SOURCE: Sharpe, Lesley. “The Enlightenment.” In A History of Women's Writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, edited by Jo Catling, pp. 47-49; 60-64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

[In the following excerpt, Sharpe provides a brief introduction to late eighteenth-century German women's writing and offers a discussion of La Roche's life and works.]

The period covered in this chapter saw the decisive emergence of the female writer and of a female reading public. Literacy expanded considerably in the German states during the eighteenth century, including literacy among women, whose education had frequently been neglected, and the reading of imaginative literature as a leisure activity gained respectability among the expanding middle classes. Whereas at the beginning of the period even literate women rarely read anything beyond household manuals or works of religious edification, by the end of the eighteenth century male commentators were voicing concern about the sorry effects of the Lesewut (reading mania) that had gripped the female middle classes.

The period 1720 to 1789 was a time of change in the traditional image of woman and the roles ascribed to her. In the first half of the century, it was fully accepted that men should have authority over women and that in the hierarchy of the household women should be subordinate. In the predominantly rural and small-town communities in the German states the nuclear family had not yet developed and women were important to the economic success of the extended household (see Hausen); the skill, industry, thrift and practical sense of the German Hausmutter were greatly prized. While old prejudices against women's weakness and ignorance survived—as late as the 1720s theological treatises were being written on whether women had souls—the early Enlightenment saw attempts to assert their educability and the potential of at least some women to show intellectual gifts equal to men's (see Blochmann). Thus popular channels of Enlightenment thinking, for example the moral weeklies modelled on English periodicals such as The Spectator and The Tatler, took up the cause of the improvement of education and the expansion of edifying reading for women (see Martens). By the end of the century the ideal middle-class woman was gebildet, acquainted with a range of imaginative and informative literature, though anything but gelehrt, academic or learned.

Yet by the end of the century women found themselves in a new kind of straitjacket. The ideal image of woman was now based on the mother of the nuclear family, a social unit that was becoming increasingly the norm as town life and the professional middle class expanded. The wife of the lawyer, professor, administrator or magistrate was not economically active but rather responsible for the good management of the household and for the creation of domestic warmth and harmony. She was now to be more of a companion to her husband, and a source of basic education and emotional stability to their children. The nature of the relationship between the sexes became the subject of intense discussion. Secular ideas based on the emerging scientific disciplines and supported by theories of education and political and social development (those of Rousseau being perhaps the most influential) displaced old religious prejudices against women but introduced new stereotypes. The relationship between the sexes was held to be one of complementarity, and accompanying this notion was an increasingly rigid conception of the contrasting sets of attributes of the sexes, often known as Geschlechtscharaktere. Anatomy, physiology and anthropology were used to support the notion that women were essentially different from men not only in body but also in mind and should pursue only those activities compatible with their calling (Bestimmung) as Gattin, Hausfrau und Mutter (spouse, housewife and mother). The resulting theories of the separate spheres of male and female activity, which determined the relations between the sexes well into the twentieth century, sprang from this intense preoccupation with gender roles in the later part of the eighteenth century. Thus, while literacy and reading among women greatly increased in the second half of the century, new culturally determined restrictions were being placed on the exercise of that literacy. Literature itself reflected those cultural changes in the development of new female stereotypes such as the schöne Seele (beautiful soul) or the innocent child of nature.

The great expansion of the reading public in Germany brought an intensive preoccupation on the part of male writers with aesthetics and the poetological assumptions underlying literary creation. Though women were writing and publishing in ever greater numbers by the last decades of the century, recognition of their achievements was hampered by the changing theories of literature, from the idea of poetry as a craft that could be learned to the more inspirational model culminating in the Geniekult. As the emphasis shifted increasingly to the psyche of the artist and to the particular confluence of conscious and unconscious, of reason and imagination in the act of creation, so women were increasingly excluded. Women might show evidence of skill and talent within the lesser genres but genius, the divine spark, tended to be regarded as vouch-safed exclusively to men (see Battersby, esp. pp. 70-112). Women writers in the eighteenth century constantly had to manoeuvre for the space left them by male writers and literary arbiters, basing the justification for their participation in literary activity on the didactic value of their work. While they are represented in the lyric and the drama, women particularly exploited the novel, the didactic short story and the lively and well-written letter, forms that were more fluid and lower in the hierarchy of genres, and their exponents therefore arguably less of a threat to male writers.

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Sophie La Roche is a key figure in the emergence of the German woman of letters. Her first novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim; 1771), was a huge success and made her famous. She was also, with Anna Luise Karsch, one of the first German women whose writing was an important source of income for her family and thus her career brings us into the period when a reading public was forming, whose interests and tastes increasingly shaped what was offered by publishers. Though famous in her day, Sophie La Roche was neglected after her death by the nineteenth-century literary historians whose judgements formed the canon of eighteenth-century works, because much of her output was primarily for women readers and was often didactic in intention. Yet her energy and range are impressive. In addition to writing several novels, two of which, Das Fräulein von Sternheim and Rosaliens Briefe an ihre Freundin Mariane von St. Altenburg (Rosalia's Letters to Her Friend Mariane von St. Altenburg), were particularly influential, she was one of the first female editors of a women's journal, Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter (Pomona. For Germany's Daughters), wrote extensive accounts of her travels when travel writing was still in its infancy in Germany, and engaged in a vast correspondence. However, it is true that her style seemed old-fashioned as time passed and her range of tone and expression was limited. She reached a pinnacle of literary achievement with her first work, Das Fräulein von Sternheim, in which didacticism and literary skill were most successfully combined.

Sophie La Roche enjoyed the benefits of being brought up in an academic family, the daughter of a doctor, who taught her to read and write. Her education was supplemented in her teens by an Italian doctor, Gian Lodovico Bianconi, a friend of her father, to whom she became engaged and who instructed her in mathematics, singing, Italian and art. The marriage plans foundered on religious differences between Bianconi and Sophie's father. Her reading and literary interests were further cultivated by her cousin Christoph Martin Wieland, later to become one of the most prominent writers of the German Enlightenment, to whom she was engaged for a time. Though again no marriage ensued, Wieland later brought her to the public eye by encouraging her to finish and publish her first novel. At the age of twenty-three she agreed to marry Georg Michael Frank La Roche, Hofrat at the court of the Elector of Mainz and adopted son of Count Stadion, first minister of the Elector. One of Sophie's main functions was to entertain with informed conversation about such topics as literature, and her curiosity, her facility in moving from one subject to another and her quick response to new impressions were developed within this court environment. She constantly returns in her work to her belief that women should acquire through suitable reading a store of useful knowledge about the world around them. In this respect she belongs to the Enlightenment tradition, despite all the sentimental qualities of her works. For her and her heroines, moral goodness goes hand in hand with a character-building awareness of the world.

La Roche's first novel, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, appeared anonymously in 1771, edited by Wieland. The popularity in Germany of the novels of Samuel Richardson, in which for the first time a woman's experience and perspective were explored (albeit by a male writer), laid the foundations for its enormous success with both male and female readers. The moral weeklies had created a taste for Moral Tales (Moralische Erzählungen), a tradition of popular didactic writing that continued well into the nineteenth century. Das Fräulein von Sternheim also bears the mark of Rousseau's condemnation of the decadence of civilization in its contrasting pictures of court and country life and in its concentration on the heart-searchings of the central figure, a feature that also links the novel to the strong German Pietist tradition of introspection and self-examination. It satisfied contemporary demands for a measure of realism, some depth of psychological motivation and an appeal to the emotions, while providing outer action that was fast-moving and exciting. It is fitting that the first great novelistic success for a woman should come from a novel in letter form, for, leaving aside the influence of Richardson, the letter was, as we have seen, a type of writing in which women in the eighteenth century excelled and which gained from naturalness and liveliness of style.

Sophie von Sternheim is the product of a mésalliance. Her father is an ennobled officer, her mother a member of an old aristocratic family. For her, as for her parents, true aristocracy is an aristocracy of the heart, which shows itself in philanthropy and the careful stewardship of one's estates. An orphan at eighteen, Sophie is brought to the court of D. by her aunt and uncle, who aim to make her the Prince's mistress in order to influence a legal case affecting their wealth. Sophie attempts to cling to the principles of her upbringing while not being experienced enough to see how she is being compromised. After seeking rescue in what turns out to be a sham marriage to the rake Derby she enters a period of testing when all that she relied on is removed. However, turning her moral sensitivity into practical help for those around her, she survives even abduction to a remote part of Scotland and assault by Derby's servant to be united finally with her true soulmate, Lord Seymour.

Sophie von Sternheim is an intriguing reflection of her creator's position between Enlightenment and Empfindsamkeit (sensibility). While possessed of extreme moral sensitivity, Sophie does not collapse under the weight of her misfortunes. She does not pine away but rather seeks useful activity. However, the heroine's refusal to abandon her belief in good works and in her duty to perform them cannot disguise the fact that she is essentially powerless to control her own life. We are meant to see the happy ending as a vindication of goodness and courage by a benevolent providence, but La Roche also reveals, probably contrary to any conscious intention, the vulnerability of a woman without male protectors.

La Roche's subsequent novels are less successful in balancing moral didacticism with excitement, immediacy and narrative skill. Her next novel, Rosaliens Briefe (1779-81), though very popular, already has a more prescriptive tone. Where she is perhaps particularly interesting, bearing in mind tendencies in modern women's fiction, is in her creation in various novels and stories of women's utopias. The story Der schöne Bund (A Beautiful Alliance; 1789) deals with the promise of four girls from differing backgrounds to stand by one another in their future lives. One of them, uncharacteristically for her time, devotes herself to scholarship. This then is the feminine counterpart to the contemporary cult of idealistic male friendships. Marriage as a partnership of equals, as we see it at the end of Das Fräulein von Sternheim, occurs again in Erscheinungen am See Oneida (Scenes on Lake Oneida; 1798), the story of a young French couple attempting to create a new life in America. By such examples we see Sophie La Roche trying to stretch the frontiers of female experience and activity.

Sophie La Roche can claim to have made a significant contribution to developing forms of writing in three further areas—the women's journal, travel writing and the moral tale, the first two being still in their infancy at the time she began her work. Her travel writing documents journeys to countries such as France, Switzerland, Holland and England, and combines information, anecdote and personal impressions in an easy, mellifluous style. She published numerous moralische Erzählungen, some of which depart from the purely predictable. In Liebe, Mißverständnis und Freundschaft (Love, Misunderstanding and Friendship; 1786), for example, she tells the story of Elisa, who though engaged to a man she loves becomes convinced that their temperaments are not suited and that she will fail to hold his affection in future years. Instead of marrying she begins a school for girls with a young widow and is entirely fulfilled by this activity—another female utopia, created by a widow who is glad to be free and a woman who commits herself to celibacy in pursuit of her vocation.

Das Fräulein von Sternheim was the first in a growing number of novels by women. The next generation of women writers was encouraged by the example of Sophie La Roche. However, few novels by women in the eighteenth century, interesting evidence though they may supply about attitudes and depictions of women, come close to her achievement. The Frauenroman (woman's novel) became a platform on which an ideal of womanhood was constantly being set up but rarely being explored with realism. The intense preoccupation with women's role and education, and with the nature of Geschlechtscharaktere, is reflected in the novels of the following decades, many of which take up again the theme of virtue on trial and patience in suffering. …

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Bibliography

General Studies and Anthologies

Battersby, Christine, Gender and Genius. Towards a Feminist Aesthetics? London: Women's Press, 1989

Beaujean, M., Der Trivialroman in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Bonn: Bouvier, 1969

Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mündigkeit. Frauen und Literatur in Deutschland von 1500 bis 1800, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987

Blackwell and Zantop, Bitter Healing, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 (contains extracts in English from L. A. V. Gottsched, Karsch, La Roche and Naubert)

Blochmann, Elisabeth, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’ und ‘die Gelehrsamkeit’. Eine Studie über die Anfänge des Mädchenschulwesens in Deutschland, Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer, 1966

Bovenschen, Silvia, Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979

Brinker-Gabler, Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, München: C. H. Beck, 1988

Charlton, D. G., New Images of the Natural in France. A Study in European Cultural History 1750-1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984

Devrient, Eduard, Geschichte der deutschen Schauspielkunst, revised edn by Willy Stuhlfeldt, Berlin and Zurich: Eigenbrödler, 1929

French, Loreley, German Women as Letter Writers: 1750-1850, Cranbury, New Jersey, and London: Associated University Presses, 1996

Gallas, Helga, and Magdalene Heuser (eds.), Untersuchungen zum Roman von Frauen un 1800, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990

Hausen, Karin, ‘Die Polarisierung der “Geschlechtscharaktere”—Eine Spiegelung der Dissoziation von Erwerbs-und Familienleben’ in Werner Conze (ed.), Sozialgeschichte der Familie in der Neuzeit Europas. Neue Forschungen, Stuttgart: Klett, 1976, pp. 363-393

Heuser, Magdalene, ‘Das Musenchor mit neuer Ehre zieren. Schriftstellerinnen zur Zeit der Frühaufklärung’, in Brinker-Gabler, Deutsche Literatur von Frauen (1988), vol. i, pp. 293-313

Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992

Martens, Wolfgang, Die Botschaft der Tugend. Die Aufklärung im Spiegel der deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968/1971

Meise, Helga, Die Unschuld und die Schrift: Deutsche Frauenromane im 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Guttandin & Hoppe, 1983; repr. Frankfurt am Main: Ulrike Helmer, 1992

Nickisch, R., ‘Die Frau als Briefschreiberin im Zeitalter der deutschen Aufklärung’. Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung 3 (1976), 29-66

Touaillon, Christine, Der deutsche Frauenroman des 18. Jahrhunderts, Vienna: Braumüller, 1919; repr. with preface by Enid Gajek, Bern: Lang, 1979

Wurst, Karin (ed.), Frauen und Drama im 18. Jahrhundert, Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1991 (contains Sophie Albrecht's Theresgen, Marianne Ehrmann's Leichtsinn und gutes Herz, Christiane Karoline Schlegel's Düval und Charmille and Wilhelmine von Gersdorf's Die Zwillingsschwestern)

Journals and Periodicals (Selected)

Die Vernünftigen Tadlerinnen, ed. J. C. Gottsched. Halle: Spörl 1725, Leipzig: Brauns Erben, 1726

Pomona für Teutschlands Töchter, ed. Sophie La Roche. Speyer, 1783, 1784; reprinted in 4 vols. with a foreword by J. Vorderstemann, Munich: Sauer, 1987

Amaliens Erholungsstunden. Teutschlands Töchtern geweiht, ed. Marianne Ehrmann, 6 vols., Tübingen: Cotta, 1790-2

Die Einsiedlerin aus den Alpen, Zurich: Orell, 1793-5

Secondary Literature

Krull, E., Das Wirken der Frau im frühen deutschen Zeitschriftenwesen, Beiträge zur Erforschung der deutschen Zeitschrift vol. V, Charlottenburg: Lorentz, 1939

Schumann, S., ‘Das “lesende Frauenzimmer”: Frauenzeitschriften im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Becker-Cantarino (ed.), Die Frau von der Reformation bis zur Romantik (1980), pp. 138-69