The Bildungsroman has exerted its influence since its advent and become a substantial genre in the volatile realm of literature. Although the bedrock of the genre, Bildung, is a philosophical and educational belief which appreciates one’s potential and development, the genre and its discourse have become ossified by its emphasis on one’s conservative integration into the society which is primarily symbolized as marriage. Hence, novels that portray resistance or insubordination of the characters are diminished as mere failures in the genre of the Bildungsroman. This paper, however, attempts to re-evaluate Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Doris Lessing’s “To Room Nineteen” as examples of a Bildungsroman of the married women, and argues that the gist of the genre is not the cohesion between the individual and society but the thorough cognizance of one’s actual position in society. This paper first traces the operation of the “separate spheres” ideology which hinges on gender, and examines the protagonists’ astute recognition of their restricted circumstances under a patriarchal system when they choose death. This paper proposes that The Awakening and “To Room Nineteen,” where an individual accurately perceives her limitations and potential, can be understood not as errant versions of the genre but a different kind of Bildungsroman.