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ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FREMDE PFLANZEN: THE GENDERED GARDENS OF ADALBERT STIFTER AND THEODOR FONTANE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment o f the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Alicia L. Carter, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2002 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Adviser Adviser Professor Bemd Fischer Germanic Languages and Professor Harry Vredeveld Literatures Graduate Program Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 3059215 Copyright 2002 by Carter, Alicia Lee All rights reserved. ___ ® UMI UMI Microform 3059215 Copyright 2002 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Copyright by Alicia L. Carter 2002 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Since antiquity, human conceptions of gender have been projected upon nature, and nature, in turn, used to legitimize societal gender constructions. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists sought to justify qualities and behaviors attributed to men and women as biologically - i.e., naturally - determined. According to such “science,” God and nature had created woman as the weaker sex, imbuing her with characteristics that, in turn, dictated her place in society and in the family. This dissertation focuses upon a setting uniquely suited for exploring issues of gender and gendered nature: the garden, a landscape that lies suspended between nature and culture. In my study I consider four nineteenth-century works in which the garden image is central, Adalbert Stifter’s Brigitta and Nachsommer and Theodor Fontane’s Irruneen. Wirrungen and Effi Briest. In addition to focusing on images and aspects of the specific literary gardens as gendered, I explore the garden itself as a gendered space, a place where societal or personal projections of gender roles and expectations are at play. For Stifter’s Brigitta, the garden provides the haven necessary for the heroine to transform herself and the landscape, and to transcend the stultifying gender expectations of her time. In the garden in Nachsommer. however, safety and “order” are achieved only by the enforcement of a strict gender hierarchy. Equated with flowers and statuary, the principal female characters are deprived of ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. agency, their personal needs and desired, stifled. Fontane’s gardens prove fragile and ineffectual refuges. When the “Naturkind” Effi Briest surrenders to natural passions, she is expelled from the Edenic garden of her childhood home, and in Irrungen. Wirrungen. Lene’s and Botho’s garden of love ultimately cannot withstand the strictures of class and gender. Stifter’s and Fontane’s treatments of the garden image - whether as Horatian “beatus ille,” garden of love, Eden, or paradise lost - illustrate the varied and often negative repercussions of the age-old connection of women with nature. My analysis reveals the female protagonists in each of these works to be “fremde Pflanzen,” plants out of place in the landscape of nineteenth-century German and Austrian society. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In loving memory of my grandfather, Dr. Charles Herman Winkler iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my adviser. Professor Barbara Becker-Cantarino, for her support throughout this project. She gave me the space I needed to make the work truly mine, and the push I needed to finish. I am also grateful to my committee members: to Professor Harry Vredeveld, for helping me to write more eloquently and elegantly, and to Professor Bemd Fischer, for challenging me to view my subject from different perspectives. Professor Gisela Vitt, who first welcomed me to the German Department in 1990, was a caring and enthusiastic friend as I concluded this stage of my studies. Professor Neil Jacobs helped me maintain a sense of humor by inventing outlandish names for my thesis and never failing to ask me, “How does your garden grow?” Professor Mark Roche, my initial adviser for this project and now Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, continued to be interested and engaged in my professional development. Professor Nina Berman was always helpful and kind, offering encouragement when I was most frustrated or disheartened. Anne Scaperoth has been with me for every step of this journey, and continues to help me find my way. Laurie Schmidt, my dear friend, has inspired me with her creative spirit and magnificent garden. And I would never have become a scholar and v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. teacher of German were it not for Gudrun Reinhard, my “Lehrerin” and “Mutti,” who believed in me and loved me as if I were one of her own children. I wish to thank my amazing family: Dad and David for cheerleading and patiently editing, and Mom - the “Gartnerin” who inspired my topic - for coming to my rescue when I most needed her. Finally, I thank my partner and best friend, Matt, without whose unwavering love and support I would never have had the courage to return to the garden and finish. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. VITA September 29, 1967 ..........................Bom - Silver Spring, Maryland 1989 ......................................................B.A. German, B.M. Voice, The College of Wooster 1994 .....................................................M.A. German, The Ohio State University 1990-1996, 2000-2001 .......................Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS 1. Translation of Foreword and Abstracts. Weee zum Mvthos. Ed. Luba Freedman and Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich. Dconographische Repertorien zur Rezeption des antiken Mythos in Europa. Supplement 3. Berlin: Mann, 2001. 2. Review of Fontane-Handbuch. ed. Christian Grawe and Helmuth Niimberger. Colloquia Germanica 34 (2001): 340-42. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Germanic Languages and Literatures vii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page A bstract.............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication.......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements........................................................................................................... v V ita..................................................................................................................................... vii List of Abbreviations........................................................................................................ x Chapters: 1. Introduction............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Gender, Nature and Landscape.............................................................. I 1.2 The Genesis of the Garden...................................................................... 6 1.3 The German “Gartenrevolution”........................................................... 8 1.4 Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften and the “German” Garden .... 11 1.5 The Romantic Garden: Banishing and Controlling (Female) Nature 14 1.6 Trapped in House and G arden................................................................ 18 1.7 The Gendered Gardens of Stifter and Fontane.................................... 22 2. Der Garten in der Wiiste:

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