Mann, “Frau und Buch,” 1930

Categorized as 300 or 400-level course, Erika Mann, Feminist Politics, Gender & Sexuality, Lesson Plan, Women Creators

Frame and Preparation

Frau und Buch

Conceptual Frames and Background

  • Representation and identity
  • Neue Frau
  • Gender roles
  • Literary aesthetics
  • Information versus knowledge
  • Neue Frau
  • Media culture
  • Women’s reading and print cultures
  • Labor and gender

Introduction

The article by Erika Mann chosen here, “Frau und Buch”, was published in 1930 in Wiener Neueste Nachrichten, a popular Austrian newspaper. Here, Mann sardonically discusses the role of women as both readers and writers—both as real reading and writing individuals and as overdetermined figures charged with the fears, stereotypes, and hopes of a patriarchal society. The short piece presents different female literary figures, while also discussing the situation of women writers in their own right as autonomous artistic subjects in the early 20th century. She addresses the questions as to what kinds of literature women should and can write as well as the genres and styles best suited for women writers.

Preparation

This is an excellent text to teach in class, as it is both short and easy to follow. Students, from 232 onward, could easily read and complete an assignment on this text in a single class session or as homework.

Copies of the text from the original newspaper article are in Fraktur; it is recommended that students know how to read Fraktur. Otherwise, instructors can either use this text as an exercise in learning to read Fraktur (especially ideal for a 231 or 232 course) or should transcribe the text into a more readable font.

Materials

You will need a PDF copy of the article, see the Münchner Stadtbibliothek for options.

Below is a sample rubric to assess an essay version of this assignment. Instructors may want to adapt it to make it more specific to the topic of the assignment.

Manifesto-Rubric

Discussion & Activity

Discussion

Here are some questions to begin a discussion of this article:

  1. How does Mann describe the state of women readers and writers in the early 20th century?
  2. What is the relationship of women to books, according to Mann?
  3. What stereotypes existed and continue to exist about women who read and write?
  4. What does Mann identify as specific roles assigned to reading and writing women?
  5. What are some of the literary genres and styles that Mann brings into connection women writers and readers?
  6. How does Mann see the future of women writers and readers?

Activity

Students will write either a long discussion post on Canvas (at least one full paragraph) or an essay/manifesto about contemporary women’s literature; alternately, students could adapt the assignment and use Mann as an example for writing a manifest about, for example, contemporary Black or LGBTQ+ literature.

So that instructors can have as much flexibility as desired in designing the specifics for this assignment, I supply here broad, major questions that students could be expected to address in a successful assignment:

1) How do you define women’s (or Black, LGBTQ+, etc.) literature?

2)What criteria—content or formal? Background of author or style?—would you use to mold this body of literature?

3) What is the relationship between the author’s background and personal identity and the work of art? 

3) What is the role of literature in society? Is it merely representative or should it enact change? What is its relationship to the “real” world: does it merely reflect or also shape the world?

4) How does literature enact change?

5) Who can define what a certain body of literature entails? Is it based on experts and gatekeepers? Readers and audiences? Is the problem of a defined body of literature problematic or useful?

Learning Goals

The learning goals of this assignment are as listed:

1) To foster a deeper engagement and understanding of early 20th-century German print culture, especially that of female readers and writers.

2) To encourage students to think comparatively across time, place, and culture, identifying similarities, differences, and points of confluence and divergence around key topics, themes, and values in two different print cultures.

3) To sharpen students’ critical thinking about gender, sexuality, literature, and the politics of the written word.

4) To exercise students’ creative and inventive capacities by challenging them to outline the goals and values of “minority” or “minor” literature.

5) To reflect on the role of literature in society: how is to be written and read, how is value ascribed to it and with which criteria, how it is to be assessed, what its goals are thought to be, and its relationship to the “real” world.