<em>Guter Hoffnung?</em> Pregnancy and Narrative in Two German Romantic Märchen

Abstract

In this essay I examine the function of pregnancy and narrative in two Romantic tales’ engagement with a Fichtean notion of subjectivity. I begin by tracing how Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) responded to the Fichtean model, arguing that even while embracing the agency and expansiveness gained by the subject in Fichte’s reworking of Kant, he recognized its simultaneously solipsistic and hyperoppositional tendencies and worked to mitigate them in his own philosophical and poetic attempts. Following an interpretation of Novalis’s “Atlantis-Saga” (1801) in this context, I broaden my perspective to examine the way in which pregnancy functions in the discourse about gender around the turn of the nineteenth century, including changes in the medical treatment of pregnancy and childbirth. Finally, I turn to Bettina Brentano’s “The Queen’s Son” (1808), which throws into question the autonomous, self-referential Fichtean subject, even in its Novalian revision. This occurs not least in its narration of pregnancy as an experience in its own right.