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  • Der weibliche Entwicklungsroman. Individuelle Lebensentwürfe im bürgerlichen Zeitalter by Susanne Balmer
  • Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos
Der weibliche Entwicklungsroman. Individuelle Lebensentwürfe im bürgerlichen Zeitalter. Von Susanne Balmer. Köln: Böhlau, 2011. 384 Seiten. €49,90.

Susanne Balmer has undertaken a monumental enterprise in her examination of 13 women-authored Entwicklungsromane across the long nineteenth century (here 1771 to 1902): she distinguishes between the concepts of Bildungsroman and Entwicklungsroman in a well-constructed historically based argument; she situates these novels within period socio-cultural beliefs and practices surrounding gender; she connects these beliefs and practices to period scientific findings pertaining to evolution; and she provides close readings that explore issues of narratology and rhetoric. Balmer notes that Germanistik scholarship examining interdiscursive features of Darwinism and literature has been meager in contrast to British literary studies. The foundation she lays will most certainly lead to expansion of such scholarship applied to other literary and artistic works.

The sheer number of novels handled render the volume useful as a survey work. Concise summaries assist the reader who has not read each of the following literary works to smoothly follow the discussions within the domains mentioned above: Sophie von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräulein von Sternheim, Marianne Ehrmann’s Amalie, Caroline von Wolzogen’s Agnes von Lilien, Friederike Helene Unger’s Julchen Grünthal and Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele, Therese Huber’s Luise and Die Familie Seldorf, Johanna Schopenhauer’s Gabriele, Gabriele Reuter’s Aus guter Familie, Louise von François’s Die letzte Reckenburgerin, and Hedwig Dohm’s trilogy Schicksale einer Seele, Sibilla Dalmar, and Christa Ruland.

Major chapter divisions assign the novels to discourses of perfectibility, pathology, revolution, and evolution. To prepare the reader for these classifications, the introductory chapters (85pp) provide the theoretical superstructure that ties period mentalities about gender differences to ways the term Entwicklung was conceptualized and applied. Extensive space is devoted to theorists who paved the way for Darwinian theory (e.g., Buffon, Goethe, Kant) and to the German popularizer of Darwin’s theories, the zoologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel extended Darwinian thought to postulate that adaptations apply as much to mental as to physical properties. The gender implications of the latter are addressed in the discussions of the novel appearing last in the chronology. Although the presentation of the scientific theories and of the novels falls into a loose sequence of decades, chronological overlap allows us to see differing [End Page 139] responses appearing synchronically. For example, the optimistic happy end for central characters of the perfectibility group contrasts sharply with the illness, death, or insanity of the pathological group’s major characters.

Balmer synthesizes vast amounts of secondary literature on the novels, masterfully setting the stage for her own original contribution within the four classifications mentioned above. For example, within narratives of pathology, male characters, including those from privileged backgrounds, are depicted less as perpetrators of patriarchy than as victims. Post-Darwin narratives of evolution reveal terminology borrowed from Darwinian discourse (and Dohm actually refers to Haeckel). By contextualizing Darwinian theory within German discourses of science, social science, and sexuality, and then connecting these to Dohm’s literary trilogy, she provides the groundwork to help readers understand the profound impact of evolutionary theory, including false derivations, in cultural work. For example, the most deleterious consequence of false scientific findings falls to those characters in the pathological trajectory: according to medical science of the day the female nervous system is weaker than the male’s, thus dire physical or mental consequences were in store for those who mustered the will and the courage to transgress behavioral norms.

The term “individuelle” in the title is richly exploited along three trajectories: the ways individual characters play out responses to perfectibility, pathology, revolution, and evolution; the degree to which characters fulfill or reject the tripartite role of wife, mother, and homemaker; and the way each character’s individual personality develops against the prescribed norms. “Individuelle” is also used to emphasize the distinction in evolutionary theory between ontogenesis and phylogenesis (18). Here Balmer helps students of literature to understand these concepts and the ways in which they were applied to notions of female development...

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