“Alles so orientalisch”: The Elaboration of Desire in Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest (1896)

This study of Effi Briest explores the Oedipal relationships that shape the protagonist’s subjectivity and the construction of her fantasy in “Oriental” terms. Prohibited from investigating the possibility of erotic fulfillment in her marriage, Effi turns to the trope of the Orient as a culturally mediated, socially accepted discourse through which to articulate her research into the mystery of sexuality. Scholarship on Effi ’s interest in the Orient has focused primarily on the Chinese ghost, but this study analyzes the broad scope of her fascination with “all things Oriental.” It draws on the work of Edward Said and Jacques Lacan in the interpretation of references to the East as both culturally symptomatic and evocative of an individual, uniquely structured fantasy. For Effi, that fantasy is fueled by a skewed Oedipal dynamic and is shaped by the multifaceted signifier of the Orient, which was powerfully operative in nineteenth-century European culture.