Disruptive Organizers: Wild Children in German Realism (1850-1900)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DISRUPTIVE ORGANIZERS: WILD CHILDREN IN GERMAN REALISM (1850-1900) Margaret Suzanne Hamilton Reif A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Carolina- Duke Graduate Program in German Studies Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Eric Downing Ruth von Bernuth Stefanie Engelstein Priscilla Layne Jakob Norberg © 2020 Margaret Suzanne Hamilton Reif ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Margaret Reif: Disruptive Organizers: Wild Children in German Realism (1850-1900) (Under the direction of Eric Downing) This dissertation explores the intersection of childhood and wildness within the literary movement of German realism. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw the introduction of mandatory education and the consolidation of the middle-class family, both of which established childhood as a distinct phase. The literary movement of German realism emerged at the same time, with a focus on representing ordinary life and experiences with a particular concentration on bourgeois values and norms.. But many children in the works of this movement prove more fantastical than realistic, more extraordinary than ordinary, and more deviant than safely bourgeois. This study therefore examines how representations of wild children interact with the aesthetics of the average within German realism. Ultimately, this dissertation has two main points: First, depictions of wild children should not be read solely as a means of celebrating the average, middle class reality of the nineteenth-century through a strategy of the literary containment of wild children. Rather, the wild child initiates a redemptive transformation of reality and is a means for introducing that which would otherwise escape representation in realist prose fiction. Second, the frequent appearance of wild children within the literary movement of German realism serves as a rhetorical strategy to depict a changing nineteenth-century reality with regard to education, family, gender, nation and art, as well as a means to question the success of these structures. In order to make these arguments, this dissertation engages with four types of wild children: literary descendants of Goethe’s Mignon, fairytale children, differently- iii abled children associated with the figure of Kaspar Hauser, and criminal children. It also considers the intersection of gender and wildness and the ways in which the language of wildness, culture and civilization have been used in Western literary traditions, particularly in a late-nineteenth-century German context. iv In loving memory of my father, Thomas Reif v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor Eric Downing, without whom this project would not have been possible. I cannot thank him enough for his expertise, insight and invaluable feedback when working on this project, as well as for his kindness and encouragement. I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Ruth von Bernuth, Stefani Engelstein, Priscilla Layne and Jakob Norberg, all of whom have helped me grow as a scholar and consider additional perspectives on the relationship between children, wildness and German Realism. I would also like to express my gratitude to the late Jonathan Hess for his advice in considering the wild topographies of German realism. I am extremely grateful for the faculty and graduate students of the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies for the supportive intellectual community. Thank you, especially, to Martin Dawson, John Gill, Lea Greenberg, Jeff Hertel, Amy Jones, Edana Kleinhans, Patrick Lang, Ian McLean, Christoph Schmitz and Claire Scott, for the conversations, coffee, tea, and friendship. I would also like to thank those who have supported me from beyond the academy. To my spiritual family at Chapel in the Pines (in particular Minnie Sue, Jerry, Marion and the handbell choir), thank you. Thank you to Elizabeth, Maya, Natasha and Yasameen for friendship, baking and countless cups of tea. To my family, your love and encouragement mean more than I can say. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: REALIST MIGNONS AND THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE REALIST IMAGINATION ....................................................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER 2: REALIST FAIRYTALE CHILDREN AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITES ......................................................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 3: REALIST KASPAR HAUSERS: THE AESTHETICIZATION OF BROKEN VOICES ............................................................................................................................ 131 CHAPTER 4: REALIST CRIMINAL CHILDREN AND THE TRANFIGURATION OF THE BOURGEOIS FAMILY............................................................................................................ 174 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 228 WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................................... 233 vii INTRODUCTION Maurice Sendak’s 1963 Where the Wild Things Are might contain one of the best-known examples of a literary wild child. The protagonist Max dons a wolf costume and runs around the house, and when sent to his room, finds himself transported to another world where he is the king of the so-called “Wild Things” only to return home after he has exhausted himself. The children in Sendak’s work are, according to Maria Tatar, “mischief makers, with anarchic energy that can be primal, dark, and voracious” and the homes of Sendak’s stories are “the quintessential safe haven.”1 Within contemporary children’s literature, wild children seem to celebrate the raw potential of children’s energy while carrying a didactic message: the home and family provide a space for the child’s wild self to return to. This celebration of children’s wildness was not always the case in children’s literature. Within a nineteenth-century German-language context, one need only think of Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz (1865), where the boys’ pranks finally end when a farmer grinds them up in his mill and within the village “ging ein freudiges Gebrumm: »Gott sei Dank! Nun ist’s vorbei mit der Übeltäterei!«”2 Misbehaving children fare equally poorly in Heinrich Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter (1845), where children’s misbehaviors are turned back on them: for example, a girl who plays with matches sets herself on fire and a child who sucks his thumbs has them cut off. Disobedient children fare no better in fairytales: obedient and hardworking children are 1 Maria Tatar, “Larger Than Life and Twice as Natural,” PMLA 192, no. 1 (Jan. 2014): 123. 2 Wilhelm Busch. Max und Moritz: eine Bubengeschichte in Sieben Streichen. (Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1977), 61. 1 rewarded and disobedient and lazy children are punished3. Wildness is not a virtue in nineteenth- century children’s literature. When I began researching the figure of the wild child in nineteenth-century German literature, I was struck by how this figure shifts when transported into literature intended for adult readers. In general, childhood was a topic featured in many works of nineteenth-century literature as the latter-half of the nineteenth century saw the introduction of mandatory primary education in German-speaking lands and the consolidation of the middle-class family established childhood as a distinct phase, all of which was filtered into the literature of the period. Wild children represent one subsection of the children featured in nineteenth-century literature, and separated from the didactic purpose of children’s literature of the same period, a child’s wildness becomes an attractive trait, and its depiction more reminiscent of the attitude toward wildness in contemporary texts such as in Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are or Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking (1945). While a didactic element remains in the representation of wild children in works intended for adult readership, it is in the context of celebrating the efforts of intrepid pedagogues to incorporate wild children into larger society. At the same time, the loss of wildness is not accompanied by the same glee found in nineteenth-century children’s literature. Wild Children in Late-Nineteenth Century German Literature The literary deployment of the figure of the wild child not only represents a response to the shifting institutional and historical landscapes of this mid- to late nineteenth-century period, but also a unique opportunity to explore the aesthetics of its dominant literary movement, 3 For example, Goldmarie and Pechmarie in “Frau Holle,” where the obedient, hardworking sister is rewarded with gold and the lazy sister is covered in pitch. 2 German realism.4 The artificiality of wild children interrupts the carefully-constructed representations of reality within German realism and is a means of investigating the paradoxical drives within its aesthetic program. Paul Fleming’s study Exemplarity & Mediocrity: The Art of the Average from Bourgeois Tragedy to German Realism describes many of the inherent conflicts within German realism, such as the ideal