This paper explores the subversion of the bildungsroman in the young
adult novel, Surrender (Penguin, Camberwell, 2005), by the Australian author,
Sonya Hartnett. It is suggested that, in reinscribing the traditional bildungsroman
within a Gothic discourse, this novel reveals the effect on subjectivity that the
horrors of postmodernity pose for the contemporary adolescent. The employment of
Gothic tropes to depict the journey of the narrator, Anwell, highlights the trauma of
locating an agentic subject position in a context where authoritative social institutions
have been revealed as corrupt. In such a world, typical pathways to agency are
problematised. Traditional bildungsroman novels suggest agency is attained by
finding one’s place in the world, most often in accordance with socially prescribed
schemata, although some contemporary examples confer agency through rebellion
or resistance instead. Surrender posits a controversial alternative, suggesting that
embracing abjection and, ultimately, death, may be considered a legitimate—if
transgressive—form of agency for the othered adolescent. Rather than finding a
place in the world that Anwell sees as having failed him, he demonstrates a subversive
form of agency in choosing to escape from this world entirely.

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• Escaping Adolescence: Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender as a Gothic Bildungsroman for the Twenty-first Century