Tragedy in Paradise: Family and Gender Politics in German Bourgeois Tragedy 1750-1850 (review)

Abstract

Goethe Yearbook 433 apt translation of "will." Similarly, the translation of Athenäum Fragment #206, the "Igel" fragment, asserts that a fragment must be "complete unto itself" (322), an inaccurate translation of "in sich vollendet sein," more properly rendered as "complete in itself." According to Athenäum Fragment #238, Romantic poesy "should also represent itself as a part of each of its representations" (323), an imprecise translation of "und in jeder ihrer Darstellungen sich selbst mit darstellen." In the translation and confusing discussion of Fragment 11 of Novalis's Fichte Studies (happily included in this volume), "das erste Bezeichnende" is translated as "the first signifier" (63,94); in view of the widespread use of the term "signifier" in the Saussurian sense in contemporary critical theory, "the first signifying agent" would have been a better translation. By and large, though, this well-conceived volume offers functional translations of a wide range of carefully-chosen texts, and the accompanying essays successfully orient the reader and provide useful overviews of central aspects of Romantic theory. Extensive notes and an annotated bibliography offer references for future reading . Kudos to Schulte-Sasse and his collective for undertaking this ambitious project, an eminent introduction to early German Romanticism for the English-language reader. University of Utah Martha B. Heifer Gail K. Hart, Tragedy in Paradise: Family and Gender Politics in German Bourgeois Tragedy 1750-1850. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996. Gail Hart begins her analysis of German bourgeois tragedy with a statement about what her intention is not :"This is NOT a study of the women figures in bourgeois tragedy, nor is it an investigation of their absence or scarcity" (ix).Thus, the reader learns at the outset that Hart's project should be distinguished from those which concentrate on "women characters" or " 'dead women' in drama" (ix). Her book is,"rather, an inquiry into [the] removal [of women], the process of effecting their absence, and the centrality of that process to the genre we identify as bürgerliches Trauerspiel" (ix). Hart emphasizes her interest in a process of removal versus the end product of this process, the absence of women figures in drama, and this distinction comprises the central thesis of the book. By presenting a number of close readings of German bourgeois tragedies focusing on familial constellations, Hart illuminates the process and 434 Book Reviews strategies of removal rather than the tableaus of dead and/or marginalized women figures which mark the end of the dramas in question. Hart analyzes canonical works including Lessing's Miß Sara Sampson and Goethe's Stella and Eugenie (Die natürliche Tochter) as well as Sturm und Drang dramas by Klinger and Wagner. The final two chapters of the book present analyses of Kleist's "Über das Marionettentheater" and Hebbd's Maria Magdalene. AU close readings reflect Hart's interest in the removal of female figures from these texts, and herein lies the unifying structure of the book. This focus, however, tends at times to a level of abstraction which begs specific questions: one wonders, for example, who or what is the agent behind the "removal" of the female figures in these texts? By shifting the focus from their absence to the actual process of removal , Hart implicitly posits the existence of a conspiratorial, ostensibly patriarchal force whose aim is the erasure of female figures . In fact, two historical anecdotes on the "removal of -women" in the introduction are meant to provide a sociohistorical context for Hart's argument.These anecdotes, however, suggest universal implications for Hart's thesis: not only is there an unnamed agent which achieves the removal of female figures from eighteenth-century literature , but this same agent is potentially influential in the removal of women from mainstream society throughout history. Hart's vocabulary of "removal" is, in this reader's opinion, potentially misleading , since her project is in fact a compelling analysis of literary strategies for alleviating the threat of female figures to male authority . These strategies include, as Hart shows, not only removal but also appropriation and strategies of disempowerment. Furthermore, these literary strategies also expose "the problem of authoritarian dependence on feminine compliance" (51), suggesting that female figures must not merely be...