ABSTRACT Title of Document: BILDUG AND GENDER IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY BOURGEOIS GERMANY: A CULTURAL STUDIES ANALYSIS OF TEXTS BY WOMEN WRITERS Cauleen Suzanne Gary, PhD, 2008 Directed By: Professor Elke P. Frederiksen, Department of Germanic Studies Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, the German Bildungsbürgertum used the civic and inner components of Bildung defined by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) as a means to characterize its social identity and prominence. Together with the transitions related to the industrialization of society in the second half of the century, the German intellectual middle class recognized the changes of Bildung that adapted to the expansion of the bourgeois public sphere but simultaneously upheld the construction of the “eternal feminine” that emerged during the period of Weimar Classicism around 1800. Therefore, the idea of Bildung became associated with the cultural reality of young men. This event leads to the question: If bourgeois society excluded women from the process of inner and civic Bildung , how did women in return view themselves as members of the Bildungsbürgertum ? Drawing on both the inner and civic aspects of Bildung , this project investigates the interrelationship of Bildung and gender as portrayed in a variety of literary and non-literary texts. Selected writings by Fanny Lewald (1811-1889), Hedwig Dohm (1833-1919), Franziska Tiburtius (1843-1927), Gabriele Reuter (1859- 1941), and Ricarda Huch (1864-1947) reveal that many women created new interpretations of Bildung that were quite different from the mainstream conception defined by the male public voice. In addition, a variety of texts from the nineteenth- century press shows how women simultaneously raised awareness of the gender paradox in Bildung in mainstream bourgeois culture, particularly by women associated with the nineteenth-century German bourgeois women’s movement. The methodological paradigms of New Historicism and Gender Studies play a vital role in my analyses of women’s Bildung as it existed in a cultural discourse of “otherness”, and how women’s Bildung changed and shifted throughout the course of the century. My project examines the role of gender within multiple contexts of Bildung as portrayed in the texts mentioned above. These discourses include upbringing, self- awareness, self-cultivation, literacy, institutionalized education, and vocational training. In addition, my analysis asks how Bildung played a role in either creating or breaking a woman’s gender consciousness and idea of “self” in regards to the construction of “proper” femininity. BILDUG AND GENDER IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BOURGEOIS GERMANY: A CULTURAL STUDIES ANALYSIS OF TEXTS BY WOMEN WRITERS By Cauleen Suzanne Gary Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor Elke P. Frederiksen, Chair Professor H. Eleanor Kerkham Professor Guenter Pfister Professor Rose-Marie Oster Professor Gabriele Strauch © Copyright by Cauleen Suzanne Gary 2008 Dedication For my parents, Sandy & James Weaver, and James & Rosemary Gary. ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to a very respectable woman and advisor, Professor Elke Frederiksen. Thank you for the encouragement, patience, and mentorship during my years of professional and personal growth. I want to thank the Department of Germanic Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland for its continuous support, and will always laud the department’s steadfastness to its motto klein aber fein . I would also like to acknowledge my parents for their unwavering support, each in their own unique and inspiring way. Thank you Peter for your much needed encouragement and love; and finally, thank you Dana for your keen eye. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... iv Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 Culture as an Object of Study: Gender Studies, ew Historicism, and Bildung as Culture .................................................................................................... 14 Cultural Studies: What is it? ................................................................................... 14 Gender Studies ........................................................................................................ 17 New Historicism ..................................................................................................... 20 Adding “Bildung” to the Question of Culture ........................................................ 25 Chapter 2 Geschlechtscharakter and Modernity: An Overview of the Interrelationship of Bildung and Gender ............................................................... 28 “Bildung” and Gender around 1800 ....................................................................... 33 “Bildung” and Gender: 1800-1848 ......................................................................... 43 “Bildung” and Social Change after 1848 ................................................................ 47 The Nineteenth-Century German Bourgeois Women’s Movement: Women as Teachers, Students, and Political Activists ............................................................. 49 Chapter 3 “Wir sollten nicht so unselbständig erzogen werden”: Fictional and on-fictional Accounts of Gendered Erziehung ..................................................... 63 “Erziehung” as “Bildung” ....................................................................................... 67 Fanny Lewald: “Meine Lebensgeschichte” ............................................................ 69 Gabriele Reuter: “Vom Kinde zum Menschen” (1921) .......................................... 83 Gendered Morals and Learning to Love, Love, Love: ............................................ 96 “Aus guter Familie: Leidensgeschichte eines Mädchens” (1895) .......................... 96 Reading the “Self” ................................................................................................ 106 “Nichterziehung”: Hedwig Dohm’s “Schicksale einer Seele”(1899) ................... 115 Chapter 4 The Cultural “orm” and Individual Self: Representations of Disparity in Women’s Ways of “Being” ............................................................... 125 “Preisfrage” [Contest]: A Focus on the “Self” in the Mass Press......................... 131 Fanny Lewald: The Path towards Individuality and a New Way of “Being” in... 135 “Meine Lebensgeschichte” (1861-62) .................................................................. 135 Self-Awareness and the Physical Boundary: Hedwig Dohm’s “Werde, die du bist!” (1894) .................................................................................................................... 141 “Nichtindividualität”? Hedwig Dohm’s “Schicksale einer Seele” (1899) .......... 148 Chapter 5 “Abnormal” Behavior and Bildung .................................................... 157 The “Hysterical” Woman? A Continued Discussion of Gabriele Reuter’s ......... 160 “Aus guter Familie” .............................................................................................. 160 “Self” Control: Gabriele Reuter’s “Ellen von der Weiden” (1900) ...................... 169 Chapter 6 “Als ob tiefe Bildung und Weiblichkeit entgegengesetzte Begriffe seien”: Frauenstudium and Autobiography.......................................................... 183 Franziska Tiburtius: “Erinnerungen einer Achtzigjährigen”(1927) ..................... 196 iv Ricarda Huch and her Student Years at the University of Zürich: A Look at her Autobiographical Narrative “Frühling in der Schweiz” (1938) and a Poem ........ 207 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 219 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 229 v Introduction “What is gender anyway?” Debra Rosenberg asked this question in her article “(Rethinking) Gender” in the May 21, 2007 issue of ewsweek Magazine. She writes, “history and science suggest that gender is more subtle and more complicated than anatomy”, and in addition, it can be viewed as “a complex interplay of biology, genes, hormones and culture”. 1 As citizens of the increasingly global twenty-first century, we find ourselves searching for answers to complex questions in order to find an identity and place in a world continuously confronted with change. In order to begin any debate on reflective contemporary concepts like gender and culture, or masculine and feminine, one might look into past cultures in hope of finding origin and answers pertaining to a person’s individual cultural heritage. Whether we look to earlier definitions of gender or culture with nostalgia or admonition, with approval or criticism, the ways of living from times past nevertheless remain a fascinating subject and can tell us something about who we are today. In articulating what kind of role gender played in past cultures, a twenty-first century search for understanding the relationship between gender,