Gender, Canon and Literary History: The Changing Place of Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers (1835–1918) by Ruth Whittle (review)

Ruth Whittle’s monograph has its foundation in the observations by earlier feminist scholars concerning the exclusion or often problematic inclusion of German women writers in literary histories beginning in the nineteenth century. “Literary history,” Whittle argues, “offers a context within which can be fruitfully explored the relationship between the position of women writers, canon formation and the narratives around the formation of the nation” (4). She uses a series of case studies looking at multiple editions of literary histories by Rudolf Gottschall (1823–1909) and August Vilmar (1800–1868; including editions of the same work with different editors) with frequent reference to Julian Schmidt’s work (1818–1886). These literary histories are analyzed in regard to their varying reception, often by the same author, of Rahel Varnhagen, Bettina von Arnim, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Fanny Lewald, and Louise Aston to establish the linkage between gender, canon, and nation. Whittle’s analysis is guided by three key terms: “discourse,” “narrative,” and “(female) agency” (2). Discourse, she writes, “refer[s] to expressions of power relations at a synchronic level, whereas the term narrative is to refer to the diachronic dimension, [ … ] the way the ‘becoming’ of Germany or German culture was imagined and reimagined” (2). Agency, as she uses it, refers to “the opportunities for women’s participation in public and particularly in semi-public discourses” (2).

Whittle’s main conclusion is that women’s identities, and therefore their place in these literary histories, are not reduced solely to their gender identity but are also determined by the varying emphasis placed on their religious denomination (Varnhagen, Droste, and Lewald), their place/landscape (all of the authors for various reasons), and race/“Germanness” (particularly, Droste and Lewald). Her analysis actually highlights the fact that it is the interplay between all these aspects of identity, including gender, that plays a role in who and how women are included or not. However, given the fact that no male authors are discussed, the reader must ask if these particular aspects of identity are not tacitly gendered. What is clear from Whittle’s analysis is that for Gottschall, in particular, and to a lesser extent with other authors, women were being re-positioned as the national context and the narrative of nation changed over time. Whether Whittle does an adequate job at detailing the reasons influencing the shifts is questionable. Although alluded to at various points in the monograph, she never clearly discusses or frames some of the other discourses that are central to the writing of a literary history, i.e.: what aesthetic debates are taking place? What effects does the establishment of Germanistik or Deutsche Philologie as a legitimate “scientific” field of study with designated university professorships have on the genre? Or more broadly, how do the authors delineate the purpose of literature? For example, Whittle decries the fact that Louise Aston, who is initially included in Gottschall’s history, disappears altogether in the 1881 edition. She concludes that the “fighting women” present in her work were no longer desirable (cf. 104). However, Aston’s eventual exclusion, as well as the total silence Whittle notes several times regarding Bettina von Arnim’s Vormärz works such as Dies Buch gehört dem König (1843), or Gottschall’s dismissal of Lewald’s “works on and around the Vormärz” could have just as much to do with a re-evaluation of the Vormärz and a rejection in the Nachmärz of literature that directly criticized existing social conditions as it does with Aston’s portrayal of women’s agency (115). Even today, most Vormärz authors are forgotten—not only the women. Who has heard of—let alone read—works by Ernst Willkomm, Ernst Dronke, or even Georg Weerth? Just as Whittle argues in regard to Romanticism, the (re-)evaluation of an entire literary period...