Women's Participation in the Literary Public Sphere Through Essayistic Writing (1770-1830)

Abstract

My project reveals that German women around 1800 used the essay to participate in the emerging public sphere. I build on the work of Rohner, Schärf and McCarthy that positions the German essay as an established literary form well before its popularity in the 20th century. I chose four authors whose essays opened up the essay to other women writers. Sophie von La Roche’s Pomona (1783-84) and Marianne Ehrmann’s Amaliens Erholungsstunden (1790-92) contained essays that shaped contemporary understanding of the role and function of a women’s journal. Therese Huber and Caroline Pichler supported their families by prolific fictional writing, and used essayistic writing to express their opinions publicly, and yet did not agree on the place of this writing within their literary oeuvre. My research sheds new light on the complex role gender plays in the public sphere, and just how eminently suitable essayistic writing is to the expression of minority voices, particularly for women emerging as authors publishing under their own name.