Abstract

Although critics have always included Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) in the canon, neglected stories like "Ein Original" ("One of a Kind") may help us to reclaim her as a feminist. First published in 1898 and later in the collection Aus Spätherbsttagen: Erzählungen (1901), it portrays a girl who excels in the male-dominated field of electrical engineering, the circa-1900 equivalent of computer science, and who does so with paternal support and approval. Here Ebner, herself a trained watchmaker and married for five decades to an engineer, writes knowledgeably about technology while questioning those cultural dichotomies that pit "feminine" feeling and literary art against "masculine" rationality and technical craft. Her ending, however, suggests the risks.

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