The Virginal Mother in German Culture

From Sophie von La Roche and Goethe to Metropolis
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8101-3929-9
Verlag: Northwestern University Press

Buch, Englisch, 276 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

The Virginal Mother in German Culture presents an innovative and thorough analysis of the contradictory obsession with female virginity and idealization of maternal nature in Germany from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Lauren Nossett explores how the complex social ideal of woman as both a sexless and maternal being led to the creation of a unique figure in German literature: the virginal mother. At the same time, she shows that the literary depictions of virginal mothers correspond to vilified biological mother figures, which point to a perceived threat in the long nineteenth century of the mother's procreative power.

Examining the virginal mother in the first novel by a German woman (Sophie von La Roche), canonical texts by Goethe, nineteenth-century popular fiction, autobiographical works, and Thea von Harbou's novel Metropolis and Fritz Lang's film by the same name, this book highlights the virginal mother at pivotal moments in German history and cultural development: the entrance of women into the literary market, the Goethezeit, the foundation of the German Empire, and the volatile Weimar Republic. The Virginal Mother in German Culture will be of interest to students and scholars of German literature, history, cultural and social studies, and women's studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. The Creation of the Virginal Mother: Sophie von La Roche’s The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim
- 2. The Ideal Virgin and Failed Mother: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, and Faust I
- 3. The Popular Virginal Mother: E. Marlitt’s The Old Maid’s Secret and The Second Wife
- 4. The “Real” Virginal Mother: Caregiving and Motherhood in the Autobiographies of Hedwig Dohm, Adelheid Popp, and Ottilie Baader
- 5. The Virginal Mother of Orphans and the Vamp Anti-Mother: Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lauren Nossettis a visiting assistant professor of German at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia.