Coming of Age

Coming of age is an important theme in the novel “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing” by Eimear McBride. Coming of age involves the personal, spiritual, moral, or emotional growth and maturation of an individual often based on real world experiences. Usually, coming of age is a positive thing – but in “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing”, coming of age is far from empowering or strengthening. In fact, it proves to be the opposite, setting the narrator up not for life, but for death as her coming of age means spiraling out of control.

Indeed, even the title of the novel should not be missed by the reader, which indicates that the narrator is only half-reared, half-ready, half-capable of handling the situations in which she finds herself. (Indeed, nothing ever truly comes to the girl fully-formed: everything is half-formed that she receives, from love...