Description
The first German women’s movement embraced the belief in a demographic surplus of unwed women, known as the Frauenüberschuß, as a central leitmotif in the campaign for reform. Proponents of the female surplus held that the advances of industry and urbanization had upset traditional marriage patterns and left too many bourgeois women without a husband. This book explores the ways in which the realms of literature, sexology, demography, socialism, and female activism addressed the perceived plight of unwed women. Case studies of reformers, including Lily Braun, Ruth Bré, Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne, Helene Lange, Alice Salomon, Helene Stöcker, and Clara Zetkin, demonstrate the expansive influence of the discourse surrounding a female surfeit. By combining the approaches of cultural, social, and gender history, The Surplus Woman provides the first sustained analysis of the ways in which imperial Germans conceptualized anxiety about female marital status as both a product and a reflection of changing times.
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The early German women's movement was established in answer to the widely-perceived problem of an unusually high number of unmarried women. However, as Dollard (history, Dennison University)points out, demographic studies prove that this imbalance did not exist. Dollard uses this pervasive myth as the basis for an examination of German uncertainty at the end of the nineteenth century. She also uses it as a base for the nature of the women's movement, which had a different outlook from its sisters in England, France and North America. In the first half of the book Dollard discusses the German ideal of feminine behavior and how unmarried women caused this to be unsettled. In the second half, she gives biographies of activist women who all came from different philosophies with sometimes opposite agendas. These include religious leaders, socialists, radical reformers and moderates. Societal fears of women being "unprotected" coincided with new medical and academic interest in female sexuality, in theory thwarted through lack of male partners. This book is a valuable addition to any investigation of pre-war German society. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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