Abstract

With the help of several Anglo-American theoretical texts from philosophy and political theory, the thesis is put forth that the expression of friendship/love that is conveyed by homosocial correspondences between middle-class German women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries allowed for the creation of another sort of social sphere. This sphere in turn made room for the expression of desire and the construction of identities that the rigid ideology of public and private spheres did not acknowledge. Examples from a letter by Rahel Varnhagen and the epistolary novel Die Günderode by Bettine von Arnim are used to illustrate the thesis. (R-EBJ)

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