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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