Domesticating the Reader: Women and Die Gartenlaube

I argue here that popular reading material in the nineteenth century, besides providing a source of entertainment, also helped create a sense of national identity in its readers, unifying a disparate nation into a cohesive reading audience. In discussing the most popular illustrated magazine of the time, Die Gartenlaube, this paper outlines the text's specific strategies for distinguishing between male and female readers. Although the magazine explicitly addressed the entire family, women readers were presented with a restricted, exclusively domestic identity. This analysis of the narrative domestication of women contributes to an understanding of the role of gender both in the conception of the nation and in the creation and consumption of popular culture. (KB)