Approximate Family: The Taxonomy of Motherhood in Theodor Storm's Viola Tricolor

Abstract

Unlike the trope of culpa patris in Carsten Curator, Theodor Storm's representation of matrilineal heredity in Viola Tricolor does not follow the strict limits of a bloodline. This article argues that the mechanism of influence in this novella should be read as an experimental deviation from Storm's typical construction of the family as biologically or legally determined. In the denial of female reproductive sexuality in the two wives (“Mutter,” “Mama”) and the literal resemblance between stepmother and child (“Ines,” “Nesi”), Storm imagines a system of female kinship constructed as a visible field rather than as the result of an unseen natural force. Through the multiplicity of female names, Storm's taxonomic strategy relies on proximity and similitude as the basis for circumscribing maternal step-relations in Viola Tricolor. Storm thus envisions motherhood as issuing from an act of naming that, like the nested hierarchy of Linnaeus's Systema Natura, relies on visual resemblance and spatial arrangement.