The first major study in English of nineteenth-century German women writers, this book examines their social and cultural milieu along with the layers of interpretation and representation that inform their writing. Studying a period of German literary history that has been largely ignored by modern readers, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres demonstrates that these writings offer intriguing opportunities to examine such critical topics as canon formation; the relationship between gender, class, and popular culture; and women, professionalism, and technology. The writers she explores range from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, who managed to work her way into the German canon, to the popular serial novelist E. Marlitt, from liberal writers such as Louise Otto and Fanny Lewald, to the virtually unknown novelist and journalist Claire von Glümer. Through this investigation, Boetcher Joeres finds ambiguities, compromises, and subversions in these texts that offer an extensive and informative look at the exciting and transformative epoch that so much shaped our own.

"The respectable woman of the West did not necessarily meet Eastern standards of the ideal woman... In the nineteenth century, gender roles established well-defined boundaries in order for men and women to maintain respectability."-- [P.1] "Frontier life was basically a family enterprise. Each unit needed to be able to function independently without the help of other people. This isolation from outside help often necessitated women crossing over into the male-dominated sphere, performing unladylike chores thereby changing the scope for what was tolerable for women in the West...The blurring of original gender roles due to necessity was a fundamental issue in the West. Women had to learn to be self-sufficient which entailed them doing work or acting in ways originally considered unfeminine or unladylike. "--[P. 12]

The first major study in English of 19th-century German women writers, this book examines their social and cultural milieu along with the layers of interpretation and representation that inform their writing. The author demonstrates that these writings provide an extensive and informative look at an exciting and transformative epoch that so much shaped our own. 16 photos.