![]() ![]() While Winnie's home and yard signify the safe, controlled, and reliable world of childhood, everything outside of them introduces Winnie to the fact that her home and her way of life are only one way of living, an understanding that the novel suggests is essential to becoming a mature individual. Winnie's decision to leave her fenced yard for the wild of the wood becomes a symbolic representation of her choice to begin her coming-of-age journey. Further, Winnie’s obvious attraction to 17-year-old Jesse, whom she meets when she wanders into her family's wood, suggests that her sexual maturity isn't far off either. Though she thinks about running away from home and ultimately decides not to, contemplating doing so suggests that she craves independence and the ability to make her own decisions. Despite these qualities that firmly establish Winnie as a child, the novel also suggests that she's at a point in her maturation where she's ready to begin questioning reality. Further, aside from suggesting that she’s not excited about the version of adulthood they represent, Winnie doesn't show any recognition that she has the power to make choices about her future. Winnie appears childlike here because she never questions what her future is going to look like she blindly trusts the adults around her to guide her towards adulthood. She hits the iron fence surrounding her family's cottage with a stick in a childish and thoughtless way, and she believes that she's going to grow up to be just like her mother and her Granny-that is, she'll grow up to inhabit a stuffy world of "proper" femininity, as modeled for her by these adult women. When the reader first meets Winnie, she appears very much like a child. By illustrating how Winnie begins to come of age, Tuck Everlasting suggests that the process of reaching maturity is one that begins when a young person begins to understand complex realities and experiment with making independent choices in the face of that complexity. She's still a child, but she also shows glimmers of maturity and the desire to explore the world, both of which the novel suggests are necessary precursors to coming of age. Tuck Everlasting introduces Winnie at the very beginning of puberty. ![]()
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