Reviewed by: Fanny Lewald: Between Rebellion and Renunciation Jeffrey L. Sammons Fanny Lewald: Between Rebellion and Renunciation. By Margaret E. Ward. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. xii + 456 pages. $89.95. Of the German post-Romantic women writers who have been studied in recent times, Fanny Lewald seems to have emerged with the most solid reputation; in some ways a restoration of a status she achieved in her lifetime but which, like that of a number of German realists, male and female, was winnowed out of literary-historical memory. The reasons for her recovery are not far to seek: an exemplary life story of tenaciously freeing herself from the domination and internalized superego of a beloved and loving but rigidly opinionated father; the rejection of a suitor chosen for her and eventual marriage—with a prenuptial agreement, no less—to a man chosen by herself and wrested from his first wife; the large body of writing arguing for women's right to equal education and work outside the home; and a long sequence of often successful works of fiction, bringing self-sufficiency and international recognition, not least in America. But she did not recreate herself ex nihilo; throughout her life she contended with the ambivalence between her repressive socialization and the rationality of her intellect, "double-voiced" (passim), as Margaret Ward puts it, between rebellion and (with an intentional Goethean echo) renunciation. Ward endeavors to be as sympathetic to and understanding of Lewald as possible, distancing herself from disparagements of the author for not having reached on all points today's feminist positions. Still, even Ward can at rare intervals get a little testy, as when she finds in Wandlungen that "the resolution of Cornelie's struggle for emancipation remains squarely within the parameters of the bourgeois value system [. . .]. Cornelie mouths platitudes about women's fullest development only being possible under the guidance of a father, brother, or husband" (284). Although Ward is fully aware of the extent to which biographical materials can reimagine the self and its history, her book is a straightforward biography with judicious weighing of the evidence. In the account up to 1845, readers of Meine Lebensgeschichte will find much that is familiar, but Ward draws on ancillary sources wherever possible and continues with materials from Lewald's memoir of 1848, her travel books, and unpublished manuscripts and letters. In her rather chatty introduction Ward gives a recognizable account of the laborious, time-consuming difficulties of researching the scattered materials of an author lacking critical editions and a strong scholarly tradition from the past. While Ward analyzes the essay writing, especially where it deals with women's issues, practically point by point, some may find the fictional works rather neglected. The Vormärz novels (Clementine, Jenny, and Eine Lebensfrage) are treated primarily in connection with the author's life story. Of the middle works, only Wandlungen receives detailed interpretive treatment, and the late novels are outlined, although Ward attempts a tepid rehabilitation of the once admired thousand-pager, Die Familie Darner, of which today's observers have generally disapproved. One sympathizes with Ward's confession: "I could still only treat a small fraction of Lewald's total fictional output" (391), but I wonder if she finds it less crucial than an old-fashioned Literaturwissenschaftler like myself might prefer. She [End Page 419] does not pursue literary contextualization of the novels very far. She tells of Lewald's admiration for the Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell and of her acquaintance with George Eliot and Geraldine Jewsbury, but does not ask about affinities and contrasts with these significant contemporaries; she notes Lewald's preference for Dickens over Thackeray without indicating what it might say about her style and manner. Prinz Louis Ferdinand seems particularly scanted; it is, after all, a historical novel of some heft, notwithstanding its patches of domestic soap opera. Ward seems interested in it primarily for its fervid portrayal of Rahel (which understandably annoyed Varnhagen, so that the dedication to him was removed from the second printing), but one could spend some time with the less generous treatment of other female figures, Helene Fromm and Pauline Wiesel. One might inquire about its quality of critical...