"Und drinnen waltet die züchtige Hausfrau"?: Caroline Pichler's Fictional Auto/Biographies

The essay re-views the reception of Caroline Pichler as a "conservative" author by exploring her contradictory statements about writing women in her auto/biographical works. It examines Pichler's relationships with female friends, how these friendships influenced Pichler's and her friends' works, and Pichler's "corrective" biographies of women she considered misrepresented. Pichler's double perspective ("schielender Blick"), which she used both to challenge convention and to express her protective ultraconservatism, gained her admission into literary circles, but proved unable to shield her from accusations of breaking the rules of femininity. Today, it may be responsible for the lack of a modern Pichler-reception. Caroline Pichler: not feminine enough for the nineteenth century, not feminist enough for the twentieth? (S.K.)