ABSTRACT
When Gabriele Reuter's ground-breaking novel Aus guter Familie: Leidensgeschichte eines Madchens appeared, enthusiastic and critical reviewers alike referred to the work as an act of protest: Es ist ein aufruhrerisches Buch (Ernst von Wolzogen). In Aus guter Familie, Reuter's attention to the material culture of the bourgeoisie extends to the role of fashion in the creation of such social distinctions, something which both allows for a demonstration of middle-class superiority but at the same time emphasizes the precarious nature of middle-class prestige in a society where an ethos of conspicuous consumption required constant new investment of money and energy. Reuter's novel confronts the sexual double standard of conventional morality while also critically implying that a physical separation from the lower classes, as a result of the geography of the modern home and the modern city, is connected with middle-class indifference to their fate.
