ABSTRACT
As Ann Taylor Allen argues, motherliness or maternalism became the basis for 'a concept of social morality that linked the self to the other and the individual to the community'. This chapter explores how ideas expressed in the political sphere of feminist activism about the importance of women's moral influence on society find their expression in literature. In the anonymous fictional diary Eine fur Viele and the novel Christa Ruland, by Hedwig Dohm, young women attempt to resist the paths conventionally mapped out for them by their families. Eine fur Viele makes for light reading, and part of its attraction for younger female readers is its account of Vera's initiation into the secrets of love. Christa Ruland is the third in Dohm's series of novels, which the author perceived as representing women's development over three generations, through three unconnected female protagonists representing the choices available to women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
