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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association
In discussing the work of Therese Huber (1764-1829), most feminist critics have sought to uncover its emancipatory aspects. Examining Luise (1796), 'Der Ehewagen' (1818), and Ellen Percy (1822), the article argues that Huber's fiction is also valuable for the sophisticated psychological insight it displays.
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Feminist critics casting a revisionary gaze on traditional German literary history have often found themselves 'drawn to [...] rebels', as Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres points out. (1) They have sought, in other words, first and foremost to rescue from obscurity those women writers whose works challenge, rather than reinforce, gender stereotypes. Such an approach, though understandable, has drawn criticism from within feminist circles. Sigrid Weigel compares it to Cinderella's 'Sortierarbeit' while preparing food in the German version of the fairy tale:
Die so oft beschworene Parteilichkeit feministischer Literaturhistorie darf [...] nicht die Form von Aschenputtels (im Marchen aufgezwungener, hier selbsterwahlter) Sortierarbeit annehmen: die guten ins (Frauenbewegungs-)Topfchen, die schlechten werden den Netzen mannlicher Geschichtsschreibung uberlassen. (2)
What approach should feminist critics take, then, to 'die schlechten', to those women writers whose works appear to portray female characters in conventional ways? Rather than overlooking them, Weigel suggests that they use them as salutary examples of the pervasiveness of misogynist ideology, as 'Lernmaterial fur Frauen' (p. 84). This is a method which has proved productive, as in the case of the now infamous 'Entsagungsroman' Elisa, oder das Weib wie es sein sollte (1795) by Caroline von Wobeser (1769-1807), but it too has justly come under attack when it has threatened to mimic the patriarchal denigration of women's writing that feminist criticism has sought to overturn. Alternatively, with a sensitivity to the restrictive historical context in which women's works have been produced, feminist critics have learnt to identify the 'double-voiced discourse' to which Elaine Showalter refers, (3) reading between the lines of a seemingly conventional text for a more subversive underlying message. They have demonstrated that, in many cases, what appears at first to be a conservative portrayal of the female sex represented an important negotiation of power for women at the time it was produced.
The reception of the work of Therese Huber (1764-1829) provides an interesting illustration of different feminist critical approaches to writing by women which appears conventional in its depiction of sex roles. Huber was a prolific author, who published many reviews, essays, and translations of literary works as well as her own fiction. In her early novels, such as Die Familie Seldorf (1795/96) and Luise: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Konvenienz (1796), which were published under her second husband's name, she depicts heroines who fail to find their place in society. Huber then wrote a number of short stories and travel journals, including the Bemerkungen uber Neu-Holland (1811). The latter was the first work to bear her initials and her first great commercial success. Later in life, she composed lengthy 'Bildungsromane' documenting the moral and social education of female protagonists such as Hannah, tier Herrenhuterin Deborah Findelkind (1821).
As feminist critics have shown, at this period all German women writers were under pressure to reproduce society's gender ideology if they wanted to secure a publisher and an audience, and safeguard their personal reputation. There are reasons to assume that in Huber's case, however, this pressure made itself felt even more strongly than in most. Huber needed to defend her femininity not only against the accusation of 'unwomanly' literary ambition which was levelled at all women writers, but also against suspicions aroused by the scandalous events of her early life. Unhappily married since 1785 to Georg Forster, a man ten years her senior, she had fallen in love with their acquaintance Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, initiated divorce proceedings against her husband in 1793, and married Ludwig a few months after Forster's death in 1794. Their known sympathies for the Mainz republic, which was founded in 1792 and fell the next year, led the Hubers to seek political exile in Switzerland, where they both pursued writing careers to earn their living. When Ludwig died in 1804, Therese Huber's literary activities alone had to provide for her and her four surviving children. Thus her dependence on sales figures was far greater than that of most of her female peers. In view of this it is hardly surprising that she did not acknowledge her authorship until 1811, nor that, after her identity was revealed, she formulated with an almost obsessive urgency the conventional assertions made by female authors of this period, in prefaces and elsewhere, that their writing in no way prevented execution of their domestic duties and that they were motivated entirely by moral and didactic, rather than artistic, concerns. Huber's claims were reiterated after her death by her son Victor Aime, who insisted in his preface to an edition of her works that she 'hat nie aufgehort, in ihrer Stellung als Schriftstellerin ein Heraustreten aus dem naturlichen Kreise stiller Weiblichkeit schmerzlich zu empfinden'. (4)
Huber's attempts to establish her respectability seem to have borne fruit: her works sold well, (5) Cotta chose her to edit his Morgenblatt fur gebildete Stande from 1816 to 1823 (the first woman to hold such a position), and King Wilhelm I of Wurttemberg even requested that she be introduced to him and to Queen Katharina at a ball in 1822. (6) That her 'conformity' as a writer did not go entirely unquestioned, however, is demonstrated by comments made by Karl Gutzkow in his Beitrage zur Geschichte der neuesten Literatur, published seven years after Huber's death. While praising the realism of Huber's writing, Gutzkow criticizes the 'Mannerfeindschaft' he finds expressed in her short story 'Drei Abschnitte aus dem Leben eines guten Weibes' (1831) and the advocacy of the unmarried state that he insists is increasingly prevalent in her later works. With some malice and with a blurring of the boundaries between woman writer and her work which was typical of the period, he diagnoses this tendency as the result of her fading attractions: 'Je alter, je weniger reizend, desto gereifter wurde sie in diesen Lehren.' (7)
Modern critics, like Huber's contemporaries, have differed in their interpretations of her gender politics. Wulf Kopke argues that she is a largely conservative author whose writing supports the relegation of women to a separate sphere, and suggests that this makes her unattractive to feminist critics. (8) In an unpublished study, Angela Lingen similarly observes that Huber's failure radically to plead the case for women's emancipation has prevented any real 'rehabilitation' of her work by feminist critics, who have tended to turn their attention instead to her more unconventional biography. (9)
In a growing body of secondary literature, however, of which Lingen's study forms a part, feminist critics have begun to redress this lack of recognition. Lingen's analysis is centred largely on Huber's short story 'Sophie', but most critics have chosen to focus on Die Familie Neldorf, the story of a young woman, betrayed by her aristocratic lover, who disguises herself as a man to fight for the French Revolutionary army. The transgressive Sara Seldorf is duly pun- ished and brought back to the fold, physically frail and dedicated at the end of the novel to the 'feminine' task of bringing up her lover's orphaned child, but feminist critics have...
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