Culture and Identity

Theatrical Revolutions and Domestic Reforms: Space and Ideology in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Austen's Mansfield Park

“…As Maike Oergel observes, the conciliatory tendency that prevails in Goethe's ideals of human history and personal Bildung does not revoke those 'suggestions in the text that a solution to bourgeois emancipation must be found, that, in effect, only the methods of the French Revolution were wrong'. 36 But in Goethe and Austen's view, revolution must stay abroad but prompt reforms at home that do not compromise the foundations of the existing order. In conclusion, the puppet theatre, the resident company of the Schloß, and the theatricals in Mansfield Park are like the 'crevices and holes' Wilhelm talks of to Mariane, peep-holes from which another world can be glimpsed, so different from the regulated cosmos of the family home, a space where excitement and animation reign, yes, but alongside them the sinister spirit of subversion and chaos, and the polluting contagion of the political and theatrical revolutions that Goethe and Austen were anxious to keep at bay.…”