Tipos del Envejecimiento

Lewald’s polemical works provide a necessary context for her novels; she comments on fashion and gender and examines how German women might best campaign for gender equality. Lewald was profoundly aware of the restrictive and prescriptive nature of fashion and the impact it had on gender. In the fourteenth letter of Für und Wider die Frauen (1869), for instance, she addresses her female reader, asking whether demands for female emancipation can be taken seriously when women follow outrageous fashions: ‘Kann ein Mann Sie in diesen ‘Kostümen’ oder in Ihren Salon-Toiletten, die in allen Farben des Regenbogens schimmern, wirklich für seinesgleichen halten?’366 _{Lewald’s tone is acerbic and vehement. She suggests that women have been shaped}

literally and metaphorically by clothes which effectively encourage them to treat themselves as objects; the recognised standard involves self-adornment with the aim to attract. Such practices are limiting and Lewald argues against extravagant dress and consumerism because they prevent gender equality. Lewald calls for self-emancipation ‘von der Nachahmung einer fremdländischen und sittenlosen Frauenwelt [...], in der alles hohl und alles leer und alles käuflich ist [...]’.367

365 _{Lesley Sharpe, ‘The Enlightenment’ in A History of Women's Writing in Germany, Austria and}

Switzerland, ed. Jo Catling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 64.

366 _{Lewald, Für und Wider die Frauen, in Freiheit des Herzens, Brief 14, 305.} 367 _{Ibid, 308.}

87 Negative terminology here is exploited in part for nationalistic reasons – Lewald tries to

distinguish Germany from immoral foreign nations. As discussed in Chapter Three, she is writing here at a time which was profoundly sensitive to the need to establish what it meant to be

German. However, by rejecting elaborate, French sartorial customs, Lewald does not assert a new gender possibility for women. Instead she writes nostalgically about women’s fashions of former years (she does not specify when), which she sees as more decent and German, since dresses used to be ‘bescheiden’, long, and subtle in colour. Lewald admonishes women for being vain enough to keep up with fashions that force them to be wasteful. The ‘Zurschautragen der

Verschwendung’368 _{is distasteful to her on moral grounds and is declared un-German in order to}

make a point about the positive attributes a German woman should have, namely simplicity, modesty and good sense. Instead of displacing gender norms, she seems to reiterate them, echoing conduct discourse by discouraging consumerist indulgence. Lewald thus contributes to the

paradox which dictates and simultaneously vetoes a consideration of fashion. This may make her seem conventional, but her reinforcement of accepted gendered traits is also used as a way of encouraging women to cultivate their intellect. The above passage could be read quite differently. Lewald overtly rejects the stereotype that associates women with superficial concerns in favour of other traditionally feminine traits; but she does so not out of any desire to constrain women but rather in order to urge them to devote their energies to the development of their minds. Lewald draws on the importance of morality in gender categorisation out of apparent conviction, but she also does so in order to appear conventional even when demanding something very

unconventional: that women see themselves as equal to men.

Indeed, Lewald’s life was not conformist; she was a self-sufficient woman writer who embraced independence and abhorred stagnant domesticity – she referred to the years spent housebound after her refusal to accept an arranged marriage as her ‘Leidensjahre’.369 _{She circulated in}

Europe's salons and hosted her own after marrying the divorced author Adolf Stahr. However, as Boetcher-Joeres points out, Lewald often avoids depictions of emancipated women in her novels since they tend to be associated with negativity and caricature. As a result her female characters are often wives and mothers. Indeed, the argument in favour of traditional gender ideals is recurrent in her work and is an example of the apparent conservatism for which she is often reproached by modern scholars. Critics have recognised Lewald’s desire for the democratisation of Germany, the improvement of girls’ education and professional opportunities for women as well as for social equalities, but they have also been disappointed at Lewald’s lack of liberalism when it comes to arguing for women’s rights in her novels. There Lewald seems to reinforce

368 _{Ibid, 307.}

88 rather than ‘contest the rigid codes of hierarchal binarisms’.370 _{Margaret Ward defends Lewald’s}

stance, arguing that comments that seem biased towards the patriarchy were ‘specifically tailored to the immediate Prussian situation’.371 _{Because Lewald was aware of the need for ostensible}

conformity, it is in the undertones of her polemical and fictional writing that we must search for the ‘Bilder’ that express ‘was die Nation bedarf und fordert’.372 _{Indeed her request that her}

correspondents destroy her letters as a discretionary measure illustrates the extent of her own self- censorship. In 1847, Lewald writes in a letter to Stahr:

Ich schreibe nur, wenn ich positiv etwas zu sagen habe und bitte jeden, auch Sie von Herzen, jeden Brief, den Sie von mir erhalten, sofort zu vernichten, wenn Sie ihn gelesen haben. Dies ist eine Notwehr gegen die Indiskretion der Zukunft, ueber die ich beruhigt sein muss, wenn ich im schriftlichen Verkehr die ganze Wahrheit sagen soll.373

Lewald wrote vast amounts in a number of genres, and the shortcomings of the novel as a political forum were clear to her: ‘die ganze Wahrheit’ had to be edited for publication. She confessed in a letter written in February 1862, ‘Ich habe innerlich manchmal die groesste Lust, alle meine Arbeiten liegen zu lassen und Pamphlete zu schreiben.’374 _{But she did continue to write fiction}

and it seems its appeal lay in the fact that it allowed the public and the author to imagine certain possibilities for, if not an entire re-working of, the female gender.

370 _{See Butler, Gender Trouble, 199.}

371 _{Margaret Ward, Fanny Lewald: Between Rebellion and Renunciation (New York: Peter Lang, 2006),}

175.

372 _{Lewald, Fanny Eine Lebensfrage (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1845), 108.}

373 _{Lewald cited in Gabriele Schneider, Fanny Lewald (Munich: Rowohlt, 1996), 7.}

374 _{Letter to Johann Hacoby, cited in Carol Diethe,Towards Emancipation (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998),}

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