Several critics have called "Burger's Daughter" a "Bildungsroman", or coming-of-age story, although not the traditional ones which, according to Susan Gardner in her essay "Still Waiting for the Great Feminist Novel", are dominated by male protagonists. While Gordimer was not a feminist author and "Burger's Daughter" is not a feminist novel, Gardner suggests that the book has "a discernible woman-concerned subtext", making it "impossible for feminists to dismiss or ignore". She says it has "a potential feminist awareness" that is "obscured by more conventional patriarchal writing codes". Yelin writes that after the death of Rosa's mother, the statement "Already she had taken on her mother's role in the household, giving loving support to her father" illustrates "the continuing hegemony of bourgeois-patriarchal ideology" in the novel. Yelin suggests that this inconsistency is responsible for Rosa's struggle, the "contradiction between feminism (Rosa's liberation as a woman) and the struggle for justice in South Africa".