The Path Not (Yet) Taken: Bettina von Arnim's Ecological Vision in Her Romantic Fairy Tale "The Queen's Son"

With my analysis of Bettina von Arnim's romantic fairy tale "The Queen's Son," I join the ongoing effort to illuminate the relevance that romanticism holds for twenty-first-century ecocritics. Parallels between the two movements include a rejection of the nature-culture dualism that characterized Cartesian rationalism and an awareness of the interdependency of life. Drawing on European philosophical traditions from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries as well as current ecocritical theories, I read von Arnim's tale as an illustration of opposing discourses that were in circulation at the time and that anticipate perspectives and behaviors still prevalent today. I also discuss similarities between this early work and von Arnim's mature publications, including the compassion that works from both periods convey for oppressed groups, whether human or non-human. I demonstrate the tale's importance for understanding von Arnim's oeuvre and contributing to a more respectful interaction between human beings and nature's other life-forms.

Confronted with the ever-increasing imperilment of life on Earth, German literary scholars have embraced the importance of engaging with the materiality of the natural world and the welfare of non-human animals as depicted in literature. In so doing, they have joined a burgeoning global movement of scholars within the environmental humanities who recognize human beings as part of nature and are critical of the notion of human exceptionalism—the centuries-old view that denies (non-human) nature agency. Collectively, the approaches comprising this movement, such as material ecocriticism, ecological posthumanism, and animal studies, have much in common with ecofeminist and environmental trends that blossomed in North America in the 1980s and 1990s.¹ These included feminist science criticism and environmental philosophy, first practiced by Donna Haraway, Carolyn Merchant, and Karen Warren, and ecocritical literary scholarship by David Abram, Harold Fromm, Cheryl Glotfelty, and Patrick Murphy.² Like these scholars, ecocritics involved in German and European studies critique binary oppositions, such as those that place human culture above the natural world, and reject the exclusive focus on human language at the cost of nature's (other) languages. All matter tells a story, Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann maintain, noting that "meaning and matter are inextricably entangled" ("Introduction" 5) in a universe that is, to quote Haraway, "semiotically active" (Species 250). Aware that we are in the midst of an environmental crisis, ecocritics seek to develop a new ecological aesthetics that will encourage human beings to respect and value the more-than-human world and develop an awareness of life's interdependency.

Although publications that reflect an ecological approach to German literature only became widespread after the turn of the twenty-first century, and ecocriticism in most other countries developed just a decade or two earlier,³ many of the insights that inform the various branches of contemporary ecocriticism are not new. In fact, German romanticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries focused on nature and human beings' relationship to it in ways that anticipate ecocritical concerns. For example, romantics pondered the link between human consciousness and the material world, emphasized both the agency and spirituality inherent in matter, and developed—in contrast to the mechanistic methods of empirical science—a holistic approach to scientific knowledge that regarded nature as a dynamic, interconnected system involving all material phenomena (Rigby, Topographies 21–32). Yet as Kate Rigby points out in Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism (2004), the romantics' ideas concerning the "rebirth" of the concept of nature were unable to prevent "the processes of environmental destruction that are now so pervasive" and which at the time were just beginning (1). Rather, their ecological insights were suppressed in subsequent decades by forces that favored "the unlimited economic exploitation and technological transformation of the earth" (1). Because these forces remain unchecked and the global environmental crisis has worsened, it is important, as Rigby argues, to "return to the path not taken" by reevaluating romanticism from an ecocritical perspective (1).⁴

With my analysis of Bettina Brentano von Arnim's romantic literary fairy tale "Der Königssohn" (1808; "The Queen's Son," 1990),⁵ I join the ongoing effort to illuminate the relevance that romanticism holds for twenty-first-century environmental concerns. Parallels between the two movements warrant such an endeavor, not only for the reasons noted above, but also because the romantics valued literature's ability to go beyond science in exploring the role of human existence "within a dynamic, unfolding, and signifying universe" (Rigby, Topographies 5). Von Arnim's tale lends itself to an ecocritical reading particularly well because it strongly opposes the Enlightenment notion of nature and culture as two distinct realms—a duality that still today encourages human beings to think of themselves as separate from and superior to the rest of earthly life. Though the tale initially describes these two realms as separate, this is done not only to show that traditional dualism is the cause of alienation between human and non-human beings, but also to challenge its validity. For in contrast to the Cartesian view that extols human exceptionalism, nature plays an active and central role in bringing about the story's outcome, just as real (non-literary) animals and other non-human forms of life cause change in the habitat we all share. Indeed, the wild animals in the tale are shown to have agency in the sense used by ecocritics today, in which matter and meanings are seen to "'intra-actively' coemerge in a unitary field of existence" (Iovino and Oppermann, "Material Ecocriticism" 77).⁶

Around the time von Arnim wrote her tale, some romantics were collecting Volksmärchen (folk fairy tales) to further the cause of German national unity, while others were writing Kunstmärchen (literary fairy tales) to express their social, political, or philosophical critiques and ideals.⁷ An example of the latter, "The Queen's Son" reveals its author's political critique and ecological vision, opposing the mistreatment of non-human animals and the mentality of human domination that allows it, questioning traditional borders that separate the human from the more-than-human realm, and envisioning a world order in which all of nature's creatures (including human beings) can live in harmony with one another. Von Arnim thus uses fantasy in the form of a philosophical fairy tale to provide a humane and pantheistic alternative to the harmful effects of Cartesian rationalism. Drawing on past philosophical traditions and current ecocritical theories, I read her tale as an illustration of opposing discourses that were in circulation at the time of writing and that anticipate perspectives and behaviors still prevalent today. I also discuss similarities between this early work and von Arnim's mature writing, including the compassion that works from both periods convey for oppressed groups, whether human or non-human. I demonstrate the tale's importance for understanding von Arnim's oeuvre and the relevance her ideas hold for ongoing ecocritical concerns, including the ecofeminist awareness that a dominator mentality is at the root of all forms of oppression, including speciesism, racism, and sexism. Indeed, if we could not just perceive but also act upon the wisdom of her romantic ideas concerning the unity of matter and spirit and the interrelatedness of "nature-culture," we might still be able to find our way back from the brink of environmental disaster and spiritual impoverishment that imperils our lives today.

Competing Philosophical Influences: Paradigms of Spirit and Matter

German romanticism contains many contradictory elements, including the way nature is depicted in its literary works. While some romantic texts emphasize the importance of uniting nature, love, and poetry to create an ideal and harmonious world, other works reveal the human desire to dominate non-human nature, depicting it as inferior to human culture or dangerous to human safety and well-being.⁸ These opposing views of nature reflect the influence of several philosophical traditions on eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century thought, with Cartesian rationalism remaining one of the most prominent. According to René Descartes, whose hierarchical juxtaposition of mind over matter has been associated with other value dualisms, such as man over woman and (human) culture over nature, animals are not only incapable of rational thought and moral judgment; they are also without consciousness, language, and souls, operating mechanistically, like clockwork (Cottingham 551). While some Enlightenment thinkers challenged Descartes's view of animals as "natural automata,"⁹ others upheld the separation between man and beast because the differences between the two allowed them to define what it means to be human. For example, Immanuel Kant viewed animals as creatures who exist only to serve human needs. Unlike human beings, they lack consciousness and the ability to reason, and are therefore also without dignity and morality.¹⁰ Despite this, human beings should not mistreat animals, Kant maintains, since doing so would prevent humans from developing compassion and the ability to treat each other in a moral and humane way.¹¹

Even though Descartes's influence on intellectuals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was very strong, other important philosophies in circulation at the time provided alternatives to his dualistic framework of mind over matter and his rationalist focus on proving verifiable truths. According to Ernesto Grassi, some important German thinkers of the late eighteenth century, including Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, preferred the rhetorical tradition developed by Italian humanists to Cartesian rationalism (17). Both traditions recognize the existence of original principles, or archai, Grassi explains, but differ in how they approach them (25). Rational speech uses logical, argumentative language to prove the truth of a principle, and rejects rhetorical language because it could influence the emotions. What Grassi calls "true rhetorical speech," on the other hand, uses inventive, poetic language, such as images and metaphors, to convey reality and to show the relationship between an original principle and its applicability to contemporary society. It is the language of the poet—the wise man or woman—who provides political education and "who with insight leads, guides, and attracts" (32).¹²

Proponents of the rhetorical tradition who advocate use of poetic language to reveal an original insight or raise awareness concerning an urgent task are also concerned with understanding nature's languages, and in turn, its divine spirit (Grassi 16). In this sense, true rhetoric displays an affinity with the philosophy of Baruch de Spinoza, who was a critic of Descartes's mind-body split and viewed the entire universe instead as one substance from which both body and mind (or matter and spirit, nature and reason) emanate. Because of his monist philosophy, Spinoza came to be regarded as the most important advocate of pantheism—the belief that nature is identical with divinity. His ideas became widely known in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, appealing to romantics such as Friedrich Schelling, who regarded nature as animate and in possession of mind-like qualities such as self-determination and free creativity (Rigby, Topographies 41). This view allowed Schelling to conclude in Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1803) that reason is not the exclusive domain of human beings: "Nature is to be visible mind, mind invisible nature. Here, therefore, in the absolute identity of the mind in us and the nature outside us, the problem of how a nature outside ourselves is possible must dissolve" (42). Schelling replaces the Cartesian separation of mind and matter with the recognition that nature is not outside ourselves: human beings are part of nature, and just as human beings can think, feel, and experience the divine, so too is the mind, or spirit, inherent in nature, which is an alive, interdependent, and organic unity-in-diversity of all things.

The Path Not (Yet) Taken: Bettina von Arnim's Ecological Vision in "The Queen's Son"

In her early fairy tale "The Queen's Son," Bettina von Arnim reflects on the different philosophical perspectives that were in circulation when she was coming of age. Written in 1808, when von Arnim was twenty-three years old, the tale critiques rationalism's oppressive language and hierarchical dualisms, embodies pantheistic beliefs, and uses metaphorical and revelatory language in the manner of true rhetoric to convey original insights concerning the desired relationship between human beings and the natural world. In fact, like ethical and environmental concerns important to material ecocritics today, von Arnim's tale suggests that non-human animals have their own value, independent of human needs. Furthermore, it advocates explicitly what Alice Kuzniar maintains would be the next step after recognizing animals' inherent value, namely, "to grant animals freedom from human utilization (say, as food sources or for medical experimentation)" (435). Speaking on nature's behalf without assuming a position of superiority, the tale criticizes human abuse of non-human animals, draws parallels between animal abuse and other forms of social domination, and posits the ideal of an enlightened ruler (or wise leader) who unites the realms of nature and culture for the mutual benefit of all living creatures. The presence of these themes allows the tale to be viewed as a nexus of contention between competing discourses about the relationship between the human and non-human during both the early nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries.

The story begins with a description of the culturally imposed separation of nature and culture that von Arnim critiques. It locates the king's castle high up on a mountain, surrounded by beautiful gardens that have been cultivated for his pleasure. Glorious rivers run between his kingdom and the dense forests where wild animals live, dividing the human and the non-human. This neat separation of the two realms is challenged, however, by the queen's pregnancy. She fails to produce offspring within the normal nine-month term, causing her angry husband to banish her to the castle's back quarters and surrounding gardens, where she remains for the duration of her pregnancy. It lasts seven years. Finally, she gives birth while out in the gardens, bearing seven sons who are born with the stature and strength of seven-year-old boys. Immediately after birth, her oldest son chases after a she-bear who carries him across the river and into the forest. Though the queen raises her other six children dutifully and lovingly, she continues to mourn the loss of her firstborn and to search for him each night at the river's edge.

The queen's confinement to the gardens during pregnancy and her preference for them after childbirth place her in a border position that troubles the socially constructed binaries of wilderness and civilization, or nature and culture. Furthermore, her pregnancy associates her closely with nature, since it results in a "litter" of seven children. Yet by being confined to the castle's cultivated grounds, the queen is also separated from nature, or at least from the wild animals who inhabit the surrounding forest and are raising her son. Whenever she sees the animals drinking from the river, the queen begs them to return her firstborn to her. The animals cannot, however, understand her pleas because of the alienation that exists between the two realms, caused entirely, von Arnim's tale suggests, by human beings' abuse of the natural world.

Via this tale, von Arnim rejects the then-prevalent use of dualistic assumptions that stem from the Cartesian mind-body separation and that regard human culture as superior to nature. Doing so in turn exposes several interrelated kinds of social domination, including sexism, speciesism, and, less directly, racism, classism, and religious intolerance. For example, through her description of how the queen is treated during her long pregnancy, von Arnim critiques the patriarchal view of women as objects of nature that exist for man's use. According to Gail Newman, eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century texts about childbearing that were written by men rarely focused on a woman's pregnancy itself, but almost exclusively on conception and birth, because these aspects were relevant for paternity and inheritance issues and hence were of interest to men (38). The focus in von Arnim's tale, on the other hand, is largely on the queen during her seven-year pregnancy—a not only fantastic but also abject and grotesque condition that calls into question her status as wife and even as woman (42). The king, who had married her "for her beauty and to have children" ("QS" 450), came to despise his wife and to consider her worthless. He regarded her large body as a deformity, the unnaturalness of which made her unfit for participation in the court's activities. Ironically, then, the queen was removed from the castle's main living quarters—the realm of culture—because her pregnancy did not proceed in accordance with the laws of nature. Once she gave birth to her many sons, however, her value was restored: "She was brought before the King with the six babes as a glorious mother, and he received her with honors and jubilation" ("QS" 451). The king's harsh response to his wife's failure to provide him with an heir and his later celebration of her as mother reflects a sexist and patriarchal view of women that sees them not as individuals with inherent value but as reproducers of their kind. From this perspective, a woman is a threat to her group's existence if she does not perform her natural reproductive function. She is deprived of her uniqueness and valued only for the specific social and sexual functions she, as a woman, is expected to fulfill.

While the king's sexist rejection of the queen during her long pregnancy suggests that he viewed her at the time as nothing more than a dysfunctional animal, the tale's critique of human beings' abuse of non-human animals provides an even clearer depiction of the nature-culture dualism that oppresses those who are not at the top of the hierarchy. Via the narrator's explanation about why the animals cannot understand the queen's desperate attempts to communicate with them about her son's whereabouts, the tale decries human culture for treating animals as if they exist to serve human beings and for regarding abuse of non-human animals as a natural consequence of their subservient role:

Oh, poor Queen, not even one wild, ignorant animal will give you counsel, they know nothing of human lament! For humans persecute them and have no communion with them at all, humans stalk after them to get their skins or to eat their flesh, but never did a human turn to them in sorrow, asking for consolation. Many a noble beast has grieved for the freedom which cunning humans have robbed from it; they grieved that they must serve as slaves, which was not their task, and which went against their very nature, and they have gotten only dry hay to eat for their pains, when they could have eaten fresh, tender leaves in the forest. And they grieved that they had to be bridled and be ruled by the whip. So animals do not trust humans, and avoid their path. And when they are cornered and helpless, they attack people and tear their bodies horribly, just to protect their freedom or their young.

("QS" 452–53)

In this critical passage, the narrator speaks on behalf of non-human animals in a way that supports animal liberation—advocating for non-human animals' freedom from human domination. The narrator criticizes human beings who kill animals for meat or for clothing and who rob them of their freedom by taking them from their homes—their natural surroundings—and making them serve as slaves, ruling them by the whip. The passage also shows that non-human animals have agency, in that they defend themselves and their young against human abuse. It resembles the critique of animal rights activists who believe that non-human animals, like human beings, are sentient creatures who feel physical and emotional pain, are intelligent, and require certain conditions to lead a happy and healthy life. Its message thus corresponds to twentieth-century activists' critique of speciesism, that is, the notion that human beings are superior to non-human animals and are therefore justified in using them for their own purposes. As first explained by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer in his groundbreaking work Animal Liberation (1975), speciesists assign values and rights to human beings based on their species membership and deny other species the same special consideration. This is identical to a pattern practiced by racists, Singer also observes, since they give greater weight to the interests of their own race than to those of another race, and by sexists, who favor the interests of their own sex (9). While the term "speciesism" was not coined till the 1970s, opposition to the mistreatment of non-human animals based on human bias already existed in previous centuries, as von Arnim's tale makes clear. Indeed, her tale—though full of fantasy and poetic language—contains a critique that resembles Singer's condemnation of groups of people who exhibit the exclusionary practices of domination whether they are directed toward non-human animals or other oppressed groups, such as women and people of color, who, like the animals described by the narrator, have also served as slaves.

Further illustration of the tale's critique of the interrelated forms of domination is hinted at near the end of the tale, when the king must determine an heir to his throne yet cannot decide which of his six sons is most worthy, since they are equally accomplished or stand out in unique but similarly amazing ways:

When they competed in a game for a prize, it often happened that they all won the same prize or that they all excelled in their own special way. The King could not love one of them more than the others, for each was handsome and their demeanor was like the iridescent feathers of an alluring bird in the sunshine; if it turns this way, then another color shines forth or yet another, or if it struts and moves its wings, the colors change as fast as lightning, one as beautiful as the next; one cannot decide which is the most breathtaking of all.

("QS" 453)

This passage calls to mind Lessing's famous ring parable that is the centerpiece of his drama Nathan der Weise (1779; Nathan the Wise, 1805), in which he argues for the importance of religious tolerance. The parable features a father who cannot decide which of his three sons most deserves to inherit a very special ring—an opal that emits one hundred colors and makes its owner beloved by "God and men" (76). While the father of Lessing's parable solves his dilemma by having a master craftsman make two rings that are identical to the first—giving one to each of his sons in symbolic representation of all the world's religions and of God's universal love—the king in von Arnim's tale has one large gold crown made to fit over his six sons' heads. He explains to them that so long as their hearts remain pure as gold and they remain together, he will be able to say, "my land has only one lord and although it has many bodies, it has only one spirit" ("QS" 453). The similarities between the two stories reveal Lessing's influence on von Arnim when she was a young woman—a source of literary authority she attests to in Gespräche mit Dämonen (1852; Conversations with demons)—and demonstrates that her interest in religious tolerance and her critique of Christians who oppress members of other faiths and races, especially the German Jews, was established at an early age (Baldwin 227). This passage also suggests a pantheistic view, showing that while there may be many material forms in the world and many ways for individuals to worship and to flourish, one spirit/substance (or god/nature) unites them all. This promise is further reflected in the tale's ending, which describes the firstborn son's return to his father's kingdom on the day his brothers are to be crowned:

The horde of animals came onward and among them appeared a beautiful face that looked upward toward the sky, and seemed to be human, only more beautiful and noble. He rides on the backs of the lions and tigers, jumping gracefully from one to the other. When his mother sees him, she says, "This is my son," and goes bravely to meet him; she embraces him and feels a stone move from her heart. The animals recognize the woman and do her no harm. But the boy had no human language, he could only express his will through signs. Therefore he takes the crown and turns it seven times around his head; and with a strong hand, he tore an olive tree out of the earth, and gave each of his six brothers a branch, while keeping the trunk for himself, to mean, "I am the master! But you shall all live with me in peace." And he became King of the animals and of humankind in spirit, without language.

("QS" 454)

In this closing scene, the queen's lost son returns from his life in the forest to become ruler of his father's kingdom. As such, he, along with his six brothers, can be viewed as precursors to von Arnim's ideal of an enlightened Volkskönig, or populist king, that she discusses in several of her mature epistolary novels.¹³ Such a ruler would bring about social reforms and provide his subjects with just and caring political leadership. The queen's son goes a step further, however, representing an even more idealistic concept than that of a populist king, since he intends to become ruler not only of his father's kingdom, as the other six sons would have done, but of "the animals and of humankind." His appearance thus calls to mind the coming of a new Messiah as described in Isaiah 11:1–10—the then-popular Old Testament passage prophesying that a descendant of King David will rule the Earth with true justice and establish true peace, even between wild animals and human beings. Through the benevolent wisdom that the queen's son has gained from his life in the forest, he—or the utopian romantic perspective he represents—will provide both humans and non-humans with ethical guidance and will help all creatures develop their innate capabilities and achieve a spiritual life of peace and harmony, with justice for all those living under his wise rule.

The tale's ending may on the one hand appear too utopian and on the other too traditional in a way that is unappealing to feminists. For besides the notion that the new king will rule "in spirit, without language," the story appears to uphold the principle of primogeniture, whereby the first-born son ascends to the throne based on his birthright. Despite appearances, however, the very idea that the queen's firstborn will rule without language suggests that his ascendancy is not as traditional (or sexist) as it might at first appear. Though the new ruler—like those who preceded him—is male, he will unite the human and the non-human, and in that sense will subvert the patriarchal dualism that places human culture over non-human nature, the realm with which women have so often been associated. And even though the son's intent to rule without (human) language seems highly unrealistic, in part because the narrator has no choice but to use words to convey the meaning of his gestures and symbols, this solution addresses a social and philosophical problem that had captured von Arnim's attention, namely, the oppressive nature of rationalist language. Indeed, because of von Arnim's affinity for the rhetorical tradition, a metaphorical interpretation of the king's declared intent provides an appropriate way to understand the tale's ending. The king's use of the olive tree—his distribution of the six branches to his brothers while retaining the trunk for himself—represents the just and peaceful state in which everyone will live under his egalitarian rule and reflects further our need to learn from nature's wisdom (or "spirit") and to rule without oppression (or rational/hierarchical "language"). Not only the king's subjects but also the tale's readers are likely to know the traditional meaning of the olive tree as a symbol of peace, and the tree trunk's (or root's) biblical significance as a symbol of nourishment and support for all its branches (see Romans 11:16–18). This metaphor establishes a connection between von Arnim's insight into the original organic unity between human and non-human nature and the current concrete need to address the urgent task of reconciling the two realms to create a healthier, more compassionate, and more sustainable world. She thus uses fantasy and the power of poetic language to go beyond science in imparting a concealed truth and correcting historical injustice—two points that are vital to adherents of the rhetorical tradition of Italian humanism and to other romantically inclined philosophers, poets, and scholars, including modern-day ecocritics. Von Arnim's tale thus shows that literature can be used to "save the earth" in the sense that it can "hallow" rather than objectify nature, terms that Heidegger uses in Poetry, Language, Thought (150, 141) and whose applicability to ecocritical analysis Rigby discusses in Topographies of the Sacred.¹⁴ Yet the tale's ending also suggests that human language—even the poetry of the wise man or woman—is inadequate when trying to convey the experience of more-than-human nature, which speaks in other-than-human languages. By declaring that the queen's son must rule "in spirit, without language," von Arnim acknowledges that even the ecopoet falls short of expressing what is beyond her (or his) understanding and experience. The tale's ending can thus be interpreted not only as a critique of the abuse of nature associated with the oppressive language of rationalism and empirical science, but also as the recognition of the inadequacy of the poetic word to fully convey "the undisclosed ground on which we construct our world" (Rigby, Topographies 121).

"Whatever Lives under the Sun Has Equal Claims": The Return of von Arnim's Early Ecological Ideals in Her Mature Works

Numerous connections can be drawn between von Arnim's romantic fairy tale and works that she wrote later in life, after her husband died and most of her seven children were grown. Although von Arnim experts rarely discuss these similarities,¹⁵ she herself was aware of the importance that her early ideas held for her mature literary production. As she exclaimed in a letter to Hermann von Pückler in 1835, revisiting the principles and desires of her youth made her "very happy": "Is there anything more blissful, than from the simple spent years of the past, as from the fire's center, to burst into newly awakened flames? … Last night I could not sleep because a thought rooted in my childhood was putting forth so many blossoms" (cited in Wolf 42).¹⁶ This "reblossoming" of her youthful ideals, including those expressed in "The Queen's Son," is particularly apparent in five works of fiction that von Arnim published between 1835 and 1852. Three of these were epistolary novels based on letters she had written and received in the first decade of the century—documents that she selected and shaped to create fictionalized accounts of her relationships with some of the most important people in her life. Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (1835; Goethe's Correspondence with a Child, 1839), which brought von Arnim overnight fame, incorporated her correspondence with Goethe's mother beginning in 1806 and with Goethe himself from the years 1807 to 1811; Die Günderode (1840; Günderode, 1861), based on letters from 1804 to 1806, is a tribute to von Arnim's friend Karoline von Günderrode, an accomplished poet who committed suicide in 1806 when the man she loved suddenly rejected her; and Clemens Brentanos Frühlingskranz (1844; The spring wreath) is a work that re-creates her 1800–1803 correspondence with her brother. In addition, Dies Buch gehört dem König (1843; The king's book), dedicated to the new Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was set in 1807 and consisted of fictional dialogues between prominent individuals of the ruling class and Goethe's mother, who instructed them in matters of social and political importance; and Gespräche mit Dämonen is set partly in Frankfurt in 1808, the same year "The Queen's Son" was written. The fact that all these works incorporate concepts, insights, and experiences that von Arnim had had as a young woman shows that the seeds for the aesthetic and political goals she pursued as a mature writer were indeed planted in her youth.

One of the ideas common to von Arnim's early tale and her later novels is a critique of the effects of rationalism on both human and non-human life. As Wolf notes, the Bettine character in Die Günderode regards the Cartesian philosophical tradition as one-sided, mechanistic, and spirit-killing, while her friend Karoline finds herself controlled by a voice that is not her own and that ultimately causes her demise (62, 66). This view of the language of rationalism also corresponds to that expressed in Gespräche mit Dämonen, where von Arnim writes: "The spirit is a voice that reaches us so that we renounce the letter, so that we won't kill anybody and can ourselves live on in the spirit" (translated in Baldwin 222).¹⁷ As Claire Baldwin notes in "Questioning the 'Jewish Question': Poetic Philosophy and Politics in Gespräche mit Dämonen," von Arnim regards the language she is opposing as "restrictive, burdening, and static" and the language she valorizes as "freeing and imaginative, harmonious and musical, encompassing and promising" (223). Von Arnim strives to speak and write in this inspiring language, "to manifest the freedom and the wisdom of the spirit in her linguistic expression" (Baldwin 224). This generative language of the spirit seeks to transcend words. It resembles closely the spiritual language of nature introduced at the end of the fairy tale, when the new king's gestures express his intent to reject rationalism's oppressive language in favor of nature's living spirit. By ruling with nature's language instead of the language of Cartesian rationalism or a transcendent god, the new king intends to protect and value all life-forms and cultivate a society that does the same.

Many of the Young Hegelians who admired von Arnim's work in the 1830s and 1840s, including David Strauß, Eduard Meyen, and Edgar Bauer, shared her critique of rationalism and Christianity as well as her other ideas about nature, religion, and politics. As the following passage by Bauer shows, they were particularly interested in what they considered to be a new religion that von Arnim was proposing, namely:

A religion for the world of plants and stones and animals. As the Christian religion sends a human-god down to earth to redeem humanity, so Bettine asks the natural human or human nature, to once again reconcile nature and humanity. It is not a new religion for human beings or an exclusive prophesy. Everyone redeems himself and nature. The "I" shall not transpose its God into another world again, to Heaven, so that the word may descend from there and become flesh. No, genius shall evolve from nature, flesh will become spirit.

(quoted in Härtl 156–57)

Bauer's views about the need for human beings to redeem nature supports von Arnim's idea that human beings need to respect nature rather than abuse it.¹⁸ Von Arnim, Bauer writes, argues for a religion—or philosophical outlook—that values and protects nature and that fosters "the natural human" who can reconcile nature and humanity. He writes further that nature's wisdom, which is immanent and "speaks to us in everything, in the bloom and scent of the rose, in moonshine and the gurgling brook, in the rustling treetops," will protect those who trust it: "Yield to the care of nature's genius, expel all fear of nature from your mind, and it will nourish you lovingly" (quoted in Härtl 156). These ideas, apparent in Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde, Die Günderode, Gespräche mit Dämonen, and "The Queen's Son," reflect the pantheistic belief that God is nature and that the Christian god's transcendent position and authoritarian representatives are the cause of discord between human beings and the natural world. They also foreshadow the ecocritical view that all the different forms of matter that comprise nature—from the blossoming rose to the toxic plume—are living agents with their own stories to tell (Iovino and Oppermann, "Introduction" 1).

Von Arnim's ethical orientation, which emphasizes caring for all creatures, is prominent in Gespräche mit Dämonen. This work is von Arnim's most sustained literary endeavor on behalf of German Jews and thus a condemnation of religious and racial intolerance. In it, nature is described as a spiritual guide that can help bring about a better, more egalitarian society that values all its members. According to Baldwin, von Arnim limits her critique of the treatment of Jews to the Frankfurt ghetto of 1808 to avoid appearing critical of the Prussian government when she wrote this work in 1852 (214). While the legal status of Jews changed significantly in 1848, those changes were not yet palpable in society, and contemporaries of von Arnim could easily discern the continued relevance of her book's social critique.¹⁹ To address the inequalities that Jews suffered, von Arnim turns to nature for analogies that she then uses in their defense, thereby illustrating her view that the truths of nature are precepts that should shape political and social reforms. She suggests, for example, that human beings, including Jews, are like sheaves of wheat to the extent that both require the right conditions to flourish: "Whatever lives under the sun has equal claims; just as the multitudes of stalks in the field imbibe sunlight to produce seeds of grain, so too should everything fructify itself through the spirit of the sun with grand thoughts. They should thrive in the Jew as well as in other people, as the grain thrives in the stalk" (translated in Baldwin 228).²⁰ This passage compares sunlight with the human need and natural right for spiritual and intellectual development. As Baldwin explains, von Arnim thus "attempts both to render nature's forms and to interpret them, offering the reader this interpretation as translation" (228). As in "The Queen's Son," written forty-four years earlier, von Arnim interprets the more-than-human world for us, suggesting in Gespräche mit Dämonen that human beings should learn from nature and conduct their policies in accordance with its laws. Doing so would help all creatures flourish by treating them equally while at the same time acknowledging their differences and allowing them the unique conditions they require to achieve their full potential.

The Ecocritical Nature of Bettina von Arnim's Work

In his book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (2010), David Abram writes: "After three and a half centuries spent charting and measuring nature as though it were a pure exterior, we've at last begun to notice that the world we inhabit (from the ocean floor to the upper atmosphere) is alive" (157). This passage suggests that human thought regarding the material world has been controlled almost exclusively by Cartesian rationalism and that we are only now waking up to the realization that we are part of a living planet full of agentic matter. It is true that Descartes's ideas, which encourage human beings to see the rest of nature as an inanimate backdrop to human activity, have dominated Western consciousness since their inception more than 350 years ago. Nonetheless, a review of competing philosophies from Descartes's time forward, including those discussed in this essay, confirms that ecocritics' appreciation of the "more-than-human world" is not new. Though idealists such as Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte regarded the spiritual realm, including the ability to reason and make moral judgments, as the exclusive domain of human beings, pantheists from Spinoza through the romantics and the Young Hegelians recognized that spirit is inherent in the material world and that all natural entities, not just human beings, have agency and tell stories. This view corresponds to ideas held by adherents of the rhetorical tradition who advocated using poetic language to express insights about nature's divine spirit and to raise awareness concerning urgent practical, political, and ethical matters. Working within that tradition, von Arnim addresses the pressing need for human beings to change their perception of nature in order to achieve ecological balance. By rejecting rational speech and valuing nature's other languages, she posits a vision of the world in which both human and non-human beings could lay "equal claims" (gleiche Ansprüche) to the conditions they need to lead a satisfying life free of exploitation. Von Arnim's vision thus reflects an ethical approach to writing literature valued by material ecocritics who hope to change how the public views nature. Like her and other romantics' rejection of rational speech, ecocritics recognize that the advent and spread of phonetic writing was one of the reasons that human beings lost their connection with the natural world. As Abram explains, the printed word acquired the power of speech, and since the rest of nature communicated without a phonetic alphabet, human beings stopped listening to it (The Spell 138). The alienation this created caused a rift between human beings and non-human nature, which in turn resulted in our reckless disregard for the environment and the anthropocentric degradation of our own biosphere.²¹ To help restore a connection with the natural world, eco-literary critics seek to embark on the path not yet taken by illuminating stories that speak on nature's behalf and recognize its agency. Doing so will help human beings understand nature's other languages and overcome "the hubris that ignores the interdependency of life" (Sullivan and Malkmus 7).²²

Bettina von Arnim's "The Queen's Son" expresses the awareness that human beings share their surroundings with other life-forms and that efforts designed to separate the human and non-human realms are harmful to us all. The queen and her firstborn child cross borders separating the two realms, thereby demonstrating their interdependence and hybridity. Like von Arnim, animal rights activists and ecocritics from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries seek to treat the more-than-human world with respect—to redeem nature—and to understand its manifold systems of communication. They recognize the similarities among various forms of domination and acknowledge that hierarchies that rank human over animal, male over female, and Christian over non-Christian create a diverse yet interrelated set of Others that are consistently viewed as inferior to the dominant subject. As ecofeminist Susanne Kappeler asserts, to stop the violence that emanates from the lofty position at the top of the "scala naturae," it is necessary to oppose all forms of domination, to question abusive power and violence "on principle, not just on occasions" (320–21). Views such as these illuminate the wisdom contained in von Arnim's tale, which serves as a parable that critiques Western civilization's hierarchical separation from and silencing of nature—and by extension, women and other representatives of underprivileged social groups—and provides twenty-first-century ecocritics with literary inspiration to address the urgent task still facing us. Von Arnim's utopian solution thus opposes the Enlightenment's dominant views concerning "man's" position in the natural order, offering in its stead a model that extends the Enlightenment's ethical truth claims to the non-human world, recognizes the inseparability of matter and spirit, values all living creatures, and allows those who are normally considered voiceless to be heard.