Although I for Isobel can be broadly classified as a realistic psychological novel, it also belongs to a literary genre that is somewhat more specialized: the Bildungsroman, or novel of maturation. Typically, a Bildungsroman will follow a single protagonist as he or she navigates challenges, conflicts, and moral dilemmas that lead to personal growth. Isobel must deal with a cruel mother, the moral scruples of a Catholic upbringing, the world of work, and the difficulty of finding a fulfilling place in adult society. However, Isobel's literary interests also place I for Isobel in an important subdivision of the Bildungsroman genre: the Künstlerroman, or novel that depicts the development and education of an aspiring artist.
Some of the most famous examples of Bildungsromans and Künstlerromans were written in German, the language from which these two terms are taken. For instance, 18th-century author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is famous for the depictions of sensitive and artistically-inclined young men that he presented in novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Yet the English-language literary canon also contains a few remarkably insightful Bildungsromans, as Amy Witting was well aware. After all, I for Isobel is laced with references to 19th- and 20th-century novels from exactly this genre—references that indicate, to attentive readers, how I for Isobel can best be situated in terms of theme and genre.
During a conversation with her Aunt Noelene (74), the adult Isobel refers to David Copperfield, Charles Dickens' first-person Bildungsroman and a novel based in some respects on Dickens' own life. The parallels here are obvious: I for Isobel itself draws from Amy Witting's own background, but without ever becoming a complete autobiography. And like David Copperfield himself, Isobel moves beyond a trying childhood to attain a measure of independence as a young adult. The parallels between I for Isobel and another novel of development that Isobel encounters, George Eliot's sprawling social commentary Middlemarch (133), are somewhat less obvious. Yet one of the central characters of Eliot's masterpiece, Dorothea Brooke, is in some ways a 19th-century Isobel. Both of these young women seek educated company, including the company of well-read men, but meet disillusionment and disappointment in such relationships.
The book that Isobel encounters that may most closely align with her own life, though, is James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Isobel glimpses this modernist narrative in Michael's book collection (151). She doesn't take it with her, but if she had, she would have recognized many aspects of herself in Joyce's protagonist Stephen Daedalus. Like Isobel, Stephen struggles during his childhood with aggressive adults and with the strictures of Catholicism; neither of these influences, however, stifles his creativity. Moreover, like I for Isobel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man breaks off roughly at a point of artistic and intellectual self-realization for Stephen—but sets up the next narrative of Stephen's development as well. While Isobel returns in Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop, Stephen resurfaces in a second narrative of Joyce's own, Ulysses.
