ABSTRACT
The fiction of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach is deeply informed, in its themes and in its aesthetic strategies alike, by the author's personal protest against the confines of her gender and social position. Ebner held politically liberal views and was critical of the narrow gender roles and religious conservatism she had experienced during her upbringing as an Austrian noblewoman. Ebner employs emotionality as a strategy to explore the psychological truths that lie behind everyday experience and reflects critically on the ideas that inform her own and her readers' preconceptions. In Ebner's most successful novel, Das Gemeindekind, the poverty of a rural community engenders resentment of a brother and sister left destitute and helpless. Without tendentiousness or sensationalism, Ebner's fiction awakens readerly sympathy with her protagonists which reaches across boundaries of class, while at the same time challenging those patriarchal authorities in society whose lack of sympathy places a brake on social reform.
