Elizabeth And Her German Garden

By Elizabeth Von Arnim

"Elizabeth And Her German Garden" By Elizabeth von Arnim

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781596250000

Elizabeth Von Arnim

Elizabeth von Arnim was born in Australia in 1866 and her family moved to England when she was young. Katherine Mansfield was her cousin and they exchanged letters and reviewed each other’s work. Von Arnim married twice and lived in Berlin, Poland, America, France and Switzerland, where she built a chalet to entertain her circle of literary friends, which included her lover, H. G. Wells. Von Arnim’s first novel, Elizabeth in Her German Garden, was semiautobiographical and a huge success on publication in 1898. The Enchanted April, published in 1922, is her most widely read novel and has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen. She died of influenza in 1941.

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ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN

BY ELIZABETH VON ARNIM

A Digireads.com Book

Digireads.com Publishing

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2660-6

Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59625-000-0

This edition copyright © 2011

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CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth and her German Garden

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth von Armin (Mary Annette Beauchamp)

Elizabeth von Armin, also known as Mary Annette Russell, Countess Russell, and by her birth name, Mary Annette Beauchamp, is a widely read English writer of the early 20th century. With genres ranging from memoirs to romances, she has left behind a range of narratives for her readers to enjoy. She wrote at a time when society's rules and norms left women greatly restricted, a theme that presents itself time and time again throughout her works. She wrote of women who faced situations where they were tied to their families or oppressed by a societal moral code, yet her female characters fought diligently against their subjugation. She may very well have been writing about circumstances and conditions that she herself faced as a woman of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a time when women were just beginning to fight for equal rights, and Armin used her work as a means of social commentary.

Rather than painting the struggle as a dry one, Armin adds wit and complexity to her works. While delving into her stories, the reader is able to sense that Armin understood the reason women were faced with repression and did not make it a subject of sadness. Indeed, she presented a drive for freedom with the characters she created, but she also allowed them to acknowledge the unlikely chance that the freedom they were fighting for would actually be attained. Armin understood both the economical hardships of removing oppression against women and the difficulty of changing mindsets that had been set in their ways for centuries. She never claimed to be an activist for women's rights, even though her stories so avidly pointed to the fact. Due to the complexity in Armin's own character, it is not enough to simply place the label of feminist upon her. She is certainly seen as a feminist writer, but she was also a humorist, a realist, and a storyteller.

Mary Annette Beauchamp was born in Kirribilly Point, Australia in 1866 to Elizabeth Lassetter and Henry Beauchamp. Her father was originally from London and as a trading and shipping merchant, he moved the family back to England in 1871 when Mary was three years old. The family didn't settle in immediately but first stayed briefly in London before moving to Switzerland and then back to London. From 1874 to 1881, the family lived in Southgate located in north London. Here, Mary went to her first school, Blythwood House School.

Mary's childhood was, overall, a happy one. The house was always full with Mary, her four brothers, a sister, and an adopted cousin all living under the same roof. Of all her siblings, Mary was the youngest and did not get much individual attention. Being left alone most of the time, Mary developed an interest in books and could get lost for hours in stories without needing anyone to comfort her loneliness. This interest in books fostered an early love of writing for Mary, though it seems she was not alone in the family as a lover of words. Her adopted cousin, Katherine Beauchamp, would also become a writer who wrote with the pen name Katherine Mansfield.

Ten years after the family's initial move to England, they moved once again, this time to Middlesex. Still at a very young age, Mary enrolled into Queen's College School. As her interests began to expand, she honed her musical talents at the Royal College of Music, where she received training in learning to play the organ.

In 1889, while Mary was on a trip abroad with her father, she met a German nobleman named Count Henning August von Arnim. Mary was twenty three, and though the Count was considerably older, he was widowed and ready for a new marriage. The couple married two years later at St. Stephens Church in Kensington, London and immediately moved to Berlin. The marriage was not a happy one, and Mary would soon come to refer to her husband in her semi-biographical writings as the Man of Wrath. Stuck in a strange land with an angry man with whom she was to spend her life, Mary turned more and more to writing as a means of refuge.

As Mary began to push her pain into writing, for reasons still unknown she began to call herself Elizabeth. While managing her large household and dealing with her husband's fury, Armin somehow managed to write her first book, a work entitled Elizabeth and her German Garden in 1898. She published it anonymously to keep her writing identity a secret from her husband.

Semi-autobiographical, the novel's use of satire and pastoral idyll was intriguing and compelling to readers everywhere; the book became an immediate best-seller. In the work, Arnim uses the juxtaposition of the lush German landscape, especially the growth of her own garden, as a contrast to her harsh family life and the restrictions that were placed upon women in Germany. It was a sentimental novel and thus received quite a bit of criticism, but was beloved by readers everywhere. Though there is a lot of sadness within the work, the satire also gave readers a sense of hopefulness. The work was very well received and was reprinted twenty times within its first year of publication.

The theme of helping those in need was explored by Arnim in many of her novels as well. The social structure in Germany demanded that most wealthy women be benefactors to the needy and Armin became very invested in doing charity work. Being around the less fortunate and witnessing their struggles had a marked influence on Armin's writing. The Solitary Scope, Armin's second published piece, appeared soon after her first in the year 1899. The fictional work describes the living conditions of the poor in Germany and the protagonists' desperate attempts to help the people find comfort. The work is also told in a unique perspective in that is neither fully German nor English, but somewhere in the middle. Her second work was also published anonymously and thus her readers, reviewers, and critics speculated about the unknown writer's nationality and culture.

Even with the publication and success of Armin's second novel, her home life was still not a satisfying one. During the most trying times in her family, Armin looked towards writing to keep herself sane. Arnim completed a children's story entitled, The April Baby's Book of Tunes, with the Story of How They Came to be Written in 1900. The book, like most of her others, was largely influenced by her own life. April Baby, which appears in the title of the work, was the term that Armin used to refer to her first child. The verses that appear within the text are believed to be those that she sang to her own child.

In 1901, Armin published The Benefactress, in which she revisited similar themes of her earlier novels. The work explored the struggles of the impoverished in comparison to the circumstances experienced by the upper classes. Though on the surface level, The Benefactress deals with the same issues that were brought up in Armin's second work, it also delves into the structure and characteristics of upper class Germany. Within the novel, the female protagonist inherits an estate in rural northern Germany and decides to use it to establish a home for all of the area's shunned and poor women. The women that Anna, the protagonist, helps take advantage of her hospitality and try to establish themselves in a position of rank. With the work, Armin criticizes the aristocratic society of Germany and the upper class in general. She seems to be suggesting that the upper class is willing to put aside their morals just to gain a higher position within the society. Armin depicts a conflict that results from a difference in class as well as in nationality and gender. Many of the situations that are presented within this novel are brought up again in many of Armin's later works.

In 1902, Henning finally got what he had been wishing for—a son. Yet this blessing was overshadowed by the end of the family's financial security. In a strange juxtaposition, Armin had great success with her novels during this time. She wrote, according to Hugh Walpole, some of the wittiest novels in the English language. One of the novels that best represents the struggles Armin had been facing throughout her years of marriage is Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther. The novel has a darker tone than the rest of her works and explores the topics of pastoralism, feminist protest, and the oppressive way of life for many women in Germany. Armin herself had been faced with many of the same issues and thus had personal experience with the topics she was exploring. With the novel, Armin brought to light many of the hardships that women in Germany were facing. She felt that women were so oppressed within the nation that they themselves could not openly speak about the trials of being a woman in the early 20th century. Therefore, even though the work is darker than some of the rest of her novels, it is one of the most moving.

In 1908, Armin finally left her husband, took her children and moved back to London. Henning would die alone in Germany in 1910. All in all, Armin wrote six novels between the time she had her son till the day her husband died. She had gained some financial success with her writing and was able to build the Château Soleil near Randogne-sur-Sierre, Valais, where she settled with her family.

Besides writing novels, Armin was also creating scripts for the stage during this period. Many of her unpublished works, such as the play Priscilla Runs Away, gained success in various theatres in London. Armin was no longer the anonymous author that no one knew. Instead, she was very much admired by the general public and her fame continued to increase.

After a series of affairs and one other unhappy marriage, in 1917 Armin published the novel Christine under the pen name of Alice Cholmondeley. The entire novel was written in the form of letters from a seventeen year old girl living in Berlin. The young girl arrives there a few weeks before the beginning of World War I and falls in love. With the onset of war, she loses her lover and her idealistic dreams. The novel caused a great deal of controversy and was considered by many critics as a work that criticized Germany. Armin responded by saying she had not meant to criticize Germany but instead intended the work as homage to her daughter Felicitas, who had died in 1916.

Elizabeth von Armin used the experiences that shaped her own life in order to draw inspiration for her won works. She began writing fiction as a means of escape from the harsh situations she was faced with and continued to do so throughout her writing career. Vera, her 1921 novel that is considered one of her most superior, was written in response to her second marriage. She brought out all the anger and pain she had felt throughout the marriage in the work. Another one of her most famous pieces, The Enchanted April, describes the plight of four Englishwomen who seek escape from male tyranny at home by escaping for a month to Italy. The novel also brings out the struggles with men that Armin had been facing since her first marriage to Henning. After completing many semi-autobiographical works, Armin's one autobiographical work was entitled All the Dogs of my Life and was published in 1936.

Throughout her life, Elizabeth von Armin longed for freedom from the male dominated society that she lived in and in particular, from the men with whom she was romantically involved. She was never able to get a grasp on what exactly such a freedom would look like because of the tumultuous situations she was faced with. Her novels were a form of escape and a way to create a world in which women are able to carve out some form of freedom as a result of their own bravery and willingness to act. Her works are still celebrated today and many have been made into films including Enchanted April and Mr. Skeffington. She completed a total of seventeen novels before her death, all of which were cleverly written and enjoyed by people all over the world.

Though many of the conflicts that Elizabeth von Armin had to face are no longer a struggle for many readers, her stories are still compelling to audiences. She gives insight not only to the way women were treated in the early 20th century, but also to the lifestyle and culture of the time. She explores the state of the countries of both Germany and England before the onset of World War II and her firsthand account of the problems both in internal and external affairs before the war have been given more interest in the 21st century. Her work continues to live, being enjoyed and read by feminists, historians, and those who enjoy a witty, well-told story.

SOURCES

Ayer, Katherine. Dictionary of Literary Biography on Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell. 2006.http://www.bookrags.com/biography/mary-annette-beauchamp-russell-dlb/

Beauman, Nicola. Arnim, Mary Annette [May] von. May 2006. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/35883

Bleisatz. Bio Worldwide. Elizabeth von Armin (English translation of German language biography). http://www.laubet.de/bio_engl.html

Merriman , C.D.. Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) Australian writer and best known for Elizabeth and her German Garden. (1898). 2005.http://www.online-literature.com/elizabeth-arnim/

Elizabeth and her German Garden

May 7th.—I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late afternoon loveliness, much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower. Two owls are perched near me, and are carrying on a long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales. The gentleman owl says [musical notes here are excluded], and she answers from her tree a little way off, [musical notes], beautifully assenting to and completing her lord's remark, as becomes a properly constructed German she-owl. They say the same thing over and over again so emphatically that I think it must be something nasty about me; but I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of owls.

This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house, much less in the garden, for twenty-five years, and it is such a pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did not, deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed. Noseless too, though it does not sound pretty; but