According to Bakhtin, one of the things that makes a novel (and separates it from an epic) is that the hero is showing growth. In a novel, “the hero should not be portrayed as an already completed and unchanging person but as one who is evolving and developing, a person who learns from life” (10). In The story of Avis, Avis’s internal struggles are often seen coinciding with nature. More specifically, Avis appears to be in nature every time she is having a moment of growth for her character. One example of this is in chapter 4 when Avis is hiding from her aunt and climbing trees to read. The text states “The illuminated hours of life are few; but those of our first youth have a piercing splendor which neither earlier nor later experience can by any chance absorb. Avis was, perhaps sixteen, when one of these phosphorescent hours flashed upon her… She was down in her father’s apple-orchard, where the low, outskirting branches yield the outlook to the sea. Between her and the shore swept placidly the expanse of the farm…” (53). It continues to expand on details before saying that “it seemed to be the first time that she [Avis]  had ever really thought she was alive” (57). This is one of the first moments where the readers are able to see that Avis enjoys making her own choices that differ from the path others have in mind for her. It’s during this moment when she’s up in the tree and looking out across nature that Avis is really believing that she has the power to make these decisions for herself. 

Another example is in chapter 7, after Avis and Ostrander engage in an argument over the chance at a relationship. The text states “Avis stood as he had left her till he was out of sight; then slowly, as if each nerve and muscle in her body yielded separately, sank down among the daisies, throwing her arms above her head, among their roots. She was worn with the strain of the last few days. She thrust her cheek down into the cool, clean earth, and let the grass close over her young head with a dull wish that it were closing for the last time” (131). The importance of nature here in this scene is that Avis had just expressed her major concern with marriage: that “marriage is a profession to a woman and I have my work” (129). Avis dropping down to just lay amongst the daisies shows how much her internal struggle has been weighing on her. Similarly to the idea Bakhtin mentions that a hero in a novel must be changing, The Story of Avis presents the heroine’s “growth moments” (including moments of realization, struggles, etc.) to be with nature.