“A Heart with Testicles”: The Gender of an Epoch

In the most recent extensive study of the Sturm und Drang, Bruce Duncan sums up the critical discussion of its women authors as follows: “According to the traditional critical consensus, no women can be numbered among the movement's members. Almost everyone agrees that the Sturm und Drang was both in fact and by its nature a wholly male enterprise. To talk about Sturm und Drang women has almost always meant to discuss only the female characters in the dramas.” While this is not entirely true — there are, in fact, several feminist works suggesting many female candidates for inclusion — Duncan's remark intentionally describes not so much fact (the historical absence of women writers from the epoch) as fiction (the mythologization of the movement as inherently male in its reception). Critical literature has done its best to define the Sturm und Drang as “by its nature” wholly male in its three most central definitions of the movement: (1) the characterization of the Sturm und Drang as the sons' rebellion against paternal authority (fathers, the state, and God); (2) the depiction of its authors as a gathering of men joined together in exclusively male societies and friendships; and (3) the interpretation of the epoch as largely defined by a genius theory that has no relevance or application to women, refers exclusively to male idols (Prometheus, Christ, Shakespeare, Young, Ossian, Shaftesbury, and Rousseau), and finds its truest expression in drama — the genre in which women have long been held to be the least competent.