Calvert, K.E. (2021) Family and communism in Maria Leitner’s Mädchen mit drei Namen and Hermynia Zur Mühlen’s Lina: Erzählung aus dem Leben eines Dienstmädchens. Journal of European Studies, 51 (2). pp. 111-128. ISSN 0047-2441
Abstract
This article analyses the portrayal of the impact of capitalism on the working-class family and the promotion of the communist movement as a form of surrogate family in Maria Leitner’s Mädchen mit drei Namen (1932) and Hermynia Zur Mühlen’s Lina: Erzählung aus dem Leben eines Dienstmädchens (1924). Reading these two Weimar-era texts as works of Gebrauchsliteratur, which seek to promote communism to a young female readership, I argue that, despite urging greater female participation in the male-dominated sphere of left-wing political action, Leitner and Zur Mühlen rely on normative ideas about gender to advocate political engagement to a demographic assumed to be politically naïve or disinterested. With reference to Weimar-era cultural discourses and strategies of the communist movement, I contest that both novellas are contradictory in their claim to represent a radically progressive political position while simultaneously failing to challenge fundamentally conservative gender norms.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | communist fiction; family; female readership; Gebrauchsliteratur; Maria Leitner; Weimar; Hermynia Zur Mühlen |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of Languages and Cultures (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Arts and Humanities Research Council AH/L503848/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2021 13:13 |
Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2021 13:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/00472441211010893 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:175282 |