MLR, I03.3, 2oo8 897 positions: while the bourgeois women's movement maintained women's difference from men and argued that it was precisely thisdifference that would justify theircon tribution to the public sphere, more radical thinkers, such as Dohm, subscribed to the 'egalitarianmodel', which privileged 'reason over biology' (p. I3). Other women, such as Reventlow, cannot be called feminist,but theydid contest the accepted view ofwomen in a strikingway: Reventlow called for the liberation ofwomen's sexuality outside marriage. The women novelistsWeedon examines 'articulate the emotional and psychic dimensions ofpatriarchal oppression' (p. I69) or depict female characters who overcome it. The study is a good introduction to little-knownworks of fiction such as Frapan's Arbeit and Wir Frauen haben kein Vaterland, and offers some original readings of better-known novels, such as the account of repressed lesbian desire inReuter's Aus guter Familie. But this isnot, primarily, a study of literaryworks: Weedon reads her novels for theirpolitical content. The readermay at first wonder whether the fictional status of the novels is important, and indeed, inChapter 7,Weedon uses autobio graphical works to fulfil the same function in her argument that novels do in other chapters. In her conclusion, however,Weedon makes a convincing case for the special status of fiction, for its capacity to 'negotiate censorship' and act as an imaginative sitewhere 'resistance can be voiced' (p. i66). Surprisingly little reference ismade to existing secondary literature, either in the main text or in the bibliography, and there are some typographical errors. Rich in detail and inquotation (translated intoEnglish), however, Gender, Feminism, and Fic tionwill prove useful to scholars and students of the period, helping them to avoid generalizations in their references to nineteenth-century views on women, and as a point of entry for the study of fictionbywomen of theperiod. BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ANNA RICHARDS Religion alsRelikt? Christliche Traditionen im Werk Fontanes. Ed. by HANNADELF VON WOLZOGEN and HUBERTUS FISCHER. (Fontaneana, 5)Wiirzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2oo6. 27I pp. E38. ISBN 978-3-826o-3545-6. Wisely skirting around the irresolvable question whether Fontane, a son of Prussia's Huguenot community, had any real personal faith, this collection takes as its subject the varied and complex representation ofChristian themes inhis work. It opens with Bernhard Boschenstein's lucid, handsomely illustrated essay reveal ing Fontane's admiration forRenaissance art that depicts Christ or theMadonna not as purely heavenly or earthly beings, but as figureswhose divinity resides in their representative humanity; and his belief that artists active after the demise of the tradition of religious painting could achieve the same religiously tinged human universality with contemporary scenes (Turner, Millais) better thanwith a necessar ilyderivative, mannered depiction of biblical figures (Bocklin). Images of butterflies and wheels are brought tomind by Hugo Aust's choppy, abstruse interpretation of Die Poggenpuhls using themedieval philologist Friedrich Ohly's model of four le vels of textualmeaning (literal, allegorical, moral, and sacred). Hans Ester contrasts thewholesale adoption ofChristian discourse inNietzsche's anti-Christian polemics with the subtle use of biblical allusions in Fontane's fiction,where they delineate characters and their interrelationships, and sometimes, through the implicit compact between author and reader, take on a narrative function of theirown. Bernhard Losch considers the representation in theWanderungen and the novels of the competing claims of the law as an absolute ordering principle and the impulse towards clemency when individuals transgress the law under exceptional pressures; 898 Reviews unfortunately this interesting topic isonly perfunctorily connected to thequestion of religion, and Losch's textual analyses do not penetrate farbeyond the surface. Using examples from several novels, Eda Sagarra demonstrates how sensitively Fontane explores the psychological impact of differentconfessional backgrounds on his char acters, and how attractive he found thedirection and comfort offered by Catholicism to those of itsadherents who sincerelywish toatone fortheir sins.Hubertus Fischer's subject isKonrektor Othegraven, theLutheran clergyman with a tincture ofCalvin ismwho meets a heroic soldier's death in Vor dem Sturm. Fischer traces a namesake who fought in theWars of Liberation, the probable source of Fontane's familiarity with him, and the changes made in turning him into a fictional character. In a close analysis of Unterm Birnbaum, Wulf Wiilfing argues that the failures...