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Offered below is the web-page version of an exemplary Seminar article without footnotes. It is Karin M. Wurst's "Women Dramatists in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany: The Hazards of Marriage as Love Match," from 38:4, November 2002. Offered as a pdf-file is an exemplary article that adheres to the policy of Seminar to hold footnotes to a minimum. It is Therese Ahern Augst's "Difference becomes Antigone: Hölderlin and the Ethics of Translation," from 38:2, May 2002. To download the file, please click here. If you do not have Adobe's Reader software installed on your computer, you can download it for free from the manufacturer's website. Another article made available as a pdf-file is Eva Ludwiga Szalay's "Norms of Femininity and their 'Transformation': Gender Identity in Kaschnitz, Bachmann, and Wolf" (Seminar 39:2, May 2003) which you can download by clicking here. |
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Women Dramatists in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany: The Hazards of Marriage as Love Match
Love that ideally leads to marriage occupies much of the literature in the second half of the eighteenth century. Even the most prestigious genre, drama, and in particular the bourgeois tragedy, revolves around this core of bourgeois intimacy. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Miß Sara Sampson and Emilia Galotti, Heinrich Leopold Wagner's Die Kindsmörderin, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's Der Hofmeister, Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Clavigo, and Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, to name only the most famous examples, help to construct and present various aspects of the new bourgeois conception of love. Whether regarded as a system of communication or as an idea that provides norms for grasping the emotions of individuals, love is a culturally produced – not a natural – concept and therefore changes historically even though its terminology may remain unchanged (Wulf 8). Modern criticism recognizes the centrality of the discourse of love in literature in the creation of bourgeois identity in the eighteenth century (Borchmeyer, Greis, Saße, Luhmann, Gallas, Clauss). Recent analyses consider primarily the canonized texts, while casting only generalizing glances at other traditions – in particular at so-called trivial literature. Günther Saße contends that the trivial tradition – under which he subsumes women's literature – confirms the dominant concept of love with facile solutions (Saße 71–72). In his study on eighteenth-century drama, he briefly comments on the novels Elisa oder das Weib wie es seyn sollte (1795) by Wilhelmine Caroline von Wobeser (Saße 56) and Das Fräulein von Sternheim (1771) by Sophie von La Roche (Saße 19). Yet he ignores the more appropriate comparison with women's dramatic production. As feminist criticism has shown, it is a simplification to assume that women writers produced in the trivial tradition and that their texts affirmed the given value system. Instead, their literary production stands in a complex socially, aesthetically, and culturally determined tension with canonized literature (Becker-Cantarino; Runge; Lange; Kord, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen and Sich einen Namen machen; Wurst, "Negotiations of Containment" and Frauen und Drama). Discussing late eighteenth-century dramatic texts by Sophie Albrecht, Marianne Ehrmann, Eleonore Thon, Elise Bürger, and Elisa von der Recke, this article will show how these writers participated in the differentiation of the discourse of marriage as love match ("Liebesehe"), which had become the underlying norm in the literary texts of the period. While the canonical authors focus on the aspect of love but avoid a happy end – and, with it, marriage – the female dramatists discussed here centre their attention on this neglected aspect of marriage. The last decades of the eighteenth century are part of a period of transition from a feudal society to a modern functionalised society. Modern society consists of two distinct spheres: (1) the professional and specialized sphere of work away from the household and (2) the realm of intimate family-life (Habermas). Both serve different functions and require distinct value systems. Efficiency, utility, and profitability govern the professional life of the middle class, while the family becomes the site for happiness, harmony, and sympathetic sociability. The family as a refuge allowed for the structural transformation of society because it compensates for the deficits in solidarity, social stability, and a sense of community in the public sphere (Luhmann 9; Wegmann passim; Clauss 10). Fostered by the literary movement of Empfindsamkeit, a new mentality governed the interpersonal value system for dealing with the immediate circle of friends, the beloved, and the family. The more intimate family life that followed brought significant changes to the relationship of the married couple. Niklas Luhmann in his
longitudinal sociological study on the development of love as
a historically changing code of social communication (Luhmann
9) examines a variety of European texts from the seventeenth-
to the twentieth century. He concludes that the eighteenth century
in Germany was a time of stagnation in the transformation of the
love-paradigm. For him the decisive replacement of gallantry with
the concept of friendship emerged in England early in the century.
Saße, who examines only German literature of the eighteenth
century, distinguishes three stages of love: "vernünftige
Liebe," "zärtliche Liebe," and "romantische
Liebe." The rational, reasoned selection of a partner ("vernünftige
Liebe") in the early Enlightenment is based on the moral
character of the lovers, which requires a close and deliberate
examination of the qualities of a potential marriage partner.
The resulting marriage stresses the proper distribution of tasks
and responsibilities between men and women and disciplines passion
and sexuality. The second paradigm
("zärtliche Liebe") bases marriage on emotional
erotic attraction and friendship. With the disappearance of the
model of familial alliance (in which the families arranged marriages
based on social and economic compatibility and interests), the
couple itself became increasingly important in initiating a successful
love match that could lead to marriage. Jutta Greis considers
this the dominant model in the eighteenth century. "Zärtliche
Liebe" is fostered by the literary and cultural movement
of "Empfindsamkeit" with its heightened sensibilities,
and it leads to the "Steigerung der Ichrealität"
(Wegmann 87) in which the individual perceives his or her self-analysis
as pleasurable. This paradigm constitutes a central moment in
the creation of the modern concept of subjectivity. Complexity
and individuality of the highly self-reflexive individual became
prized indicators of a rich emotional life. For the communication
with others, especially friends and the beloved, this has important
consequences. The highly individualized self requires equally
intense relationships, which not only are threatened with a loss
of boundaries with the other (Wegmann 108) but also stand in opposition
to social integration (Luhmann 46). Above all, these relationships
are highly exclusive: "Allenfalls noch mit einer Person versucht
das zunehmend sich als einzigartig begreifende Individuum noch
die grenzenlose Annäherung, die vollkommene Transparenz"
(Wegmann 111). This decreases the likelihood of finding a suitable
soul-mate and increases the possibility that the subject desiring
the most intimate communication will remain without response (Wegmann
115). The romantic love paradigm
– not restricted to marriage – celebrates the fusion
of emotion, sensuality, and sexuality (von Hammerstein 222). It
suggests a melding of masculine and feminine traits in love (and
marriage) as a higher form of human existence. Nevertheless it
regards "the feminine" as the less alienated, more natural
state of being, which is able to offer salvation to the modern
male torn between the value systems of the public and private
spheres (Saße 52). The depictions of love
leading to marriage discussed in this article do not fit easily
into one of these three historical paradigms. Closest to the model
of "zärtliche Liebe," they are hybrids that display
traits from the first two paradigms to varying degrees. To distinguish
this hybrid from the established paradigms, the concept of love
will be referred to as erotic love. In the manifestations of erotic
love discussed here, sexuality is nowhere celebrated as a means
of transcending the alienation of modern life. Unlike some of
the canonized texts (esp. Schiller's Kabale und Liebe),
these representations of erotic love do not anticipate the romantic
love paradigm. Furthermore, the dramatic texts under investigation
here do not establish or confirm the discourse of erotic love
as the canonical texts do but, instead, expose the contradictions
that arise when it is fused with marriage. This, however, is not
to say that the canonized texts do not address the internal contradictions
within the erotic love paradigm. While those texts never reach
the point of marriage, the dramatic tradition discussed here examines
the complex issue of marriage based on erotic love. The problems
that the plays highlight emerge when the instability and transient
nature associated with erotic love are melded with the social
stability and durability of marriage and the family. After all,
the passionate love between two individuals encourages them to
live for themselves exclusively. Marriage, however, grounds the
individual in a social context (Gallas 69), and therefore the
demands of the lovers clash with the demands of the larger community.
The exclusive focus on each other is detrimental to the social
functions of men and women (as mother, wife, husband, and breadwinner). Regardless of their
own class affiliations, Eleonore Thon, Elisa von der Recke, Marianne
Ehrmann, Sophie Albrecht, and Elise Bürger subscribed to
a bourgeois understanding of erotic love and marriage. With the
possible exception of Thon, about whom there is a lack of biographical
information, these writers experienced their own marriages as
problematic and, all but Thon, they endured the psychological,
economic, and social impact of divorce. The need for financial
independence prompted the middle-class women to seek (gainful)
employment in the few areas open to women: acting (Albrecht, Ehrmann,
Bürger) and writing. As Albrecht, Ehrmann, and Bürger
aged, they left the theatre and turned to writing. As was the
case for most authors during this time, they could not support
themselves exclusively by fiction writing. Yet despite the limited
opportunities and financial hardships these women relished the
labour of writing as an intellectually fulfilling part of their
identity. They enjoyed the mobility, the opportunities to travel
and to form a larger social network of personal and professional
friends. As the authors and their plays are not well known, a
brief biographical introduction on each author is in order, as
well as a short plot summary of each play. Sophie Albrecht (1757–1840),
author of the earliest play, was the well-educated daughter of
a medical doctor (Royer 30–102). Soon after her father's
death in 1772, she became a doctor's wife and accompanied her
husband on his travels to Russia, during which time she began
to write poetry. In 1783 she joined Großmann's theatre company
and established a reputation as an actress that earned her a position
with the famous Bondini troupe in Dresden (1785). She became one
of the most famous and highly paid female actors and also published
works in important almanacs such as Schiller's Thalia and
Sophie La Roche's Pomona. In 1795 she joined the Hamburg
Theatre and, with the help of an inheritance, supported that democratic
liberal theatre, which for a while was directed by her husband.
Albrecht sub-titled her bourgeois tragedy Theresgen (1781) "Ein
Schauspiel mit Gesang in fünf Aufzügen," a genre
designation that allowed for great flexibility. Raised in the
city by her beloved aunt and godmother, Theresgen is forced, after
her aunt's death, to live in a small village with her stepfather.
The play opens with Theresgen's friend and confidante, Lehngen,
and her fiancé, Andres, marvelling at the exhilarating
effects of erotic love on their lives. This exuberance is contrasted
by the deep melancholy of the next scene, which introduces Theresgen
in the cemetery where she is mourning the loss of her beloved
aunt and bemoaning her unrequited love. She had earlier rejected
a suitor from her own class because she was not in love with him
and then fallen in love at first sight with a handsome stranger
whom she rescued from drowning. He turned out to be Count Adolph,
master of Theresgen's suitor, Franz, and – a further obstacle
to a relationship – himself in the process of marrying. In
the face of these barriers, Theresgen's erotic desire turns into
"melancholia" – the parlance of the day for the
deep despair and sustained depression into which a woman might
fall when, in keeping with the gender-specific socialization of
the eighteenth century, she suffers passively and in silence,
her desire unarticulated, forbidden to pursue a love object. Theresgen's mean-spirited
stepfather, Heinrich, wants to force her against her wishes into
a marriage with Franz, it being his duty as head of the household
to assure the daughter's economic security by marrying her off
to a suitable member of their class. Contrary to the conventions
of the late eighteenth century, however, Heinrich is proceeding
without the daughter's consent. At one point, Heinrich, Franz,
and Count Adolph discuss the issue of consent – the Count
advocating a middle-class marriage based on love for his subjects,
the stepfather resolved to use parental authority to force his
daughter, and the suitor is ready to settle for a marriage of
convenience in the hope that she will learn to love him in time
(Albrecht, in Wurst, Frauen und Drama 153–54). Of
course, the erotic love paradigm suggests that love cannot be
willed or coerced, and these strategies fail. Theresgen remains
steadfast in her refusal to enter into a marriage that is not
based on mutual erotic love. Rather than renounce the desire of
her heart and settle for a man she does not love, she drowns herself
minutes before her wedding. Albrecht's play highlights
several issues associated with the new "Liebesehe."
It ponders the exuberance of reciprocated love and its role in
marriage. Lehngen, who used to go to bed early and sleep late,
now rises at first light, and love energizes her until late at
night (141). For her fiancé, Andres, love converts toil
into delight and worry into joy; giving him boundless energy to
complete his chores: "seitdem du meine Braut bist, bin ich
der fleißigste im ganzen Dorfe (142). While love enhances
Andres's desire to work, it drives Lehngen to daydreams, intensifying
her appreciation of the beauty of nature and sending her spirits
soaring. Berit Royer refers to Albrecht's depiction of erotic
love, which is at the core of all but her religious texts, as
a "stimulating drug" (219). In their own prosaic manner,
the simple peasants describe the popularization of the effects
of erotic love that Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
had introduced into the cultural imagination. In contrast to Werther,
they naively believe that this kind of love can be maintained
within the institution of marriage. As advocates of the concept
of "Liebesehe," they expect the effects of erotic love
– the heightened appreciation of life – to last once
they are married. Their optimism is challenged by warnings from
their elders, who argue that love ceases to exist after the honeymoon
(143). The marriages portrayed in the play seem to confirm these
negative descriptions. But the lovers note that all these marriages
were based not on true love but on economic considerations. The discussion between Theresgen's stepfather, her suitor, and the Count subjects marriage to more intense scrutiny. The Count, who is not aware of Theresgen's love for him, tries to help Franz by suggesting a strategy for convincing Theresgen: provided that she does not love another, he recommends manipulation, so that what is in truth coercion should seem like free will. He advocates patience, so that Theresgen can become accustomed to the idea and imagine herself in love (159). The question is never whether or not Theresgen has the right to reject the suitor. Instead, the men discuss merely the best method of achieving compliance:
By raising questions
without offering solutions, the play has given rise to divergent
critical evaluations, above all as to how the Count's ambivalent
suggestion and Theresgen's suicide are to be understood. Dagmar
von Hoff reads Theresgen's insistence on her unhappy love as a
portrayal of the psycho-pathological condition of "Liebeskrankheit"
or "Liebes-Melancholey" (von Hoff 72–73). Royer,
on the other hand, considers the psychological reading insufficient
and sees the play as indicative of Albrecht's early feminist and
democratic ideals, which advocate the self-determination of women
and thus their right to refuse marriage (Royer 190). Royer bases
her interpretation on Albrecht's own life-choices and on the importance
of the theme of erotic love as a vital, intensifying force in
life throughout her oeuvre. Yet, while the play advocates
women's right to self-determination in marriage and the right
to refuse, it also points to the negative – in this case
even catastrophic – consequences. The ending seems to suggest
that, in the absence of valid alternatives, the excessive concern
with love is a dangerous gamble for women. If Goethe's Werther
celebrated "love at first sight" as an expression of
divine fate justifying erotic desire, the play exaggerates this
topos and thus marks it as excessive and unrealistic. The brief
encounter that ignites Theresgen's passion and the impossibility
of reciprocity indicates the dangerous power of the imagination
in the creation of erotic love. She indulges in the fantasy of
erotic love, which is supposed to lead to the new ideal of "Liebesehe,"
and is therefore unwilling to settle for less. This insistence
betrays a loss of grounding in reality. Theresgen's suicide has
been read as a heroic act of self-determination with its ultimate
renunciation of a marriage of convenience (Royer 194). However,
the fact that she commits suicide as a last resort characterizes
it as an act of desperation. While clinging to the ideal of erotic
love and its fulfilment in a "Liebesehe," the play at
the same time denounces the grand expectations that the new love
paradigm raises but that, given the limited scope of women's life,
have so little chance of realization. This ambiguity forces the
audience to contemplate an alternative to erotic love as the dominant
means of fulfilment for women. Albrecht's play touches
upon another danger associated with erotic love, namely its abuse
as a self-deceptive illusion, its "roses" obscuring
above all the lover's view of the "chains" of prevailing
power relationships ( "Ketten so viel als möglich unter
Rosen verbergen," Albrecht, in Wurst, Frauen im Drama
160). With this it touches implicitly on another recurring theme
of its day, namely the role of literature in creating such illusions,
with romance novels above all both creating erotic desire and
blurring hierarchical social relationships (Wurst, Frauen und
Drama 78). This problem, while not explicit in Albrecht's
text, is prominent in Marianne Ehrmann's play Leichtsinn und
gutes Herz: oder Die Folgen der Erziehung (1786). Orphaned
early in life, Ehrmann (1755–1789) attempted unsuccessfully
to cope with her straightened circumstances (Madland 6) first
by becoming a governess and then by escaping that precarious position
into a marriage that soon ended in divorce. A subsequent brief
engagement with a theatre troupe she ended soon after the publication
of her Philosophie eines Weibes (1784). After her second
marriage – to the writer Theophil Friedrich Ehrmann –
she concentrated on her writing career, and the couple at times
subsisted entirely on her earnings as the editor of the successful
periodicals Amaliens Erholungsstunden (1790–92) and
Die Einsiedlerin aus den Alpen (1793–94). Her Leichtsinn
und gutes Herz: oder Die Folgen der Erziehung examines the
contradictory relationship between erotic love and its portrayal
in literature, revealing as it does so the role that romance novels
play in the socialization of men and women. The play rewrites
the bourgeois tragedy in the tradition of Lessing (in particular,
Emilia Galotti) by avoiding a tragic ending. Its main protagonist
Lottchen was, against the wishes of her father, socialized and
educated in the city, where her sensitive personality was soon
inflamed by "Lectur und Schwärmerei" (Ehrmann,
in Wurst, Frauen und Drama 189). After she has returned
to the idyllic realm of the country, she encounters Count von
Treuberg, who finds her reading by a brook and is instantly smitten
by a desire so intense that he even asks for her hand in marriage
(188). Lottchen's father is unwilling to subject his daughter
to such an unconventional arrangement and withholds his permission.
Immature, capricious, and confused, Treuberg is dependent on the
advice of his wicked tutor and advisor Mekler, who has sexual
designs of his own on Lottchen. Mekler convinces Treuberg to seduce
Lottchen at his castle and, after Mekler has lured Lottchen there,
Treuberg ravishes her but soon loses interest (219). Tossed aside,
Lottchen gathers her strength and insists that they must marry
(222). She realizes that this will not rekindle Treuberg's erotic
desire for her and so renounces any erotic demands upon him. Yet
she insists that he restore her social honour by marrying her.
While the Count is off asking his family's permission to marry,
Mekler attempts to rape Lottchen, but she is rescued at the last
minute by a stranger. A markedly forced happy end ensues when
the Count begs for forgiveness and asks Lottchen's father –
this time successfully – for her hand in marriage, her honour
thus secure, albeit it in a match of dubious quality. More explicitly here
than in Albrecht's Theresgen, literature – and in
particular the "Schwärmerei" of popular sentimental
literature – is shown to play a questionable role in the
socialization of women. By linking the reading of novels with
city life and its diversions, the play imparts fresh nuances to
the conventional contrast between city life and country life.
Bourgeois tragedy (Lessing) had criticized feudalism, its vices
and excesses, by contrasting the superficial city life and its
nobility-oriented pleasure-seeking with the morally superior country
life and its middle-class-oriented focus on family, friends, and
closeness to nature. Ehrmann's play uses this motif not as a political
critique of feudalism but rather as a self-reflexive examination
of middle-class virtues. The play shows how city life and reading
shape the bourgeois woman, Lottchen. With her early city life
exposing her to the literature of sentimentality, she grew accustomed
to reading novels, which taught her to indulge in imaginative
fancy and daydreams that could lead her to imagine modes of conduct
and models that transcend the expectations for her sex and class
(Wurst, Frauen und Drama 81). Literature, as the central
socializing element of her life in the city, also made her familiar
with erotic love and the desirability of a "Liebesehe."
It provided her, as it did most women, with the only pre-marital
experience in such matters, acting as a major factor in the creation
of modern sensibilities and desires. Jeannine Blackwell also points
out this connection between literature and the new form of marriage,
the love match that she calls "marriage by the book":
"spontaneous eroticism, preparatory for the love match, is
released by the literary model – or at least so it was perceived
by several generations of moralists and women authors, who decried
novels while writing them" (Blackwell 140). Ehrmann's drama
implicates certain types of literature – romance novels –
as a means of eroticising women and making them more susceptible
to male seduction. An increasingly differentiated society saw
women as especially vulnerable to the allure of romantic literature
because of their confinement to the home where reading was an
important cultural pastime. The play takes up arguments of the
so-called "Lesesuchtdebatte" that occupied the popular
press and popular philosophy at the time and unfolded the ambiguous
nature of novel-reading: on the one hand the didactic potential
of reading that could instill middle-class moral values, on the
other hand the potential for excesses that might inflame the imagination
– its ability to reveal new worlds versus its capacity to
make women more susceptible to seduction: "Die männliche
Phantasie [...] produziert das Klischee von der durch das Buch
verführten und daher verführbaren Frau " (Wurst,
Frauen und Drama 82). Ehrmann's play hints especially at
these dangerous and seductive qualities of reading. Returning to the country,
Lottchen combines the pleasures of reading with an indulgence
in nature. She seeks out the solitude of an idyllic place to read,
creating a picturesque tableau that, viewed voyeuristically
by Count Treuberg, inflames his passions and makes him fall in
love at first sight. Likewise Lottchen: she falls – or, rather,
imagines herself – in love with him at their first meeting,
without the audience's ever learning what attracts her to him
or what draws his "soul and body" (Ehrmann, in Wurst,
Frauen und Drama 195) to Lottchen. Treuberg's verbose expression
of desire for Lottchen is so full of clichés from the literary
discourse of the time, his decision to forsake his family and
class to marry her so precipitous, that he seems likely to have
been reading the same literature that Lottchen enjoys. Nor is
his weakness portrayed as merely an individual character flaw,
but rather as symptomatic of a tendency to live in imitation of
– possibly flawed – fantasies inspired by literature.
His education did very likely not socialize him solely in the
values of his class. By the 1780s, the middle class had come to
dominate the cultural – and especially the literary –
sphere, such that the aristocracy were exposed to the values of
the middle class, to its outlooks and readings. Treuberg, "impressionable
fellow" that he is (Madland 137), has likely come by his
tendency to irresponsible behaviour as a result of the "improper
educational practices of the private tutor, Mekler" (Madland
137), a conclusion supported by the sub-title of the play –
"Die Folgen der Erziehung"! – as well as by its
author's general concern with the didactic. While the Prince in Lessing's Emilia Galotti is attracted by the beautiful image of the bourgeois women and to the value system she stands for, Treuberg seems to be influenced by the middle-class system of erotic love as it was created in literature. He is attracted to what the reading bourgeois woman stands for: both her resistance and her vulnerability to seduction. Lottchen's initial refusal of his advances combines with and other obstacles to fuel his desire, and he does not rest until he possesses her. After the consummation of their love he loses interest and complains: "Ich bin, wie ein Kind, das nur darum weint, weil es befriediget ist, und nichts mehr zu wünschen hat" (Ehrmann, in Wurst, Frauen und Drama 219). This statement exposes one of the central contradictions in the concept of erotic love in the tradition of Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise. Erotic love is dependent on prohibitions and separation to fuel desire. Prohibition creates what it forbids, the desired object (compare Foucault). Helga Gallas describes this phenomenon with respect to Novelle Heloise:
Experiencing this flaw
in the erotic love paradigm, both Treuberg and Lottchen react
in gender- and class-specific ways. Treuberg wishes to escape
from the relationship (possibly in order to find a new object
of desire), and Lottchen insists that he should restore her honour
by marrying her. She realizes that her insistence on the social
permanence of marriage (underscored by the forced nature of the
union) means that she can no longer count on his erotic desire
for her. The play thus alludes to an inherent contradiction in
the model of marriage as love match, namely the impossibility
of maintaining desire in long-term relationships. By eliminating
the obstacles that create and sustain desire, marriage makes it
impossible to maintain desire over the course of a lifetime. Thus
Ehrmann seems to challenge an uncritical celebration of erotic
love, especially in romance novels that invite their readership
to identify and imitate their heroes and heroines. In the end, Treuberg agrees to marry Lottchen with the consent of his parents and of her father, and the audience is left to imagine what kind of marriage this will be. The cynical description of this kind of mésalliance by Mekler (Ehrmann, in Wurst, Frauen und Drama 196) suggests that it will have to be one based on relative isolation. They cannot live the simple life of Lottchen's father, and Treuberg's marriage to a commoner ruins his prospects of a career at court. They will have to find their own way, and in this case literature offers no models. By avoiding the catastrophes of famous bourgeois tragedies of the Sturm und Drang such as Wagner's Die Kindsmörderin and Schiller's Kabale und Liebe and ending instead in marriage, Ehrmann's play leaves the audience to contemplate this particular union and create their own model for marriage. It seems in this way to advocate a version of marriage based on erotic love, yet at the same time to caution that marriage must be created by each couple and cannot be based on literary models. Eleonore Thon's Adelheit von Rastenberg (1788) affirms marriage first and foremost as a social institution that integrates its members into society. Thon (1753–1807) was the daughter of August Friedrich Röder, private secretary at the ducal court in Weimar. She married Johann Karl Solomon Thon, who served as privy councillor at the court in Weimar (Killy 350). Her social status as a member of an impoverished noble family placed her between the upper middle-class and the nobility. By the gender-specific standards of the time she was highly educated, and – unlike many of her female contemporaries – she continued her literary pursuits during her marriage. In Adelheit von Rastenberg, an example of the fashionable "Ritterschauspiel" inspired by Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen, the title-figure is forced into an unhappy marriage with Robert while her beloved soul-mate, Adelbert, participates in the Crusades. Adelheit spends her days seeking solitude in the forest, where she escapes the domestic realm and her husband's demands to indulge in her secret fantasy-life, yearn for Adelbert, and mourn his loss. Adelbert returns unexpectedly after Adelheit has suffered through several years of her arranged marriage. He attempts without success to persuade her to leave her husband and live with him as his common-law wife. This she refuses to do on the grounds that the resulting loss of honour would cost her her place in (feudal) society, making them outcasts hidden away at his sister's (not his own) estate. Adelbert is much beloved by the beautiful Countess Bertha, but he twice refuses her offer of marriage, whereupon she, in despair, sets about designing an intrigue meant to eliminate Adelheit. Since Adelheit's stepson sees his stepmother blocking his access to his father's heart and social power, Bertha is able to persuade him to create a situation that will awaken Robert von Rastenberg's jealousy. Accordingly, Robert observes an encounter between Adelheit and Adelbert in which she renounces her love for him and affirms her marriage, but misinterprets it as a lovers' rendezvous. Convinced by her stepson that erroneously jealous Robert means to kill her, Adelheit makes ready to flee, only to encounter Adelbert. Before the two of them can mount their horses and escape, Bertha stabs Adelheit to death and then takes her own life, leaving the entire last act to portray the reconciliation of the three men. The play focusses on the gamble of finding reciprocity in erotic love. Erotic love and marriage remain separated in this text. The lovers who find reciprocity – Adelheit and Adelbert, Robert and the mother of his son – do not marry. While Ehrmann looks at the internal contradictions of erotic love that cannot sustain its desire after it is consummated, Thon reveals external obstacles to the consummation (Adelbert and Adelheit) and – in the case of Robert with his socially unacceptable and unfaithful lover – the sustaining of erotic love. Bertha's erotic desire for Adelbert is not reciprocated, and Robert, who is passionately in love with his wife, Adelheit, cannot coerce her into falling in love with him. He is unable to accept this and suggests instead that she should at least feign love: "Adelheit! Adelheit! wie viel hab' ich schon um dich gelitten! – erquicke mich wenigstens durch süße Täuschung, heuchle mir Zärtlichkeit. Solltest du das nicht können? bist ja mein Weib" (Thon, in Wurst, Eleonore Thon ... 19). He urges her to make do with a marriage of convenience. However, Adelheit separates her role and duties as wife and her emotional life, fulfilling her role as honourable lady of the house but reserving her inner life – her emotional and erotic desires – for her hours of solitude away from her husband's castle. This theme of unrequited love is repeated by the fate of Countess Bertha, whose excessive desire for Adelbert is not reciprocated, suggesting that erotic love is highly subjective, exclusive, and thus unreliable. Consumed by passion, Bertha is unable to forsake Adelbert and plunges into madness. Disappointed erotic desire leading to murder and suicide is a metaphor for the psychologically dangerous and socially destabilizing effects of erotic love, "suggesting the frightening possibility that as paradigms change, individuals might actually remain completely non-integrated, grounded neither by the family alliance nor by sentimental love" (Wurst, "Introduction," Eleonore Thon ... xxvi). Not unlike Albrecht's Theresgen, the play seems to warn of excessive emotions, which are shown to lead to illness, loss of reality, and madness. Thon's play reveals the tensions between erotic love and social, public responsibility. Adelheit rejects Adelbert's desire to rekindle their love and his suggestion that they flee together, despite the fact that she is still in love with him. Invoking her duty to her husband and her honourable obligation to keep her marriage vows (Thon, in Wurst, Eleonore Thon ... 11), she refuses to follow her heart and enter into a love-affair with him. Her honour is an important part of her public identity, without which she would cease to exist as a public person and have to live in the isolation of the country hideaway. She is able to renounce her erotic love for Adelbert and to concentrate instead on her social responsibilities as a wife. This positive portrayal of renunciation is contrasted with the failure to renounce desire, which leads to upheaval and destruction. The play explores the social and psychological costs of the erotic love paradigm that are incurred if the highly elusive reciprocity cannot be achieved. The play also addresses the gender-specific differences between the two instances of unrequited love and desire. While the social order enables Robert to force Adelheit into marriage (with the consent of her father), Bertha cannot enforce her marriage proposal to the unwilling Adelbert. While Thon's play portrays the social upheaval created by the erotic love-paradigm and is less interested in examining the construct of "Liebesehe," Elise Bürger's "Ritterschauspiel" Adelheit, Gräfin von Teck (1799) explores the conditions that enable a marriage based on erotic love. Bürger (1769–1833) was the daughter of a civil servant and lived with her widowed mother until she married Gottfried August Bürger. After that marriage ended in bitter divorce, she joined the theatre, enjoying successful engagements in several German cities before leaving the theatre to support herself by writing poetry, short prose, and essays. Adelheit, Gräfin von Teck investigates the conditions that ensure a "Liebesehe." Bürger's Adelheit, like Thon's, had been forced into an unhappy marriage by her father, while the man she loved – in her case, Georg – was off to the Crusades. The play opens with Georg returning to Adelheit's mother in search of Adelheit. When he hears that she is married and has a young son, he is ready to renounce her despite the fact that he still loves her. Adelheit's sister, Marie, falls in love with Georg while nursing him after he has fallen ill. Out of a mix of gratitude, desire for a family, and the fantasy that he can love Adelheit in Marie, Georg agrees to marry Marie. The first act then ends with Adelheit, now, unbeknownst to her family, newly widowed, returns home to visit her mother. This turn of events forces Georg to choose between honouring his promise to Marie and following his heart to his beloved Adelheit. He decides to leave the decision to Marie, but both sisters are willing to renounce him for the sake of the other. At this point, Adelheit receives word that her fortress is under siege by a suitor she rejected, her infant son left there in the care of his nurse. She readies for battle, rejecting Georg's offer of military assistance. In this she relents only after Marie renounces Georg, and in the end the two lovers stand side by side on the fortress wall, victorious in defending her son and property. The play ends in a double wedding, as George's friend Conrad falls in love with Marie and asks for her hand in marriage. Not unlike Albrechts' Theresgen, Bürger's play contrasts the a love of a happy couple – that of the servants Ida and Edgar – with Marie's unhappy love for Georg and with Georg's for Adelheit. In an attempt to help the unhappy Marie, the servants hint to Georg that Marie loves him, and he begins to consider a marriage of convenience with Marie:
Georg's decision suggests that he considers such a marriage a satisfactory possibility even if it is not based on erotic attraction. Rather than living in grief and isolation, he seeks reintegration into society by having a family of his own. Similarly, Adelheit is ready to forsake him once again after she learns of his engagement to Marie, and she vows to devote her attention instead on her son and on being a good ruler to her subjects: "Bin ich nicht des Leidens längst Vertraute, bin stärker als Marie, habe einen Sohn, der die trüben Stunden seiner Mutter doch nicht Freudenleer [sic] lassen wird, habe Pflichten gegen meine Unterthanen, die mich beschäftigen, zerstreuen werden" (49). As in Thon's play, both are willing to sacrifice erotic love, their individual desires, for their social responsibilities. Unlike Thon, Bürger fuses erotic love and marriage in a happy ending. Her portrayal of a "Liebesehe" suggests that she considers social responsibilities central in the institution of marriage. Before consenting to marry George, Adelheit obtains his formal and public promise that she will retain full authority over her son and property (119). This marriage is based on equality. The play suggests that reciprocity of erotic love requires equality between man and woman and that the integration of this equality of love into marriage also requires financial and legal equality. The historical genre of "Ritterschauspiel" allows the author to present a female protagonist who is also a public person, a ruler with financial and political resources at her disposal. Given the social realities of late eighteenth-century Germany, only the historical genre makes possible the portrayal of such an independent woman. Compared to Albrecht's Theresgen and Thon's Adelheit von Rastenberg, Bürger's play is more interested in the social preconditions of love leading to marriage and also explores in greater detail the importance of character and integrity – the aspect of friendship – as the core of erotic attraction. The lovers are no longer portrayed as struck by love at first sight but have come to know each other over time. In Elisa von der Recke's
play Familien-Scene oder Entwickelungen auf dem Maskenballe
(ca. 1794, published 1826), this discussion of character dominates
the exploration of love before and in marriage. Von der Recke
(1754–1833) a Courland noblewoman married to a man of her
own rank, occupied the highest social status among the writers
discussed here. After her divorce, von der Recke travelled widely,
extended her vast correspondence with famous contemporaries, and
vigorously continued her literary pursuits. Her autobiographical
writings emphasize the role that the reception and production
of literature played in her life (Aufzeichnungen und Briefe).
Clearly influenced by Enlightenment principles, she saw herself
as a mediator between the ideologies of the court and those of
the bourgeoisie. Her Familien-Scenen oder Entwickelungen auf
dem Maskenballe discusses erotic love and marriage in greater
breadth than do the other plays. The play takes place in aristocratic
circles and opens with its protagonist, Sophie von Wellenthal,
celebrating her birthday at the estate of her uncle, who has raised
her since the death of her parents. The farmers and servants of
the estate come to wish her well, and her uncle chooses this moment
to announce that he is passing the estate on to her. The felicity
of these events is then countered by a long conversation between
Sophie and her friend, Antonie Lindorf, revealing that Sophie
is in love with Count Walheim, who, after a blissful courtship,
has suddenly and without explanation withdrawn his attentions
– rumour having it that he has fallen in love with another
woman, Emma. During Sophie's celebrations,
it is decided that her birthday festivities are to end with a
masked ball, and the second act introduces the rest of the figures
in a sequence of "Familien-Scenen" in which, as they
receive their invitations, they reveal their essential goodness
and morality, their minor flaws born of their tendency to misunderstand
and misread their social roles, and their attitudes and values
with regard to love and marriage. We first meet Sophie's sister-in-law,
Laura von Wellenthal, as she samples the latest Paris fashion,
takes drawing lessons, and flirts coquettishly with her visitor
Major Sommerfeld. To Count Walheim, a disillusioned cynic who
has lost faith in women, she confides that she is worried that
her husband's affections have shifted from her to Antonie Lindorf,
whose devotion to motherhood he admires. Major Sommerfeld, whose
flirtations have awakened his wife's anxiety and jealousy, expresses
his weariness of her excessive and demanding emotional sensitivity
and the frequent illnesses in which it manifests itself. During a visit to the
household of Julie Sommerfeld, Sophie confronts her cynical and
elusive Count Walheim – the two of them, together with Antonie
Lindorf, hoping to cheer their hostess through one of her bouts
of ill health. Eager to forestall the possible awkwardness of
their first meeting since their mysterious break-up, Sophie immediately
assures Walheim that she will make no erotic demands. Another
suitor, it turns out, in hope of winning Sophie for himself, had
led Count Walheim to hold her responsible for informing his father
about his relationship with Emma during a trip to Italy. An ensuing
scene features Antonie Lindorf and her husband, who, prompted
by Laura von Wellendorf so jealous of her own husband's attraction
to Antonie's maternal devotion, now suggests that their children
be sent off to boarding school – a proposal that Antonie,
deeply hurt, refuses. The last act brings
the masked ball, its symbolic chaos making manifest the widespread
confusion of values as the participants overhear things, confuse
the identities of people wearing similar costumes, and assume
the identities of others in hope of showing their partners the
errors of their ways and bringing them to their senses. Walheim
is wearing a costume identical to that of Sophie's brother and
consequently becomes the object of comforting ministrations that
she means for her brother. Mistaking such affection as intended
for him, Walheim explains his feelings and asks her forgiveness
for misjudging her character. They decide to reunite, but marry
only after they have come to know each other better: "als
bis des wir dessen gegenseitig gewiß sind, daß unsere
Phantasie uns nicht über unsern innern Werth und unsere Gefühle
täuscht" (von der Recke 126). Von der Recke's play alludes to the prevailing pattern of socialization, which culminated in the construct of Geschlechtscharakter, the concept that the sexes are different by nature and thus naturally responsible for different social tasks, which underscored the compartmentalization of modern life. Women were not only responsible for the emotional well-being of the family, but also expected to remain effective care-givers to their family members, thus fusing work and love. These intermingled functions within the domestic sphere shaped women's identity, while men's identity split more distinctly into separate functions that disassociated the emotional sphere of the family from the rational sphere of work outside of the house. Antonie, in Familien-Scenen oder Entwickelungen auf dem Maskenballe, summarizes the ideology of the family within a more functionalised society in exemplary directness:
A lecture in personal and social ethics, the play supports erotic love only if it is infused with rational self-discipline. The text advocates women's self-respect, which they will be able to achieve only if they understand the difference between love in courtship and love in marriage. As in Bürger's and Thon's plays, excessive sensibility resulting in immoderate erotic love is shown as a source of illness and destruction of mind and body (Julie) – even within a marriage. The most positive character, Antonie, argues for moderation in all social relationships including love and marriage: "Eine Frau sollte von ihrem Mann eigentlich nur Hochachtung und Freundschaft erwarten: denn lange und mit Zartheit liebt fast kein Mann" (von der Recke 75). She repeatedly lectures Julie, the character most prone to these excesses, about the difference of erotic love and marriage:
For her, marriage must bring a mature and loving support of the partner to replace the courtship's focus on the emotions of the beloved. The play faults the instability of an erotic desire that, ever in search of new objects, is prone to infidelity and thus a source of vulnerability for the marriage as love match. In a successful marriage, erotic love must be complemented by friendship, respect, and support for the other – a vision that reintroduces aspects of the older model of reasoned love ("vernünftige Liebe") into the love match. As the above analyses show, this sequence of plays reveals several problems associated with the new constructs of erotic love and of marriage as love match. A call for moderation recurs throughout most of these plays, with excessive desire linked to melancholia (Theresgen), illness (Julie in Familien-Scenen oder Entwickelungen auf dem Maskenballe), and madness and murder (Bertha in Adelheit von Rastenberg). The eighteenth-century condemnation of excessive reading (Lesesucht) was one way to limit this indulgence in sentiment in its most powerful medium, narrative literature. In Leichtsinn oder die Folgen der Erziehung, reading makes the female protagonist more desirable to her seducer and thus contributes to her moral demise. These plays also examine the supposition that erotic desire should become the basis of marriage. They point to the essential incompatibility of the fleeting passion of erotic attraction and the long-term social realities of marriage, thus indicating the need for reinterpreting the role of love in marriage. The other problem that these texts depict is the fact that erotic love is based on mutual attraction, which in turn implies equality. Yet the requisite reciprocity is precarious because of the subjective nature of erotic attraction, an impulse that cannot be forced or coerced and that is hampered as well by the legal and social inequality between the sexes. Erotic love tends to mask the facts of women's social and financial dependence on their husbands and families. Equality as the basis for love was not supported by the social structure and gender-specific behaviour patters and value systems. With their texts, these authors participated in the differentiation of middle-class identity by rethinking positions that they had come to experience as troublesome. The literary texts are important as cultural representations constituting part of an imaginary, "inofficial history consisting of collective wishes, desires, fears and hopes" (Kaes 215). Emphasizing the effects on the lives of women, they mapped out the liabilities of the fusion of erotic love and marriage. Works Cited Albrecht, Sophie. Theresgen:
Ein Schauspiel mit Gesang. 1781. Gedichte und Schauspiele.
2nd ed. Dresden: Richter, 1791. Reprinted in Wurst, Frauen
und Drama 141–187.
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