Goethe's Ailing Women

Abstract

This discussion of three prominent, always tantalizing characters in three separate works is based on a conviction that Goethe peopled his writings with types as well as with individuals; and that the understanding of a given type (which exists above the single work) may do much to promote a correct interpretation of the work in which it appears. I have already examined one type in a study entitled Natural Creatures.1 Another significant type is the Amazon, who allegorically portrays mankind's cultural potentialities. Related to the Amazon, paradoxically enough, is the type of the ailing woman, of which I have identified three examples: the Princess in Torquato Tasso, the Schone Seele in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and Makarie in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Investigation of the shared traits of these, I submit, will help both to explain their roles within the individual works and to shed new light on those works as a whole. The ailing women can be traced back to two actual personages who exerted great influence over Goethe's life: Susanna Katharina von Klettenberg and Charlotte von Stein. It is, to be sure, a commonplace of literary history to recognize traits of Frau von Stein in Tasso's Princess. As for Susanna von Klettenberg, Goethe's mother and his brother-in-law Schlosser immediately saw that she was the model for the Schone Seele.2 But critics have scarcely noticed the