The leading character, Wilhelmine, is, like most characters which are chosen and built up to exemplify a preconceived theory, quite unconvincing. In his foreword Wezel analyzes his heroine’s character and details at some length the motives underlying the choice of attributes and the building up of her personality. This insight into the author’s scaffolding, this explanation of the mechanism of his puppet-show, does not enhance the aesthetic, or the satirical force of the figure. She is not conceived in flesh and blood, but is made to order.
The story begins in letters,—a method of story-telling which was the legacy of Richardson’s popularity—and this device is again employed in the second volume (Part VII). Wilhelmine Arend is one of those whom sentimentalism seized like a maddening pestiferous disease. We read of her that she melted into tears when her canary bird lost a feather, that she turned white and trembled when Dr. Braun hacked worms to pieces in conducting a biological experiment. On one occasion she refused to drive home, as this would take the horses out in the noonday sun and disturb their noonday meal,—an exorbitant sympathy with brute creation which owes its popularity to Yorick’s ass. It is not necessary here to relate the whole story. Wilhelmine’s excessive sentimentality estranges her from her husband, a weak brutish man, who has no comprehension of her feelings. He finds a refuge in the debasing affections of a French opera-singer, Pouilly, and gradually sinks to the very lowest level of degradation. This all is accomplished by the interposition and active concern of friends, by efforts at reunion managed by benevolent intriguers and kindly advisers.
The advice of Drs. Braun and Irwin is especially significant in its sane characterization of Wilhelmine’s mental disorders, and the observations upon “Empfindsamkeit” which are scattered through the book are trenchant, and often markedly clever. Wilhelmine holds sentimental converse with three kindred spirits in succession, Webson, Dittmar, and Geissing. The first reads touching tales aloud to her and they two unite their tears, a sentimental idea dating from the Maria of Moulines episode. The part which the physical body, with its demands and desires unacknowledged and despised, played as the unseen moving power in these three friendships is clearly and forcefully brought out. Allusion to Timme’s elucidation of this principle, which, though concealed, underlay much of the sentimentalism of this epoch, has already been made. Finally Wilhelmine is persuaded by her friends to leave her husband, and the scene is shifted to a little Harz village, where she is married to Webson; but the unreasonableness of her nature develops inordinately, and she is unable ever to submit to any reasonable human relations, and the rest of the tale is occupied with her increasing mental aberration, her retirement to a hermit-like seclusion, and her death.
The book, as has been seen, presents a rather pitiful satire on the whole sentimental epoch, not treating any special manifestation, but applicable in large measure equally to those who joined in expressing the emotional ferment to which Sterne, “Werther” and “Siegwart” gave impulse, and for which they secured literary recognition. Wezel fails as a satirist, partly because his leading character is not convincing, but largely because his satirical exaggeration, and distortion of characteristics, which by a process of selection renders satire efficient, fails to make the exponent of sentimentalism ludicrous, but renders her pitiful. At the same time this satirical warping impairs the value of the book as a serious presentation of a prevailing malady. The book falls between two stools.
A precursor of “Wilhelmine Arend” from Wezel’s own hand was “Die unglückliche Schwäche,” which was published in the second volume of his “Satirische Erzählungen.”[76] In this book we have a character with a heart like the sieve of the Danaids, and to Frau Laclerc is attributed “an exaggerated softness of heart which was unable to resist a single impression, and was carried away at any time, wherever the present impulse bore it.” The plot of the story, with the intrigues of Graf. Z., the Pouilly of the piece, the separation of husband and wife, their reunion, the disasters following directly in the train of weakness of heart in opposing sentimental attacks, are undoubtedly children of the same purpose as that which brought forth “Wilhelmine Arend.”
Another satirical protest was, as one reads from a contemporary review, “Die Tausend und eine Masche, oder Yoricks wahres Shicksall, ein blaues Mährchen von Herrn Stanhope” (1777, 8o). The book purports to be the posthumous work of a young Englishman, who, disgusted with Yorick’s German imitators, grew finally indignant with Yorick himself. The Almanach der deutschen Musen (1778, pp. 99–100) finds that the author misjudges Yorick. The book is written in part if not entirely in verse.
In 1774 a correspondent of Wieland’s Merkur writes, begging this authoritative periodical to condemn a weekly paper just started in Prague, entitled “Wochentlich Etwas,” which is said to be written in the style of Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey, M . . . R . . . and “die Beyträge zur Geheimen Geschichte des menschlichen Herzens und Verstandes,” and thereby is a shame to “our dear Bohemia.”
In this way it is seen how from various sources and in various ways protest was made against the real or distorted message of Laurence Sterne.
[1.] I, p. 103, Lemgo.
[2.] 1772, July 7.