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Fractured Fairy Tales: German Women Authors and the Grimm Tradition

1987; Routledge; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/19306962.1987.11787292

1930-6962

Jeannine Blackwell,

German Literature and Culture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesEdward Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York : Basic Books, 1975), pp. 83–87.Wolfgang Iser’s term. Examples of the critical pivot around the “unsaid” can be found in the psychoanalytical approach of Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and lmportance of Fairy Tales (New York: Knopf, 1976), in the extension of the psycho-literary method of Fairy Tales as Ways of Knowing: Essays on Märchen in Psychology, Society, and literature, eds. Michael M. Metzger and Katharina Mommsen (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981), and the social -historical approach of Jack Zipes in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization (London: Heinemann, 1983). My thoughts have been informed by Zipes’ work (including the earlier Breaking the Magie Speil: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (Aust in: University of Texas Press, 1979) and The Trials and Tribulations of little Red Riding Hood : Versions of the Tale in Socio-Cultural Context [London: Heinemann, 1982]) as well as by Ruth Bottigheimer’s forthcoming research, “Silenced Women in Grimms ’ Tales: The ‘Fit’ between Fairy Tales and Society,” in Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm, ed. Ruth Bottigheimer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986).Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, pp. 13–23.The provenance of the Grimms’ tales has been described by Johannes Bolte and Georg Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig: 1913–1932, second edition Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963), v. 4, pp. 431–473; Wilhelm Schoof, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Grimmschen Märchen (Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1959). The revisions in style in their editorial history are discussed by Gunhild Ginschel, “Der Märchenstil Jakob Grimms,” Deutsches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 9 (1963): 131–168.Linda Degh in “Grimm’s [sic] Household Tales and its place in the Household: The Social Relevance of a Controversial Classic, ” Western Folklore 38 (1981): 1–12, reprinted in Fairy Tales as Ways of Knowing: Essays on Märchen in Psychology, Society and literature, eds. Michael M. Metzger and Katharina Mommsen (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981). See also Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).John Ellis, One Fairy Tale Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Ellis passionately charges the Grimms with intentionally fraudulent methods. I think he overstates the cases of their questionable claims to sources—feminist scholars are not so surprised at the appropriation of anonymous women’s work by men; it was acceptable nineteenth-century practice: witness the Schlegel translations and reviews and the “Westöstliche Divan.” Moreover, as he neglects to stress, the materials on the Grimms’ actual informants and interviewers have been part of the scholarly record for some time—I discovered his “findings” in writing this paper before I had read his book. However, his information is correct, and the Grimms did twist attributions to fit their nationalist political program.Because Bettina herself dropped the aristocratic “von” from her own name, I will break with scholarly tradition and call her simply Bettina Arnim.See Schoof and Bolte/Polivka, note 4.Wilhelm Grimm’s interview with Benedikte Naubert, December 13, 1809, is described in Kurt Schreinert, Benedikte Naubert: Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichet des historischen Romans in Deutschland (Berlin, 1941, rpt. Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1969), pp. 35–36.Heinz Rölleke, “Die ‘stockhessischen’ Märchen der ‘alten Marie’. Das Ende eines Mythus um die frühesten KHM-Aufzeichnungen der Brüder Grimm,” Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift 25 (1975): 74–86.Women contributors to the Grimm collection include: Lotte Grimm, Jeanette Hassenpflug, Amalie Hassenpflug, Wilhelmine von Schwertzell, daughters in the Wild family (particularly Dorothea Catharina Wild and Marie Wild Hassenpflug), Karoline Engelhardt, Ludovica Brentano Jordis, Frederike Mannet, Frau Lehnhardt, Julie Ramis, Charlotte Ramis, the sister of Werner Henschel, Henriette Handel-Schutz, an unnamed Dutch woman, daughters in the Haxthausen family, Dorothea Viehmann (nee Pierson), Jenny von Droste-Hülshoff Laßberg and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.Bolte/ Polivka confirm that women contributors were much more important than men (p. 435), as does Friedrich Panzer in his article “Märchen” in Wege der Märchenforschung, Felix Karlinger, ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), p. 125.Folktales and legends collected or written by German women 1789–1850:Benedikte Naubert. Neue Volksmärchen der Deutschen. Leipzig: Schäfer, 1789–1793.Karoline de la Motte-Fouque. Drei Mährchen. Berlin: Hitzig, 1806.——— and Amalie von Helvig. Taschenbuch der Sagen und Legenden. 1812.Caroline Stahl. Erzählungen, Fabeln, und Märchen für Kinder. Nürnberg, 1818.———. Märchen. Riga, 1824.Amalie Schoppe. Kleine Mährchen-Bibliothek. Berlin: Mathison, 1828.———. Neue nordische Sagen. Heidelberg: Engelmann, 1829.———. Volkssagen, Märchen und Legenden aus Norddeutschland. Leipzig: Pocke, 1833.———. Sagenbibliothek. Leipzig: Fritzsche, 1851.Agnes Franz. Volkssagen. Leipzig: 1830.Four stories of Caroline Stahl are included in Deutsche Märchen vor und nach Grimm, edited with notes and afterword by Ninon Hesse (Zurich: Europa, 1956): “Die Gevatterinnen,” (pp. 131–136), “Däumling,” (pp. 151–155), “Der undankbare Zwerg,” (pp. 183–185), and “Der Pomeranzenbaum und die Biene” (pp. 293–298). They are closely related to stories of Madame d’Aulnoy and the Grimms.These figures are the “educated guesswork” of Rudolf Schenda, Volk ohne Buch. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der populären Lesestoffe 1770–1970 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1970), p. 44.Ruth Bottigheimer, “Silenced Woman in the Grimms’ Tales: The ‘Fit’ between Fairy Tales and Society,” see note 3.See the following feminist analyses of fairy tales: Ruth Bottigheimer, “The Transformed Queen: a search for the origins … Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 10 (1981): 1–12; Ethel Johnson Phelps, The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from around the World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981); an analysis of contemporary uses of fairy tale motifs is found in Ellen Cronan Rose, “Through the Looking Glass: When Women Tell Fairy Tales” in: The Voyage In. Fictions of Female Development, eds. Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983), pp. 209–227; a recent German language feminist analysis of Grimms’ tales has been done by Renate Steinchen, “Märchenbilder—Leitbilder für Utopien oder Fluchtbewegungen? Zur Rekonstruktion kulturhistorischer Geschlechtsstereotypen in den Grimmschen Märchen,” Das starke Geschlecht. Veranstaltungsreihe der Fraueninitiative der Hochschule der Künste Berlin im Wintersemester 1983–84 (Berlin: Hochschule der Künste, 1985), pp . 117–181. The earlier, pioneering feminist works on women’s social learning through fairy tales are: Kay Stone, “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us,” Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975): 42–50; Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty GoodBye: Breaking the Speil of Feminine Myths and Models (New York: Doubleday, 1979); Marcia Lieberman, “‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale,” College English 34 (1972): 383–395; and Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women’s Hidden Fear of Independence (New York: Summit, 1981). Works treating the feminine archetypes include: Marta Weigle, Spiders and Spinsters: Women and Mythology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981); the anthology of water nymph stories by male authors, Von Nixen und Brunnenfrauen: Märchen desJahrhunderts, ed. Henriette Beese (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1982); the somewhat superficial monograph by Jennifer Waelti-Walters, Fairy Tales and the Female Imagination (Montreal: Eden Press, 1982), which makes a less than satisfying attempt to bring Foucaultian analysis to French fairy tales; and Marie-Louise von Franz, Problems of the Feminine in Fairy Tales (Zürich: Spring, 1972, second ed. 1976), an excellent Jungian approach which is compatible with feminist interpretations.See Gilbert/Gubar, Madwoman in the Attic (note 6), Ellen Cronan Rose, “Through the Looking Glass” (note 15) and Tillie Olsen, Silences.See Kurt Schreinert, Benedikte Naubert: Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte des historischen Romans in Deutschland (Berlin, 1941, rpt. Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1969) for a thorough analysis of her historical fiction.“Die weiße Frau,” in Christiane Benedikte Eugenie Hebenstreit Naubert, Volksmährchen der Deutschen (Leipzig: Schäfer, 1789–1793); I use the second abridged edition (Leipzig: Gebhardt and Reisland, 1938) v. 4, pp. 95–154.See G. Fr. Daumer, Das Geisterreich in Glauben, Vorstellung, Sage und Wirklichkeit (Dresden: Woldemar Türk, 1867), v. 2, pp. 164–187 and Aniela Jaffe, Geistererscheinungen und Vorzeichen. Eine psychologische Deutung. Mit einem Vorwort von C.G. Jung (Zurich: Rascher, 1958), pp. 104–120, 125–126.“Der kurze Mantel” appeared originally in Volksmöhrchen der Deutschen, but was not included in the abridged version. I have used a version from 1819: Der kurze Mantel und Ottilie: Zwei Volksmöhrchen von Benedicte Naubert (Vienna: Carl Armbruster, 1819), pp. 7–170. Marianne Kalinke (Univ. Illinois) is presently researching the motif of the mantle of chastity/virtue in European literature.The Grimm version is in the first volume, KHM number 24.Karoline (von Lengefeld) von Wolzogen, Agnes von Lilien (Berlin: Johann Friedrich Unger, 1798), p. 428. This novel appeared first in Schiller’s Horen v. 8f., 1796.“Hochgräfin Gritta” was first published by Otto Mallon in Berlin: S. M. Fraenckel in 1926. There was a special edition of his afterword by the publisher in the same year, in which the sources, chronology, and motifs of the piece are thoroughly treated. Recent editions are: Walter Verlag of Olten, Switzerland/Freiburg im Br., 1980 and the appearance of the full text, including missing pages of the galley proofs which were recently discovered by Shawn Jarvis, in Insel Verlag, 1986. The Gritta tale is discussed in some detail in two forthcoming articles in Women in German Yearbook 3: Feminist Studies and German Culture (1986): Shawn Jarvis, “Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child? Bettine’s Das Leben der Hochgräfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns” and Edith Waldstein, “Romantic Revolution and Female Collectivity: Bettine and Gisela von Arnim’s Gritta.” More information on recent archival work can be found in the exhibition catalogue Bettine von Arnim: 1785–1859 (Frankfurt: Freies Deutsches Hochstift—Frankfurter Goethe Museum, 1985).Earlier feminist studies on Bettina Arnim include: Ingeborg Drewitz, Bettina von Arnim: Romantik, Revolution, Utopie (Düsseldorf: Diedrichs, 1969; Gisela Dischner, Bettina. Bettina von Arnim: Eine weibliche Sozialbiographie aus dem 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1977); an afterword by Christa Wolf on Bettina is found in Bettina von Arnim, Die Günderode (Inseltaschenbuch 702, 1983). On Bettina’s political activities, see Gertrud Meyer-Hepner, Der Magistratsprozeß der Bettina von Arnim (Weimar: Arion, 1960). Of interest to comparatists is an article by Margaret Fuller, “Bettine Brentano and her friend Günderode,” Dial 2 (1842): 313–357. Recent dissertations by Constanze Bäumer, Shawn Jarvis, Lisa Goldsehen, and Edith Waldstein indicate a Bettina revival.Bettina’s fairy tales are found in Bettina von Arnim, Werke und Briefe, Gustav Konrad, ed., (Frechen: Bartmann, 1963), v. 4. “Der Königssohn,” pp. 5–8 was first published in Westermanns Monatshefte 113 (1913): 554–558. She obtained her other short tales from other sources: “Hans ohne Bart” from Frau Marie Lehnhardt (Frankfurt) and “Die blinde Königstochter” from a Professor Arnold in Coblenz. “Königssohn,” contrary to Achim von Arnim’s recollection, was her own: she sent it to him in two installments in April, 1808 and had to remind him, “Das Märchen ist von mir; daß es Dir etwas dunkel vorschwebt, wird wohl sein, weil ich Dir einmal sprach, daß ich ein solches schreiben wollte, die letzte Hälfte schrieb ich grad so in Deinen Brief und ich weiß nicht einmal, ob es so recht an die erste Hälfte paßt, die ich gestern verloren hatte.” Citation from a later reprint in: Deutsche Literatur-Sammlung literarischer Kunst- und Kulturdenkmäler in Entwicklungsreihen, Reihe Romantik, v. 14, Märchen I, edited by Andreas Müller (Leipzig: Reclam, 1930), p. 308.Susan Gubar, “‘The Blank Page’ and the Issues of Female Creativity,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1981): 243–263.Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. The Tradition in English, ed. by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (New York: Norton, 1985), p. 67.Arnim, Werke und Briefe I: 289. Both Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde and a fragment of Die Günderode were translated into English by Margaret Fuller. In her anonymous translator’s preface to Günderode. A Translation from the German (Boston: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, 1842), she praises Bettina’s “wild graces of style” and hopes “that the translation retains the delicate lineaments of the original. It ought—for their beauty has been keenly feit by the interpreter.” The translation was completed by another woman in 1861.Arnim, Werke und Briefe II: 56.Arnim, Werke und Briefe IV: 13–114.On Bettina see note 24. Benedikte Naubert’s work has been almost exclusively ignored, but Georg Olms Verlag is presently publishing reprints of two of her historical novels. A new edition of the fairy tales and her magic novels is needed, as well as serious feminist scholarship.The following recent adaptations of fairy tale motifs in women’s literature are mentioned in the next section or are feminist reinterpreta tions:Ingeborg Bachmann: “Undine geht” in Das dreißigste Jahr (Munich: Piper, 1966) and Malina (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971); Marie Luise Kaschnitz, “Undine” in Zwischen Immer und Nie (Frankfurt: dtv, 1971); Barbara Frischmuth: Die Mystifikation der Sophie Silber (Salzburg: Residenz, 1973), Amy oder die Metamorphose (Salzburg: Residenz, 1978) Kai und die Liebe zu den Modellen (Salzburg: Residenz, 1981); Irmtraud Morgner: trilogy (unfinished), Das Leben der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura. Roman in dreizehn Büchern und sieben Intermezzos (Berlin: Aufbau, 1974), Amanda. Ein Hexenroman (Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1983). Other recent works of feminist fairy tales are Mürchen deutscher Dichterinnen, erste Folge (Karlsruhe: Karlsruhe Bote, n.d. 1983?), Ursula Eggli, Fortschritt in Grimmsland. Ein Märchen für Mädchen und Frauen (Bern: Riurs, 1982) and Die Blütenhexe und der blaue Rauch. Ein modernes Märchen (Bern: Riurs, 1984), both inspired by the women’s movement and the handicappers movement, published in the author’s press, Wangenstr. 27, CH-3018 Bern. Grimms Miirchen—modern: Prosa, Gedichte, Karikaturen. Für die Sekundarstufe, Wolfgang Mieder, ed. (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1979, No. 9554) gives an interesting overview of variants of classical Grimm tales up to modern socially critical versions.Quoted from Arthur Helps and Elizabeth Jane Howard, Bettina: A Portrait (New York: Reynal, n.d.), p. 151.Eugenie Marlitt, Goldelse (Leipzig, Ernst Keil, 1867), p. 9.Frischmuth’s work, read at the 1984 conference of The Coalition of Women in German, appears under the title “Eine souveräne Posaune Gottes: Gedanken zu Hildegard von Bingen und ihrem Werk,” in Women in German Yearbook 2: Feminist Studies and German Culture 1986: 11–21.