ABSTRACT
In the age of literary modernism, artistic ambition and social engagement were regarded by many as irreconcilable. In protest fiction, the communication of a reforming agenda might at a glance seem intrinsically at odds with literary experimentation. In 1899, the writer of colonial fiction Frieda von Bulow spoke out against critics like her close friend Andreas-Salome who give preference to writing by women in which the gender of the author is indiscernible. Only by exploring women's writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in its material and cultural context is it possible fully to appreciate the artistic contribution made by these novels as an expression of their particular consciousness of modernity. Women's important contribution to the development of the German novel in this era is located precisely in their challenge to powerful male-authored narratives and patriarchal authorities.
