Spring 1999 Book Reviews

Editor: Magda Mueller
E-Mail: mmueller@csuchico.edu
Deptartment of Foreign Languages
California State University, Chico
Chico, CA 95929-0825
Phone: 916-893-0361

In this excellent study of Christa Wolf's texts, Sabine Wilke presents first a comparison of Wolf's self-reflective writing style with the writing strategies of the new historians. Highlighting the parallels between the two, Wilke reviews the ambivalence of the kind of historical writing process that teeters between the objectivist and idiosyncratic subject positions as well as the tension between the subject acting on society and society's acting on the subject.

Chapter Two compares Wolf's archeological model of historiography to Benjamin's fragment "Ausgraben und Erinnern." The archeologist, the site of excavation, and the discovered object must be illumined in their intrinsically linked environment as configuration. Benjamin's archeologist hunts for splinters of silenced history (monads) not found in the traditional victors' history. By resubmitting Benjamin's dialectic of stasis in a dialectic with the writing of history, Wolf problematizes historiography as archeology by drawing attention to her tools (writing/language) which are always already imbued with tradition. Discoveries are immediately beset by repression or homogenizing intent.

Chapter Three investigates passages dealing with fascism and the final solution, compares Wolf's arguments to those of the Historikerstreit, and scrutinizes Wolf's technique of analogy-building. Through historical analogies, Wolf explores the connection between historical materials and subjective remembering. By stringing together personal observations of past and present, Wolf does not assume an apologetic position but rather problematizes the process of memory.

Chapter Four looks at definitions of subjectivity and identity. Wilke explores a shift in Wolf's writing from the dialogical perception of the subject in Nachdenken über Christa T to a more essentialist stance in Kassandra. In spite of Wolf's reliance on enlightenment ideas (e.g., a rational model of conflict-solving), she presents a new model of how sex/gender may be perceived. By presenting female figures within a net of relationships, she (re)creates their identities anew. Simultaneously, through her critical excavation, these figures have access to an assumed plane of authentic femininity long buried by historical and cultural processes. Wilke locates Wolf's aesthetic of resistance in the play of these two moments.

Discussing the mirror scenes in Wolf's works, Chapter Five problematizes the identification-formation as it is conditioned by mirroring-processes, and examines the strategies of doubling, role-reversals, gender/sex-changes, the dissolution of subjectivity and sex/gender, etc. She draws on Stefan's Häutungen and Aichinger's Spiegelgeschichte to compare the multi-layered process of identity-formation found in Wolf. Wilke identifies three forms of poetic play based on the discussion of women's relationship to specular logic and to the space of mirroring.

Wilke then applies Irigaray's "parler femme," her reading against the grain, to various Wolf texts. Focusing on the doubling and division of female identity, she examines how Wolf employs the image of the distorting mirror in Kein Ort. Nirgends to allow the Günderrode figure to escape the specular (male) logic. Equally interesting is her analysis of the cross-dressing and transgender imagery in the same novel.

The concluding chapter explores the body's status as stage for the performance of Weiblichkeit. Wilke examines first the representation of a gendered body as the stage for the violent inscription of social structures. Aspects of this can be self-negation and self-mutilation, exemplified in Wolf's Penthesilea who purposely destroys herself in order to warn her warriors through her example of their consequences.

Wilke then addresses the function of body language as an opposing pole to the power of society. Relying on Kristeva's distinction of the symbolic versus the semiotic, and Cixous's notion of female desire based on mutual exchange rather than conquest, she suggests that Wolf's texts exhibit problematic and contradictory elements of a similar kind of desire, sisterliness, and a return of the repressed semiotic.

In conclusion, Sabine Wilke presents an important contribution toward the critical body concerned with Wolf's oeuvre. The study's strength lies in the contextualization of feminist concerns as they surface in Christa Wolf's texts.

The bourgeois ideal of the sentimental family which arose during the late eighteenth century definitively relegated women to the private sphere and to the corresponding domestic roles of wife, mother, and caretaker. In her writing, as in her personal life, Therese Huber neither radically opposed this norm nor did she programmatically seek to change it. She sought to maintain a feminine image and took pride in her faithful devotion to her household and familial responsibilities. Yet Huber did lead an unconventional life; she was a prolific author of novels, stories, and travelogues, as well as a translator, editor, and biographer. Paradoxically, her outspoken conformity to the norm allowed her to simultaneously circumvent that norm and maintain a career as a freelance writer.

In her feminist reading of a selection of Huber’s narrative prose works, Gokhale demonstrates that the author uses the very same strategy of touting tradition to communicate non-traditional attitudes in her works. Gokhale effectively argues that beneath the overt conformity of Huber’s texts to the social norm lies a form of subtextual protest, which she describes in Foucaultean terms as "‘a starting point for an opposing strategy’" (30). By utilizing techniques such as circumlocution, euphemism, and silence, ambivalence in content, and the projection of rebellious impulses in anti-heroines (Gilbert and Gubar’s "dark-double"), like other women writers of her time, Huber can employ conventional themes to subversively protest women’s subordination. Her positive female characters find options within the confines of domesticity to negotiate their freedom and to express themselves. Women figures who are too independent or rebellious are punished, or they are integrated into the domestic setting, or they simply regress into the background of her narrations. Such a strategy allows Huber to articulate forms of dissent in the course of her narrations without overtly approving of them. In her stories, the patriarchal structure of society is thus neither attacked nor challenged; instead strategies of power manipulation within the bounds of the private sphere are revealed. Gokhale points out that unlike the female characters in her works, Huber herself did enter domains reserved for men. She could do this only by maintaining a non-threatening domestic image and operating within the boundaries prescribed by that male-dominated society.

Gokhale succeeds in demonstrating the existence a subversive feminist content in five of Therese Huber’s stories: "Die Frau von vierzig Jahren," "Klosterberuf," "Die Jugendfreunde," "Die ungleiche Heirath," and "Die früh Verlobten." In addition, Gokhale’s prefatory description of the social and personal circumstances in which Huber lived and wrote can help the uninformed reader attain a better understanding of the conditions which affected women’s writing around 1800. If not groundbreaking or wholly new in its direction, her study does broaden the scope of research on Huber, whose novels have most often been the primary focus of feminist scholarship. At the same time, however, Gokhale’s seemingly arbitrary treatment of less than one-sixth of Huber’s narrative prose works leaves the reader asking a number of questions: What led Gokhale to choose these five works in particular? In what specific way does each story embody "characteristics typical of Huber’s prose" (2)? And what place do her narratives have in relation to her oeuvre? One wonders what specific categories and patterns of protest might emerge from a comprehensive study of Huber’s thirty-three narratives. Gokhale’s study offers a few starting points from which further exploration can ensue. Detailed answers to such questions remain a direction for future feminist scholarship, however.

Despite all this, Gokhale’s contribution to the body of Huber research should not be overlooked. She includes in her work a comprehensive bibliography and detailed index to facilitate further study, and she does indeed succeed in her effort to demonstrate in Huber’s writing "a constant shift between conformism and confrontation" (30).

Scholars who use and appreciate Elke Frederiksen's 1989 Greenwood volume, Women Writers of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: An Annotated Bio-Bibliographical Guide, will not be surprised at the usefulness and high quality of the present coedited volume. Unlike its predecessor, which offered brief biographical sketches and extensive annotated bibliographies for almost 200 women authors, the new critical sourcebook offers informative articles and bibliographies of primary and secondary literature on about one-third that number of women from the early Middle Ages (Hrostsvit von Gandersheim) to contemporaries, such as Verena Stefan and Elfriede Jelinek. For a Germanist looking at this volume, who may be tempted to regard it as comprising a sort of "canon" of German women writers, it is sobering to realize that most of them remain unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, as Frederiksen points out in her introduction. The inclusion under a separate rubric in the individual author bibliographies of the few extant translations should at least facilitate broader access to these writers, if not animate further endeavors to produce sorely needed translations.

Probably because of the long gestation of this project, some of the individual bibliographies do not appear to be completely up to date; most do not go beyond the early to mid-1990s. The time lag between conception and publication may also help to explain the near-absence of "hyphenated" German authors, a lacuna which the editors themselves acknowledge and attribute to their unsuccessful search for contributors: With the exception of the Czech-German Libuse Monikov‡, minority writers, such as the Afro-German and Turkish-German women whose presence on the literary scene has transformed contemporary understandings of "German" literature, thus do not appear in the volume. Many of them, of course, also belong to a generation that came into prominence after that of even the youngest women included in this volume.

The Sourcebook derives its strength from the editors' success in securing the collaboration of scholars with recognized expertise on the authors treated in the articles, which range from six to twelve pages. Well-written and eminently readable, these entries present a solid introduction to their subjects and frequently also offer satisfying new insights for readers who may already possess basic knowledge of the author in question. Arranged alphabetically, the articles follow a uniform pattern of organization, beginning with a brief account of the author's life and times. The central focus of every essay, however, is an examination of major themes and narrative strategies in the work of each author. It is here that the variety of feminist theoretical approaches employed by the contributors produces the richness of critical insights that distinguish this volume from more bland reference works. With a "Survey of Criticism" reserved for the end of each article, the contributors' own voices resonate clearly in the main portion of their analyses.

The volume concludes with a chronological list of authors by date of birth and a useful general bibliography, which is organized into the following subsections: reference works; theoretical and methodological discussions; critical anthologies and studies on women and German literature and culture; socio-historical studies; and selected studies and collections on specific literary and socio-historical topics, the latter arranged chronologically. All told, this book is a model of thoughtful conceptualization, careful scholarship, and conscientious editing. There is no reason, except the price, why this volume may not find its place in handy reach on the bookshelf of most GermanistInnen.

Jede(r) Deutschunterrichtende sollte dieses Lesebuch in seiner/ihrer Buchsammlung haben -- die Frage ob dieses auch auf jede(n) Deutschlernende(n) zutrifft, kann allerdings nicht so eindeutig beantwortet werden. Marianne und Martin Löschmann formulieren in der Einleitung den Wunsch, interkultureller bzw. menschlicher Kommunikation mit all ihren positiven aber auch gebrochenen Untertönen eine Stimme verleihen zu wollen und dabei nicht lediglich "der Verklärung in der alle Menschen Brüder werden (XIII)" zu verfallen. Diesem Anspruch wurde ohne Frage Genüge geleistet: Einander verstehen ist eine anregende Sammlung komplexer und vielfältiger literarischer Texte und Textauszüge, die nur schwerlich zu Schwarz-Weiß-Malerei oder Heile-Welt-Phantasien einladen. Bemerkenswert ist auch das breite Spektrum an Texten -- so findet der/die Leser(in) Kurzgeschichten, Romanauszüge, Gedichte, Lieder und Beispiele anderer Genres aus verschiedenen Epochen, die ihm/ihr nicht schon aus diversen Lesebüchern für den Fremdsprachenunterricht in Erinnerung sind. Allerdings sind die Löschmanns sowohl in ihrer Themen- als auch in ihrer Autorenwahl nicht gerade von der traditionellen Selektionsweise für Anthologien abgewichen: der Löwenanteil der Texte wurde von Männern geschrieben und die Themen konzentrieren sich auf Bereiche wie "Generationen", Frauen und Männer", "Deutsche" und "Fremde".

Aus didaktischer Sicht läßt das Lesebuch einiges zu wünschenübrig. Den Studenten werden unzureichende Hilfestellungen an die Hand gegeben. Es gibt weder Aufgaben zur Einführung in die Themen noch zur Vorbereitung auf das Lesen und Vokabelhilfen sind eher die Ausnahme als die Regel. Die Autoren versuchen zwar möglicher Kritik zuvorzukommen, indem sie kundtun, die Texte benötigten keine Einführung, weil es sich bei ihrer Textsammlung nicht um ein literaturwissenschaftliches oder literaturhistorisches Buch handele - doch dieses scheint mir für ein Lesebuch, das angeblich schon im Fremdsprachenunterricht der Mittelstufe einzusetzen sei, eine eher magere Erklärung zu sein. Die spärlichen Aufgaben zur Textanalyse, zur Diskussion, zum Schreiben und zum Rollenspiel, die dem Leser angeboten werden, weisen zudem einige Schwächen auf. So werden die Studenten (die keinesfalls immer Literaturhauptfächler sind) zu Genres befragt, ohne diese vorher definiert zu haben, oder unter der Rubrik Diskussion findet sich ein Eintrag wie: "Was könnte hier diskutiert werden" (74) ?

Um auf meine eingangs gestellte Frage zurückzukommen, ob sich Einander verstehen im Besitz aller Deutschlernenden befinden sollte, so muß meine Antwort "nein" lauten. Den Studenten wird der Zugang zu den zum Teil recht schwer zu erschliessenden Texten (z.B. Ausschnitte aus Heiner Müllers Leben Gundlings Friedrich von Preußen Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei oder Franz Xaver Kroetz' Furcht und Hoffnung der BRD: Ausländerdeutsch) nicht erleichtert, und der/die Deutschunterrichtende wird in seiner/ihrer Arbeit nur insofern entlastet als es sich bei dem Buch um eine Fundgrube interessanter und noch nicht allzu "abgenutzter" Texte handelt. Die Anthologie könnte genauso gut für den Oberstufenunterricht an deutschen Gymnasien zusammengestellt sein und zeichnet sich nicht als eine pädagogisch ausgewogene und durchdidaktisierte Materialiensammlung für den Fremdsprachenunterricht aus.

Hermynia Zur Mühlen is a name which is familiar to a few WiG members, but it certainly should be known by us all. Born in 1883 to one of the highest aristocratic families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Zur Mühlen was raised in the traditions of her class and married another, albeit lower-ranking Baltic German aristocrat in 1908, but broke free to become a translator and writer, to join the Communist Party, then to renounce Communism for left-wing Catholicism in the 1930s. A convinced antifascist, she was forced to flee the Nazis and lived in Austria, Slovakia, and finally England until her death in 1951. All but forgotten after the early 1950s, Zur Mühlen was "rediscovered" in the 1980s, and the author of this biography, Manfred Altner, was the driving force behind the Zur Mühlen renaissance. His biography is a major contribution to our knowledge about this fascinating writer; it also helps expand the readers' understanding of the disparate worlds in which she lived.

One of the difficulties in researching an "unknown" writer is locating biographical sources years after the subject's death, and Altner admits that he was unable to find independent information on Zur Mühlen's childhood and early adulthood, so the chapters about this period in her life consist mainly of quotations from her autobiography, Ende und Anfang, along with the results of Altner's characteristically detailed research on her family and first husband. The rest of the book is divided up into segments focused on the stations of her very dynamic life and work: Frankfurt am Main, Die Märchen, Kriminalromane, Als Emigratin in der der Heimat are some examples. One segment spotlights her important work as a translator, and especially her relationship with Upton Sinclair, which can be documented through the still extant letters between the two writers. Zur Mühlen not only translated his novels and stories, but worked hard making them known in the German-speaking world. Despite her efforts, this relationship was sometimes rocky, and Sinclair eventually chose another translator because he had been told that her efforts were not good enough, a turn of events Zur Mühlen attributed to the interference of Wieland Herzfelde and the Malik publishing house. The association between the two writers and the conflict with Herzfelde and Malik are interesting, but Altner explicates this matter in excessive detail, quoting long sections of the pertinent correspondence. As here, in other sections of the biography he tends to cite too copiously from original documents rather than paraphrasing or, better, analyzing them.

Some of the best segments of the biography deal with Zur Mühlen's life in exile. Altner's examination of her life on the run after leaving Germany in 1933 is a sympathetic portrayal of how exiles were forced to live, begging for handouts from relief agencies, leaving the barest essentials behind, even the books and notes she needed to write. Especially difficult were her first years in England, where in the first months after the outbreak of World War II fascists and antifascists were interned together under circumstances that jeopardized Zur Mühlen's already fragile health. In other excellent parts of the book, Altner provides brief but insightful introductions and analyses of her works, most of which must be unfamiliar to his readers. For example, in the chapter about her 1920s fairy tales, Altner first concisely outlines the theories behind the proletariat-revolutionary children's stories of the 1920s, then comments on zur Mühlen's stories' place and significance within this genre. Certainly, this new biography deserves to be read by anyone interested in broadening her knowledge about German-speaking women writers of the twentieth century.

†berzeugend dokumentiert der umfangreiche Band vielfältige und bedeutende Positionen, die Frauen in der Aufklärung einnahmen. Aufgeräumt wird eindeutig mit dem Vorurteil, allein Männer seien Agenten der Aufklärung gewesen. Frauen partizipierten im Kommunikationsprozeß der Aufklärung und gestalteten aktiv Diskurse. Neben der Briefkultur beeinflußten Frauen Lesegesellschaften und waren wesentlich an der Gruppenbildung und am Formationsprozeß der aufgeklärten Bildungselite beteiligt. Der Band enthält vierzehn in zwei thematischen Teilen gegliederte Essays. Der erste, "Ordnung und Geselligkeit der Geschlechter bei Hof und in der städtischen Bildungselite", umfaßt acht und der zweite, "Vom aufklärerischen Diskurs zur politischen Praxis", sechs Beiträge. Die Volkswagen-Stiftung unterstützte den Druck und finanzierte auch bereits eine Reihe von Colloquien (1994-96) zu "Politik, Gesellschaft und Geselligkeit der Geschlechter im Zeitalter der Aufklärung".

Darauf basieren diese Forschungsergebnisse von Historikerinnen, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaftlerinnen, die in der vorliegenden interdisziplinären Anthologie versammelt sind. Alle Beiträge nehmen geschlechtergeschichtliche Sichtweisen zum Ausgangspunkt, aktivieren breitgestreute feministische Ansätze und etablieren innovative Sichtweisen zum Diskurs der Geschlechter und der Mentalitätenforschung der Aufklärung. Auf neuere sozialgeschichtliche Forschungen rekurrierend werden die höfischen Gesellschaften und die städtischen Bildungseliten nicht mehr als unvereinbare Gegensätze betrachtet, sondern als koexistente Räume gelesen, die sich nicht nur berührten sondern aufeinander vielfältige Wirkungen ausübten. Diese Wechselwirkungen werden ausgelotet.

Der erste Teil thematisiert das Wechselverhältnis von ständischer Ordnung und neuen Soziabilitätsformen. Dabei werden …ffentlichkeit und Privatheit nicht mehr als unversöhnliche Gegensätze oder gegensätzliche Sphären gedacht, sondern das Ineinanderwirken beider wird als …ffentlichkeit des Privaten analysiert. Unter diesen Prämissen untersuchen Sybille Oßwald-Bargende und Helga Meise Ehebrüche am württembergischen und am hessen-darmstädtischen Hof als öffentliche Ereignisse. Dadurch geraten Mätressen in den Mittelpunkt historisch-feministischer Diskursanalyse. Anne Fleig untersucht die (Selbst)Repräsentation als einen Aspekt politischer Kultur innerhalb der Legitimität fürstlicher Macht am Beispiel der sächsischen Kurprinzessin und späteren Kurfürstin Maria Antonia. Ihr politischer Aufstieg gelang ihr mit der Aufführung einer von ihr selbst komponierten und geschriebenen Amazonenoper, in der sie zudem noch als Amazonenkönigin auftrat. Brigitte Tolkemitt analysiert die herausragende Stellung von Frauen innerhalb geschlechtergemischter Geselligkeit in den offenen Häusern der Hamburger Familien Reimarus und Sieveking. Brigitte Schnegg stellt am Beispiel des Besuchs von Kloptock bei Bodmer die Vorbehalte des letzteren gegen den freien Umgang der Geschlechter untereinander dar. Gegen sozialgeschichtliche Quellen liest Claudia Opitz kritisch Montequieus Verdikt, Frauen verfügten in der Monarchieüber größere politische Macht.

Im zweiten Teil des Bandes analysiert Susanne Jenisch die aufklärerische Debatte um die Aufhebung der Geschlechts-vormundschaft. Im Gegensatz zu früheren feministischen Interpretationen liest sie sie als eine wesentliche Instanz zur Wahrung weiblicher Interessen. Susanne Toppe zeigt, daß der aufklärerische Diskurs zur Mutterschaft die Position der Frauen verschlechterte, da er die Kontrolleüber sie intensivierte. Die sozialdisziplinierende Rolle der Aufklärung untersucht Olivia Hochstrasser am Beispiel des gesellschaftlichen Zurückdrängens weiblicher Pauperisierter. Vergleichbare Disziplinierungsversuche sieht Dietlind Hüchtker in der Reglementierung Prostituierter. Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen zeichnet in "Das Ende männlicher Zeugungsmythen im Zeitalter der Aufklärung: Zur Wissenschafts- und Geschlechtergeschichte des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts" die Entwicklung des naturwissenschaftlichen-aufklärerischen Diskurses nach. Leider fehlt dem sorgfältig edierten Band ein Register und eine umfassende Bibliographie. Letztere kann aber ohne weiteres aus den zahlreichen Anmerkungen sondiert werden. Alles in allem ist diese Essaysammlung ein wesentlicher Beitrag zum interdisziplinären Gespräch, der in keiner Bibliothek fehlen sollte.

While German women have increasingly become the subjects of interdisciplinary inquiries, the study of Austrian women has long been secondary to that of their neighbors. The Austrian Cultural Institute in New York must be commended for subsidizing the publication of Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, the first of a two-volume series on Austrian Studies. This one consists of essays derived from the 1991 "Women in Austria Symposium," held at the University of Minnesota, which initiated and encouraged an open exchange on the developing area of women's studies in the Austrian context. The subtitle, Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, indicates the text's greatest strength, namely it's having compiled essays in history, political science, economics, social sciences, and gender studies. The diversity of the contributions is truly impressive, both in regards to the discipline and the time frame. While earlier studies on Austria have overwhelmingly focused on turn-of-the-century Vienna, Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century encompasses a much broader period.

The book is divided into three parts: "Gender and Politics," "Women and Work," and "Female Identities." In the first part, James Albisetti convincingly questions the myth of the alleged Austrian backwardness in female education. Comparing nineteenth-century schooling and teaching policies in Austria to those in Germany and Switzerland, Albisetti concludes that in some areas, Austria was clearly more progressive than German states and other European countries, a fact that dramatically underscores the need for more research on the topic. In "Women in Austrian Politics, 1890-1934: Goals and Visions" Brigitta Bader-Zaar recounts the history of the Austrian suffrage movement and analyzes women's behavior after they were granted voting rights in December 1918, taking into account issues of class, race, and religion. Bader-Zaar concludes that the frame of cultural feminism, namely concepts of gender differences, shaped ideas about women in politics before and after enfranchisement. Particularly fruitful is the continuous comparisons to the American suffrage movement. Examining the present-day situation of women in the Austrian parliament, Gerda Neyer's work continues Bader-Zaar's inquiry. Neyer establishes that women's increased representation in the Parliament has not led to gender equality and argues that only participation in the extra-parliamentary institutions will change existing power relations. Complemented by valuable statistics, Neyer's essay is a very readable and succinct summary of gender biases in Austria's current political system.

In the second part, "Women and Work," Erna Appelt effectively traces the evolution of "female" positions in the service sector. She suggests that although gender-specific jobs resulted in a shift from patriarchal businesses to capitalistic enterprises, it soon paved the way to a gender-segregated labor market that secured privileged positions for men. Continuing to examine women's work in the second half of the twentieth-century, Gudrun Biffl's contribution provides important statistics on women's work in the domestic sphere and in the labor market. This data, which indicates that women work more hours than men in the household and also do substantially higher amounts of paid and unpaid work combined over their life cycle, might be particularly useful for further analysis. In "Femininity and Professionalism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Ambition in Female Academics and Managers in Austria," Gertraud Diem-Wille analyses what she considers to be successful career women, although this term is never defined. Her controversial essay tends to confirm the negative stereotype of the obsessive career woman, rather than make distinctions among women.

In the last part, "Female Identities," Marie-Luise Angerer describes the development and establishment of gynecology in the early nineteenth century. While the first part of her analysis fills a gap in existing scholarship by providing the medical context of the discourse on female sexuality, Angerer's examination of the psychological discourse on women in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna is less convincing. Angerer does not give a detailed critical reading of Freud's writings on hysteria, and her analysis of female sexuality in Klimt's paintings remains vague. "War and Gender Identity: The Experience of Austrian Women, 1945-1950," offers interviews with women from all social classes during World War II and the postwar period in Vienna. The authors question the victimization myth that exempts Austrian women on the basis of their nationality and their gender from taking responsibility for the Nazi past. Their essay examines important and little researched areas of Austria's postwar history, such as women's fear of rape by the liberators and the changing gender relations upon men's return from the front. Some of these theses are very engaging, in particular, the theory that women employed Hollywood imagery to describe and frame traumatic postwar memories. Here, a more detailed analysis and more actual quotes from the interviews would be useful. At other times, the authors seem surprisingly insensitive, such as in calling a woman "lucky" because she was "only" raped and did not contract a disease or an unwanted pregnancy.

All in all, Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century offers a selection of very fine and engaging essays. As a resource book, the text provides a wealth of historical information so increasingly needed for cultural and literary inquiries. The interdisciplinary character of the work allows the reader to select up-to-date scholarship in diverse areas, to have statistics and historical summaries available for classroom use, and to obtain important references for an in-depth examination.

This study takes a fresh look at Greiffenberg's meditations on Mary's pregnancy and the Last Supper. In four chapters, Foley-Beining introduces Greiffenberg as a prolific author, offers historical perspectives on women's religious writing, and discusses the gendered physical aspects of her religious understanding in "Von Marien Schwanger-gehen" (1678), and "Die Abendmahls-Andachten" (1693). Disregarding Greiffenberg's active engagement with several literary societies and her vigorous correspondence with leading members of these societies, Foley-Beining reads her primarily as a religious writer and considers her work within "a long tradition of women's written spiritual expression" (25) characterized by a physical dimension of individual spirituality. She utilizes "gynocritics" (a term coined by Elaine Showalter in "Toward a Feminist Poetics" of 1985) for her concise textual analysis of Greiffenberg's work and advocates the construction of new theoretical models for further critical readings of women's literature based on the female sufferance.

The author elaborates on these female experiences in "Von Marien Schwanger-gehen" and "Die Abendmahls-Andachten" and understands Greiffenberg's detailed fictionalization of the Holy Mother's pregnancy as an attempt to elevate women's biological and spiritual dimension. Although the religious writer herself was never pregnant, Foley-Beining argues that Greiffenberg's "sensitivity to maternal issues [and her] empathy for the experience of other women" (92) allowed her to understand the relevance that pregnancy played in spiritual growth. However, Foley-Beining does not problematize Greiffenberg's avoidance of describing the birth-process. She fails to consider the large number of 17th-century women who had miscarriages, stillbirths, or even died during childbirth. In Foley-Beining's view, women perceive pregnancy in the same way, arguing that each woman has the ability to transcend the physicality of the birth process, and can thereby access an individual religious awareness.

By positioning her analysis within "gynocritics," Foley-Beining offers valuable insights on how corporeality can define gendered religious experiences. Yet, such a critical approach intrinsically leads to essentialism, and exactly this essentialist notion threatens to undermine Foley-Beining's otherwise meticulous textual analysis. A critical engagement with Greiffenberg's "Meditations" in light of the cultural restraints placed on women in 17th-century Germany and to the extent that Greiffenberg's fictionalization stayed within the narrowly defined spaces of correct female behavior would provide a broader analysis of Greiffenberg's work. Further investigation into Greiffenberg's knowledge of the Querelle des Femmes could elucidate a gender awareness beyond the corporeality of women and inquire whether Greiffenberg's religious writings can be seen as part of a German Querelle tradition. Nevertheless, Foley-Beinings close reading of the "Meditations" is an important contribution to a literary history that includes a critical engagement with texts by early modern women.

WiG Book Reviews Online Spring 1999