Goethe and gender

Abstract

Goethe created poetic and complex female and male characters in his key works. But because he viewed his works as 'fragments of a great confession' (HA ix, 283), biographical accounts of Goethe's relationship with women coloured the readings of his works for almost two centuries; moreover, they were often marked by a condescending attitude towards the women in Goethe's life, an exclusive focus on and a naive adoration of the poet as a great man. Goethe's Faust and his concept of the 'Eternal Feminine' were seen as the loftiest ideal of modern German man, and the poet's biography was constructed along a string of ever-fascinating sexual experiences with women. In recent decades, such hagiography has given way to spirited studies of Goethe's relationship to women, who are seen as personalities in their own right with contributions to literary culture. Feminist and gender studies have produced new readings of his female (and male) characters in their gender roles and relationships. They have started a lively debate about Goethe's representations of gender dichotomy, his sophisticated gender discourse, his negotiations of femininity, masculinity, androgyny, homoeroticism and male bonding in the patriarchal setting of his age.