SOURCE: Fry, Ingrid E. “Elective Androgyny: Bettine Brentano-von Arnim and Margaret Fuller's Reception of Goethe.” Goethe Yearbook 10 (2001): 246-62.

In the following essay, Fry discusses the way Arnim and Fuller, as talented women operating within the restrictions of their respective cultures, found inspiration for new versions of female identity in the works of Goethe.

Well-educated European and American women of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century belonged to a cultural environment which placed a particularly high value on the individual and on the expression of individual genius. Cultural codes, however, confined women to pre-established, primarily domestic roles, and thus hindered the development of their individual natures and abilities. The tension between these opposing standards created a contradiction in feminine self-definition and self-expression that was acutely felt by the women of the day, especially by those of extraordinary ability and creative energy.¹ Margaret Fuller, an American, and Bettine Brentano-von...