Walter-Gensler-Dissertation
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Copyright by Christina Cindy Walter-Gensler 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Christina Cindy Walter-Gensler Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Ideologies of Motherhood: Literary Imaginaries and Public Discourses Committee: Katherine Arens, Supervisor Janet Swaffar, Co-Supervisor Sabine Hake Peter Rehberg Heidi Schlipphacke Ideologies of Motherhood: Literary Imaginaries and Public Discourses by Christina Cindy Walter-Gensler, B.B.A.; B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2016 Dedication <To all Rabenmütter, especially my grandmother Franziska, who after WWII was an immoral single mother, and my mother Veronika, who did not give up her work when I was born. These two women have been incredibly inspiring role models and I owe them a lot.> Acknowledgements <I would like to thank Katherine Arens, my intellectual mother, for her continuous support and encouragement. She is the best advisor possible and I cannot express in words how much I owe her. Moreover, I would like to thank Janet Swaffer, not only for sharing her expertise on twentieth-century literature, but also for keeping me calm and focused. I am indebted to Peter Rehberg for his numerous suggestions and food for thought, particularly in terms of the methodological and theoretical framework. Heidi Schlipphacke on the other hand I have to thank for providing me with valuable insights into the origin of bourgeois femininity and for encouraging me to investigate a variety of mass media outlets in addition to novels. Last, but not least, I learned a lot from working with Sabine Hake, whose constructive feedback I truly appreciated. However, without sufficient funding, I would not have been able to conduct original research at the various archives and libraries in Germany that was crucial for this project. Therefore, I would like to express my gratitude to the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Germanic Studies and the Graduate School for their generous financial support. > v Ideologies of Motherhood: Literary Imaginaries and Public Discourses Christina Cindy Walter-Gensler, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Katherine Arens Co-Supervisor: Janet Swaffar Compared to other industrialized Western nations, the number of female professionals in Germany remains low, and fewer women combine a career with raising children. Public debates repeatedly argue that only stay-at-home moms can secure the ideal upbringing of children. This contemporary German social phenomenon is examined here as a failure of Germany’s shared social imaginary to provide images of alternative social roles for adult females. To do so, this dissertation traces discourses about motherhood and female identity construction reflected in German novels since the nation’s 1871 foundation, demonstrating the persistence of a limited number of images of female identities that constrain “acceptable” roles for women to family contexts. The study, however, does not seek a complete history of Germany’s maternal images, but rather provides an archive of persistent and visible gender identity scripts inscribed into Germany’s social imaginary and secured by law, custom, and usage in the public—to fill a lacuna in understanding the century-old dominant ideologies about women that sets Germany apart from other European nations and the US. Setting the scene by examining the available roles for women in literary works dating to the Wilhelmine Empire at the end of the dissertation’s introductory chapter, I vi then address selected highly visible German novels written during the Weimar Republic (Vicki Baum), the Third Reich (Ina Seidel), West Germany’s early postwar period (Heinrich Böll), West Germany from 1968 to 1989 (Gabriele Wohmann), and postreunification (Hera Lind). As I argue in my conclusion, a close look at the public perception of motherhood as manifested in these popular, visible narratives suggests that, despite the nation’s multiple transformations, the novelistic rhetoric about women’s roles scarcely changed, even if state ideologies and legalities did. They still state or insinuate that there is no “suitable” place for women outside the nuclear family. This result is significant because novels provide descriptions of women’s roles as mothers that become memorable and hence “true” for many of their readers, who reproduce the images as “normal” within social reality—there are few literary counterimages that might foster the emergence of alternative roles for German women in the twenty-first century. vii Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Discourses and Literary Representations: Finding the Corpus .......................5 Reading the Public Imaginary and Available Roles for Women in Social Reality ..............................................................................................................22 Setting the Scene: The Roots of Bourgeois Femininity and the Wilhelmine Family ..................................................................................................29 Chapter 1: The Weimar Case—New Woman, Old Mother ...................................42 Overview of Weimar’s Economic, Sociopolitical, and Legal Framework ...44 Structural and Discursive Realities for Women’s Lives in Weimar .............53 Moving Beyond the Bourgeoisie ..................................................................60 Weimar’s Discourses on Mothers: The Improbability of Breaking Free .....67 Chapter 2: Mothers in Weimar Novels ..................................................................71 Vicki Baum: Heralding Options While Affirming a Past .............................72 Reinforcing the Bourgeois Public Sphere: Other Literary Mothers in Weimar ..............................................................................................................87 Representations of Mothers and Motherhood from Outside Germany .......106 Some Conclusions: Weimar Mothers and “New Women” .........................113 Chapter 3: The Literary Mothers of the Fatherland .............................................117 Overview of Nazi Germany’s Economic, Sociopolitical, and Legal Framework ............................................................................................................120 State-Approved Representations of Women’s Lives ..................................127 Female Identities under National Socialism: Turning to the Text ..............140 Representations of Mothers and Motherhood from Outside Germany .......154 Some Conclusions about the “Good” Mothers of the Third Reich .............158 Chapter 4: Restoration—Depictions of Motherhood in Early Postwar Literature162 Women and the Family in Early Postwar West Germany ..........................165 A Case Study of Early Postwar Novels: Böll’s Haus ohne Hüter, a Zeitroman ............................................................................................................172 viii Haus ohne Hüter: Turning to the Text ........................................................188 Representations of Motherhood in the Early Postwar Years: Some Conclusions ............................................................................................................201 Chapter 5: Reverse Revolts—Depictions of Motherhood in Late Postwar Literature .....................................................................................................................213 The Turning Point of 1968: The Personal Becomes Political .....................216 Women’s Literature and Representations of Motherhood after 1968 ........224 Paulinchen war allein zu Haus: A Women’s Literature Case Study..........233 Paulinchen war allein zu Haus: Not All Mothers Are Motherly................252 Female Identities in Postwar German Literature: Some Conclusions ........260 Chapter 6: The Mother in German Literature after 1989—No Superweib in Sight265 A “Women’s Place” in Reunited Germany ................................................268 Turning to the Text: Hera Lind’s Das Superweib .......................................293 The Mother in Contemporary German Novels: Some Conclusions ...........311 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................323 Bibliography ........................................................................................................336 ix Introduction As the historian Cornelie Usborne explains, conservatives during the Weimar period frequently argued that, because of the New Woman’s attitudes toward marriage and childbearing, the German family was in crisis (137). Whether because they indulged in hedonistic pleasures or sought liberation in other forms, these women were accused of denying the state the offspring supposedly necessary for Germany’s survival. Interestingly, Carrie Smith-Prei points out that, in the 2000s, the German family still seems “to be in fundamental need of salvation” (Satirizing 76). Like the young women in the Weimar era, German feminists today still are blamed for low birthrates and their failure to dedicate their lives to their families. Feminist thinking is frequently disparaged as responsible for the fact that some women choose to pursue careers rather than starting families or refuse