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The Resistance of Effi Briest: An (Un)told Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Valerie D. Greenberg
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Abstract

Rereading the canon in the light of recent theory and criticism can turn into a subversive project when one finds that a novel long considered easily accessible and safely categorized may be neither. Such is the outcome of this essay's reading of Theodor Fontane's popular Effi Briest (1894–95). Incomplete stories in the text lead to a reassessment of its ending, of the heroine's position, and of the text's political implications. What emerges is a modern, self-reflexive, incipiently feminist Effi Briest that resists the standard readings and instead moves closer to “shocking” texts of the time (such as Wedekind's first Lulu play and Freud's Studies on Hysteria) than to those texts with which it is traditionally compared.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 103 , Issue 5 , October 1988 , pp. 770 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1988

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