Abstract

This dissertation traces the interrelation between female gender norms and the representation of femininity in texts by the late-eighteenth-century German authors Sophie von La Roche , Benedikte Naubert , Friedericke Unger and Auguste Fischer . In this time period of a developing middle class, female gender roles were no longer perceived as socially constructed but as part of female nature. Femininity therefore was seen as unchanging--unaffected by time, space, or the individual. ;It is these naturalized universal norms that set the parameters of the literary representation of femininity in German literature. Unchanging norms can only exist in tension with narratives, since narratives are usually a description of a process through time. Rather than becoming a venue for self-expression, these literary texts trace an increasing silence and the lack of possibility and choice for female protagonists. Story-telling can only take place when the expected female narrative is at least temporarily disrupted , the text offers an alternative approach to female gender norms , or the female heroines decide not to marry . ;As a result, a second form of representation, namely paintings, is introduced in many of these texts. Pictures were seen as better able than narratives to capture the unchanging quality of femininity. In addition to being unaffected by time, paintings are isolated by their frames from their spatial context. Consequently, what is depicted in them can easily pass as an expression of eternal and universal truth, and as such is prone to idealization. ;Critical consideration of female gender norms throws new light on literary texts that have long been seen as aesthetically deficient because of their uneventful plots. Instead, the missing narratives can be seen as a necessary consequence of an unchanging concept of femininity and as indicators of the cultural shifts occurring at that time