Luftzug hinter Samtportieren. Versuch über E. Marlitt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Luftzug hinter Samtportieren. Versuch über E. Marlitt Helga Druxes Luftzug hinter Samtportieren. Versuch über E. Marlitt. Von Erika Dingeldey. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2007. 209 Seiten. €34,80. The popular author Eugenie Marlitt (1825–1887) published ten novels and three stories in her lifetime, many of which were serialized in the middlebrow family periodical Die Gartenlaube. Erika Dingeldey investigates Marlitt's feminist agenda and return to Enlightenment ideals, and contrasts her politics with the nationalistic patriotism after 1871 in the population at large. She also draws attention to the conflict between her views and those of the "not openly oppositional"—in fact, quite imperialistic and nationalist—agenda of the magazine which promoted her to a large readership. In recent years, Germanists have paid more serious attention to Marlitt, no longer dismissing her under the label of romance novelist. Elke Liebs (2004) shows that Marlitt's views on marriage and critique of bourgeois values put her in the company of Austen and Dickens. Dingeldey proves that the main impetus behind Marlitt's novels is to trace female development and a proto-modern view of marriage as a contractual partnership between individuated protagonists. Her novels hold up unhappy marriages to critical inspection, while not rebelling against the institution as such. She criticizes class prejudice, bourgeois self-absorption, bigotry, anti-semitism, and received notions [End Page 154] about the traditional role of women—in short, prejudice of all kinds. However, she is not as outspoken as her contemporary Fanny Lewald (1811–1889), whose novels and memoir offer a more radical feminist critique. Dingeldey rightly focuses on the novel Im Schillingshof as her central example of the overcoming of entrenched class barriers and ossified aristocratic values. She also provides an in-depth discussion of other novels, such as Goldelse, Reichsgräfin Gisela, Die zweite Frau, Das Heideprinzeßchen, Im Hause des Kommerzienrates, and Die Frau mit den Karfunkelsteinen. Unfortunately, her discussion relies heavily on plot summary. This reader would have liked more comparison with other popular women's authors of the day, whose agenda was often more nationalistic and conventional. Ultimately, Dingeldey asserts, Marlitt blames a loss of liberal political ideals on the bourgeoisie themselves, not on external enemies (90). Even then, Marlitt's critique is muted by generalities and emotionalism; she does not name the oppressor, except to refer to those who foment class hatred against the bourgeoisie to further their own rise to power: "Die Abneigung, dem Bürgertum Vorschub zu leisten, oder vielmehr das Streben, es nicht stark werden zu lassen, liegen ihnen traditionsgemäß im Blute. Dagegen fühle ich Grimm, unbezwingbaren Grimm, gegen die feilen Fahnenflüchtigen aus unseren Reihen, die liebedienerisch und um des persönlichen Vorteils willen das eigene Fleisch und Blut bekämpfen [ . . . ]" (Die Frau mit den Karfunkelsteinen, 1885). A return to family values, to the congruence of the bourgeois family with the social group, is intrinsic to such rhetoric. This stance is, however, at odds with Marlitt's ongoing critique of fictional bourgeois families as split by generational conflict, pecuniary greed, secrets, and disavowals. She feels compelled to introduce fresh blood, in the guise of exotic ethnic female others, into these dysfunctional families. In Schillingshof, Mercedes Valmaseda, a Mexican-American who lives in South Carolina, rescues her German step-brother's children and falls in love with his brother, a painter stuck in a loveless marriage to a Catholic fanatic. In Die Zweite Frau, the German protagonist Juliane von Trachtenberg reactivates the memory of the 'socially dead' invalid Indian wife by circulating an erotic portrait she painted of her. Marlitt creates an identification between "the Lotos flower" and "Liane" that infuses her own relationship to Baron von Mainau with new attraction. Freedom of artistic expression is a theme dear to Marlitt's heart, and serves to symbolize the Enlightenment values of freedom and humanitarianism. We rarely find mention of working-class subjects in the novels, but when we do, for example in Reichsgräfin Gisela, they live in a "Musterkolonie" and are educating themselves through reading books: "Und weshalb sollten sie nicht über diese Lebensstellung, die da mit anderen Worten Not, Elend und Entbehrung heißt, hinaus können [ . . . ] Haben sie nicht einen Kopf wie wir...