Little Women

Beth March is a fictional character from Little Women.

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and... in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century. Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the way reality is created in the works of fiction, the fascination of the character study, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements , a characteristic subject matter that creates both intimacy and a typical epic depth can be seen as features that developed with the Western market of fiction. The separation of a field of histories from a field of literary fiction fueled the evolution of these features in the last 400 years.
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Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the... nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies. In the past, and in some societies today, such a change are associated with the age of sexual maturity ; in others, it is associated with an age of religious responsibility. Particularly in western societies, modern legal conventions which stipulate points in late adolescence or early adulthood are the focus of the transition. In either case, many cultures retain ceremonies to confirm the coming of age, and significant benefits come with the change. Coming of age is often a topic of fiction. In literature, a novel which deals with coming of age is called a bildungsroman. Similar stories told in film are called coming-of-age films.
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