"Spies" can be considered a coming-of-age novel because it shows the changes brought about by Stephen's growing up process. The spying adventure helps Stephen mature and move on to adulthood.
The most noticeable change that affects Stephen is related to the way in which he understands events.
Little by little, he leaves his childish hypotheses behind. At the beginning of the novel, when Keith and Stephen start spying on Mrs Hayward, they had a very limited understanding of what was going on because they had very little knowledge of adult relationships and behaviour. Their hypotheses sounded infantile and showed their fertile imagination at work. These hypotheses included spies, logbooks, secret signs, meetings in the nights of no moon, underground passages under manholes, rockets, time machines or the gradual assemblage of a bomb. However, as the investigation makes progress, their findings lead the narrator to revise these initial ideas, and to work out a theory that is more consistent with the discoveries.
Little by little, he leaves his childish hypotheses behind. At the beginning of the novel, when Keith and Stephen start spying on Mrs Hayward, they had a very limited understanding of what was going on because they had very little knowledge of adult relationships and behaviour. Their hypotheses sounded infantile and showed their fertile imagination at work. These hypotheses included spies, logbooks, secret signs, meetings in the nights of no moon, underground passages under manholes, rockets, time machines or the gradual assemblage of a bomb. However, as the investigation makes progress, their findings lead the narrator to revise these initial ideas, and to work out a theory that is more consistent with the discoveries.
For Stephen to be able to understand what is really going on at the Haywards´and beyond the tunnel, he has to comprehend many aspects of the world of adulthood. On the one hand, he has to learn about marital and extramarital relationships, and about the complex nature of love in order to realise that Mrs Haywards is having an affair with her sister´s husband. On the other hand, he needs to abandon his idealistic conceptions of the Haywards and of war heroes to accept that the Haywards are far from the perfect family he took them to be and that the dishevelled man under the piece of corrugated iron is Uncle Peter, who deserted war and its horrors out of sheer fear.
A character with an important role in helping Stephen to break away from his childish conceptions is Barbara Berrill. She plays an essential part in Stephen's coming-of-age because of two main reasons. First, she makes Stephen see the events in a more adult and realistic way as she is the one who suggests that the mystery he is investigating must be related to a love affair, and that Mrs Hayward and her husband seem to be undergoing a crisis . Her comments make Stephen reassess his hypotheses and eventually lead him to the truth. Secondly, Barbara makes Stephen discover women's appeal, which develops new emotions and sensations in him and helps him to understand the conflictive nature of love.
In conclusion, Stephen comes of age along the novel, and discovers that feelings like love, bravery, faithfulness and fear are more complex than he thought. His views and opinions mature and at the end of the book we see how far he is from the little boy who idolised the Traceys and the Haywards. The truth he discovers is hard to accept to himself as it completely shatters his childish idealisations. That explains why he has repressed his emotions related to the events for such a long time.
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