Seduction novel
The seduction novel is not in the official canon of literary genres defined subgenus of the social novel .
Among the most prominent novels of this type are Fontane's “ Effi Briest ” (1895), Flaubert's “ Madame Bovary ” (1857), Tolstoy's “ Anna Karenina ”, (1875–77) and Heinrich Mann's “ Between the Races ” (1907).
definition
A dependent young woman, either daughter or wife, is seduced by a notorious libertine woman . She thereby triggers sanctions imposed by either the father or the husband, and usually dies at the end of the novel.
The model
The first to develop this model of civil conflict to perfection was the English writer Samuel Richardson in the mid- 18th century with his epistolary novel " Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady " (1748).
The novel describes in 537 letters how the London libertine Lovelace falls in love with Clarissa, a virtuous beauty from the country. Her father tries to force a husband that she disgusts on her. The power struggle with the family patriarch makes her vulnerable to the seductive arts of Lovelace, but she remains so steadfast that he finally kidnaps her, keeps her imprisoned in a London brothel , drugged and raped her . Lovelace is killed in a duel . Clarissa defines herself as culpably dishonored, gets sick and dies.
Behind this story lies a criticism of the growing English bourgeoisie of the nobility and its loose “ French ” customs . Richardson's novel defines the bourgeois family as patriarchal, but at the same time criticizes the patriarch's abuse of power when it comes to choosing a suitable husband for a daughter. She should have a say and marry out of inclination, albeit always in accordance with the will of the father. The mother is portrayed in Richardson's model novel as weak and suggestible. She thwarts the orders of the head of the family and contributes to the daughter's misfortune .
Richardson's " Clarissa " served the moral education of the bourgeois daughters. The basic principle of its construction and the basic character of the main characters appear again and again in later seductive novels. Richardson's English drama of a bourgeois family was modeled on contemporary Puritan edification literature and moral weeklies.
Origin of the topos
A forerunner of “ Clarissa ” is “ La Princesse de Clèves ” by Madame Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette , published in 1678. The action takes place in 1559. A noble girl who has become marriageable is brought from the monastery boarding school to Paris by her widowed mother and, after a first-class game has broken up, married to the prince (= prince) of Clèves. He loves her from the very first moment, but she only has sympathy for him. At a ball at court, she meets the Duke of Nemours and they both fall in love as if struck by lightning. Nemours is a skilful and handsome man who has already been in love, but can now only think of the princess. She thinks of him just as often, but feels guilty and tried to evade Nemours. With this in mind, she asks her husband to allow her to withdraw from the court. When he wants to know the reason, she tells him that she has fallen in love, but that she will do everything possible to remain loyal to him. Despite this proof of loyalty and virtue, he grieves so much that he becomes sick and dies. The princess could now marry Nemours, who still loves her, but she withdraws from society and becomes pious. At one last encounter, she explains to him that she still loves him, but does not want to be disappointed by the infidelity that is to be expected at some point. Above all, however, she has found her peace of mind and does not want to put it at risk. Afterwards she retires to a monastery and devotes herself to her piety.
Sophie von La Roche's first novel, “The Story of Fraulein von Sternheim ”, was published in 1771 , initially anonymously. This is also a letter novel. Sophie Sternheim is the daughter of a highly decorated commoner and a noblewoman. Her mother dies early, her father when she is twenty. She comes to an aunt at a court, where she is supposed to be given to the prince as mistress without her knowledge . At the same time, Lord Derby, an English libertine woman, tries to win her over. The trial of Sophie's virtue takes place under the eyes of the courtiers and is watched by Lord Seymour, who loves Sophie but doubts her virtue. A Derby intrigue and a mistake by Seymour lead Sophie to secretly marry Derby and flee with him. But the priest was wrong and Derby leaves Sophie because he fails because of her coldness. Sophie begins a charitable life, but is again kidnapped and imprisoned by Lord Derby. She falls ill, seems to have already died, but is saved by Lord Seymour at the last moment and marries him.
In this adventurous novel, it is above all English that fight against French and the bourgeoisie against the court nobility. The nobility exposes themselves as corrupt and immoral by making a woman the object of intrigue and sexual desire . The young heroine counteracts her virtue , which consists primarily of persistent nonsensuality and inducibility.
In the seductive novels written by female authors, young women are accorded a certain normative independence. They recognize their victim role in the struggle of two men who stand for two different social classes , and survive as long as they refuse extramarital sexuality. If you can't do it, you will die.
Further development
In the 19th century, the woman who is seduced is not in the realm of a father, but in that of a husband who, however, has the age and demeanor of a father.
In her 1832 novel Indiana, George Sand (1804–1876) defined the young heroine as a “ noble savage ” who can only be happy outside of civilization. Indiana comes from a South Sea island and is Creoline . Sand portrays her on the one hand as lascivious and indolent, on the other hand as sexually unexciting and courageous. She is married to Colonel Delmare, who is much too old. The Parisian aristocrat de Ramière tries to seduce her. Indiana's husband is absent during these seduction attempts and has entrusted her family friend Ralph with the task of guardian of virtue. The execution of the seduction is prevented by the return of Delmares. He takes her to Paris. However, Indiana flees with Ramière, who suddenly feels hesitant about cheating on Delmare. Indiana tries to drown herself and is saved by Ralph. Indiana tries again to unite with Ramière, but goes down in the turmoil of the July Revolution in France . Again she is rescued by Ralph. Her husband Delmare has since died. Ralph and Indiana discover their latent love for one another, decide to commit suicide and jump down a waterfall. Only in a later attached chapter do we learn that the couple survived in the wilderness of the South Sea island.
In her novel, Sand equates politics with women. When the seducer Ramière thinks of politics, he thinks of women and what he can achieve by dating certain women. Indiana's role in the novel is to defend herself against being taken over by politics and thus by men. It stands for the figure of the "noble savage". Your view of society is naive and apolitical. After the erring of her senses (the sexual act of adultery did not take place), she either cannot survive at all, which is what the suicide with Ralph describes, or she can only continue to live outside civilization on an island. Sand's criticism of civilization is radical and general.
In the 19th century, the social criticism that is in all seductive novels is no longer primarily directed against aristocratic ways of life, but against excesses of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois life. The death of the heroine at the end of the novel particularly fascinated male authors.
Fontane's Effi Briest is married as a childlike and playful young woman to Baron Innstetten, her mother's former admirer. In this novel, the mother advocates the principle of convention , while the father appears as an overly indulgent, but humane and compassionate friend of the daughter. Innstetten leads his young wife into a house where the ghosts of the dead reign. Effi lonely in her fears. She succumbs to the arts of the livelier Major Crampas, a well-known womanizer. Years later, while looking after their child, Innstetten found love letters in his wife's closet. He kills Crampas in a duel and casts his wife away. Effi falls ill and dies.
Fontane also constructs the drama in such a way that the parents' weaknesses (indulgence on the one hand, too great severity on the other) appear as the breach in which the misfortune comes into play. Innstetten also commits a role error. He does not behave like a loving husband, but like a father who keeps the young woman trapped in a system of fear. This is how the seducer gets his chance, who is also here associated with French light-heartedness. Effi remains the eternal child who has no insight into his actions and who delights with his naivete. So she remains a victim of the socio-political moves of the adults around her. For her, the eternal innocent-guilty child, there is no other way out than early death. Effi is a fictional character without its own reflective dimension. Unlike Richardson Clarissa, who actively and obstinately takes on a guilt that she doesn't even have, Effi doesn't understand her fate until the end.
Flaubert's Emma Bovary is also married to a man who does not satisfy her sensuality . She lets herself be seduced by several men one after the other. She consciously imitates life at the French court in a provincial copy. After all, she is deeply in debt, poisons herself and dies.
Flaubert himself judged his figure as a woman of a somewhat perverse nature . Emma does not manage to break free from the clichés of bourgeois dreams of romantic love and noble life. Their protest against petty-bourgeois narrowness in the provinces is not based on deliberation, but is sensual and unreflected. The language artist Flaubert shows his novel heroine again and again from the point of view of the men who desire her. Emma never defines herself, she is defined solely by the gaze of the men around her. She thus appears as the object of the male gaze, as the embodiment of the male conception of a seductive woman. Her story is framed by the story of her husband Charles, who owns the first and last chapters of the novel.
The Catholic variety
Flaubert's novel reveals a striking difference to the original "Clarissa Model" in the Protestant cultural area . While for the Protestant woman one fall is enough to consecrate her to death, the Catholic sinner, since there is confession and absolution , can "fall" several times.
Little known in Germany is the Spanish novel “ La Regenta ” (1884) by Clarín ( pseudonym Leopoldo Alas ' (1852–1901)), which is part of the literary canon in Spain.
The heroine Ana Ozores de Quintanar is married to a much too old man who is only interested in hunting and is exposed to the seduction attempts of the priest Fermín de Pas and the notorious libertine, Alvaro Mesía. In this case, too, the seducers are men who are not involved in a middle-class family life. Again, the husband is a patriarch with weaknesses. Ana also comes from a destroyed family. Her mother died after Ana's birth, her nanny had changing lovers and did not take care of her while her father fought for his political convictions.
Clarín describes for the first time a young woman suffering from hysteria , as it was described at the time by the Parisian neurologist Jean Marin Charcot (1825-1893). In 1881 the Viennese doctor Josef Breuer made the discovery in his patient Ann O. that the physical symptoms of hysteria disappear when the trauma that triggered them has been dealt with. Ana's priestly seducer initially appears as a doctor of the soul , but then abuses the trust of his “patient”. Not only does Clarin anticipate elements of psychoanalysis as developed by Sigmund Freud just a few years later, Clarín is arguably the first author to attribute hysterical symptoms to sexual abuse of women in childhood, even if in the novel he only suggests that Ana was abused by the nanny's lovers. The fact is, however, that they try to kiss Ana against her will. Ana, trapped in petty-bourgeois confinement, falls into a rapturous infatuation with love and thus resembles Emma Bovary, who does not love a specific man either, but the romantic idea of love.
Ana doesn't die at the end of this novel. But she is expelled from the “fine” society and is therefore socially dead. The last scene shows her in the church as the humiliated prey of everyone . She is kissed by a church servant who has not yet dared approach her.
Sociopolitical background
The victim of the social struggle of the bourgeoisie for self-definition and moral supremacy against the old nobility is always a young woman. Novels of seduction have nothing to do with the emancipation of women , although they do place a woman at the center (and title) of a novel. In these novels, the young heroine usually has naive , enthusiastic and / or childlike features. The male representatives of two social classes argue about them : the father of a growing bourgeoisie that wants to determine the customs and rules of life, and the old nobility or clergy with their baroque tradition of sexual freedom, which is also a means of politics.
The bourgeoisie is concerned with defining the patriarchally organized family and marriage as inviolable and thus setting themselves apart from the immorality of the court nobility. It is an almost archetypal struggle over who the young women belong to, which is waged on an aesthetic level. The seduction novel defines the bourgeois family as a refuge of feeling , obedience and sexual abstinence . The disaster develops when the parents or husbands show weaknesses. The weaknesses include too much severity and brutality as well as forbearance and lack of vigilance towards the daughters.
Each of these novels is meant to be socially critical. However, the authors rarely do justice to women. They do not want to represent the right of young women to self-determination , but rather demonstrate the deadly consequences of a lack of vigilance and instinct control . They tell of the danger of female sensuality for the structure of the bourgeois family and society and are characterized by a deep mistrust in the reason and personal responsibility of women. The seducer almost always has female assistants. It almost always seems agreed that a young woman cannot resist the temptation of the seducer.
As a rule, the authors also deal in much more detail with the mental states, considerations, strategies and sufferings of men.
The female variety
Female authors who use the topos oppose the society they criticize with a vague utopia . Sands Indiana is withdrawing from civilization. Lafazette's Princess of Clèves goes to the monastery and devotes herself to active charity. LaRoche's Sophie Sternheim escapes persecution through flight and movement. They free themselves from the bourgeois family and withdraw into the togetherness of love.
In her 1899 novel “ The Awakening ”, which is little known in Germany, the American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) describes adultery and subsequent suicide for the first time as a woman's self-liberation. The novel is set in New Orleans and on the Grand Isle .
Edna Pontellier is married and has two sons. Her story is mainly told from her point of view. But at the beginning of the novel it is her husband, Léonce, who describes and introduces his wife with his eyes. Stylistically , only then does the protagonist break free from his point of view and gain independence.
Edna is bored at her husband's side. The young Robert Lebrun gradually awakens her sensuality. Finally he confesses his love to her, but immediately afterwards flees the immorality of an adulterous love affair. Edna's awakened sensuality remains unanswered by him. She also falls victim to the well-known womanizer Arobin. The novel lasts nine months, as long as a friend of Edna's pregnancy lasts. Edna realizes that none of the possible female roles suits her. Neither that of the woman who lives only for art, nor that of the loving wife and mother, nor the role of the beloved. She experiences the delivery of her friend as unjust torture. Avoiding pregnancy becomes more important to her than even her own life. Sexual lust and love appear to her as nature's deception maneuvers in order to secure offspring for humanity. The women play the worse part. When Edna can no longer find her lover Robert when she returns from the birth of her friend, she travels to the Grand Isle and searches for death in the sea.
Chopin's novel contains a utopian moment insofar as it refers beyond itself to another world that does not exist in it. Edna repeatedly imagines waking up somewhere completely different, where another species of human lives. Diffuse discomfort of women about their roles in society at the end of the 19th century gives birth to the equally diffuse vision of a society in which everything is different. Chopin's novel is thus probably the first in the genre of seductive novels in which the adulteress wants to emancipate herself and seeks her self . Adultery and suicide appear to be a dead end for self-realization.
literature
- Christine Lehmann: The Clarissa model. Love, seduction, sexuality and death of the heroines of the 18th and 19th centuries . Metzler, Stuttgart 1991 ISBN 3-476-00748-0