A Nietzschean Feminist Rejoinder to the Mädchenbuch Controversy

Abstract

While sexual difference and cultural norms still largely limited the opportunities of most Wilhelmine girls and women to express themselves on issues of sexuality, gender, education, and class difference, a range of feminist writers encouraged their young audiences to question the radical social developments of the late Wilhelmine era. Few Mädchenbücher, however, seem to have been written by feminists who rejected both a traditional, cultural conservative ideology as well as a more radical socialist outlook. The eighteen short works of the Nietzschean feminist Elsa Asenijeff (1867–1941) that comprise Unschuld. Ein modernes Mädchenbuch (1901), illustrate her strategies in unsettling notions of Wilhelmine cultural and sexual (re)production by valorizing the creativity and radical individualism of young girls. Asenijeff’s enthusiasm for Genie and individual freedom, and her attempts to reconcile this with Nietzsche’s arguments regarding women’s biological destiny, position her as another example of the complex yet largely positive reception of Wilhelmine feminists to his teachings.