Fanny Lewald and Nineteenth-Century Constructions of Femininity by Vanessa van Ornam (review)

Abstract

MLR, 99.3,2004 831 mut Schneider's 'Kleist's Challenge to Enlightenment Humanism', a wide-ranging consideration of Kleist's inversions of Lessing's Nathander Weise. It not only includes a compelling Freudian reading of 'Der Findling' but also identifies far-reaching consequences of questioning humanist assumptions about the transformation of crude nature into culture, of instinct into morality, and of fact into meaning. Schneider's is an essay of substance which offersan explanation for Kleist's texts' resistance to interpretation: they subvert fiction's claim to unite the particular and the universal, as notably in the classical poetic symbol. University of Bristol John Hibberd Fanny Lewald and Nineteenth-Century Constructions of Femininity. By Vanessa van Ornam. (North American Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature, 29) New York, Bern, and Berlin: Peter Lang. 2002. x+192 pp. ?60.80. ISBNo8204 -5101-0 (hbk). Fanny Lewald (1811-89), whose work was very widely read in the nineteenth century, has in recent years been 'rediscovered' by feminist critics. In her study Vanessa van Ornam takes up the argument put forward by such critics that, while in her essays and non-fictional works Lewald challenges the conventional ideas of her period about women's role, in her novels and short stories she tends to perpetuate them. Concentrating mainly on Lewald's later, lesser-known, and seemingly more 'conservative' fiction, van Ornam seeks to show that although most of Lewald's heroines aspire first and foremost to be good (i.e. virtuous, submissive, and self-sacrificing) daughters, wives, and mothers, Lewald uses the very conventionality of such figures to justify demands for an improvement in women's rights and status. The framework for van Ornam's discussion of Lewald's fiction is an examination of how femininity was constructed and enforced in the nineteenth century by four extra-literary discourses: medicine, the law, pedagogy, and domestic ideology. Thus she demonstrates that the illnesses of Lewald's heroines, though in keeping with the contemporary medical notion that the female sex was naturally weak and sickly, also afford them power over male figures, and that Lewald portrays women who are vic? tims of unscrupulous men in order to show that the existing law does not provide the vulnerable female sex with sufficient protection. She further argues that, while conforming to the popular opinion that women should be educated primarily forthe sake of the men in their life or to earn a living should they fail to find a husband, Lewald's texts nevertheless underline the importance of increased schooling forgirls, and that, by laying bare the tensions and trials that beset family life, they demystify the prevalent domestic ideal. Van Ornam sheds important light on hitherto neglected works. As well as sup? porting her analysis with relevant biographical information, she anchors it firmlyand valuably in the historical context, though she relies largely on a limited number of se? condary sources to provide this context, and her evaluation of Lewald's fictionmight have benefited from some comparison with writing by other women of the period. Van Ornam's reading of the ways in which conformity can lend weight to a protest is sensitive; she demonstrates convincingly that texts such as 'Das groBe Loos' (1865), in which the worthy Christel can do nothing to prevent her inheritance being squandered by her dissolute husband, or 'Kein Haus' (1865), in which the poor, deserving heroine is driven to suicide because the law prevents her frommarrying her lover and she is ostracized from society, make an emancipatory point. The danger is that she overstates the case. When applied to works such as Liebesbriefe (1850), forexample, in which the heroine does not employ the power her illness lends her to pursue an 'unfeminine' 832 Reviews path, but merely to return to the conventional religious faith she has been persuaded to desert, van Ornam's line of argument demands some qualification. Nevertheless, the study makes an important contribution to our understanding of Lewald's fiction. Birkbeck College, London Anna Richards Ring und Gral: Texte,Kommentare und Interpretationenzu Richard Wagners 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', 'Tristan und Isolde', 'Die Meistersinger von Numberg' und 'Par? sifal'. Ed. by Ulrich Muller and Oswald Panagl. Wiirzburg: Konigshausen...