Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowlegments
- Introduction
- 1 Woman versus Women: Gender, Art, and Decadence in “Der Mensch als Weib” and Eine Ausschweifung
- 2 Marriage and Science: Discourses of Domestication in Das Haus
- 3 Untamed Woman: Talking about Sex and Self in Jutta
- 4 Motherhood, Masochism, and Subjectivity in Ma: Ein Porträt
- 5 Returning the Gaze: Uppity Women in Menschenkinder
- 6 Articulating Identity: Narrative as Mastery and Self-Mastery in Fenitschka
- Conclusion: Women Who Move Too Much
- Works Cited
- Index
2 - Marriage and Science: Discourses of Domestication in Das Haus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowlegments
- Introduction
- 1 Woman versus Women: Gender, Art, and Decadence in “Der Mensch als Weib” and Eine Ausschweifung
- 2 Marriage and Science: Discourses of Domestication in Das Haus
- 3 Untamed Woman: Talking about Sex and Self in Jutta
- 4 Motherhood, Masochism, and Subjectivity in Ma: Ein Porträt
- 5 Returning the Gaze: Uppity Women in Menschenkinder
- 6 Articulating Identity: Narrative as Mastery and Self-Mastery in Fenitschka
- Conclusion: Women Who Move Too Much
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
THE AMBIVALENCE, AMBIGUITIES, AND dialogic style that dominate “Der Mensch als Weib” and Eine Ausschweifung also play a significant role in the other works that Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Although she did not write Das Haus (The House) until 1904, it reveals a similar engagement with feminist ideologies. As in Eine Ausschweifung, Andreas-Salomé weighs the pros and cons of the changes in women's and men's lives in this time of transition to new roles. Whereas Eine Ausschweifung (and the co-published Fenitschka) examines these changes in female characters who do not follow traditional paths in life and in the men they befriend, Das Haus explores the domestic domain and woman's changing role in marriage. Adine of Eine Ausschweifung envies her mother's marriage and regrets that what she presents as a kind of pathology prevented her from entering into a similar marriage, but she is not naïve enough to believe that marriage to Benno would have automatically brought fulfillment: “… hätten wir uns rasch heiraten können, so wäre wohl für mich die Enttäuschung auf dem Fuße gefolgt, oder aber es würde die Mutterschaft mich vielleicht in meinem ganzen Wesen stark verwandelt haben” (75; “If we had been able to get married soon, I would have had a quick and sudden disappointment. Or maybe motherhood would have changed my entire being completely,” 54).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Women in the Works of Lou Andreas-SaloméNegotiating Identity, pp. 45 - 68Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009