SOURCE: Brandes, Ute. “Escape to America: Social Reality and Utopian Schemes in German Women's Novels Around 1800.” In In the Shadow of Olympus: German Women Writers Around 1800, edited by Katherine R. Goodman and Edith Waldstein, pp. 157-71. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Brandes looks at the works of three women writers—La Roche's Erscheinungen am See Oneida, Sophie Mereau's Das Blüthenalter der Empfindung, and Henriette Frölich's Virginia, oder die Republik von Kentucky—and focuses on how they envisioned and redefined the utopian ideal.

America! The land of milk and honey, the cradle of democracy, home of the noble savage, the symbol of freedom, the image of an unspoiled, natural way of living. We are still familiar with the lure of this myth.¹

Without ever having set foot on American soil, German writers around 1800 frequently projected their ideals of freedom...