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Rethinking Tableaux Vivants and Triviality in
the Writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Johanna Schopenhauer, and Fanny Lewald
PETER M. MCISAAC
Duke University
Recent art practice and scholarship have sought to find new ways of thinking
about the cultural significance of tableaux vivants and attitudes, a widespread
form of entertainment between the 1780s and 1900.' In these related cultural
practices, series of static scenes from paintings and other art works, as well as
literary and mythological sources, were re-created with living people in lavish
costumes and sets. Perhaps because these productions often succeeded in giving
the impression that static scenes had come to life, these productions created
peculiar effects, among them the sensation of a dream-like state, which
intrigued and delighted contemporary observers. Yet despite being highly
enjoyed by the likes of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and A.W. Schlegel, tableaux
vivants were nonetheless regarded as an amusing but aesthetically inferior,
even low culture, pastime. Although tableaux vivants' inferior status was
sometimes linked to a belief that they hailed from the lower classes in Italy,
around 1800 tableaux were also strongly associated with femininity. Women,
particularly Lady Emma Hamilton of England, Henriette Hendel-Schlitz of
Germany, and Ida Brun of Denmark, were the most compelling performers
of tableaux vivants. Female characters and their bodily expressions likewise
received acute scrutiny during tableaux performances in widely read literary
texts such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Johanna
Schopenhauer's Gabriele and Fanny Lewald's Jenny.
In this essay, I wish to probe the nexus of feniininity, entertainment,
and the aesthetic functions of tableaux vivants in prevailing social and literary
settings. Focusing on accounts of tableaux performance on the one hand
and literary texts by Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Lewald on the other, I will
analyze tableaux vivants and the texts deploying them in terms of what I will
call a gendered, high/low cultural divide.^ In such a divide, the gendering of
cultural forms works to construct and maintain hierarchical relationships between
notions of "serious" and "trivial" aesthetic and cultural status. In what
follows, it is important to recognize that Goethe's cultural status in fact rose
Monatshefte, Vol. 99, No. 2, 2007 152
0026-9271/2007/0002/152
© 2007 by The Board of Regents of The University of Wisconsin System

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 153
for his ability to create unabashedly "high culture" out of a trivial practice
such as tableaux vivants, making the Wahlverwandtschaften instrumental in
popularizing tableaux performance as a form of "domestic" entertainment in
nineteenth-century upper and middle class salons. A similar point can be made
about the way Goethe and his novel shaped tableaux vivants' literary life, particularly
for women writers such as Johanna Schopenhauer and Fanny Lewald.
In their novels Gabriele and Jenny, these authors used tableaux vivants and attitudes
to probe not only a fascinating range of issues having to do with female
bodies and emotions, including tableaux vivants' role in socializing young
women, but also Goethe's own beliefs about women and their place in society.
In spite of this strategy, Schopenhauer and Lewald's textual tableaux are
usually read to confirm the belief that, as popular women writers, they could
only have reiterated Goethe's insights. Paradoxically, their engagement with
Goethe's novel worked over time to reinforce a gendered fault line separating
great and trivial literature.
The high/low divide has compounded the prevailing view of tableaux
vivants as trivial, tending to further obscure the complexity of these women's
texts and the contributions they made through tableaux vivants. By deploying
the notion of a high/low divide, I seek to avoid this limitation. Ratiier than rehash
old arguments comparing the "quality" of Schopenhauer's and Lewald's
writing to Goethe's per se, I wish in particular to be mindful of canon formation
in shaping our approaches to texts, their conditions of production, and
their audiences. Around 1800, the boundary between high and low culture was
still fluid. The three literary texts in this essay were chosen because their welldocumented
interrelationships enable me to reconsider tableaux vivants' cultural
status and their impact on bodies and minds as a function of the emerging
literary high/low divide between 1780 and 1850.^
I. Tableaux vivants and the High/Low Divide
In assessing the "low" cultural status of attitudes and tableaux vivants, I wish
first to delineate what I mean by a high/low cultural divide. As Andreas Huyssen
argues in his essay "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other," high
modernism's claim to artistic superiority depends on its disowning of what it
considers to be popular, trivial, banal and/or feminine, even as high modernist
writers appropriated the "feminine" within their own projects to serve modernism's
own ends. As a case in point, Huyssen reads Flaubert's Madame Bovary,
stressing that the novel presents the kind of life and literary predilections that
ultimately destroyed Emma Bovary only to be able to repudiate them."* At
stake in this repudiation is an aesthetic transcendence of dilemmas of real life
that, among other things, threatened to overcome the writer himself. As the
famous statement "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" indicates, Flaubert struggled
with the boredom of quotidian domesticity and the seductive escapes offered

154 Peter M. Mclsaac
by pulp literature, aspects of a fantastic identification with femininity that
had to be repudiated and suppressed to make great literature.^ By inscribing
femininity and the consumption of trivial literature together on the low side of
the divide, Flaubert's aesthetic product can lay claim to high-cultural status,
attaining the status of "authentic literature" by distancing itself from the taints
and banalities of everyday life. For Huyssen, this divide and its association of
femininity with mass culture emerged as a function of modernization, receiving
its full articulation as the century progresses.''
A gendered, high/low cultural divide began to form around 1800 with
respect both to literary and consumer culture. One of the most significant
developments at this time was an expanding literary market, driven by growing
numbers of women writers and readers.' Characterized as dilettantes in
Goethe's and Schiller's "Uber den Dilettantismus," women writers and readers
alike were for the most part deemed incapable of distinguishing between the
work of art and its emotional effects, thereby defining serious works in opposing
and implicitly gendered terms.* If these criteria would one-day result in
expectation that the serious writer was almost assuredly male, around 1800 the
categories of the professional writer and "high" and "low" writing were still in
flux. By its third year of publication, Schiller in fact had to turn to women writers
in order to maintain the Die Horen's viability.^ Though, or perhaps in fact
because, commercial considerations clearly intruded upon classical literary
practices, measures such as these tended to reinforce Goethe's and Schiller's
conviction that high literature could and should be distinguished from forms
they held were lower (WAI 47: 312-13, 318).'° In this regard, it is worth recalling
that Goethe and Schiller attempted, as part of their "dilettante project,"
to convert Amalie von Imhoff's and Caroline von Wolzogen's writing into
"true art" by systematically eradicating its dilettante qualities, only to have
the result remain too "feminine" to attain the exalted category of true art."
And while Goethe and Schiller's inclusion of exceptional women's texts likely
formed part of a strategy designed to lead readers to a better appreciation of
"true" literature,'^ that strategy could only function by maintaining a perceptible
divide between "high" and "lower" forms of art. However it is viewed,
"classical" literary quality requires that "feminine" qualities be expunged or
shown to be identifiably foreign elements within a larger literary work.
A similar high/low divide can be seen in Weimar-era consumer culture,
whose trends were associated with fashionable cultural practices such as tableaux
vivants. Fashions in clothing and mass-manufactured home decoration
(busts, vases, medallions) shared much of the same Enlightenment heritage
and Grecophilic sources of inspiration as traditional Weimar classicism.'^ As
Catriona MacLeod has demonstrated, the mass marketing of neo-classical
sculptures and other decorative items went some way toward "exporting the
image of Weimar as classical center."''' Though prominent Weimar intellectuals
profited from this image, they were uncomfortable with, perhaps even

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 155
threatened by, the similarity of their aesthetic production to consumer culture,
causing them to distinguish between aesthetically inferior consumer goods
and an "appropriately" classicizing art. Not only concerned with literature, the
aesthetic tenets of German neo-classicism can be viewed also as a critical, if
defensive, response to the champions of this burgeoning consumer culture.'^
As in the literary context, the boundary between art and fashionable commodity
was reinforced by gestures that can be interpreted in gendered terms.
As an act of masculine defiance toward the commodity culture surrounding
it, "true art" establishes itself by repudiating aesthetic sensibilities deemed to
be changeable, whimsical, quotidian, entertaining, in short: feminine."" The
disavowal of non-masculine quotidian, entertaining, and/or commercial qualities
valorizes "true" art and literature, and ensures lower forms bearing those
feminized qualities always remain on the other side of a hierarchical divide.
A notable high/low distinction accompanied the fashionable tableaux
vivants. Despite their proliferation in aristocratic and educated circles, theories
of tableaux vivants locate their origins elsewhere, either in the distant, south
European past and/or the lower classes. In an article in the Abend-Zeitung, for
instance, Bottiger points to ancient traditions in Italy as predecessors of the
Goethezeit tableaux.'^ Similarly, in his Italienische Reise, Goethe expounds
the belief that tableaux vivants originated as a popular expression of common
Neapolitans.'* Later, these popular origins remained tied to tableaux vivants'
function as aristocratic entertainment. Indeed, Goethe first pondered tableaux
vivants during his initial stay in Naples, where he encountered the future Lady
Hamilton's "living pictures." This performance and the larger Neapolitan context
were again brought to mind when, following his excursion to Sicily, Goethe
was taken on a tour of Lord Hamilton's secret archaeological collection, where
Goethe and Hamilton come upon the gold-rimmed, black box Hamilton had
once used for her tableaux vivants (HAll: 403). After describing the stage,
Goethe explains,
Hier ist der Ort, noch einer andern entschiedenen Liebhaberei der Neapolitaner
uberhaupt zu gedenken. Es sind die Krippchen (presepe), die man zu Weihnachten
in alien Kirchen sieht, eigentlich die Anbetung der Hirten, Engel und
Konige vorstellend, mehr oder weniger voUstandig, reich und kostbar zusammen
gruppiert [...]
Da mag man nun manchmal aueh lebendige Figuren zwischen die Puppen
mit eingemiscbt haben, und nach und naeh ist eine der bedeutendsten Unterhaltungen
hoher und reicher Familien geworden, zu ihrer Abendergotzung aueh
weltliche Bilder, sie mogen nun der Gesehichte oder der Diehtkunst angehoren,
in ihren Palasten aufzufuhren. (HAll: 331-32)
In this passage, Goethe inscribes a prehistory to the ruling-class forms that,
by stressing their origins in popular nativity scenes, marks tableaux vivants as
appropriated cultural forms.'^ As if to underscore the notion that tableaux vivants
are somehow foreign to or outside of the upper classes, Goethe mentions

156 Peter M. McIsaac
twice in the same sentence that tableaux vivants function merely as entertainment
(diversions, evening amusement) once they are appropriated. Similarly,
in "Uber den Dilettantismus," Goethe and Schiller identify the "puppenartige
Reprasentation" of Italian romantic comedy and "Presepe und Tableau" as examples
of dilettantism in foreign drama (WAI 47: 317). In these texts, tableaux
vivants are presented in terms of a high/low divide, with their popular origins
and amusing functions serving to distinguish them from true high culture.
While their putative popular origins did not prevent Goethe from enjoying
tableaux vivants, their formal qualities, understood in terms of prevailing aesthetic
categories, more forcefully shaped his perceptions. Goethe summed up
his experience of Emma Hamilton's performance by writing "so viel ist gewiB,
derSpaBisteinzig!" (HAl 1:209). Part of what caused Goethe's "SpaB" derived
from seeing an art form full of unexpected transitions and combinations:
[Hamilton] hat [Emma Hamilton] ein griechisch Gewand machen lassen, das
sie trefflich kleidet, dazu lost sie ihr Haar auf, nimmt ein paar Schals und macht
eine Abwechselung von Stellungen, Gebarden, Mienen, etc., daB man zuletzt
wirklich meint, man traume" (HAl 1: 209).
Characteristic of tableaux vivants is on-going alternation of poses, gestures, and
emotions that otherwise might not be seen together. Juxtapositions of seemingly
disparate cultural categories likewise figured in the Henriette Hendel-Schutz's
performances. In moving from one scene to the next, these performers of tableaux
vivants established transitions from one historical period to another, from
one art form to another, from one style of art to another.^" Tableaux vivants
thus manifested hybridities that violated the strict separation of genres such
as sculpture and narrative and sculpture and painting that marked aesthetics
after Lessing. Bottiger accordingly refers to tableaux vivants in his reviews as
a "Zwittergattung" incapable of rising to the level of a high art painting, and
Goethe similarly referred to tableaux vivants as a "Zwitterwesen zwischen der
Malerei und dem Theater."^'
In their mixed-media mode, tableaux vivants often performed multiple
functions reinforced by a gendered division of labor. Judging by how they
were advertised, tableaux vivants appealed in part because the range of combinations
possible in performances often had a larger meaning as in a cycle
representing a larger narrative or progression (later in this essay, this issue will
become critical). To present their narratives, tableaux could employ a mix of
scenes selected from a variety of traditions, with some claiming to be mere
imitation of some existing artwork and some claiming to be creations of the
performer.^^ The audience was often torn between playing a guessing game
of what original work was being imitated and confronting an artistic innovation,
amplifying the tendency of some observers to regard tableaux as a kind
of parlor game or society pastime. At the same time, however, the distinction
between imitation and artistic creation points to an ambiguity with regard to

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 157
the status of the performer. Whereas the figure frozen in a pose is the presented
"material," she can likewise be recognized as the creative instance. In practice,
the latter status was seldom fully acknowledged in women, in part due to the
belief that women were at most capable of copying "real art." Instead, truly
creative aspects of tableaux were generally ascribed to the men who helped
stage the performances. Goethe accordingly draws attention to the role of
Lady Emma's future husband Lord Hamilton when he sees her perform in
Naples: "Der alte Ritter halt das Licht dazu und hat mit ganzer Seele sich
diesem Gegenstand ergeben. Er findet in ihr alle Antiken, alle schonen Profile
der sizilianischen Munzen, ja den Belvederschen Apoll selbst" (HAll: 209).
Emphasizing Lord Hamilton's intellectual investment {Seele), Goethe leaves
the act of interpretation to him, a reference that becomes more comprehensible
when it is recalled that tableaux performers did not speak. Instead, a
voice apart from the staging, typically a male voice, suggested interpretations
through commentary or poetic passage.^^ Following a kind of gendered division
of cultural labor, Emma Hamilton is relegated to an object Lord Hamilton
manipulates in order to draw out her latent meanings. In spite of tableaux
vivants' focus on female performers, their bodies could require male intervention
to become truly intelligible.
Goethe's subsequent pronouncements regarding Emma Hamilton's performance
reinforce the gendered division of labor and recall the way tableaux
vivants were often approached by contemporary observers. Goethe appreciates
the intellectual and artistic content of Emma Hamilton's performance in
terms of her poor intellect. Goethe confesses,
Darf ich mir eine Bemerkung erlauben, die freilich ein wohlbehandelter Gast
nicht wagen soUte, so mu6 ich gestehen, daB mir unsere schone Unterhahende
doch eigentlich als ein geistloses Wesen vorkommt, die wohl mit ihrer Gestalt
bezahlen, aber durch keinen seelenvollen Ausdruck der Stimme, der Sprache
sich geltend machen kann (HAl 1: 332).
According to Goethe, the tableaux are entertaining because their performer is
beautiful: "eine schone Unterhaltende" who is nonetheless "ein geistloses Wesen,"
she achieves effects with her figure. Yet, since tableaux performers did
not speak, Goethe's denial of intellectual status to Emma Hamilton must derive
from his recollection of their personal conversations. The failure to dissociate
information gleaned from personal interactions from a performer's public appearance—in
other words, to regard tableaux as an art form that co-mingles
private and public realms—is a tendency commonly found in Goethezeit audiences.^"
Male observers applying prevailing conventions of public and private
behavior reported titillation in seeing a married woman "reveal" herself in
public by emulating figures more compatible with the (sexualized) confines of
the private sphere: sphinxes, nymphs, muses, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene,
to name but a few.^^ Costuming likewise suggested that a woman's private side

158 Peter M. McIsaac
was being shown in public. The costumes of both Lady Hamilton and Henriette
Hendel-Schlitz contained elements one might expect to find in an intimate,
everyday domestic environment, such as bare feet and loose, non-powdered
hair.^^ Linked to the quotidian realm, tableaux could not have attained the status
of autonomous art, which distinguished between "life" and "art."
The revelation of a quotidian but normally concealed femininity is one
of the most important aspects of the tableaux and related to their putative
ability to make feminine desire visible.^^ This can be illustrated by quoting a
contemporary review of Henriette Hendel-Schutz:
Was an Vollkommenheit der Formen gegen die bildenden Kunste abgeht, ersetzt
sie in ihrer Weise durch Entfaltung und Folge; denn in sichtbaren Ubergangen,
in einfachen Fortschritten wird durch sie in lebendigem Zusammenhang vor
unsern Augen, was wir im Gemahlde als geworden allein und abgeschnitten erblicken
und vielleicht vermag flir das Eindringliche und Herzergreifende nie ein
Zauber der Vollendung im Gemahlde das aufzuwiegen, was die Mimik durch
fortlaufende Bilder der innern Zustande mahlt. Die Poesie des Gemahldes ist
nicht bios stumm [...] sie ist zum Theil auch unsichtbar; in die Zeichen des
Gegenwartigen ist alles Vorubergehende und alles Nachfolgende, wie eingewikkelt.
Die mimische Vorstellung enthalt fortschreitend die Regungen des Innern,
versichtbart das Gemlith mit seinen kampfenden Empfindungen und noch nicht
gefaBten Entschliissen.^^
By setting up contexts and making transitions, the series of scenes revealed
"meaningful moments" that would otherwise be hidden or unsuspected.
Between the frozen states, movements occurred that seemed to depict the
performer's otherwise invisible emotional state. Having this emotional state
rendered visible was compelling for two related reasons. On the one hand,
the performer's emotions were assumed to be in confiict, such that a battle of
desires ("das Gemtith mit seinen kampfenden Empfindungen") appeared to
emerge from a sequence of punctuated bodily movements. On the other hand,
as the phrasing "noch nicht gefaBten Entschlussen" suggests, the performer's
intimate conflicts were revealed before the spectator's eyes, perhaps without
the performer seeming to know herself how she would resolve her confiicting
desires. Having bypassed the performer's intellect, the "truth" of feminine
desire could be witnessed in her speechless body before bodily stasis, often in
tandem with narrative "progression," suggested desire's containment. Indeed,
performers regularly interrupted their movements by freezing in recognizable
poses, poses which in turn often followed cycles that, as in the case of
Henriette Hendel-Schutz's sequence of Mary Magdalene images, moved from
earthly lustfulness to images of repentance, atonement and chaste devotion.^'
As will become clear shortly, containment of desire in literary venues likewise
turned on performers having to deal with the knowledge revealed by
their tableaux vivants, though what counts as "containment" and "resolution"
varies by author. Able to reveal and contain an otherwise elusive feminine

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 159
desire, tableaux therefore performed peculiarly compelling cultural functions
in the early nineteenth century. Though unable to rise to the level of high art,
tableaux vivants' revelation of women and their desires was ultimately not a
mere matter of entertainment.
IL Reading Low-Culture Tableaux in the High-Culture
Wahlverwandtschaften
The issue of the display and ultimate containment of feminine desire via tableaux
vivants accompanies their deployment in Goethe's 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften.
In that text, two sets of tableaux vivants are performed, one
that centers on the boisterous daughter of Charlotte, Luciane, and one that centers
on Ottilie. It is a critical commonplace that Luciane is brought into the text
to offer a negative foil to Ottilie, with this contrastive pairing being nowhere
more apparent than in the tableaux vivants. Indeed, Luciane's participation in
the tableaux would seem to be the most lavish attempt to entertain the large
group she has brought with her. Ottilie's later series represents a much more
subdued, even sober presentation, yet one that is much more crucial to the text
for the way it forces Ottilie to reckon with her submerged inner desires and
take on a saintly role.
Though this disciplinary function allows Ottilie's tableaux to be analyzed
more thoroughly in terms of contemporary audience expectations than
Luciane's, in most respects, Luciane's performance nevertheless conforms to
what I have been describing as characteristic of tableaux. For one thing, men
such as the Architect and the Count arrange the staging. In recent accounts,
Luciane's performance in her three tableaux scenes (van Dyck's Belisarius,
Poussin's Ahasverus and Esther, Terborch's Eatherly Admonishment) has been
interpreted as representing a narrative arc.^" In each successive scene, Luciane
progressively alters her appearance so as to conform to an aesthetic that finds
beauty in female paralysis and speechlessness. By her third tableau vivant,
the narrator laments: "hatte sie [Luciane] nun gar gewuBt, daB sie schoner
aussah, wenn sie still stand, als wenn sie sich bewegte [...] so hatte sie sich
mit noch mehrerem Eifer dieser naturlichen Bildnerei ergeben."^' Luciane's
not explicitly knowing that standing still and keeping quiet would make her
more beautiful suggests that her success in the tableaux vivants is a surface
effect. Indeed, the narrative registers nothing of Luciane's emotions or movements
between the scenes. Although the narrator's descriptions of her body
triple in length as the cycle continues, offering detailed descriptions of most
of her body, there is no indication of Luciane's desires being contained, or how
the tableaux affect her internally (HA6: 392). Perhaps because she does not
internalize this aesthetic of feminine paralysis, the narrator resumes his biting
criticisms of her as soon as she moves again, continuing even after she has left
the text (HA6: 395).

160 Peter M. Mclsaac
In contrast to Luciane's tableaux vivant, Ottilie's scenes provide an exposure
of her feelings and reinforce her tendency to reticence in order to emulate
the ideal she is performing. This is the case even though the Architect is
still in charge and even though the tableaux vivants are staged for the explicit
purpose of entertainment (HA6: 402). The important difference in Ottilie's
tableaux vivants is that the narrative reveals the movement between the scenes.
yVhile most critics have overlooked it, Ottilie's performance consists of two
nativity scenes, a "Nacht- und Niedrigkeitsbild" that turns into a "Tag- und
Glorienbild" (HA6: 404). In the first image, the narrator reports that Ottilie
identifies with the Virgin Mary's humility and purity, in part because she believes
only Charlotte and a few members of the household are watching her
(HA6: 404-05). Between scenes, however, she realizes that an unexpected
visitor has arrived, which disrupts her dubious identification with the Virgin
Mary. Indeed, Ottilie's everyday persona, her desired domestic reality, breaks
through and mixes with the high aesthetic ideal, making it very clear that
Ottilie is not naturally saintly as the narrator often claims (HA6: 368, 404,
490). Upon hearing the visitor's voice, she feels a burst of emotion, "Wie im
zackigen Blitz fuhr die Reihe ihrer Freuden und Leiden schnell vor ihrer Seele
vorbei und regte die Frage auf: 'Darfst du ihm alles bekennen und gestehen?'"
(HA6: 405). Exposed between the pictures, Ottilie's emotions are marked by
the words "tell" and "confess" and a palpable gap opens between the Virgin's
virtue and Ottilie's guilt when she thinks of the pleasures and sufferings that
are connected with her illicit love for Charlotte's husband, Eduard. This revelatory
perception has a powerful effect on Ottilie:
Mit einer Schnelligkeit, die keinesgleichen hat, wirkten Gefuhl und Betrachtung
in ihr gegeneinander. Ihr Herz war befangen, ihre Augen fiillten sich mit
Tranen, indem sie sich zwang, immerfort als ein starres Bild zu erscheinen;
und wie froh war sie, als der Knabe sich zu regen anfing, und der Kiinstler
sich genotiget sah, das Zeichen zu geben, daB der Vorhang wieder fallen sollte!
(HA6: 405).
The transition to this tableau vivant reveals her struggling desires, which, interestingly
enough, are only noticed by the narrator and Ottilie herself. Through
the tableaux vivants, Ottilie's experience with aesthetic paralysis is brought
into direct relation with her feelings for Eduard, and she practices restraining
them in order at least to outwardly appear like the Virgin Mary. For this to
happen, Ottilie must reconcile her internal sense of shame with her outward
appearance, which she achieves by pursuing a strategy of withdrawal and personal
renunciation. Ottilie's forgoing of earthly happiness is simultaneously
induced and motivated by the tableaux's aesthetic practice. Preparing her for
a supposedly saintly existence and valorizing her renunciation, the tableaux
vivants lay the groundwork for Ottilie's eventual refusal to speak and eat after

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 161
little Otto's death and stunningly rehearse her permanently frozen display in
the glass coffin at the novel's end.
The tableaux vivants have profound cultural bodily effects even though
they are clearly demarcated as entertainment in Goethe's text, effects the characters
notice superficially at best. This is true not only in the case of Ottilie, but
also for the Architect, who appears in Luciane's tableau vivant depicting the
mourning of Belisar. Later, having heard of Ottilie's death, the Architect visits
the chapel he helped adorn with her image, and as he approaches her casket, he
strikes precisely the same pose as in the earlier tableau: "Schon einmal hatte er
so vor Belisar gestanden. Unwillkurlich geriet er jetzt in die gleiche Stellung;
und wie naturlich war sie auch diesmal!" (HA6: 487). Tableau performance
has been so compelling for the Architect that he repeats its role involuntarily.
With regard to tableaux vivants' ability to affect men as well as well as women,
it has been argued that the tableaux vivants do not prove life-threatening to
him because the aesthetic values at stake in this painting inscribe a classical
opposition between the daring, clever, active man and the quiet, unreflective,
passive woman.^^ gut what a reader familiar with the operations of tableaux
vivants can likewise appreciate is that this closing scene might be described as
a composite, but unannounced tableau vivant whose key elements have been
rehearsed by previous tableaux." The dynamics of the "merely entertaining"
tableaux vivants are therefore instrumental for this text's high aesthetic functions
and pretenses.^"* In Goethe's text, the tableaux' function depends on their
association with the revelation and ultimate containment of feminine desire
and their retaining the status of entertainment.^^ By means of these functions,
the novel inscribes tableaux vivants into a high/low divide.
This high/low divide was apprehended in, and reinforced by, the novel's
immediate reception. Even readers who had questions about Goethe's intentions
were convinced that, though not high art, the tableaux vivants needed
to be comprehended in order to interpret Goethe's novel.^^ According to Karl
August Bottiger, for instance, the novel's use of tableaux vivants presented an
exemplary interpretive problem.^'' In their literary form, Bottiger writes, the
tableaux vivants represent a "toUe Zusammenschmelzung" that violates classical
aesthetic criteria in much the same way as their extratextual counterparts,
making them seem out of place in Goethe's novel.^* Yet their role in the text
is clearly too important for them to appear merely as an object of Goethe's
scorn, thus prompting Bottiger to ask, "Billigt Gothe also dielJ Spiel?" Even as
a "toUe Zusammenschmelzung" and "Verkehrtheit," Bottiger admits that the
tableaux vivants help construct Luciane and Ottilie's opposing qualities and
also express the complex emotions Ottilie would feel toward the baby Otto,
the most immediate impediment to the union she desires with Eduard. Confronted
with the perceptible presence of low art in a high art project, Bottiger
worries that the novel might lead the reader to accord the tableaux vivants with

162 Peter M. McIsaac
a higher status than they deserve.^^ More articulate in his assessment of the
high/low divide is Karl Solger, who valorizes Goethe's text precisely for its
ability to present the quotidian whims of the day as entertainment and, in the
process, produce art. As Solger writes.
So wie [die Details der Umgebungen] das ganze tagliche wirkliche Leben der
Personen immer in gleicher Schwebung erhalten und gleichsam als Folie dienen,
so verhalt sich die Einflechtung von allem, was jetzt Mode ist, als Gartenkunst,
Liebhaberei an der Kunst des Mittelalters, Darstellung von Gemalden durch lebende
Personen und was sonst dahin gehort zu dem Leben der Leser und des gesammten
Zeitalters. In der Behandlung dieser Dinge liegt ebenfalls eine Kunst,
die ich nicht genug bewundern kann. Sie sind als vollkommen gliltig, wahr und
in der Zeit lebendig aufgefasst und von dem hochsten und reinsten Standpunkt
aus dargestellt. Sie sind sogar in die Handlung selbst als bedeutend verflochten:
wenn zum Beispiel der Architekt am Ende beim Sarge Ottiliens dieselbe Stellung
annimmt, die er einst als Hirte in dem Gemalde halten musste.""*
As the copula (und) twice indicate, Solger admires this text because it aptly
captures the passing fancies of the day in one register at the same time as it
manages to use them as a foil for attaining higher artistic purposes in another.""
Though the two registers are related, Solger regards the text as art
precisely because the strands of the former remain recognizable even when
they are woven into the moments of great artistic significance, such as, tellingly,
the Architect's repetition of his tableau pose before Ottilie's glass coffin.
As Bottiger's and Solger's respective readings demonstrate,"*^ contemporaries
familiar with tableaux vivants' operations discussed their important role in the
novel's intellectual agenda despite (or perhaps in some sense also for) their
remaining marked as aesthetically inferior, female-focused, cultural practice.
The high/low divide in Goethe's text was to shape the art form's subsequent
practice and literary reception. In his 1810 review, Bottiger presciently
predicted, "Gothe's aufregende, lebendige Darstellung wird noch mehrere zur
Nachahmung reizen.'"*^ In a review of an 1811 performance arranged by Carl
Ferdinand Langhans, Goethe's text provided the idiom in which tableaux vivants
could be discussed, in part because the reviewer believed that the text
was both widely read and had inspired private performances:
Wer Gothe's Wahlverwandtschaften mit Interesse gelesen hat, und wer hatte
das nicht, wird im Voraus flir diese Gattung von Darstellungen eingenommen
sein...Seit dem genannten Werke, haben mehrere Privatgesellschaften dergleichen
Bilder dargestellt, und ein neuer Reiz des geselligen Umgangs ist dadurch
hervorgegangen .'^
The new mode of social interaction had become so authoritatively associated
with the Wahlverwandtschaften that this reviewer deployed lengthy passages
from the novel to illuminate the faults of the observed tableaux vivants (for instance,
the failure to replicate the novel's transitions in Ottilie's nativity scenes;

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 163
6: 298-301). In similar fashion, contemporary intellectuals and subsequent
reference works such as the Conversations-Lexikon and the 1847 Brockhaus
Encyclopedia, to name but a few, unequivocally attributed the widening acceptance
of tableaux vivants to Goethe's influence.''^ So powerful was this influence
that in her groundbreaking study, Kirsten Holmstrom claimed—wrongly
it turns out—that Goethe had invented the form as it was perceived and practiced
in domestic settings.''^ At the same time, the subsequent association of
tableaux vivants with the domestic salon—so indelible as to justify the truism
that tableaux vivants would and should grace any respectable salon—solidified
the association of tableaux vivants with notions of femininity."" In spite of
the fact that tableaux vivants' popularity was also bolstered by factors independent
of Goethe, the high culture paragon's seeming endorsement of tableaux
vivants remained highly prominent in public perception. Following Goethe,
middle-class homes entertained with tableaux vivants as a culturally ambitious,
but nonetheless implicitly feminized, form of entertainment."*
III. Reading Tableaux Vivants in a Literary High/Low Divide:
Johanna Schopenhauer and Fanny Levcald
A high/low divide likewise marked the appearance of tableaux vivants in
literature that followed the Wahlverwandtschaften, shaping, by the midnineteenth
century, how readers approached texts with a perceived imitative
relationship to it. Indeed, reading the tableaux vivants in texts such as Johanna
Schopenhauer's Gabriele (1819) and Fanny Lewald's Jenny (1843) is complicated
by what Margaret Ward has called Goethe's "literary paternity," that
is, the tendency to regard subsequent (female) writers as Goethe's admiring,
but ultimately derivative, progeny.''^ In foregrounding the notion of literary
paternity (which is another way of articulating the high/low divide), I do not
deny the obvious esteem Schopenhauer and Lewald had for Goethe. Rather,
I wish to analyze these writers' narrative strategies for their complexities, to
generate insight into the difficulties intellectual women had with concepts like
feminine renunciation. Because she was so closely associated with the concept
of renunciation and its implications for women's happiness in work and marriage,
Ottilie and the devices used to expose her desires (such as her diary and
tableaux vivants) served as a privileged point of reference for women whose
creative urges forced them to struggle with Goethe's idealization of femininity.
Precisely those borrowings and references to Ottilie need to be read with great
sensitivity in order not to attribute their insights solely to Goethe's influence,
since these women interrogated Goethe's notions by varying them.5°
Gabriele's close relationship to Goethe and his novel has been clear since
its pubhcation, with Goethe's own positive review in 1822 figuring importantly
in establishing this pattern. As contemporary reviewers noted, Gabriele's likeness
to Ottilie was recognizable both in her character and gestures (both, for

7(54 Peter M. Mclsaac
instance, raise their hands "wie flehend" in moments of distress) and in her
deep differences with the figure Aurelie, a figure reminiscent of Goethe's Luciane
down to the way she approaches tableaux performance." Only recently,
however, has Gabriele begun to be read for the subtleties of its relationship to
Goethe.^2 Christa Burger is right to regard Schopenhauer's borrowings from
Goethe as her means of developing a philosophy of renunciation that registers
the penetrating intellectual and emotional emptiness suffered by its protagonist
(this feminine suffering gave the novel an epic quality in Goethe's eyes).
Yet even Burger's interpretation fails to see beyond Goethe's infiuence when it
comes to tableaux." I want, in contrast, to get further away from Goethe, first
by showing that if Schopenhauer's principle of renunciation presupposes an
empty life so that it can find compensation in art, as Burger argues, then tableaux
vivants and attitudes offer a concrete mechanism by which women were
prepared for that dreary quotidian existence. Understanding feminine identity
in light of this mechanism in turn enables us to follow the concept of renunciation
to its logical extremes and where Schopenhauer depicts its breakdown.
In Gabriele, tableaux vivants and attitudes have a revealing and heretofore
unappreciated place in Gabriele's education.^" Gabriele's mother Auguste,
we learn after witnessing Gabriele's arrival at the home of her aunt, gave
Gabriele an extensive education to prepare Gabriele for the life of renunciation
as experienced by her mother. A crucial part involved attitudes:
Gabriele lernte sogar, von der Mutter geleitet [...] mit einem Shawl die reizendsten
Stellungen der Antike nachbilden. Auguste sah oft mit wonneglanzendem
Auge die kleine Grazie, das Tamburin schwingend, im leichten, siidlichen Tanze
auf und niederschweben; sie gedachte dabey der truben Tage ihrer eignen Jugend,
in denen sie lachelnd, wenn gleich mit halb gebrochenem Herzen, sich
auf Befehl ihres Vaters vor schimmernden Versammlungen so zeigen muBte,
und pries dankbar das Geschick ihres glucklichen Kindes und seine ungetrlibte
Freude an der heiteren Kunst.
Stunden ernsteren Unterrichts wechselten mit diesen, dem Schmuck des Lebens
geweihten [...]."
The performance of attitudes shows Gabriele how to relate femininity
and public appearance using references to the shawl and tambourine, along
with the southern origin of the attitudes, to operate as familiar tropes for the
revelation and containment of emotion. Because they occurred under the direction
of her father, for Auguste, attitudes are synonymous with the exposure
and containment of conflicting internal emotions and she must conceal her
half-broken heart in order to conform to the demands of the "heitere Kunst,"
much as we have seen in the case of OttiUe. This pedagogy prepares Gabriele
for entry into a male-dominated social environment.
Tbe happiness of Gabriele's childhood is a key to understanding the educational
use of the attitudes. A pedagogical method involving tableaux vivants
and attitudes had been in use in the late eighteenth century by Stephanie de

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 165
Felicite, the Countess of Genlis. Thinking that young girls should strive for
a kind of self-observation while practicing gestures as a means of attaining a
beautiful appearance without spoiling their "naturalness," Genlis advocated
a strict, religiously based method that avoided the use of theoretical explanations.^^
Instead, historical scenes were enacted as tableaux vivants in the hopes
that bodily emulation of certain poses would transmit proper morals, politics
and Bildung well before young minds could grasp those abstract concepts." A
form of intellectually stimulating entertainment was also to result, insofar as
the audience—typically other children and Genlis in domestic isolation—was
to identify the scenes.^* Since Schopenhauer viewed Genlis as her predecessor
as a "saloniere and repubhcan novelist," she likely also drew on Genlis's
educational practices, which were believed to produce a combination of sociability
and unassuming graciousness.^'* These properties would have been
attractive to Schopenhauer, who abhorred women who displayed philosophical
or theoretical profundities.''"
As would accord with Genlis's theories, Gabriele's attitude-based education
in the text is represented as an intense mother-daughter exchange that
inculcates Gabriele with the values of renunciation long before she can see her
own life in those terms. To see this, Schopenhauer's conventional metaphors
need to be read as figures of identity. With Gabriele's father uninvolved in
family life, the text states that Auguste "zog Gabrielen in ihre schone innerliche
Welt, dort lebten Mutter und Tochter ein alien Uebrigen verborgenes,
engelgleiches Leben, in gegenseitigem Verstehen, wie diese Erde es selten
bringt" (Gl: 30). After Auguste's death the notion of mother-daughter identity
is reiterated even more forcefully: "nie hatte das Band geldst werden sollen,
das Mutter und Tochter so begluckend vereinte, ihre Herzen hatten immer zusammen,
in gleicher Bewegung schlagen mussen, bis von Einem Grabe beyde
in einer Stunde aufgenommen worden waren" (Gl: 32). Schopenhauer's language
of interiority, conventional though it may be, speaks of a psychic and
behavioral bond so complete that Gabriele is her mother in important ways,
not only in terms of physical appearance, but also in the sense that, to vary
Schopenhauer's metaphor, Gabriele's mother hterally seems to live on in her.
So forcefully does Gabriele recall her mother's presence that encountering her
causes Frau Dalling, Ernesto, and her own father to mistake her for Auguste
(Gl: 42, 57; G2: 11). More than surface effect is at stake in this remarkable
mother-daughter bond, for the attitudes were to shape a child's body and mind
in accordance with social and aesthetic norms. Such an inner and outer rapport
emerges under Auguste's uninterrupted monitoring (Gl: 30-31), leading
Gabriele to assimilate Auguste's respect for God, "stilles Dulden" and trust for
male authority as part of her recipe for feminine renunciation, particularly the
expectation that love can only exist in a woman's heart (G1: 30). Just as importantly,
however, Auguste's lessons supply Gabriele with a self-knowledge that,
as part of an ongoing internalized monitoring process (see Gl: 41), prevents

166 Peter M. Mclsaac
her from exceeding her reservoir of experience and destroying her "natural"
appearance.
In addition to guiding Gabriele, the identity structure expressed as a
figure of maternal monitoring functions as a trope of renounced identity. The
scene in which Gabriele is first pressed to perform tableaux vivants can, for
instance, be read both in terms of the inner orientation and as a trope. Sent to
live with her aunt upon her mother's death, Gabriele arrives in the middle of
the household's preparations for lavish tableaux vivants (GI: 4-9). Capable
of differentiating between a "false" femininity and an appearance according
with her "proper" sense of self and sociability (but unable to put it this way,
see also GI: 55, 79), Gabriele refuses to perform in these tableaux vivants in
the name of observing her mother's memory (GI: 10). Because this wording
is graciously diplomatic in this social context, it is easy to overlook that
Gabriele's invocation of her mother is likewise an important reference to the
inner force that guides her, using the only idiom at her disposal (she literally
has no other way to speak, as is stated on the following page, GI: 11). Indeed,
one point of attitudes-based education is that women would always act in
a gracious manner, silencing women in order that they not betray abstract
insights in an "unnatural" or self-important manner.''' This dictate is served
by Gabriele's overdetermined language, which can be read as establishing a
tropic shorthand for the state of Gabriele's inner condition and her striving for
a renunciative ideal (GI: 15, 37-38).''^ Explaining to her nanny Frau Dalling
why, in response to her discomfort at having to leave home, she appears to
have entered a dream world, Gabriele states,
Sey ruhig, gute Dalling [...] ich dachte jetzt an meine Mutter, und iiberlegte was
ich thun muB, um zu seyn, wie sie es wunschen wurde [...] sie soil mir nicht
gestorben seyn, ich will wie unter ihren Augen mein Leben fortsetzen, denn hier
in meiner Brust fiihle ich zu deutlich alles, was sie mir rathen wlirde, und die
fremden Leute sollen mich nicht darin storen (GI: 41).
Explicitly recalling the motherly monitoring of the attitudes, this register of
the text figures renunciation as a promotion of an idealized feminine identity
always already inscribed in terms of loss, even before the possibility of
a relationship based on love is renounced. This is why Gabriele struggles
"zu ihrer ehemaligen Resignation wieder zu gelangen" (GI: 117; my emphasis),
even though her feelings for her Ottokar are only beginning to emerge.
Moreover, this notion of feminine identity is also always already formulated
in terms of aesthetic, and aesthetically mediated, wholeness, such that the
only available recourse for possible fulfillment lies in aesthetic cultivation
of the self. Accordingly, Gabriele is portrayed—and in her tableau vivant is
even presented—as an ethereal "Traum" (GI: 100-01), a mode of existence
Gabriele herself holds responsible for her strange inability to speak to her Ottokar
in a way that would lend her a relationship-enabling presence (GI: 101).

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 167
Renounced identity conceived this way must, for the aesthetic reasons that
enable it, exclude a priori anything Hke an actual union between a man and
woman. Rather than some male-female bond in this text, it is in fact the urrelationship
between mother and daughter that is described with the language
of romantic love, as a delightful union of "mutual understanding and synchronized
heartbeats too perfect to be rent asunder, even in death" (Gl: 32). Thus
depicted, Gabriele's femininity will always already be in conflict with what it
purportedly desires, the outward realization of "true love."^^
The perpetual conflict arising out of Schopenhauer's conception of femininity
needs to be recognized as the major factor driving her narrative's interest
in tableaux vivants, a factor too easily overlooked if the novel is read merely as
a confirmation of Goethe's greatness. One thing critics have missed by giving
Schopenhauer too little credit is the operation of unannounced tableaux vivants
in her text. Such a moment can be recognized, for instance, in the Marquise's
public presentation of herself following her arrival in Germany, staged in her
bedrooms behind a curtain that is suddenly dropped to reveal a calculated and
opulent display of a posed woman in a long white gown (G2: 154-56). On
the one hand, this tableau vivant stages femininity in a way consistent with
its appearance throughout Schopenhauer's text, namely as a question of how
a woman's private desires (implied here by the bedroom environment) are
resolved or exploited with respect to her expected social functions.*^ On the
other hand, this elaborate presentation figures the Marquise as a negative foil
to Gabriele (see G2: 156), developing the tableaux-based contrast of Gabriele
and Aurelie in a way that presumes familiarity with the place of tableaux
vivants in existing thought about femininity. It does not matter if the reader's
familiarity derives from Goethe's novel, or even that Goethe, too, used unannounced
tableaux vivants in his novel, especially in light of Schopenhauer's
blatant references to Goethe's text.
The high/low divide has so blinded critics that Schopenhauer (as imitator)
has not been viewed as a reader capable of appreciating the subtler
dimensions of Goethe's text, let alone be recognized as a (sharp) writer with
a strategic relationship to Goethe and his writing. For all of Schopenhauer's
admiration for Goethe, her drawing on his novel can be read as part of a narrative
strategy designed to speak to readers in the prevailing idiom, using subtle
differences and variations in the use of tableaux vivants and attitudes to reveal
the limitations of renounced identity. One such difference results from the
systematic association of femininity with attitudes and tableaux. For while
conventions such as loose hair and a lack of makeup are used in Gabriele's
tableau vivant as markers that her innermost, private desires for Ottokar are
revealed in order that they ultimately be resolved (Gl: 99-100),*' I wish to
question whether any path was ever open to Gabriele other than the striving
for aesthetically mediated loss, particularly in Hght of the conflict's educational
roots. But paradoxically, Schopenhauer's desire to illustrate the proper

168 Peter M. McIsaac
relationship of femininity to the aesthetic (resulting in the female suffering
recognized by Goethe), rather than to transcend the feminine in the name of
aesthetics, means that her text, for the insight it generates into feminine identity,
does not garner a boost in status comparable to Goethe's for its use of a
practice of entertainment to realize its aesthetic ends.
A different kind of borrowing distinguishes Fanny Lewald's use of tableaux
vivants in her novel Jenny. Lewald's novel exploits tableaux vivants in
some familiar ways, most notably as a device to reveal her characters' struggling
desires in the movement between scenes. At the same time, however,
Lewald dispenses with the use of tableaux vivants as a means to contrast female
figures within her text, preferring instead the much bolder strategy of deploying
Jenny's tableaux performance to contrast Jenny with Goethe's Ottilie
herself. In fact, Goethe's novel is only one of several texts with which Jenny
engages. Through Jenny's appearance as the fictional Jewess Rebecca, Walter
Scott's Ivanhoe emerges as an important intertext for Lewald's novel.^
Jenny appears twice as Rebecca, first in a rehearsal and then in the announced
New Year's Eve performance. In the rehearsal, Jenny suddenly refuses
to play Rebecca, which reveals the tableaux's stakes in Lewald's novel.
Entreating Jenny to change her mind, the artist Erlau remarks:
Seien Sie nicht unerbittlicher! Sie sind immer ein Engel, eine Gottin; wanim
wollen Sie nun absolut mit einem Male eine wasserblaue, schmachtende Madonna
vorstellen? Sie, die der Himmel gleichsam fur diese gluhende Rebecca
pradestinierte? Kommen Sie, Fraulein! Oder der Hauptmann kommt aus der
Position!" (102).
Though seeming to go against her destiny, Jenny's desired transformation into
the Virgin is motivated on one level by her hope that she might one day marry
the student of Christian theology, Reinhard, as Erlau indiscreetly intimates.
Yet in that context, the "yearning Madonna" reference also recalls Ottilie, the
Virginal figure Lewald identified elsewhere as the embodiment of renunciation.^^
Strengthening the passage's reference to Ottilie is the strikingly similar
emotional conflict experienced by Jenny in her tableaux. Wishing to conceal
Erlau's insight into her motivations, Jenny denies Reinhard's influence by
agreeing to play Rebecca, leading to inner turmoil: "In heftigster Bewegung,
halb auBer sich vor Schmerz und Zorn und Scham, war sie Erlau in den Saal
gefolgt. Sie probierte, scherzte und lachte, wahrend das Herz ihr bitter wehe
tat" (104). Here, however, the similarities with Ottilie come to an end. Eor one
thing, Jenny unwittingly affirms her Jewishness by convincingly portraying the
"glowing Rebecca." Eor another thing, Lewald reverses the tendency for tableaux
vivants to resolve conflict by reinforcing female silence and self-denial,
and not only because the tableaux vivants also reveal Reinhard's emotional conflicts
as well (103, 114-15, 120). In contrast to Ottilie, tableaux performance
impels Jenny to speak with Reinhard: "Endlich war die Probe beendet; es trieb

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 169
sie, Reinhard aufzusuchen, sich um jeden Preis mit ihm zu verstandigen, die
Qualen zu beenden, denen sie beide unterlagen" (104). Rather than solidify
resignation, this impulse results, after a series of complications, in Jenny and
Reinhard's engagement (111). Despite being little more than entertainment,
the tableaux vivants perform crucial functions in Jenny.
Lewald's novel achieves two significant ends with the tableaux vivants
device. On the one hand, affirming Jenny's voice and Jewishness in this way
buttresses the conceptual compatibility of love-marriage with women's sense
of self, implicitly arguing against any form of arranged marriage (see 107-08)
and/or the conviction that Jewish-Christian love-marriages might diminish antagonisms
toward Jews.** On the other hand, the tableaux performance works
to affirm Jenny's Jewish heritage. Following the first performed tableau, that of
Bendemann's "Trauernde Juden im Exil," Erlau explains that the tableau vivant
is more convincing than the original because Bendemann, lacking the courage
to paint Jews as they are, preferred instead to show men and women who look
like "Dusseldorfer Garnter, denen die Raupen den Kohl aufgefressen haben"
in foreign dress (116). With Jenny its undeniably Jewish-looking star, Erlau's
comments authenticate Jenny's Jewish credentials, a process carried on by the
tableaux vivants' narrative arc. Finishing the series of performances started
with the "Trauernde Juden," Jenny's stunning portrayal of Rebecca climactically
coincides with the chimes ringing in the New Year (118). Though these
performances of Jewishness are derived from highly conventionalized material,
enhanced by orientalizing turbans and a greenhouse full of exotic oriental
plants as a backdrop (96-97), Lewald's technique nonetheless endorses those
traits her heroine cannot hope to mask, namely her Jewishness and her need
for social and intellectual fulfillment (in this she resembles Rebecca, the one
figure of Ivanhoe refusing to dissimulate).*' These defining qualities would
have to be betrayed in order to make a Jewish-Christian love marriage work
under prevailing social conditions, meaning that as long as women and Jews
are regarded as socially inferior, this form of marriage will also demand from
women sacrifices tantamount to renunciation. This notion of feminine sacrifice
is left behind in the position statement vis-a-vis Goethe that are Lewald's
tableaux vivants, even before it is rebuffed by example of the life Jenny leads
between her inability to marry the obstinate Reinhard (135-45) and her subsequent
mobilization of the "Idee, 'entsagt zu haben'" as a means of maintaining
her independence (248). Indeed, using the very literary device Goethe
used to commend Ottilie, Lewald hones an alternative model of femininity by
linking Jenny to Rebecca.
Understanding what about Rebecca works to advance Jenny's femininity
over and against Ottilie sharpens Jenny's critical contours. Of the many
parallels between these much-adored daughters of Jewish merchants, most
important with respect to Ottilie is the way Jenny and Rebecca fashion their
responses to a world hostile to their needs and happiness. Threatened at various

170 Peter M. Mclsaac
points by rape, imprisonment, burning at the stake, and marriages not of her
choosing, Rebecca represents, on one level, "all women's potential to be the
victims of men's violence and oppression." Though less acutely, Jenny, too, is
shown to be fearful of rape when she is alone on the streets (notably, just when
she feels doubt about converting, 135-38), one step away from an arranged
marriage to her cousin (107-08), and always at some risk from anti-Jewish
sentiment, including, as the novel reminds us, violence such as the 1819 "Hep!
Hep!" riots that swept the German territories (41).^' No matter how much these
women suffer, they struggle to affirm themselves, drawing strength from those
personality traits responsible for their suffering and refusing to compromise
for social convenience. This femininity inspires Erlau to sketch Jenny as she
appeared as Rebecca in order that he may venerate "das geistig Schone" that
signifies by remaining untouched by prosaic realities such as compromised
marriage (163).
Using Rebecca to map Jenny's femininity draws into focus dimensions
to Lewald's novel that otherwise tend to go undetected. At the end of Ivanhoe,
Rebecca's inabihty to compromise her Jewishness leads her exile in Granada
following the wedding of Ivanhoe and Rowena (399-401). Since this symbolic
event represents the creation of a unified English nation-state (398), Ivanhoe
shows English national unity to cohere in precise coincidence with the societal
exclusion of groups such as the Templars and the Jews. This notion is
made all the more problematic in that Rebecca is arguably the novel's most
admirable character and Ivanhoe's obvious love-match.^^ Reading Ivanhoe as
a text relevant to nineteenth-century Germany would have been sympathetic
to Scott. As Michael Ragussis argues, Scott wrote his 1820 novel to address
the conflict taking shape between emerging European national identities and
the claims of Jewish emancipation, as exemplified in the 1819 Hep! Hep! riots
(181-82). Linking Jenny to Rebecca's fortune mobihzes this insight for the
novel's German-speaking world, precisely at a time when the question of German
unification occupied so much political energy and thought.
This intertextual linkage has its greatest implications with respect to
Jenny's conversion, an issue critics using Lewald's biography have identified as
a core concern of the novel." Conversion was, it is useful to note, a prominent
trope of English identity formation that Scott's novel refigured. Prior to Ivanhoe,
conversion worked in English historiography as the paradigm explaining
how Saxons evolved smoothly into modern Englishmen. Ivanhoe's intervention
inserts conversion into a historicizing context in which the at times violent
domestication of the Saxons proceeds apace with the coercive process offering
enfranchisement to the Jews only by having them renounce their ancestral
origins. Thus refigured, conversion becomes the lynchpin of a strategy that
rewrites English history as Anglo-Jewish history, that is, as a history aware of
difference, guilt, and debt.^'' As Rebecca articulates in Ivanhoe's last chapter,
the forging of the English nation forces her to go into exile because she cannot

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 171
believe that converting would end the threats of violence and the tortured division
of the self (399-401).
As if to confirm this conviction, Jenny's conversion plunges her into a
"Kreis von Widersprtichen, aus denen nur ein gewaltsamer Ausweg moglich
sein wird" (214), violence that not only destroys her relationship to Reinhard
but also creates an aporia of identity complicating her relationship to
her family and loved ones (177, 208-09). But in similar fashion to Ivanhoe,
Jenny's indictment of religious proselytizing inserts Jews and difference
into German culture, deftly figuring conversion's anguish as a wrong against
German culture. When, in preparing for her new life, Jenny slowly discovers
her inability to accept Christian teachings, it becomes clear that she had
naively thought her "faith" in Bildung—her affinity for Goethean pantheism
and German aesthetics—was the same as being Christian (174). Following
Jenny's profession of belief the narrator explains, "Der Pastor muBte naturlich
sein erstes Augenmerk gegen die pantheistische Weltschanschauung richten,
in der Jenny, ohne es zu ahnen, erwachsen, und in welcher die dichterische,
gewissermassen heidnische Vorstellung der Gottheit ihr lieb geworden war"
(132). Or, as she answers Reinhard when asked about the Trinity, "Nun, eine
Dreieinigkeit habe ich immer gekannt [...] Es ist die Dreieinigkeit der Kunst!
Diese ist mir von jeher einleuchtend gewesen, so sehr, daB ich Poesie, Musik
und bildende Kunst gar nicht voneinander im Innersten der Seele zu trennen
vermag" (138). A well-educated haskalah Jew, Jenny must learn that her behefs
are inadequate for Reinhard not because they are somehow not German,
but rather, and only, because they are not Christian. Jewish heritage is not
erased here in the name of some simple notion of assimilation: Jenny's Jews
continue to affirm their history of persecution and ties to other Jews (40-5,
151-53, 273). Rather, these differences are no more in conflict with German
culture than those between Christianity and Bildung. By dissociating Christianity
and German culture in this fashion, the reader can understand that more
than personal social injustice is at stake when Reinhard cannot bring himself
to wed an unbelieving Jenny, when the Jewish Eduard and the German Clara
are forced to renounce each other, or when the German nobleman Walter dies
for loving Jenny. From the failure of these unions, the text warns, will emerge
a homogeneous German social order predicated on an unnecessary and irrational
exclusion of some its finest proponents, secular Jews. Whatever likeness
Jenny's conversion might have had to Lewald's—and criticism has tended to
approach the issue exclusively in these terms ^^—recognizing the relationship
between Jenny and Rebecca in the tableaux vivants helps to bring Ivanhoe,
and English history and culture more generally, to bear on the interpretation of
Jenny in a more complex way than scholarship has so far managed.^* In Jenny,
the low culture tableaux vivants are an integral part of the narrative, advancing
the novel's critique of certain Goethean notions such as feminine renunciation
even as it affirms others. Perhaps because it has been on the wrong side of the

172 Peter M. Mclsaac
high/low divide for so long, the complexity of the novel's engagement with
Goethe has, as far as I can tell, been undeservingly neglected.
As in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften and Johanna Schopenhauer's Gabriele,
this kind of nuanced reading of Lewald's novel would not be possible
without considering tableaux vivants as complex cultural manifestations. This
approach has required that the high/low divide affecting both tableaux vivants
and literary texts by women writing after Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften be
taken into consideration. Using tableaux vivants, Schopenhauer's Gabriele
can be read against the grain to reveal the breakdown in Goethean notions
of feminine renunciation, while in Lewald's Jenny tableaux vivants work to
refute those notions altogether by recasting Goethe's Ottilie in the mode of
Rebecca. Though they differ in how they regard feminine desire, for each
writer, tableaux vivants serve as a device capable of revealing feminine desire
and a discourse for shaping thought about feminine desire and how its accompanying
conflicts might be resolved. As these texts show, it matters in which
context the female body is made to speak.
'See for instance Birgit Jooss, Lebende Bilder. Korperliche Nachahmung von Kunstwerken
in der Goethezeit. (Berlin: Reimer, 1999). Mara Reissberger, "Das Lebende Bild und sein
'Uberleben': Versuch einer Spurensicherung." Fotogeschichte 14 (1994): 3-18.
^I am grateful to Margaret Cohen for encouraging such an approach in the early stages of
this project and to Toril Moi and Yvonne Ivory for their critiques at later stages.
'Two texts from this period I cannot analyze here are Eichendorff's Ahnung und Gegenwart
and E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nachricht von den neuesten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza. In
his discussion of them, Langen argues that despite minor differences, neither of these texts strays
very far from Goethe's model in their basic functions (246). Jooss makes a similar point in her
analysis of Hoffmann's text (231-33). In contrast to the women writers in this study, neither
of these authors has been considered "trivial" or mere imitators of Goethe. As far as I can tell,
their texts also failed to engender particular notice for their use of tableaux. In this essay I also
cannot examine memoirs and letters that discuss tableaux, or literary texts, after 1850. On that
topic, see August Langen, "Attitude und Tableau in der Goethezeit." Jahrbuch der Deutschen
Schillergesellschaft 12 (1968): 248-57.
"Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other." After the Great Divide:
Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986): 45-47.
'Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman," 45-47.
''Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman," 50-53.
'Katherine R Goodman and Edith Waldstein, "Introduction." In the Shadow of Olympus.
Eds. Katherine R Goodman and Edith Waldstein. (Albany: SUNY P, 1992). Linda Dietrick,
"Women Writers and the Authorization of Literary Practice." Unwrapping Goethe's Weimar:
Essays in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge. Eds. Burkhard Henke, Susanne Kord and
Simon Richter. (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000): 214-15, 222. Michael Gross, Asthetik
und Offentlichkeit. (Hildesheim: 01ms, 1994): 40-53.
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Eriedrich Schiller, "Uber den Dilettantismus." Goethes
Werke. Weimarer Ausgabe, 143 vols. (Weimar: Bohlau, 1887-1919): 1 47: 313-14, 319-20.
Subsequent references will be made parenthetically, to this edition (=WA1, 47). Susanne Kord
argues that general agreement on this point can be found in the writings of contemporaries
such as Immanuel Kant ("Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht." Werkausgabe in 12 vols.
Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977): vol. 12: 395-690, and "Die
Metaphysik der Sitten." Werkausgabe in 12 vols. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977, vol. 8.), Johann Gottlieb Fichte ("Erster Anhang des Naturrechts. GrundriB des

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 173
Familienrechts." Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sdmmtliche Werke. (Berlin: Veit, 1845): 3: 304-68),
and Wilhelm von Humboldt ("Uber Mannliche und weibliche Form," Werke. 5 vols. Eds. Andreas
Flitner und Klaus Giel. (Stuttgart: Cotta 1960): 1: 296-336, and "Uber den Geschlechtsunterschied
und dessen Einfluss auf die organische Natur." Werke. 5 vols. Eds. Andreas Flitner
und Klaus Giel. (Stuttgart: Cotta 1960): 1: 268—95), who conceived of vv'omen as constitutionally
sensuous and passive beings lacking the faculties of moral reasoning and duty. See Susanne
Kord, Sich einen Namen machen. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996): 36-42. Barbara Becker-Cantarino,
Der lange Weg zur MUndigkeit. Frau und Literatur (1500-1800). (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987):
175-77. Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Schriftstellerinnen der Romantik. (Munich: C. H. Beck,
2000): 57-58. Christa Burger, Leben schreiben. Die Klassik, die Romantik und der Ort der
Frauen. (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990): 21-31. Dietrick, "Women Writers and the Authorization of
Literary Practice," 215-19. Goodman and Waldstein, "Introduction," 16-17.
'Lydia Schieth, Die Entwicklung des deutschen Frauenromans im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert.
Ein Beitrag zur Gattungsgeschichte. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987): 72-78.
'"Dietrick, "Women Writers and the Authorization of Literary Practice," 215-16, 222.
Gross, Asthetik und Offentlichkeit, 300-05.
"These strivings are documented in Goethe's and Schiller's letters to one another. See
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "To Friedrich Schiller." 29 May 1799,1 June 1799,22 June 1799,
15 July 1799, 20 July 1799, 24 July 1799. Der Briefivechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe.
3 vols. Eds. Hans Gerhard Graf and Albert Leitzmann. (Leipzig: Insel, 1912): 2: 214-15,
216-17, 228-30, 239-40, 242-43, 244-45; Friedrich Schiller, "To Goethe." 31 May 1799,
25 June 1799, 19 July 1799. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe. 3 vols. Eds. Hans
Gerhard Graf and Albert Leitzmann. (Leipzig: Insel, 1912): 2: 215-16, 230-31, 241-42. See
also the discussion in Burger, Leben schreiben, 23-24, 179-80, and Dietrick, "Women Writers
and the Authorization of Literary Practice," 217-21.
'^BUrger, Leben schreiben, 31.
"Daniel Purdy, "Weimar Classicism and the Origins of Consumer Culture." Unwrapping
Goethe's Weimar: Essays in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge. Eds. Burkhard Henke, Susanne
Kord and Simon Richter. (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000): 43. Catriona MacLeod,
"Floating Heads: Weimar Portrait Busts." Unwrapping Goethe's Weimar: Essays in Cultural
Studies and Local Knowledge. Eds. Burkhard Henke, Susanne Kord and Simon Richter. (Rochester,
NY: Camden House, 2000): Gl-IQ. Carrie Asman, "Zeichen, Zauber, Souvenir: Das Portraitmedaillon
als Fetisch um 1800." Weimarer Beitrage 43 (1997): 6-9.
'••MacLeod, "Floating Heads," 67-70.
"Purdy, "Weimar Classicism," 43.
'*• Purdy, "Weimar Classicism," 48-50. Dietrick, "Women Writers and the Authorization
of Literary Practice," 216.
"Karl August Bottiger, "Tabhaux." Abend-Zeitung, 27 May 1819, n.p.
'"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in
14 vols. Ed. Erich Trunz. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1981): vol. 11: 402-03. Subsequent references
will be made parenthetically, to this edition (= HAl 1).
"Goethe repeats his assertion in other texts, for instance his Proserpina. See Erich Trunz,
"Die Kupferstiche zu den 'Lebenden Bildern' in den Wahlverwandtschaften" Weimarer Goethe-
Studien (Weimar: Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1980): 211. Holmstrom concludes that Goethe's
historical understanding only superficially obtains. Kirsten Gram Holmstrom, Monodrama, Attitudes,
Tableaux Vivants: Studies on Some Trends of Theatrical Fashion 1770-1815. (Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967): 217.
See Conversations-Lexikon oder encyclopddisches Handworterbuch ftir gebildete
Stande. 10 vols. 2nd/3rd ed. (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1818): 9: 611-14.
^'Karl August Bottiger, "Plastisch-mimische Darstellungen." Afcenrf-Ze/fung, 14 and 15
January 1818. Karl August Bottiger, 'Tableaux." Tableaux's mixings have led some scholars to
describe them as a proto-cinematic art form. See Volker Schachenmayr, "Emma Lyon, the 'Attitude,'
and Goethean Performance Theory." New Theatre Quarterly 8 (1997): 11. The Goethe
passage is quoted from Holmstrom Monodrama, 232. Citing it, Peucker links the aesthetic issue
of "Zwitterwesen" to the tableaux and particularly to the figure of Ottilie (Brigitte Peucker, "The
Material Image in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften!' The Germanic Review 74.3 [1999]: 207).
n, "Attitude und Tableau," 216.

174 Peter M. McIsaac
^'Dagmar v. Hoff and Helga Meise, 'Tableaux vivants. Die Kunst- und Kultform der
Attituden und lebenden Bilder." Weiblichkeit und Tod. Eds. Renate Berger and Inge Stephan.
(Cologne, Vienna: Bohlau, 1987): 79.
^"'Hoff and Meise, 'Tableaux vivants," 72.
"Hoff and Meise, "Tableaux vivants," 72. On titillation, Peucker, "Material Image,"
208-09.
^'•Hoff and Meise, "Tableaux vivants." 72.
"See the similar argument in Hoff and Meise, "Tableaux vivants," 74.
^*Morgenblatt fiir gebildete Stande, Nr. 34 (1814): 136; original emphasis.
2^See Langen, "Attitude und Tableau," 217-18.
•*Norbert Puszkar, "Frauen und Bilder: Luciane und Ottilie." Neophilologus 73 (1989):
397-410.
^'Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe
in 14 vols. Ed. Erich Trunz. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1981): vol. 6: 392. Subsequent references to
this text will be made parenthetically, to this edition, (= HA6).
^^Cf. Peter M. McIsaac, "Exhibiting Ottilie: Collecting as a Disciplinary Regime in
Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften!' German Quarterly 70 (1997): 354-55.
^2 As Barnes argues, Ottilie's appearance in the tableaux rehearses both the final scene and
other scenes as well, for instance the death of little Otto. H.G. Barnes, "Bildhafte Darstellung
in den Wahlverwandtschaften!' Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift ftir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte
30 (1956): 66, 60-61. For slightly different reasons, see also Peucker, "Material
Image," 204. Norbert Miller, "MutmaCungen Uber lebende Bilder: Attitude und tableau vivant
als Anschauungsform des 19. Jahrhunderts." Das Triviale in Literatur, Musik und bildender
Kunst. (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1972): 118.
'""Langen argues similarly with no reference to the high/low divide (242). Peucker argues
for the centrality of the tableaux vivants on the grounds that they engage with Diderot's aesthetics
(206-10). Michael Fried also reads Goethe's tableaux vivants in these terms. Michael Fried,
Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1980): 171-73.
''See Paul Stocklein, Wege zum spaten Goethe. Dichtung, Gedanke, Zeichnung, Interpretationen
um ein Thema. (Hamburg: M. von Schroder, 1960): 70. Jooss, Lebende Bilder HQ.
•"•See Langen's discussion of readers who recognized the importance of tableaux without
fully grasping their function (242).
""Ein Einziges diene hier als Beispiel, sey zu scharferer Untersuchung ausgezeichnet,
und fuhre zu ahnlichen Problemen und Aufiijsungen [...]" Karl August Bottiger, "Uber Gothe's
Wahlverwandtschaften!' Zeitung fiir die elegante Welt, 2 January 1810.
•"•Bottiger, "UberGothe's Wahlverwandtschaften"9-XTi.
'''Bottiger, "Uber Gothe's Wahlverwandtschaften!' 9-13. Some nine years later Bottiger
wrote again of Goethe's literary tableaux. Fueled in part by Goethe's own staging of tableaux
some years later, Bottiger was concerned that tableaux be thought of only as entertainment.
Bottiger, "Tab\eau\." Abend-Zeitung, 27 May 1819.
•"'Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, "Uber die Wahlverwandtschaften." "Die Wahlverwandtschaften.
" Eine Dokumentation der Wirkung von Goethes Roman 1808-1832. Ed. Heinz
Hiirtl. (Berlin: Akademie, 1983): 201; my emphasis.
•" The pursuit of this dual purpose—the portrayal of the historical specificity and the high
aesthetic standpoint—sometimes gets overlooked in this early critique. An exception is Langen,
"Attitude und Tableau," 242. It is worth keeping in mind, as Astrida Orle Tantillo points out,
that Goethe's approval of Solger's review helped increase the novel's reception (Astrida Orle
Tantillo, Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics. (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001):
26-27, 33-36).
••^These two voices were greatly influential in the reception of this text. See JUrgen Kolbe,
Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften und der Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1968): 81-85. Tantillo, Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics, 26-27, 33-36.
••'Bottiger, "Uber Gothe's Wahlverwandtschaften," 9-13.
'"Journal fiir Kunst und Kunstsachen, Kunsteleien und Mode 4, December 1811: 289-
309. Quoted from Jooss, Lebende Bilder, 297.

Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 175
•"Brockhaus, Conversations-Lexikon. Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyklopddie fiir die
gebildeten Stande. 15 vols. 9th ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus,1843-1848): 14: 72. See also Langen,
"Attitude und Tableau," 234-35.
'"'Holmstrom, Monodrama, attitudes, tableaux vivants, 216-27, 226.
'"By the mid-1800s, large guidebooks to tableaux production were available, explaining
the requisites for individual scenes as well as their cultural significance. See Edmund Wallner,
Eintausend Sujets zu lebenden Bildem. Ein Verzeichnifi von mehr als 1000 kleineren wie grofieren
Genrebildem, historischen Gruppen und biblischen Tableaux. (Erfurt: Er. Bartholomaus,
n.y.) and E. Sedouard, Das Buch der lebenden Biider. Mit begleitenden Versen zu jedem der
lebenden Biider sowie genauer Angabe der Stellung der Personen und Stellungsplanen fUr grossere
Gruppenbilder. (Berlin: Blochs Theater-Buchhandlung, 1890).
•"Holmstrom, Monodrama, Attitudes, Tableaux Vivants, 209. Jooss, Lebende Biider,
218-19.
••^Margaret H. Ward, "Ehe und Entsagung: Eanny Lewald's Early Novels and Goethe's
Literary Paternity." Women in German Yearbook 2 (1986): 61. See also Kolbe, Goethes "Wahlverwandtschaften,
" 81 - 85.
"'See the arguments of Burger, Leben schreiben, 64-65, and Ward, "Ehe und Entsagung,"
63. Analyses of Lewald's narrative strategies in her autobiography, which stress this kind of variation,
are also worth reading in this context. See Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres, Respectability and
Deviance: Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers and the Ambiguity of Representation.
(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998): 91-100. Robert C. Euhrmann, "Masculine Eorm/Eeminine
Writing: The Autobiography of Fanny Lewald." Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins:
Essays on Ethnic and Cultural Boundaries in German-Speaking Countries. Eds. Dagmar C.G.
Lorenz and Renate S. Posthofen. (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 1998): 104-05. Katherine R.
Goodman, Dis/Closures: Women's Autobiography in Germany Between 1790 and 1914. (New
York: Peter Lang, 1986): 149.
*'Burger, Leben schreiben, 36.
'^Btirger, Leben schreiben, 36. Jooss, Lebende Biider, 234-38.
''Jooss' reading goes farther in appreciating how Schopenhauer was not deploying tableaux
merely to contrast Gabriele and Aurelie (234-35).
'••Langen notes the use of attitudes in educating young girls, but claims this is neither
new nor noteworthy (247). In this context, Jooss refers to the attitudes without analyzing them
(234-35).
''Johanna Schopenhauer, Gabriele. 3 vols. (Eschborn: D. Klotz, 2000). Rpt. of Johanna
Schopenhauer, Samtliche Schriften vols. 7-9. (Wien: Ch. Fr. Schade, 1825). Orthography follows
from facsimile of 1825 edition, which paginates each book separately. In what follows,
GI, G2, and G3 refer parenthetically to the respective books, followed by page numbers. Cited
here: GI: 30-31.
""Jooss, Lebende Biider, 97.
"Holmstrom, Monodrama, Attitudes, Tableaux Vivants 223. Jooss, Lebende Biider, 94.
'* Jooss, Lebende Biider, 94.
''Katherine R. Goodman, "Johanna Schopenhauer (1766-1838), or Pride and Resignation."
Out of Line / Ausgefallen: The Paradox of Marginality in the Writings of Nineteenth-
Century German Women. Eds. Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres and Marianne Burkhard. (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1989): 188. As Norbert Miller points out, Genlis's practices were widely publicized in
Europe. Miller, "MutmaBungen," 114.
"'Goodman, "Schopenhauer," 192.
'^'Only in her diary does Gabriele begin to examine her emotional state, however, the
trope also surfaces there (GI: 102, 103, 106). Even in the diary, Gabriele cannot dispel her confusion
and the diary is then abandoned (GI: 117). Though Gabriele's "weak spark of life" might
have contributed to Gabriele's silence, as Anna Richards argues, her attitudes-based education
compounds and reinforces that tendency ("Suffering, Silence, and the Female Voice in German
Fiction around 1800." Women in German Yearbook 18 [2002]: 97).
''^Burger hkewise points to overdetermination as a key component of Schopenhauer's
narrative strategy (71—72).
''•'See the diary entry on GI: 102 for an exemplary expression of this point.

176 Peter M. McIsaac
"One such function would be to increase GeselUgkeit. See Jooss, Lebende Bilder, 236.
'•'Immediately following this revelation, Gabriele's diary depicts her toil with her budding
love for Ottokar(Gl: 101-11), making the tableau vivant the first in a series of literary devices
not only exposing Gabriele's emotional struggles, but also contributing to their resolution in
renunciation.
''Fanny Lewald, Jenny. Ed. Ukike Helmer. (Frankfurt am Main: Helmer, 1988): 118.
Subsequent references will be made parenthetically, to this edition.
"Though Ward notes the centrality of Ottilie's tableau vivant to the construction of her
saintliness, she overlooks the work of tableau vivant in Jenny and its reference to Ottilie (Ward,
"Ehe und Entsagung," 63). It is possible, as Marci-Bohneke argues, that the Hauptmann reference
is also meant to evoke Goethe's novel. Though she is right to read the tableau vivant as a critique
of Goethe's concept of renunciation, she offers no further evidence for this interpretation and she
interprets the reference to the "schmachtende Madonna" purely in terms of plot. Gudrun Marci-
Boehneke, Fanny Lewald: JUdin, Preufiin, Schriftstellerin: Studien zu autobiographischem Werk
undKontext. (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1998): 226, 236-37.
•^'Gabriele Schneider, Fanny Lewald (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1996): 44-47.
'•^Graham TuUoch, "Introduction." Ivanhoe. Ed. Graham TuUoch. (London: Penguin,
2000): xxiii.
Tulloch, "Introduction," xxvii.
'" On the effects of these riots on Lewald, see Hanna B. Lewis, "Fanny Lewald and Judaism:
The Writer, the Woman, the Prussian, the Jew." The Germanic Mosaic: Cultural and Linguistic
Diversity in Society. Ed. Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay. (Westport, CT: Greenwood P,
1994): 269.
'^Tulloch, "Introduction," xxvi. Michael Ragussis, "Writing Nationalist History: England,
the Conversion of the Jews, and Ivanhoe." ELH 60.1 (1993): 181-215. Alide Cagidemetrio,
"A Plea for Fictional Histories and Old-Time Jewesses." The Invention of Ethnicity. Ed.
Werner SoUors. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989): 14-43.
"Deborah Hertz, "Work, Love and Jewishness in the Life of Fanny Lewald." From East
and West. Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870. Eds. Frances Malino and David Sorkin.
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1990): 209-10. Irene Stocksieker Di Maio, "Jewish Emancipation and Integration:
Fanny Lewald's Narrative Strategies." Autoren damals und heute. Literaturgeschichtliche
Beispiele veranderter Wirkungshorizonte. Ed. Gerald P. Knapp. (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1991): 283.
"Ragussis, "Writing Nationalist History," 202. TuUoch, "Introduction," xxvi-xxvii.
^'See Lewis, "Fanny Lewald and Judaism," 269-70. Marci-Boehneke, Fanny Lewald,
21-22. "*See for instance Christina Ujma, "England und die Englander in Fanny Lewalds Romanen
und Reiseberichten." The Novel in Anglo-German Context: Cultural Cross-Currents and
Affinities. Ed. Susanne Stark. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000): 146-48.