Marie Nathusius' Elisabeth and Fontane's Effi Briest: Mental Illness and Marital Discord in the “Century of Nerves”

Nervous symptoms in wives are an indicator of marital discord in a number of nineteenth-century novels.1 Popular examples are Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest (1895) and Gustave Flaubert's Emma Bovary (1856), where attempts to escape unfulfilling relationships fail tragically. A lesser-known text from the so-called "century of nerves" is Marie Nathusius' Elisabeth: Eine Geschichte, die nicht mit derHeirath schliest (1858) . In this novel, the protagonist Elisabeth, much to her religious family's dismay, marries the agnostic officer Otto von Kadden. The ensuing conflicts lead to nervous ailments in both partners, but in the end, the couple reunites after turning away from a shallow, secular society. The following analysis examines the ways in which Nathusius presents both female and male illness asan opportunity to negotiate difficulties in marital relationships. Fontane's Effi Briest is discussed as a contrast since it offers starker images of female disease. His novel implies that the effects of haut bourgeois marriage on women are isolating and potentially fatal. A number of Fontane's heroines are afflicted with hysteria, a term that describes nervous symptoms ranging from anesthesia and paralysis to epileptiform seizures. Robert Burton's seventeenth-century Anatomy of Melancholy focuses less on physical manifestations than on the depiction of psychological distress, an approach visible in Nathusius' novel as well (Schaps 36-37) . More recently, Susan E. Gustafson has addressed the preponderance of narratives on depression by the "new generation" of German writers, in which female characters lose connection to the self and to others (19). In contrast, Nathusius treats the psychosomatic illnesses of Elisabeth and Otto von Kadden as a sign of lovesickness against the background of a strong emotional bond. The Kaddens enjoy the privilege of being able to choose their partners, unlike Effi Briest and her husband, whose marriage is one of convenience. Effi's malady represents a "poignant decline" (Richards 2), whereas Nathusius' characters resolve the difficulties inherent in gendered expectations of marital relationships. The self, as described in Elisabeth, is a relatively simple entity, although dreams hint at subconscious desires. Mirroring the religious concept of free will, the novel implies that Elisabeth and Kadden can learn to resist their impulses, finding solace and healing in faith. Marie Nathusius: Faith and the Female Sphere Marie Nathusius (1817-1857), nee Scheele, was raised in a Pietist family but nevertheless granted opportunities to study at home well beyond the age of fourteen, when official schooling for girls ended.2 Like other female writers, Nathusius was influenced by Pietism, "which encouraged the narration of personal experience and the expression of feeling, [and] had allowed them to develop a language with which to document the inner lives of characters" (Richards 4). Although Nathusius and her works are virtually unknown today, her novel Tagebuch eines armen Frauleins was so popular that Elisabeth was marketed with reference to "der Verfasserin des Tagebuchs eines armen Frauleins," as Friedrich Winterscheidt notes in Deutsche Unterhaltungsliteratur der Jahre 1850-60 (190). 3 A full-length biography, written by Elise Grundler, underwent a second edition in 1909. The positive reception of Nathusius' texts is suggested by the fact that Julius Fricke published a fifth edition of Elisabeth as early as 1860. The novel was translated into English and French, indicating a rather broad authence and thus the profitability of her writing. Despite their popularity, Nathusius' novellas and her major works, Tagebuch eines armen Frauleins (1853), Ruckerinnerungen aus einem Madchenleben (1855), and Elisabeth have yet to be acknowledged by literary criticism (Myrrhe 85, 96). Winterscheidt, for example, regards these texts as "literarisch [...] unbedeutend" (196). Instead of dismissing Elisabeth as "Tendenzliteratur" and as a moral treatise (Winterscheidt 192, 196), I would follow Eva Klingenstein's lead in choosing the term "Referenzliteratur," which non-judgmentally describes this genre as part of an active discourse on women's lives and societal norms (281-82). …