The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 109 The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow Edith H. Krause Duquesne University Abstract: This article attributes much of the novel’s long-lasting appeal and freshness to its psychological complexity derived from Schach’s intriguing and ambiguous relationships with Josephine von Carayon and her pockmarked daughter, Victoire, and his indelible ties to his late mother. Deeply embedded in the protagonist’s multiple entanglements are the fundamental and disruptive effects of fascination and repulsion associated with the feminine position as maternal body. This intricate setup forms the umbrella for a number of interconnected issues: power structures and a modern psychopathography of insecurities and instabilities; decentering erotic desire and the demands of internalized norms; and male autonomy and maternal pull. Considering the central aspect of Victoire’s abject face this article reads the impact of her disfigurement and the related twists of- pleasure, pain,- and revulsion-against the background of Kristeva’s notion of abjection. A stepby-step examination of Schach’s social, personal, and psychological circumstances sheds light on his fragile identity and charts the inexorable pace of his disintegration by focusing on the debilitating rigidity of conventions, his uncompromising strife for status, and his deep psychological ambivalence toward the female body as the focal point of fears and desires. Keywords: abjection, ambiguity, clean and proper, matricide, maternal hold Georg Lukács famously called Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow “ein noch lange nicht in seiner vollen Bedeutung erkannter einsamer Gipfel der deutschen historischen Erzählkunst” (298). Indeed, as Bontrup has observed, the novel’s capture of numerous public and private historical moments “hat das Augenmerk der meisten Untersuchungen auf die historisch-politische Dimension des Textes gelenkt” (60). While the scope of these elements provides a rich narra- 110 Edith H. Krause tive background, this article attributes much of the novel’s long-lasting appeal and freshness to its psychological complexity derived from Schach’s intriguing and ambiguous relationships with Josephine von Carayon and her pockmarked daughter, Victoire, and his indelible ties to his late mother. Deeply embedded in the protagonist’s multiple entanglements are the fundamental and disruptive effects of fascination and repulsion associated with the feminine position as maternal body. This intricate setup forms the umbrella for a number of interconnected issues: power structures and a modern psychopathography of insecurities and instabilities; decentering erotic desire and the demands of internalized norms; and male autonomy and maternal pull. Characterized as an “aesthetische Figur,” Victoire stands outside “dem Bannkreis des politischen Gegensatzes” epitomized by the opponents Bülow and Schach (Szukala 138). Likewise, Schach’s “sehr eigenartige Natur” and its associated “psychologische Probleme” as diagnosed by his fellow officer, Alvensleben, accentuate concerns beyond the political sphere (GBA I/ 6: 24). Typecast as someone “bei dem alles so ganz und gar auf das Ästhetische zurückzuführen wäre” (GBA I/ 6: 24), Schach enters an emotional turmoil after his intimate encounter with Victoire. Outwardly blemished, she is positioned at the margins of her social circles. However, as an enigmatic object of attraction she rattles the handsome officer’s carefully constructed persona and moves right into the psychological heart of the story. When disfigurement meets desire, the normative frame of Schach’s existence gets muddled and he suffers an all-encompassing breakdown. Considering the central aspect of Victoire’s abject face - the primary target for the male gaze - this article reads the impact of her disfigurement and the related twists of pleasure, pain, and revulsion against the background of Kristeva’s notion of abjection. Schach’s affair with Victoire situates him at a precarious border where acceptable standards of beauty and disaffecting ugliness collide and challenge the core of his socialized identity. The “natürliche Konsequenz” (GBA I/ 6: 97) of his encounter with Victoire and the conventions of his era demand that he marry her. Victoire’s abject face, however, presents an insurmountable obstacle to Schach’s excessive vanity, personal pride, and obsessive cult of honor. In his struggle between normative/ cultural expectations and particular/ individual proclivities, he seeks refuge and a resolution for his dilemma at his ancestral home, Schloss Wuthenow. His homecoming, however, turns into an ultimate impasse. In what follows, the article will examine Schach and Victoire along the various aspects of the abject proposed by Kristeva. The analysis will address the role of the symbolic order, the deeper meaning of Victoire’s illness and skin blemish, the inescapable presence of Schach’s deceased mother, the implications of the dust, decay, and decapitated statues at Schloss The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 111 Wuthenow, Schach’s regression in the boat excursion, his fata morgana, and the final scenario of his abject death. A step-by-step reading of Schach’s social, personal, and psychological circumstances will shed light on his fragile identity. Using Kristeva’s theoretical framework, the article will chart the inexorable pace of his disintegration by focusing on the debilitating rigidity of conventions, his uncompromising strife for status, and his deep psychological ambivalence toward the female body as the focal point of fears and desires. Schach’s unstable emotional territory is, as Kristeva would have it, “edged by the abject” (Powers-6) that exhibits its disruptive force in the process of the subject’s identity formation and relations to others. In regard to Schach, neither a resetting of ideals nor a rational coping with fears and doubts emerge as life-sustaining vehicles for his tormented existence. As illustrated via a few examples, Schach von Wuthenow depicts lives and situations replete with poignant “Zwiespalte” (GBA I/ 6: 22): Bülow bemoans the Prussian state’s political “Schwanken” and “dies […] halbe Stehen zu Rußland und Österreich” (GBA I/ 6: 11); Victoire’s “feines Profil” cannot belie a face robbed of its beauty (GBA I/ 6: 8); Schach is described as a zealous “Pedant und Wichtigthuer” while also deemed to be “einer unserer Besten” (GBA I/ 6: 25—26); he is “selbstbewußt” but also “schwach” and dependent on external validation (GBA I/ 6: 49); Frau von Carayon is strikingly beautiful, yet considered unsuitable for her vain suitor (GBA I/ 6: 24) on account of her daughter; Victoire issues a “vieldeutig” response to Schach’s invitation that leaves the destination of the consequential afternoon outing “vorläufig im Dunkeln” (GBA I/ 6: 30). Politically, emotionally, and socially the novel is suffused with discomfort, doubt, vacillation, and unease. Its portrayal of a life driven to the violence of an abject, suicidal revolt embraces a wide range of desires and equivocalities. Thus it fits well within the parameters of abjection, which, according to Kristeva, first and foremost bears the mark of “ambiguity” (Powers 9). Moreover, the exploration of the text’s abject imagery, along with the narrative functions of the maternal trope and its interface with the disintegration of Schach’s self, reveal unique new insights into the psychological depth of the novel that revolves around the “inability to escape the abject mother” (Oliver 84). The narrative’s delineation of Schach’s fall points to fundamental junctures in the process of the constitution of the subject and the development of selfhood. Most impressively, the novel showcases the crucial double-bind of submission to, and repudiation of, the power embodied by female corporeality. Broadly speaking, abjection describes a casting off of unwanted material. As conceived by Kristeva in her seminal text, Powers of Horror (1982), it is a psychological process that is operative in the construction of boundaries between what constitutes self and society and what must be expelled as disorderly, unaccept- 112 Edith H. Krause able or threatening. Pre-oedipal in nature, it comes into play as a constitutive factor in the developmental phase of the child where, at the threshold of the emerging subject’s entry into the symbolic order, the dependence on the maternal body threatens the formation of an independent identity. Thus abjection is an essential feature of the maternal function and the process by which the individual attempts to differentiate her or his self from that of the harboring mother in order to establish her or his own identity in the realm of the symbolic. Fundamentally ambiguous, the process of abjection is marked by “a desire for separation, for becoming autonomous” and, at the same time, by “the feeling of an impossibility of doing so” (Kristeva, “Interview” 136). As a developmental factor that operates along the borders between “what will be ‘me’” and what is “Other” (Kristeva, Powers 10), abjection concerns our sense of wholeness. It is an emotional riposte to a “jettisoned object” (Powers 2) that jeopardizes meaning and selfhood and is experienced as a peril to what is considered “clean and proper” (8). Yet the abject is also a compelling element of attraction that leads back to the original symbiotic unity with the mother. Abjection as a safeguard against the annihilation of the self is a human reaction largely brought about by encounters with deformed bodies, bodily waste products, abhorrent food items, the corpse, and the maternal body, all of which are disturbing reminders of “the subject’s threatened and provisional control” over its own corporeality (Grogan 95). It manifests itself as loathing, repulsion, horror, and disgust in the face of that which constantly sets out to unhinge “identity, system, [and] order” (Kristeva, Powers 4). Victoire succinctly frames the normative power of Prussian culture: “Die Gesellschaft ist souverän. Was sie gelten läßt, gilt, was sie verwirft [or abjects, in Kristeva’s terms], ist verwerflich” (GBA I/ 6: 77). Schach, who is considered by his peers to be “krankhaft abhängig, abhängig bis zur Schwäche, von dem Urteile der Menschen, speziell seiner Standesgenossen” (GBA I/ 6: 24—25), lives in deep fear of this kind of expulsion or rejection. Staunchly committed to the structured sphere of the symbolic he cultivates the aura of a distinguished public figure who derives meaning and value primarily through adherence to the hegemonic dictates of traditional Prussian “propriety” (Turk 8) and community. Aspiring to a certain “Grandezza” (GBA I/ 6: 157) he claims, above all, “his right to shine in the glittering social élite” (Bowman 57). However, when the consequences of his erotic encounter with Victoire demand that he uphold what is considered a Prussian officer’s “Pflicht und Ehre” (GBA I/ 6: 139) through a lawful marriage, he feels trapped and falters. In particular, he fears the threat of marginalization and loss within a discursive space that he perceives as coherent and meaningful. As a potential disruption in the realm of signification - the codes that form the bedrock of the Prussian social system in which he The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 113 exercises a sanctioned signifying practice - his brief affair with the abject Victoire prompts a crisis that unravels the fabric of his subjectivity. The thought of being ridiculed and dissociated from society at the side of an unbefitting, ugly wife seems unbearable. As an existential threat, the prospect of a marginalized, bucolic married life governed by “Raps oder Rübsen” (GBA I/ 6: 100) generates a sense of utter meaninglessness in him. Under the lens of a Kristevan reading, the negative public backlash following the handsome officer’s marital ties with a pockmarked woman would puncture his controlled position in the symbolic order and erode the constitutive parameters of his being on which his wholeness depends: honor and acceptance in the Prussian public arena, validation of normative beauty and appearance, and abstention from sexuality, expressed by the appeal which the order of the Templars has for him (GBA I/ 6: 44—45). Being associated with Victoire’s “abnormality,” her abject pockmarked facial skin, would violate Schach’s aesthetic aspirations that are focused on securing his “clean and proper” body and self. In terms of Kristeva’s theory, the skin is “the essential if not initial boundary of biological and psychic individuation” (Powers 101). It is a foundational “cover” that “guarantees corporeal integrity” (Powers 101) and grants identity. However, as “a relatively flimsy and easily assaulted partition between the body’s inside and the world outside” (Covino 17), the skin is also an imperfect traversable membrane. Hence, as a reminder of the body’s infirmity, Victoire’s wounded skin with its intrinsic permeability throws into relief the body’s ambiguous borders that threaten the notion of an orderly bodily whole. As the porous site of orifices and excretions, the skin, especially the impaired skin, emerges as an abject cause of disorder that tests “the self/ other split upon which subjectivity depends” and, recalling the fragility of our selfhood and our proclivity for “physical wasting and ultimate death,” provokes disgust (Covino 17). In Kristevan terms, Victoire’s skin as such a “fragile container” bears all too visibly the threatening signs of ruptures as residues of loss. For Schach, her appearance indicates acutely the loss of what Kristeva calls “the integrity of one’s ‘own and clean self’” (Powers 53). 1 Significantly, Victoire contracted smallpox at the age of fifteen, at the peak of puberty (Manthey 127). Thus her illness coincides with the onset of “unclean” bodily flows that, as part of the wide array of Kristeva’s abjects, compromise physical boundaries and, ultimately, bear the sign of mortality. Moreover, thus marked as an object that has only narrowly escaped obliteration, Victoire’s blemish conjures up the abject peril of the ultimate loss - death. Consequently, Schach’s return from his boat excursion on the estate’s lake takes him to the juncture “wo der tote Arm des Sees nach Wuthenow hin abbog” (GBA I/ 6: 114). Moreover, “[er] freute sich der Anstrengung, dies ihm kostete” to get back to the “verpaßte Stelle” (GBA I/ 6: 114). Unable to contain Victoire’s power to contaminate, his desperation turns 114 Edith H. Krause into a willingly embraced death wish as the only possible form of escape. Misaligned with what he considers unclean and improper, Schach resorts to suicide as the only proper measure in view of an undesirable marriage. In addition, Victoire’s pregnancy represents more than a call to paternal duty and responsibility. Her pregnant body conjures up awareness of the original maternal abode which the child leaves behind upon entering the world of the symbolic with its rules of language, codified behavior, and conventions. It is a reminder of the fundamental split in which the mother is left behind in the realm of the abject along with everything else that is disorderly and might derail the development of the emerging subject’s autonomy. However, it is also a reminder of the persistent danger of the maternal hold, of “an Other who precedes and possesses me” (Kristeva, Powers 10). As such it elicits horror or disgust visà-vis the jettisoned abject that is intricately linked with the body of the mother. Thus Schach’s disparate reactions to Victoire, maternity, and marriage reflect his deep-seated ambiguity regarding the maternal figure whose hold, in Kristevan terms, is experienced as both a blessing and an impediment, as generative and nullifying, as jouissance and anguish. Likewise, the maternal hold mirrors the hold of the social and political network that encapsulates Schach like a second skin. His attraction to Victoire ruptures this enclosure. It constitutes a threat to a regulatory space that, by granting “symbolic dignity” (Oliver 85), is of vital necessity for him. The love affair between Schach and Victoire, its fecundity, and its fatal end are foreshadowed in various ways. At the very beginning, Schach’s arrival in Frau von Carayon’s salon casts “ein Schimmer freudiger Überraschung” over both Victoire and Josephine (GBA I/ 6: 8). Both anticipate joyfully the outing to Tempelhof. However, instead of bringing clarity to Josephine’s and Schach’s relationship, it turns into an event abounding with ambiguities. The excursion to the little church is shrouded in portentous images that contradict the April day’s promising “Sonne und wieder Sonne” (GBA I/ 6: 34). A barren field borders the churchyard wall, the grounds are dotted with dilapidated graves, and the church’s inside “wirkte kümmerlich und zerfallen” (GBA I/ 6: 41). The theme of death and its relation to Schach is particularly reflected in the story about the Tempelritter whose “abgeschurrt[en]” face carved on his tombstone (GBA I/ 6: 42) also connects to the “für diesen Text zentralen Themen der Entstellung und der Häßlichkeit” (Pfeiffer 266). Likewise, the text’s insistence on physical defilement and bodily decay relates to Kristeva’s notion of the abject that draws the subject “toward the place where meaning collapses” (Powers 2). Thus the portrayal of the locale’s ruinous appearance may also be seen as a reference to an increasingly meaningless Prussian society and to the ruinous path taken by Schach as one of its representatives. The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 115 Intriguing for the purpose of this analysis is the subtle interpolation of the maternal ambit through suggestive images that emanate from the surrounding natural setting. The narrator’s account rests briefly on nascent crops, nesting larks, and on a pair of serenading toads at the watery breeding ground of a “trichterförmigen Tümpel” (GBA I/ 6: 39—40). On the one hand, the description evokes a realistic sense of the rural locale. On the other, the setting’s elements embody a wide associative network of sexuality and fertility that anticipates the interlude between Schach and Victoire. The image of the toads, in particular, is imbued with ambiguous notions of life, death, and impropriety. Socio-culturally, the toad emerged as an “Attribut der Unkeuschheit und des Todes” in the late Middle Ages (Lurker 107). Its supposedly poisonous skin, in particular, contributed to the notion of the toad as an augury of demise. In the context of Freudian psychoanalysis and folkloric myth, the toad has also been seen as a symbol of the uterus, the mother within the mother (Stekel 111). Thus both as a magical creature and an ugly, slimy, verrucous beast, the toad is a multifaceted reference to the story’s core elements. It points to Victoire’s charming nature, her compromised features, her sexual lapse and pregnancy and, finally, Schach’s repulsion. His ambiguity toward Victoire comes full circle when, after their affable verbal interplay, he abruptly disengages. Upon leaving the secluded site of the church and the Templar’s shrine, he demonstratively leads Frau von Carayon back into the public space of the village in what appears to be an effort to save face at the side of a beautiful woman rather than to lose face in the company of the disfigured daughter. Of further significance is Victoire’s unobtrusive act of picking a bunch of violets growing at what is suggestively described as a “schattig-feuchte Stelle” by the church (GBA I/ 6: 41). In an ambiguous vicarious gesture, she hands the flowers to her mother as Schach’s publicly displayed object of adoration. Only later, during the couple’s wedding festivities, does Tante Marguerite divulge a second violet-incident. Victoire had also picked a small bouquet for Schach which, however, never reached the intended recipient. Commonly seen as a multifaceted symbol of modesty, virginity, hope, fertility, and love, the plant sheds light on Victoire’s conflicted emotions. She, too, is caught up in ambiguities. Her psychological ambivalence is distinctly evident when, as the aunt keenly observed, she discards the blooms on the grave of a child in an equivocal move coupling female desire, a frustrated act of defloration, and fear of rejection (GBA I/ 6: 148). 2 By dint of Victoire’s disposal, the flowers on the child’s grave become a subtle illustration of the contiguity of life and death observed by Kristeva. In addition, her act of discarding the flowers recalls Kristeva’s concern with the intricate mother-child relationship. Consequently, it may be seen met- 116 Edith H. Krause aphorically as Victoire’s desire to restore her own blissful maternal bond with Josephine that is threatened by her clandestine attraction to Schach. As a turning point in the dynamic between Schach and Victoire, Prince Louis of Prussia’s soireé serves to connect the abject with the notion of jouissance by way of a capricious treatise centered around the various manifestations of physical attractiveness. The Prince’s titillating evocation of the “beauté du diable” as a superior form of beauty suffused with “Energie, Feuer, Leidenschaft” (GBA I/ 6: 67—68) is directly associated with the pockmarked Victoire. Objectivized in absentia, she is relentlessly delivered to the patronizing male gaze of the soirée’s guests and their frivolous scrutiny of the beautiful as the benchmark of a woman’s value. In the end, the Prince’s famously paradoxical verdict, “le laid c’est le beau” (GBA I/ 6: 69), produces a manipulative politics of the body. He propounds a “dynamic and inclusive” view of the coexistence of “context-dependent, divergent notions of what may be defined as (un)aesthetic” (Kutzbach and Mueller 7). Subjective in nature, it is a “constructed rather than given” understanding of the aesthetic and of beauty that is based on individual impressions rather than objective measures (Kutzbach and Mueller 7). 3 Thus Victoire undergoes a check of systemic assumptions and becomes the testing ground for an experiment in which the Prince’s salacious cajolery diffuses Schach’s repulsion and kindles his fascination. By blurring distinct conceptual borders, the Prince’s remark lays the groundwork for the protagonists’ pivotal amorous hours. His light-minded causerie unfolds a seductive dialectical tension that, through a value reversal, constructs Victoire’s body as desirable. Schach’s attraction to Victoire recalls the ambiguity of the abject that is tied to a nexus of diametrically opposed feelings materializing as love and hate, rejection and submission, and elation and loathing. Moreover, the French formulation that glamorizes Victoire’s physical appearance establishes a paradoxical psychological safeguard. The distancing and transfiguring register of the Prince’s linguistic representation allows a close physical engagement between Schach and Victoire. Likewise, a transformative act of “sprachliches ‘cross-dressing’” (Brandstetter and Neumann 261) contributes to the consequential act. Victoire likens herself to the French figure of Mirabeau whose own disfigurement makes him her “spezieller Leidensgenoß” (GBA I/ 6: 78). This prompts the wordplay in which she emerges first as his female counterpart, “Mirabelle,” and then as the more intimate German “Wunderhold” (GBA I/ 6: 78) that sets the tone for the ensuing corporeal union with Schach. In the dark confines of the salon, where the mother’s absence creates “eine Art Freiraum” outside the “Liebescode einer Normengesellschaft” (Brandstetter and Neumann 257), Victoire’s body becomes Kristeva’s “magnetized pole of covetousness” (Powers 8). Within the blank space of the text where, in the process of physical union, language recedes and norms The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 117 are suspended, it becomes a temporary locus of pre-symbolic pleasure. Thus the “Salon,” the public place of social receptions, turns into the private space of conception. In a moment of self-abandonment incited by Victoire’s flushed cheeks, the “aufblitzendes Feuer in ihrem Auge” (GBA I/ 6: 77), and indulging the echo of the Prince’s words, Schach yields to temptation. “Alles ist Märchen und Wunder an Ihnen; ja, Mirabelle, ja Wunderhold! ” (GBA I/ 6: 79). It was, as the Queen aptly observes later on, “ein geheimnisvoller Zug” (GBA I/ 6: 139) that led Schach to Victoire. As an object of attraction “das süße Geschöpf” (GBA I/ 6: 101) opens the door to a gratifying “land of oblivion that is constantly remembered” (Kristeva, Powers 8). However, while offering access to remembered but deeply buried maternal pleasures, the intimate encounter with the abject figure also harks back to the ever present inaugural trauma of the maternal “loss” that, by severing the subject’s maternal bonds, lays “the foundations of its own being” (Kristeva, Powers 5). As a part “of the trials of individuation,” this severance is a “struggle […] with what is not parted from […] the mother’s body” (Beardsworth 83). Schach’s assuaging concession “daß sich die Seele den Körper schafft oder ihn durchleuchtet und verklärt” (GBA I/ 6: 78) fuses previously uncomfortable boundaries but deflects only briefly from Victoire’s outer deficiencies. Significantly, Frau von Carayon’s return re-establishes the framing social code. The intimate “du” reverts to the “Sie,” and Schach’s hasty retreat is couched in the notion of guilt: “‘Erst die Schuld und dann die Lüge,’ klang es in ihm” (GBA I/ 6: 79—80). The narrative interpolation remains ambiguous. On the one hand, it can be attributed to Schach’s participation in the act of love-making followed by his instant awareness of its momentary nature and his imminent breach of trust. On the other, it harks back to Victoire’s cryptic acknowledgement of Josephine’s return overheard by Schach: “Du kommst so früh. Ach, und wie hab ich Dich erwartet! ” (GBA I/ 6: 80). In Kristevan terms, her words signify both the surreptitious need to uphold the mother, who came back all too early, in the realm of the abject and the joy and mitigating relief about being reunited with her. With Victoire’s pregnancy Schach faces forced connubial ties. However, marriage and wedlock are words that have terrified him “von alter Zeit her” (GBA I/ 6: 100). His courtship of the beautiful Josephine von Carayon is no more than a socially accepted ritual typical for the airs of a member of the officer corps. As an empty, behavioral template that is repeatable at will, it lacks substance but befits the public persona of the handsome, vain Schach, who also appears to bestow attention on other female members of high society (GBA I/ 6: 37). Marrying a widow with a child, however, would be incompatible with his “überspannte Vorstellungen von Intaktheit und Ehe” (GBA I/ 6: 24). In Kristevan terms, taking their relationship beyond the ritual would violate his extraordinary dependen- 118 Edith H. Krause cy on the “clean and proper.” Nor does Josephine proffer the requisite “social” integrity since the “Unnormalität” of her unpresentable daughter would be an abject contamination of Schach’s “Normalität” (GBA I/ 6: 24). Likewise, a marriage with Victoire is unfeasible. For one, in Kristevan terms, the scar tissue of her pockmarked face with its traces of “holes,” as it were, puts Schach’s sense of orderliness and wholeness at risk. For another, it is reminiscent of his own inner scar tissue that stems from his ambiguous maternal bonds: the dread of the maternal pull with its inherent danger of self-annihilation on the one hand, and the dread of losing the always coveted originary unity on the other. Victoire’s feverish passion awakens Schach’s desire. However, the implicit prospect of gestation and maternity links her to the abject and the maternal hold on the subject. Thus she also appears as a threat, for the struggle for autonomy bears “the constant risk of falling back under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling” (Kristeva, Powers 13). Schach’s association with Victoire renders his “clean and proper [self] … filthy,” what he sought after “turns into the banished, [and] fascination into shame” (Kristeva, Powers 8). Moreover, as conceived by Kristeva, abjection is coexistent with narcissism, a character trait attributable to Schach: “The more or less beautiful image in which I behold or recognize myself rests upon an abjection that sunders it as soon as repression, the constant watchman, is relaxed” (Powers 13). Schach’s abandonment of this “constant watchman” during a few pleasure-filled hours becomes a personal gridlock. To be part of “the symbolic order, the subject must reject or repress all […] modes of being [that are] regarded as unacceptable, improper or unclean” (Creed 37). The incompatibility of his proper sense of self with an improper other leads to a “narcissistic crisis” (Kristeva, Powers 14) marked by avoidance, flight, and the mourning of the lost mother whose lingering presence challenges his wholeness, stability and integrity. Schach’s subjectivity is under siege from the beginning. With the exception of the Wuthenow chapter, the text constructs his self largely as the product of interpretations delivered by others rather than through his own self-affirming proclamations of character, behavior, and purpose. In the opening paragraph, a reference to his absence from the chair next to Frau von Carayon establishes his destined presence in the Carayon salon as an empty shell. At the same time, it already anticipates his final absence from the story. After his late arrival, his voice in the animated politico-societal banter between the evening’s guests is mostly eclipsed by the others’ comments. In Kristeva’s terms, his entry into the realm of the symbolic via language is compromised. He gains fuller shape through the descriptions of his peers who take advantage of his early retreat to illuminate his convictions and ambitions during their late-night gathering in The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 119 the comfort of a local drinking establishment. As a public discourse, their frank confabulations eagerly examine his fitness as a suitor for Frau von Carayon whose beauty is accentuated as a marked contrast to her unsightly daughter. The unpleasant circulation of anonymous caricatures represents another and more pernicious form of the public voice that renders him speechless. Exported from the relative safety of a small circle of friends into the open civic arena, his relationship with Josephine and Victoire becomes a publicly displayed and ridiculed “cause celèbre” (GBA I/ 6: 105). Culminating in an image that depicts him brazenly as “‘Schach - matt’” (GBA I/ 6: 106), the series constitutes an assault on his innermost core and precipitates his disintegration. Faced with the unabashed travesty of his relationship with the Carayons he feels defiled and polluted. By exposing his private affairs to public inspection, the unacceptable, improper, “unclean” drawings expel him from the “clean and proper” of Prussian society. The depth of his shock manifests itself in an affective reaction. Subjected to this violation of the code of honor ingrained in him, “[er] zitterte vor Scham und Zorn, alles Blut stieg ihm zu Kopf, und es war ihm, als würd er vom Schlage getroffen” (103). Unable to handle the shame in the city, he seeks refuge at his ancestral home of Schloss Wuthenow where the “maternal authority” as the “trustee of the self’s clean and proper body” (Kristeva, Powers 71) moves into the foreground. Within the castle’s “alter, weißgetünchter und […] schwarzgeteerte[r]” timber structure (GBA I/ 6: 107) lies the formidable grey area of the mother whose presence still pervades every corner of Schach’s childhood home. Here, where the disfigured image of Victoire meets the authority of his beautiful mother, Schach reaches his point of no return. At the stroke of midnight Schach arrives on horseback at his ancestors’ country seat. Under the starlit sky, the rural seat steeped in the spirit of his male ancestors’ great military achievements and the female beauty of their consorts lies before him “wie das Schloß im Märchen” (GBA I/ 6: 107). In a striking parallel, “Märchen” is the same word that described Victoire when she was at her most desirable for Schach and thus draws the two objects of desire - Victoire and the mother embodied by the Schloss - in conflictual proximity. It is Schach’s first visit “seit dem Tode der Gnädigen” (GBA I/ 6: 111) a year earlier. The horse, generally a symbol of freedom and of traditional patriarchal masculinity, conjures up notions of male vitality, self-reliance, and potency that underpin a cultural understanding of the ability to exercise control. As part of a cavalry officer’s outfit, it signals Schach’s membership in the elite Regiment Gendarmes. Likewise it reminds us of his steadfast belief in the “fridericianischen Satze, daß die Welt nicht sichrer auf den Schultern des Atlas ruht, als Preußen auf den Schultern seiner Armee” (GBA I/ 6: 39). However, as is the case in the fairy- 120 Edith H. Krause tale, the midnight hour exerts its transformative power. When “Rittmeister v. Schach” (GBA I/ 6: 8) relinquishes the reins of his horse, he sheds his masculinity and reverts to the position of a maternal appendage. Displaced from the urban scene and re-placed into his original locus of authentication, he plunges into a labyrinth of agonizing feelings and thoughts. Remodeled at the behest of her late ladyship and cherished by Schach as a maternal legacy, the Schloss figures, in Kristevan terms, as the maternal cave to which the son returns. Following a narrow passageway - a birth canal, of sorts - Schach re-enters, as Kristeva would have it, the “natural mansion” (Powers 13) through a “Doppelthür” that is “halb verquollen[e]” and could not be opened “ohne Müh und Anstrengung” (GBA I/ 6: 109). As gateway into the recently deceased’s garden salon and reception room, it leads to a domain where everything and, by implication the son himself, still has “den alten Platz” (GBA I/ 6: 109). A variety of “Kunst- und Erinnerungsgegenstände[n]” and a “bronzener Doppelleuchter, den Schach selber […] seiner Mutter verehrt hatte” (GBA I/ 6: 109) are manifestations of her feminine presence and a doting descendant. Within the Kristevan framework, the contents of this sanctuary recall the “mother’s insides” (Van Buren 120) to which Schach retreats in order to relinquish his moral responsibilities and to regain the security of the erstwhile attachment. Permeated by an oppressive sultriness and damp air, the maternal surroundings are reminiscent of the protective, moist uterine cavity to which Schach has come back. Yet he does not find repose. Framed in the textual imagery of the abject, harbingers of death torment his “überreiztes Gehirn” (GBA I/ 6: 110) as he tries to settle down to sleep. A dense cloud of dust stirred up from the sofa connects readily with his thoughts of the family vault. Likewise, an abject mass of buzzing nightly insects - portents of death, attracted to the inside by the candlelight - doubles as Schachs’s troubled ruminations that crush his composure and drive him outside. Physically and emotionally he is moving in a circle without outlet: “könnt’ ich heraus! ” (GBA I/ 6: 113). The insects as instances of the Kristevan filth and defilement belong to the inventory of the abject. Compromising the distinction between the interior and the exterior, the abject swarm trespasses the border to the uterine enclosure thus encroaching on the revered space of the mother which the visitor seeks to re-inhabit. 4 The garden itself with its disarray of overgrown summer blooms is impregnated with “ein schwerer und doch zugleich auch erquicklicher Levkojenduft […], den Schach in immer volleren Zügen einsog” (GBA I/ 6: 112). As a realm of nature traditionally coded as feminine it is a reminder of both lack and desire: the lack of the mother’s supervisory presence that used to keep all growth in order and the eager gesture of suction - reminiscent of lactation - that fancies the recuperation of a lost union with the maternal. The heavy floral scent becomes a vestige the mother’s The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 121 ubiquity. It metaphorically underscores Schach’s experience of the painful scar that stems from the original separation from the maternal body. Schach’s circular movements take him past crumbling statues of gods and goddesses whose relevance as a formidable instance of narrative complexity has remained unacknowledged in Fontane literature. Despite their merely casual mention in the text, these statues assume a significant and deeply ambiguous meaning. Not having taken notice of their “Bedeutung” in the past, now Schach bestows upon them his attention “und freute sich besonders aller derer, denen die Köpfe fehlten, weil sie die dunkelsten und unverständlichsten waren” (GBA I/ 6: 112). In light of Kristeva’s framework, their ultimate meaning for Schach becomes transparent. For Kristeva, the image of the severed head is related to “the archaic fear of losing the mother.” As a “capital cut,” it recalls the infant’s original separation and is thus connected to the notion of the abjection of the feminine (Kristeva, Severed Head 83—84). The loss of “the head as symbol of the thinking living being” (Severed Head 4) amounts to the loss of the individual’s true self. As an “admission of our internal fractures” (Severed Head 105), it becomes an allusion to “the decapitated truth of our identity” (Miller 1). Schach has left Berlin in a sort of “headless” manner without notifying the Carayons and disregarding the expected announcement of his betrothal to Victoire. The headless statues he encounters in the castle’s gardens are the visual representation of his fragmentation. 5 Illustrating “the deceptive claim to a seamless unity” (Miller 8), they are a reminder of the originary oneness with its nurturing pleasures whose pursuit has led to Schach’s return. At the same time, the headless figures represent a form of coveted, self-validating matricide as the necessary precondition for establishing individuality and wholeness via the process of maternal abjection. As Kristeva notes, “the cult of the mother […] is transformed into matricide. The loss of the mother - which for the imaginary is tantamount to the death of the mother - becomes the organizing principle for the subject’s symbolic capacity” (Kristeva, Melanie Klein 129—30). Hence the feeling of joy that Schach exhibits at the sight of these dark and mysterious forms without heads that suggest the self-affirming “loss of maternal dependence” (Kristeva, Severed Head 16). Additionally, within the Kristevan framework, the statues as cold and lifeless entities confront Schach “with the fundamental invisible that is death: the disappearance of our carnal form and its most salient parts, which are the head, the limbs, and the sex organs, prototypes of vitality” (Severed Head 4). In the final analysis then, the capital disappearance foreshadows Schach’s suicide. The notion of matricide also relates to Victoire’s position in the ménage à trois that plays out in a series of swaps. Switching mother/ daughter roles, Victoire ostensibly plans the Tempelhof outing as a way to promote a desirable marital 122 Edith H. Krause commitment between Schach and Josephine. The Tempelhof events, however, hint at a latent rivalry between mother and daughter. Victoire’s deeply affective response to Schach’s affable conversational tone betrays her fondness for the mother’s suitor who has offered her his arm. Reverberating deeply within her, the sound of his words “traf ihr Herz und zitterte darin nach, ohne daß sich Schach dessen bewußt gewesen wäre” (GBA I/ 6: 44). Likewise, she is visibly “betroffen” when, shortly thereafter, Schach “exchanges” her for Josephine whom he leads back to the country inn: “Und sie verfärbte sich” while pondering the “Tausch, den Schach mit keinem Worte der Entschuldigung begleitet hatte” (GBA I/ 6: 45). Later surrendering to her own desires and granting Schach access to her body when the opportunity arises, Victoire “seeks to supplant her mother and to become the beneficiary of her own efforts” (Kieffer 32). Fragmented in her own way by illness and sadness about the “eingetauschten Guten” (GBA I/ 6: 77) that has altered her social intercourse, her advancement of and participation in the sexual intercourse bears the stamp of aggression toward the mother as rival. Claiming that “Ich darf alles” (GBA I/ 6: 30), she stipulates freedom from limiting social dictates and, implicitly, from maternal attachment. Her intimate letter to her friend Lisette von Perbandt reflects the turning point in the mother/ daughter/ Schach dynamic that resonates in her suggestive description of the Tempelhof ambience: “Zuletzt traten wir in die Kirche, die vom Abendrot wie durchglüht war, alles gewann Leben, und es war unvergeßlich schön” (GBA I/ 6: 48). Driven by liberating “Uebermut” and tinged with traumatic and predominating “Bitterkeit” (GBA I/ 6: 78), she cuts into the tight bond with the mother to assert her own zest for life. Thus the sexual act as a form of severance from maternal engulfment becomes a covert act of matricide. For her, too, “the loss of the mother is a biological and psychic necessity […] on the way to becoming autonomous. Matricide is our vital necessity, the sine-qua-non condition of our individuation” (Kristeva, Portable Kristeva 197). Significantly, the text alludes to the former resemblance between Victoire and Josephine (GBA I/ 6: 8) as a token of their exchangeability. Not surprisingly then, bodily and psychologically Victoire consummates her union with Schach in place of the mother and in the mother’s place, the salon in Berlin’s Behrendstraße. Josephine, for her part, guards her beauty assiduously through a daily glance in the mirror. Beyond the daughter’s reassurances, her pride demands that the mirror, in fairy tale-like manner, also attest to her sustained beauty. Moreover, as the narrator tells us, her controlling gaze does not veer to her late husband’s full-length portrait above the salon’s sofa but that, instead, “ein stattlicheres Bild” is conjured up in her mind (GBA I/ 6: 28). She, too, is noticeably responsive to Schach’s attentions. With a playful trace of jealousy, following a piece of gossip shared by Aunt Marguerite, she challenges Schach’s serenade of anoth- The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 123 er, beautiful member of the social elite. Schach, in turn, responds with effusive “Huldigungen” that make her eyes gleam “während ihre Hand in der seinen zitterte” (GBA I/ 6: 37—38). Nevertheless, the mother as the guardian of her child materializes when she defends her daughter’s rights in view of Schach’s withdrawal. Now it is her turn to engineer a commitment between him and Victoire, and she relies on the leverage of the symbolic realm, the King and Queen as the highest Prussian authorities, to secure it. Still, maternal inclination seems only part of her course of action. Beyond that, she would gain vicarious participation in her daughter’s marital union with Schach. In addition, she is driven by self-preservation. She admits to the unconditional desire not to be dislodged from a social circle in which she intends to continue to thrive: “Ich gehöre der Gesellschaft an, deren Bedingungen ich erfülle, deren Gesetzen ich mich unterwerfe; […] Mit anderen Worten, ich habe nicht Lust, ins Kloster zu gehen oder die dem Irdischen entrückte Säulenheilige zu spielen, auch nicht um Victoirens willen” (GBA I/ 6: 97). Her daughter’s illegitimate and therefore objectionable pregnancy would turn her into a social outcast. In Kristevan terms, she would become abject. Although spitefully ridiculed by the spurned Josephine as a “Hühnerhof” (GBA I/ 6: 123) and “eine Lehmkathe” (GBA I/ 6: 125), Schloss Wuthenow holds the guiding principle of Schach’s existence. As he wavers between a tormenting concession to royal orders and an equally problematic cultivation of his ego, the retreat to his place of origin becomes the ultimate battlefield for his destabilized subjectivity. Eventually, after his futile perambulation in the garden, he finds rest in his mother’s summer boat of bygone days. As a boy, going out on the lake in Wuthenow had been “seine höchste Wonne” (GBA I/ 6: 113). He relives this joy at a time of utmost crisis during his visit to a home that is filled with maternal memories. Water is an organic symbol of women’s fluidity, like the blood, milk, and tears which Kristeva identifies as abject. Thus the boat as another metaphorical womb becomes the ultimate expression of the maternal recess (Manthey 128—29). In Kristeva’s words, Schach’s jouissance reveals the emotional significance of the abjected mother as “a deep well of memory” (Powers 6), a power that we try to banish but whose command is perpetually present. Gently rocking and swaying, the boat takes Schach into the flow of the current, onto the “rechte [maternal] Richtung,” and lulls him into a peaceful sleep (GBA I/ 6: 114). Returning to the house, a last combat of thoughts in the ancestral picture gallery advances Schach’s passage toward suicide. Here the mother turns from dark memory to commanding image when her portrait becomes the climactic target of his gaze. As he pictures the addition of a painting displaying Victoire he recoils. Her blemishes would deface the countenance of the mother who for him is “am schönsten” among all the women in the estate’s collection (GBA I/ 6: 124 Edith H. Krause 119). At this point, the maternal hold comes full circle. Unable to reconcile the incompatible, Schach’s categorical “Nein, nein! ” concludes his stay in Wuthenow (GBA I/ 6: 120). His dilemma unresolved, he surrenders to the authoritative body - the alluring mother whose prevailing presence makes marital bliss unfeasible. Yet honor and duty demand of him, “alles was geschehen sei, durch Gesetzlichkeit auszugleichen” (GBA I/ 6: 142). The maternal element resurfaces with Schach’s “Fata Morgana” on the eve of the wedding. His vision of the honeymoon trip to Venice, Sicily, and Malta becomes a fervent description of a journey to the edge of the unceasingly remembered and desired maternal “land of oblivion” evoked by Kristeva. Coded in the trope of the feminine dark continent and replete with sensual and sexual innuendo, “der geheimnisvolle schwarze Weltteil” (GBA I/ 6: 145) emerges as an ambiguous zone of attraction in the reluctant bridegroom’s anticipatory and unusually loquacious account. The image of the underworldly siren—rooted in the “Urbild der Mutter” (Bontrup 89) and a symbol of death—contrasts with luscious visions of green meadowlands and the magic dance and music of blackand brown-skinned girls. The erotic innuendo is compellingly captured in the suggestive image of girls raising their “Becken” with its double meaning of anatomical pelvis and musical cymbal (GBA I/ 6: 145). And, as the narrator elucidates, “diese Spiegelung aus der geheimnisvollen Ferne, das sei das Ziel” (GBA I/ 6: 146). Schach’s ardent premarital fantasy exhibits a liminal reverie in which time and place are momentarily suspended, much as it is the case with the timeless experience in the desired womb. While his fervent description is a reminder of the split from the original abode into language, the illusory scenery he describes is a passionate recall of its loss. 6 Later on, Frau von Carayon’s cryptic remark after the wedding echoes the power of the maternal: “On revient toujours à ses premiers amours” (GBA I/ 6: 150). Schach’s mirage conjures up just that ever present goal: The elusive return to this premier amour, the desirable and, at the same time, forfeited mother. 7 Lost in a reverie of “Luftbildern und Spiegelungen” (GBA I/ 6: 145), Schach extricates himself from the “flitterwochenwirklichkeit” and slips into a “todesfantasie” [sic] (Grawe 260). Hence his preliminary commitment to a redeeming “Gesetzlichkeit” is shrouded in obscurity: “Über ein Mehr leg er sich vorläufig Schweigen auf” (GBA I/ 6: 142). It is a silence that culminates in the “Mehr” of his suicide as the only possible act of liberation. Victoire’s reaction to his honeymoon vision is ambiguous. Elated by his rapturous words she is, at the same time, overcome by a “bang und düster” premonition that anticipates the actual irreality of the promised matrimonial reality: “und in ihrer Seele rief eine Stimme: Fata Morgana” (GBA I/ 6: 146). On his way home from the wedding festivities, Schach dies through a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his carriage. The maternal receptacle of his coach, The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 125 a locus that, as a uterine enclosure, is reminiscent “of the subject’s generation,” becomes the place of his final “obliteration” (Gross 89). In the womb-like enclosure of his carriage, the violence of the act and the implicit bloodshed caused by the gunshot are reminiscent of both the blood of birth that recaptures the traumatic moment of separation and individuation, and the blow of death that comes as loss and nullification. Marked by an abject “hole” that perforates the tenuous border between inside and outside, between life and death, Schach becomes, in Kristeva’s terms, a “cadaver” which is “the most sickening of wastes,” and as such “the utmost of abjection” (Kristeva, Powers 3—4). With his death he liberates himself from a personal dilemma. Likewise, he abjects the Prussian state and the values that used to give his life meaning. Unable to follow the Queen’s call to honor and duty, the handsome Schach experiences the state as a devouring threat that no longer sustains him. Thus he is personally, psychologically, and politically left within a zone of lack and loss. His life emerges “als ein todesverfallenes oder ‘totes’ Leben, denn nur totes Material läßt sich ästhetischen Formgesetzen unterwerfen” (Bontrup 68). Mirroring the “Todesverfallenheit” of the Prussian State and the “Schwäche der nach-friderizianischen Armee um 1806,” his existence which is based on outer representation and representability equates private “Lebensraum und öffentlicher Kulturraum” (Bontrup 62—63) and is thus destined to break down. In the commentator Bülow’s view, Schach’s demise is a categorical repudiation of an outdated Prussian society whose vanity and aberrations he represents. Victoire, on the other hand, intuits Schach’s dilemma, the vertiginous disintegration of the would-be Templar’s self after his courtly love turns carnal. In her concluding words she expresses a vague understanding of the deep-seated perplexities and drives in Schach’s nature: “Ein Rest von Dunklem und Unaufgeklärtem bleibt, und in die letzten und geheimsten Triebfedern andrer oder auch nur unsrer eignen Handlungsweise hineinzublicken, ist uns versagt” (GBA I/ 6: 156). While Bülow describes the “Schach-Fall” as political “Zeiterscheinung,” (GBA I/ 6: 153), Victoire’s assessment points to Fontane’s deep psychological interest in the “seelische Analyse” of his protagonist (Wandrey 157). Thus it is Victoire’s psychological assessment that provides the final of the novel’s two co-existing conclusions. Going beyond the parameters of historical time and place, her words evoke the significance of “Triebfedern” that are deeply buried in our individual psychological archaeology yet continually come to the fore as we negotiate the cultural and psychological formation of our identity and our socio-historical presence. The novel’s poignant embrace of life’s ambiguities and variable forces that constantly cloud intentions, appearance, and reality are masterfully showcased 126 Edith H. Krause in Schach’s journey from desire into death. His dramatic response to Victoire’s abject facial features as well as the troubling confrontation with her maternity provides insight into the instability, ambiguity, and fragmentary nature of his self and his foundering struggle for self-preservation. Guided by Kristeva’s theoretical framework, this article illuminated the momentousness of the abject as an ambiguous, unsettling force that disturbs identity, system, and order, challenges the idea of the body as something whole, and tests subjectivity as something always orderly and coherent. Following Kristeva, Schach’s inner disarray can be seen as the “expression of a narcissistic wound” of a depressed personality whose suicide is “a reuniting with sorrow and, beyond it, with that impossible love, never attained, always elsewhere” (Kristeva, “On the Melancholic Imaginary” 7). Still, given the twofold epistolary ending by Bülow and Victoire, the novel remains open ended. As readers we continue to be intrigued by the minutiae of Schach’s trajectory. Although Schach’s fate is embedded in history and focused on an outdated “Kultus einer falschen Ehre,” the psychological backdrop that motivates the protagonist’s final resort to “un peu de poudre” (GBA I/ 6: 154) has time-transcending character. It is not only Schach’s problematic Ehrenkultus that has “in anderer Form bis in die heutige Zeit überdauert” (Franzel 61). This reading connects Fontane, the chronicler of traditional Prussian society, to the contemporary discourse of the female body. It documents that Fontane’s works are not “stagnant backwaters” but “resonate with our era today” and with “current critical approaches” (Lyon and Tucker 6) advanced by feminist thought. In particular, this reading contributes insights into the fragile constitution of the protagonist’s subjectivity. It offers an understanding of the complex processes that are instrumental in the formation of selfhood and delineates Schach’s gradual downward spiral into a dead-end. Kristeva considers the abject and abjection as “[t]he primers of [our] culture” (Powers 2). As elements that exist at the borders of what is acceptable and unacceptable, they are thematically present throughout Schach von Wuthenow and offer an interpretive key for Schach’s inability to establish an autonomous and coherent self. By way of a Kristevan reading, the story unfolds as a cultural and psychological narrative of the ambiguities of the maternal body. The novel’s deep concern with the role of the maternal in the formation of the individual’s integrity illuminates its enduring appeal. The Abject Face: Schach and Victoire in Fontane’s Schach von Wuthenow 127 Notes 1 The old Krist, caretaker at Schloss Wuthenow, also mentions the skin metaphor when he objects to Schach’s sleeping in the dusty salon. He cites Schach’s father, who, countering the image of being skinned alive by the adverse effects of the castles’s abject “Kalkmodder,” used to say, “Nei, Krist, uns’ Huut sitt fast” (110). Besides evoking a male frame of robustness, the father’s comment betrays a firm allegiance to the Prussian state that envelops its people like a second skin. It is an allegiance that has been passed on to the son. 2 Connecting “violets” with the English word “violate,” Sigmund Freud’s analysis of a patient’s dreams leads to an understanding of the flower as an explicit sex symbol (Traumdeutung 310). 3 Kutzbach and Mueller trace this understanding of beauty back to Immanuel Kant who “paved the way for […] more contestable definitions of aesthetics” which render an understanding of aesthetics “negotiable” (7). 4 Interestingly enough, the salon in Wuthenow undergoes a thorough cleaning at the hands of the caretakers. Returned to its “clean and proper” state, the place is intended to ensure Schach’s comfort and well-being. Mutter Kreepschen’s “gute Stube” presents a parallel to the mother’s newly cleansed salon. Owing to the “Mottenvertreibungsmittel,” here everything “war sauber und rein” (116—17). 5 The fact that he claims illness as a reason for his leave from the city is another intimation of his threatening physical and mental disintegration. 6 For Kristeva the original split from the mother is reflected in the subject’s encounter of language for “all abjection is in fact recognition of the want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire is founded” (Kristeva, Powers-5). 7 Manthey also refers to Schach’s “Regression in die embryonale Haltung im Mutterschoß” (Manthey 128), without, however, anchoring his observations in the text’s pervasive notion of the abject. Works Cited Beardsworth, Sara. Julia Kristeva. Psychoanalysis and Modernity. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 2004. Bontrup, Hiltrud. “… auch nur ein Bild”: Krankheit und Tod in ausgewählten Texten Theodor Fontanes. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 2000. Bowman, Peter James. “Schach von Wuthenow. 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