German women as letter writers, 1750-1850

About this book

Letters by German women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are voluminous, multifaceted texts with a wide reception and an underestimated history. Scholar Lorely French's study demonstrates the many dimensions of these letters, so as to challenge interpretations that have pejoratively characterized women's concerns in their writings. Drawing on theoretical debates surrounding feminism and the incorporation of history, culture, and psychology into the study of women's writing, her analysis offers a means to address such issues as friendship, publication, aesthetics, and politics as they relate to women writers. Examples of women's friendship, as in the letters of Meta Moller Klopstock, Louise Gottsched, and Helmina von Chezy, emphasize the public nature that women's private letters could assume through expansive circles of correspondents. An examination of the varying perspectives in the letters of Anna Louisa Karsch, Sophie Mereau, and Karoline von Gunderrode shows publishing writers who continually repositioned themselves according to their diverse roles in life. Passages from letters by Rahel Varnhagen and Caroline Schlegel-Schelling demonstrate how they granted importance to the trivial and thereby lent aesthetic value to their letters through skillful narration. An investigation of changes that Bettine von Arnim made to original letters when she edited and then published her correspondence with famous writers of her day addresses the issue of publication. In working through her letters for publication, Arnim stressed a communicative, dialogic relationship in which literature, history, and art coalesce into a highly personal form. The final chapter offers an overview of letters that address political concerns. Louise Aston, Fanny Lewald, Emma Herwegh, and Mathilde Franziska Anneke all used letters in their publications concerning the 1848 Revolution, thereby fusing literature with the historical essay and radically expanding traditional genre definitions and canons.