, even when they become mentally divided or opposed. Since the division or opposition always suggests a point where the two parts were once one or could once be one. Not only would I say that this separation of child and parent symbolizes the separation of individual and community, this idea also relates to the definition of rebellion by Camus, the author Jenny and her friends discuss at school, since he said that "in order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist" (22). The separation from an initial state of unification will also be the subject of the next chapter and can be seen to form one of the main threads throughout this film, as I would argue.

The first scene, where Jenny and her parents have dinner is filmed from such a view-point that Jenny is seen as sitting in between her parents and they from a sort of unity (see Figure 6).

Once Jenny has met David and we see her in a setting with both parents, she is opposing them and leaning away from them while she sits beside David, who as I have discussed can be seen to symbolize rebellion (see Figure 7).

Figure 7

When Jenny gets back from her first date with David, her mother is in the kitchen, still up. She asks Jenny how it was but we see that she is distant and holding her self in an awkward manner, almost as if wanting to cradle herself, seeking comfort (see Figure 8 & 9). Jenny responds, without noticing or at least without paying any attention to her mother's body language: "Best night of my life."

Figure 8

Figure 9

remark about the style of these frames is the fact that both the women are shown in one frame. There are no close-ups and Jenny's mother is shown from the back. The mother is at the kitchen counter washing the dishes, which can be labelled as a very conservative task for a woman to perform. Jenny on the other hand walks in and sits on the counter, something that is not

necessarily well behaved and could be said to be a small act of rebellion. Jenny thus physically dominates the kitchen; a place which symbolizes a conservative view on what a girl should become, while her mother surrenders to it. Moreover, her mother acts almost as just a part of the furnishing of the kitchen. Her face is not shown and she barely says anything. Jenny on the other hand is not only dominant by her position on the counter, her face and her emotions are shown and she talks spiritedly.

This scene, I would argue, symbolizes the separation of the child from the mother; and with that the separation of the self from the other and the images we are shown invite us to assume a certain division between Jenny and her parents. If we then parallel the movie to historical development again, I would argue, that this scene illustrates the uprise of individuality and

disappearance of social cohesion. Jenny has a voice as an individual, while her mother is part of the decor of the kitchen.

Chapter 3: Rite of passage

The rite of passage

In the chapter at hand, I will be discussing how the notion of community, individuality, separation and unification form the basis for certain forms of narration. The rite of passage will be discussed as a way of story telling and will be related to the coming of age genre and the film An Education.

Separation and unification of the self and the other are key

components in stories of transformation. Hardcastle, Morosini and Tarte mention these phases as belonging to rites of passage; tails in which the protagonists goes on a journey, passing from one state to another (3). In this case, these states of being are childhood and adulthood and Jenny is the 'traveller' who passes from the one to the other. Rites of passage often concern the process of maturing of the protagonist and show roughly the same structure of separation, opposition or transition and incorporation. The protagonist of the tail sets out from the initial environment to go on a journey of self-realization. A successful passage, though, means that finally the

protagonist will be reincorporated into the society, be it in a 'transformed' state as Joseph Campbell elaborated in his book on the mythical hero (NP).

Hardcastle, Morosini and Tarte note that his model is germane to our discussion of cinematic transitions, coming of age in and of film. The

separate. Arnold van Gennep, who introduced the term in anthropology, discusses the central points of the rite of passage pattern. He defines the central stage of the rite of passage as the moving across, but also the marker of the transition point - the threshold (131).

As I have discussed before, teenagers are culturally regarded as being in limbo and at the threshold, with childhood marking this one space where they are travelling from and adulthood the other, where they are travelling. Van Gennep mentions adolescence as one of life's thresholds specifically (189). The starting point of Jenny's passage into adulthood is pointed out to us when we are shown the community of the girls' school and her parents, who have put her in this environment and who enforce this environment in the life of Jenny. This is the starting point of Jenny s transition and in the first conversation with her parents we witness already that she separates from them by contradicting what her father says. This starting point can also be seen as to depict the always already existent friction of unity and duality of the self and the other and more specifically of the parent and child. Jenny is able to separate from and rebel against her parents, because the starting point is that they are in part one and the same.

What is above all interesting for my thesis about the mythical or literal rite of passage is that it often involves a 'threshold figure', a figure that guides another through the transition. This figure can be a romantic partner, although

also gets assigned the role of a temptress or tempter, who's charm the protagonist needs to resist in order to complete his or her journey (Campbell, NP). I will discuss this threshold figure more thoroughly in the next section of this chapter, where I will close-read some scenes from the movie where Jenny interacts with her newfound love interest and her teacher.

What is of significance, I would argue, is that the different feelings of belonging are at the foundation of the various stages of the rite of passage. The actions of the protagonist, or specifically the teenager, question his or her experience of belonging; separation from the community, opposing the

community and reincorporation into the community. Before the teenager can be fully (re)incorporated into society as an adult, he or she has to evaluate his or her experiences of belonging to that society by separating from it and arriving in the liminal space. Because it is set outside society, the liminal state offers the possibility of new insights, which imply both critique and opportunity for growth (Hardcastle, Morosini and Tarte, 4).

David as a tempter

The first scene with Jenny and David: An older man in a fancy car stops on the side of the pavement and offers to drive our young protagonist home (so she and her cello will not get wet). This man is anything but from the same environment that Jenny is from as we will learn even more later, but at this

of peers and her parents as the guardians of that community. He is older and someone she could look up to, someone who seemingly has already passed into adulthood, since he is portrayed as someone doing well enough to own a car and, of course, for the mere fact of his age. When Jenny is reluctant about putting the cello in his car (she refuses to get in herself), he offers to give her money to buy a new cello in case he would drive off with hers; portraying his status as a providing and self-sufficient adult. The fact that he is offering himself as a help to her on her journey towards home and his literal guidance of her alongside the pavement could be seen as to refer to his future symbolic role as the guide on Jenny's rite of passage. Jenny at one point does get into the car with him as if accepting his guidance and in unifying with him,

separates herself the more from her initial community. Excerpts from the following conversation:

"Where to madam?"

"I only live around the corner. Worst luck." "I'll see what I can do."

(Drives very slowly. Another car passes)

"Smoke?"

(Talking about how Jenny never visits concerts and would love to. The man, David, talks about himself as an

experienced visitor of concerts.)

Jenny: "If I get to University, I'm going to read what I want, and listen to what I want, and I'm going to look at paintings and watch French films, and I'm gonna talk to people who know lots about lots."  

"Which university?" "Oxford, if I'm lucky"

"I went to the University of Life as they call it. Didn't get a very high degree though."

I would argue that this shows David's intent to drive Jenny to where she wants and take time to do so, reaffirming his role as threshold figure, at this point easily mistaken for a guide due to his helpfulness. Him offering her a smoke though also hints at his role as tempter, tempting the young girl with a cigarette - a cigarette being a symbol of sensuality and risky behaviour. In the shots, this separation from the initial world and his role as a threshold figure are also shown. As we see in the beginning, Jenny only gives her cello to David to transport. She trusts him with something she loves and makes a certain commitment to him. He now has something of hers in good trust and