Narrating the self: realism in the works of Theodor Fontane and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

textComparisons of selected late realist prose works by Theodor Fontane and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach reveal surprising thematic and narrative similarities regarding ways of looking at the self. Scholars have thus far largely overlooked these similarities, perhaps partially because Fontane has enjoyed more lasting recognition than EbnerEschenbach. Insights from close readings that make up the core of this dissertation, bolstered by a variety of interpretive methodologies, show a shared ambivalence towards the narrative possibilities and impossibilities of the individual’s relationship to the self that frequently culminates in the death of a female character. Each chapter addresses one theme relating to a stage of human life and associated issues of self. The methodologies are chosen to complement issues that emerge from the texts and range from idealist aesthetic constructions to poststructuralist psychoanalytical theory. The authors’ autobiographic formulations of childhoods in the 1830s and 1840s that balance the conflicted aspects of self incorporate ideas from Schiller’s idealism. vii Schopenhauer’s idea of the will provides a fitting frame for the internal and external challenges of becoming an adult in Ebner-Eschenbach’s “Das Gemeindekind” (“Their Pavel”) and Fontane’s Effi Briest. A combination of three methodological aids centering on the pressures of unrelenting surveillance in Fontane’s Cécile and Ebner-Eschenbach’s “Margarete” show how society disturbs the maintenance of the autonomy of self. In the interpretations of Ebner-Eschenbach’s “Unsühnbar” (“Beyond Atonement”) and Fontane’s Unwiederbringlich (Beyond Recall) informed by Lacanian psychoanalytical theories, assets of impeccable feminine virtue that border on the sublime become deadly burdens. The wide range of theories moves the interpretations towards the conclusion that is valid for the late realist movement in general: the narratives are reflections of individuals’ attempts to build and maintain whole selves, in accordance with the principles of a realist worldview. The successes and failures of these attempts show realism straining to accommodate the changing perceptions of self, positioned at the threshold of Freud’s revolution of the unconsciousGermanic Studie