ABSTRACT
The pedagogical province of Mine-Haha; or, On the Physical Education of Young Girls is a far cry from the strict schooling of Spring Awakening. Mine-Haha describes a pedagogical enclave, a walled parkland inhabited only by girls. In Mine-Haha, Frank Wedekind returns to the questions of pedagogy and puberty which were central to Spring Awakening, but this time he creates a setting which has significant links to the utopian tradition. As Adolf Muschg has argued, the obscenity of Mine-Haha stems from the attempt to transplant a vision incompatible with society — in this case Wedekind's vision of non-reproductive sensuality — into that society. References to female beauty throughout Wedekind's work reflect the masculinist assumption — compellingly analysed by Wendy Steiner, Naomi Wolf, and others — that sexual attractiveness has a greater existential significance for women than for men. The proximity of 'physical education' and 'young girls' is a result of the obstinate association between the feminine and the biological-natural, corporeal-immanent.
