Bakhtin highlights three characteristics that he believes constitutes the unique genre of the novel. One of these says that, “From the very beginning the novel was structured not in the distanced image of the absolute past but in the zone of direct contact with inconclusive present-day reality. At its core lay personal experience and free creative imagination” (38). I believe that Avis’ character is a perfect example of this, since we follow her contemporary and progressive personal experience throughout the story. And specifically since it was written in the mid to late 19th century, her personal experiences we read about would have been very unconventional for the time. Even as a teenager, she pushed back on the expectation that women should take care of things around the house, when she told her father, “”Aunt Chloe says it’s unladylike to hate … if it is, then I’d rather not be a lady. There are other people in the world than ladies. And I hate to make my bed; and I hate, hate, to sew chemises and I hate, hate, hate to go cooking round the kitchen” (50). The fact that she was so sure of herself and what she believed in at a younger age is so telling of how contemporary her experience is.