The Life of High Countess Gritta von Ratsinourhouse (European Women Writers) - Hardcover

Von Arnim, Bettine; Von Arnim Grimm, Gisela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080324665X ISBN 13: 9780803246652

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1999

Synopsis

Appearing for the first time in English, this delightful story of the adventures of twelve young girls will appeal to readers of all ages. Gritta, neglected by her father, is uprooted when her new stepmother insists she enter a convent school. Strictly supervised by the nun Sequestra, Gritta slips into melancholy. A mishandled bird, however, awakens Gritta to the realization that she and her friends must flee their walled-in life. Following her heart and employing her wits, Gritta leads the escape. The runaway girls are eventually shipwrecked near the principality of Sumbona. They establish a Robinson Crusoe–like existence and later found their own cloister.

 

Their community is sustained by the industry and talents of each of the girls. Mayeli paints, Harmony composes, and Wildberry, an herbalist, learns nature’s secrets and gains access to supernatural powers that will guarantee the future of the community. Gritta chooses to marry Prince Bonus of Sumbona, but when she sees the twelve cells in the cloister, she realizes with a pang of longing that she will never occupy the one meant for her.

 

This enchanting tale, coauthored in the early 1840s by Gisela von Arnim Grimm and her mother, Bettine von Arnim, lay undiscovered in an archive for nearly a century. Through humor and delicate satire, the authors criticize the place of women and children in nineteenth-century German society.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Ohm is an assistant professor of German at the College of St. Benedict and Saint John’s University in St. Joseph, Minnesota.

Reviews

Written in the early 1840s, this unusual German Bildungsroman-fairy tale was long passed over for publication owing to the difficulty of authenticating its authorship, its missing final pages (finally rediscovered in 1986) and its strong feminist bent. The narrative's underlying satirical commentary on the role of girls and women in 19th-century Germany portrays menAaristocrats and commoners alikeAas weak and intellectually inferior to females. ( The male powers of the day, including the ruling monarch, were duly offended.) Now available in English for the first time, the tale charts the adventures of 12 young convent-school students who are taught the skills, manners, and attributes that good (read: conformist) girls must have. Young High Countess Gritta, the protagonist, is sent away to the convent by her stepmother, who accuses the seven-year-old of being "a wild little thing" who "can't embroider, weave, [or] spin." When the girls finally escape their walled-in school, it is Gritta who leads their flight, and Gritta who oversees the founding of the girls' own community on an island in paradise, where they lead a self-sufficient life amid elves, dancing rats (hence the Ratsinourhouse of the title) and the bounty of nature. This is a delightfully clever tale of female empowerment, and a lengthy introduction by the translator places it firmly in its historical and social context. The story's only ambiguity is Gritta's decision to forgo the community and marry Prince Bonus of Sumbona; it's unclear whether she does so to satisfy her own heart or his. (Aug.) FYI: Bettine von Arnim and Gisela von Arnim Grimm were mother and daughter; Gisela married Herman Grimm, the son of fairy tale collector Wilhelm Grimm.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

paper 0-8032-9620-7 The Life Of High Countess Gritta Von Ratsinourhouse ($35.00; paper $15; Aug. 23; 154 pp.; 0-8032-4665-X; paper 0-8032-9620-7): Completed in 1845 but not published in full until 1986, this is an agreeable romantic fantasythe single collaboration of a mother and daughter writing team about a spirited young girl who escapes with 11 companions from a repressive convent school, survives shipwreck, and eventually founds a utopian commune in which women are their own masters. A lively satire on 19th-century German paternalism and a forthright fable of women's empowerment, this only slightly dated tale is in fact an entertaining and rewarding work, and very much worth rediscovering. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080324665X
• ISBN 13: 9780803246652
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 154