ODE ON MY BELOVED PHILINE

BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE

At a time when women were largely confined

To the domestic sphere
And professional life seemed unthinkable
For bourgeois women,
Goethe's novel plays.
In his Bildungsroman "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre",
He juxtaposes his protagonist
With a character who seems to be downright controversial
To the prevailing ideal of women.
In the 18th century, femininity was equated
With emotion, passivity, innocence,
Naturalness and motherliness...

If Philine is perhaps a typical woman

Of her time after all,
Whose only aim in life is marriage and motherhood,
Will be discussed below.
Perhaps, however, she is forced
To act in such a different way
And, as a single and professional woman
Without the protection of her family,
Has no choice but to accept
The reputation of an actress.
The question of whether Philine also
Undergoes an educational path,
Like Wilhelm, in the course of the novel
Will also be the subject of the paper.

The character of Wilhelm Meister

Will also play an essential role.
Wilhelm, who from his youth onwards
Pursues the question of the meaning of life,
The question of whether education
Is necessary and important
Beyond his working life.
I will look at his ideals and goals in life,
Both of which were formed in childhood.
Why a love relationship
Between Philine and Wilhelm cannot work,
Indeed seems downright incompatible
Will also be the subject of this paper.
To prove this, I will look
At the prevailing image of women
In the 18th century,
Goethe wrote his novel in 1795,
And the prevailing and accepted relationship
Between men and women.
The way Goethe introduces Philine to the novel
Already casts doubt on her submission
To the prevailing norms of behaviour for women.
Thus she takes the active part
In getting to know Wilhelm.
When the two meet for the first time,
Wilhelm is in the street
And Philine is looking out the window of her lodgings.
Philine makes the first contact
Wwith Wilhelm under a pretext.
She sends her boy to him
With a request for the flowers he is holding.
Wilhelm sends her the bouquet
With a compliment, which Philine
Returns with a friendly greeting.
Wilhelm, however, does not take the opportunity
To get closer to Philine;
For him, the encounter is a kindly adventure.
Only when Philine appears at the window again
Does Wilhelm inquire about her
Aand the acquaintance deepens.
Philine has to appear at the window
A second time to recall herself,
So she undoubtedly takes the active part here
In making the acquaintance of Wilhelm.

Philine is a working woman,

She earns her living as an actress.
Here too she contradicts passivity,
She earns her living and has a profession.

Her sphere of action is not limited

To the domestic sphere,
As is the case with most contemporaries.
However, she is also dependent on men
From whose generosity she earns her living.

Until the 18th century,

Actors were considered dishonourable
In all Christian countries.
They were excluded from communion
And the Christian oath
And the church refused them a Christian burial.
So Philine as an actress
Is in an in-between position,
On the one hand she is celebrated by her audience,
On the other she is socially
On the edge of respectability.

Philine is a woman who does not conform

To the social norm,
She shapes her life according to her own ideas.
She openly lives sexual relationships
With several men without regard
For her social standing.
She is indifferent to her reputation.
Thus, for Laertes, she is the real Eve,
The figure of seduction and sin par excellence.

Proof that the adjective innocent

Does not apply to Philine is the song
Der Schäfer putzt sich zum Tanz,
Which she performs on an outing.
The exact wording is not given to the reader
Because the narrator fears
The reader might find it tasteless or indecent.
This song that she recites to the company
Is pure provocation.

Wilhelm first notices Philine's appearance,

Her blonde hair which fell
Carelessly undone around her neck.
A little later, when they meet in person
For the first time, Philine wears
A pair of light high heeled slippers
And a black mantilla over a white negligee,
Because it was not quite clean,
Her short skirt showed
The cutest feet in the world.
This appearance to a stranger,
Which Wilhelm undoubtedly is at this point,
Is not befitting of a woman
In the 18th century.
Philine is clearly flirting with her charms here.
Her negligee is white,
So it is the colour that stands for innocence.
However, the garment is no longer entirely clean,
Just like her innocence.
The very fact that a woman
Who is not impeccably dressed
Rceives two men in her private rooms,
One of whom is a complete stranger to her,
And the other a friend, rather than a relative,
Must have astonished contemporary recipients,
Or underlined the part of the sensual seductress
That Philine plays.

The theatre was financed with the help of patrons,

The actors were dependent
On the favour of their backers.
As Laertes tells Wilhelm, Philine and he
Belong to a group of actors that has disbanded.
What Laertes does not tell us,
But which is the consequence of their situation,
Is that they are looking for a patron
In order to be able to earn a living as actors.
So the assumption is that Philine is using
Her feminine charms to find a backer.

Philine tells Wilhelm and Laertes

About an incident with two strange men
With whom she had gone to dinner.
Already on the way she put
Their generosity to the test.
The gentlemen immediately inquired
About the prices of the various dishes,
Whereupon Philine takes the order from their hands
And orders the most expensive dishes.
She agrees with the landlord beforehand
That she wants to test the two gentlemen
And that she is by no means actually
Ordering the dishes.
The gentlemen excused themselves for a walk
While they waited for their order
And left Philine sitting in the inn
Without having paid the bill.

Philine laughs at this incident.

Since she depends on the generosity of men,
She quickly realised
That an acquaintance with these gentlemen
Would not be useful to her
And therefore broke it off.
In the course of the novel,
Philine usually fares a little better
Than the other actresses.
With the help of her feminine charms
And her adaptability, she manages
To endear herself to the people
Who can give her advantages.
For example, she lives in the inhabited castle
And is a companion of the countess,
While the rest of the group of actors
Are housed in a dwelling
That lacks the most basic necessities.

At their first meeting,

Philine gives Wilhelm a powder knife
On which the words "Remember me"
Are engraved. This personal dedication
Leads to the assumption
That this knife is a gift to Philine
From a former admirer.
Wilhelm feels obliged by this gift
To make a greater gift in return,
Wwhich Philine naturally knows
And also wanted to achieve.
Philine is also setting out the framework
Of the possible relationship between them.

Since generosity secures Philine's livelihood,

She is also charitable and generous
Towards poorer people.
On an excursion, she not only gives away
All the cash she, Laertes and Wilhelm are carrying,
But in the end even her hat and jewellery.
So she not only receives, but also gives.

The status to which women aspired

In the 18th century was marriage.
All women sought to attain this state
As their true destiny.
The real place of female agency
Is the domestic world.
The triad of marriage, motherhood and the home
Was considered the only true fulfilment
Of woman's God-given and natural destiny.

It does not appear that marriage

Is Philine's goal in life.
She does not hide her frequently changing
Male relationships,
Which would certainly be helpful
In getting a man to marry her
And thus offer her security.
She makes no other attempt
To achieve this security.

Philine's lack of interest in marriage

Is certainly unusual for the time,
A marriage would ensure her security
And social standing.
Unmarried women missed
Their most important destiny,
Were despised and exposed to ridicule.
This contempt is shown to her
By Madame Melina.
As fellow actors, the two women
Are actually on the same lower social rung,
The only thing that elevates Madame Melina
Above Philine is the fact that she is married.

Marriage for Philine would mean

That she would have to be subordinate
And faithful to a man,
But Philine does not think much of faithfulness,
Since love for her .is a gift to be enjoyed
By someone without envy
Or stubbornness.
She therefore considers jealousy
And competition among men
For a woman's favour to be unnecessary.
Because she does not limit this gift
To just one man.

Motherhood is considered
The most beautiful task,
The highest happiness of a woman
In the 18th century.
Philine does not pursue this goal either;
She finds the pregnant Madame Melina unattractive,
She says to Laertes, It dresses her so ugly,
If only I should see no more women of good hope.
To Wilhelm she says, I can't stand
The children otherwise,
Clearly expressing her dislike of motherhood.
Philine does not fit at all into the image
Of women in the 18th century
When she aspires neither to the state of marriage
Nor to motherhood,
Bth of which were considered
The only goals of women.
Philine rather embodies the joie de vivre
And the ease of living as she wishes,
As contemporary readers are more familiar with
From men than from women.

The way in which Goethe takes Philine

Out of the novel
Seems particularly striking here;
She is pregnant and lives together
With Friedrich in a wild marriage.
Even Friedrich finds nothing more informal
And ridiculous than she,
Philine in this state appears just
As absurd to him as she does to Wilhelm.

Philine hides in her condition,

She does not present it
As the fulfilment of her womanly life,
Which may also be due to the fact
That she is not sure whether Friedrich
Is really the father,
And that she has a child as an unmarried woman.

When Wilhelm first sees Philine,

The first thing he notices is
That a pleasant cheerfulness
Animated her face.
This cheerfulness embodies a quality
Wilhelm lacks. He is a serious
And introverted man,
Often lost in his thoughts.

Philine catches his eye

Bbecause she draws attention to herself
And she is a well-educated wench to him.
In contrast, Wilhelm's first impression
Of the beautiful Amazon, Natalie,
His future wife, is almost contrasting.
He never thought he had seen anything
More noble or more amiable than Natalie.
Philine embodies serenity for him,
Physical attraction,
And she is a symbol of the easy
And unconstrained life
He leads around her.
Later, when Wilhelm joins the Tower Society
And sees himself at the goal
Of shaping his character,
There is also no longer room for Philine
At Wilhelm's side.
Wilhelm is not satisfied with the kind of life
He leads with Philine at the theatre society
As he continues his search for identity.
Philine is therefore not a figure
That stands for Wilhelm's future.
As Philine and Natalie stand next to each other,
I, Wilhelm, never thought I had seen
Such a distance.
Natalie embodies inner beauty and humanity.
There is something motherly and protective
About the way she takes off her coat
And puts it on the badly injured Wilhelm
That fascinates him.

Furthermore, it is Philine's profession

That exerts a captivating effect on Wilhelm.
As an actress, she embodies
Part of the maternal world he covets
And into which he has fled.
He admires both Philine and Mariane
For their social indeterminacy.
A state he would like to achieve.

These things, cheerfulness and acting,

Remind Wilhelm of Mariane,
The figure of his ideal love.
At first Wilhelm tries to project
His love onto Philine, but Philine
Is a woman who is only loyal
To her own ideals
And cannot be moulded
Into Wilhelm's ideal woman.
Thus, despite a fixed appointment
With Wilhelm and Laertes,
She has gone away with two strangers,
Whereupon Wilhelm rebukes her inconsistency.
His pride is hurt
Because she does not attach enough importance
To the date with him and amuses herself elsewhere.
As the novel progresses,
Wilhelm is repeatedly forced to realise
That Philine is neither prepared
To be monogamous
Nor to make him the centre of her life.
The consequence of this observation is
That he refuses her.
For him, there is only the possibility
Of an absolute, monogamous relationship.

Philine sees in Wilhelm first and foremost

What she sees in all men,
A potential patron.
With Wilhelm, too, she uses her powers
Of seduction to be able
To steer him in her favour.
When Melina asks Wilhelm for a loan
For some acting props,
Melina does not yet receive a concrete promise.

Philine then approaches him.

She sits down with him on the bench,
Kisses him in public
And approaches him cold and fine as she is,
In a way he considers completely inappropriate.
Philine just laughs and says
The passers-by thought
They were a newly married couple.
Wilhelm, in order not to give scandal,
Is forced to play the part of the patient husband.
Philine justifies her behaviour
By inducing Wilhelm to stay with her
And not continue his trading trip.
After this incident on the bench,
Wilhelm wants to follow Philine to her room,
But is stopped by Melina.
Wilhelm, his mind completely on Philine,
Unthinkingly assures Melina of the loan.
When this promise is made,
Friedrich intervenes and, instead of Wilhelm,
Rushes to Philine's room.
Although Wilhelm is so jealous of Friedrich
That he might have pulled the boy backwards
Down the stairs by the hair,
His self-discipline regains the upper hand
And he does not show his passionate feelings,
But evades the situation.

This incident shows that Philine is calculating

And lives for the moment.
Since she is without a commitment
And knows full well that Wilhelm
Has the means to secure her one with Melina,
She approaches him and thus gets her way.
However, it is not Philine as a person
Who binds Wilhelm to the theatre in the long run,
But the money he has lent Melina
That is his legitimisation to stay
With the acting troupe.

Philine does not only approach Wilhelm

Out of calculation, however,
She also loves the challenge
That the disciplined Wilhelm poses for her.
With his modesty, he is a right stick for her,
Ad it is precisely because of this
That she justifies her interest in him.
Philine is a woman used to pleasing men,
Wilhelm's stubborn aloofness challenges Philine.
She gets a kick out of teasing him.
For example, she puts her slippers
In front of his bed.
Wilhelm searches the whole room for her
He searched more and more assiduously,
Indeed a mischievous onlooker
Might have thought he was searching
In order to find.
Wilhelm's inner struggle
Between inclination and propriety
Continues constantly in Philine's presence.
On the one hand, he desires her presence;
On the other, he considers it inappropriate
And could not reconcile it
With his concept of decency and morality.
The two experience their only night of love,
Under the cover of darkness.
Wilhelm has enjoyed too much wine
To be able to maintain his resistance,
Which Philine takes advantage of.
The next morning, Wilhelm cannot accept
That he has given in to his weakness
And imagines that it was his Mariane.
With this distortion of the facts,
He creates a legitimisation for the favour
He has enjoyed and flees
From the reality he cannot bear.

Philine and Wilhelm are two

Completely different characters.
While Wilhelm is a serious man
Whose goal is to shape his character,
Philine lives by the motto Carpe Diem.
She sings the song
The Shepherd preens himself for the dance
To cheer up the company.
Although Wilhelm can find no moral merit
And nothing poetic in her singing,
He does praise the way she performs it.
Again, as from the first moment,
He remains only on the surface.
Philine's lightness and light-heartedness
Fascinate him, as does her appearance.
He leaves out the moral things
That inevitably contribute
To the formation of character
In his assessment of Philine.
This leads to the assumption
That she is out of the question for Wilhelm
As a potential partner, since for him
character building is an essential goal in life.

Philine falls in love with Wilhelm,

But still remains true to her ideals in this love,
Saying to him, And if I love you, what's it to you?
Wilhelm and Philine have a fundamentally
Different conception of love.
While Wilhelm seeks absolute fulfilment in love,
Which is also part of his identity,
For Philine love is a gift
Someone enjoys without envy or stubbornness.
These are two views that are incompatible.
It is also difficult to imagine Philine,
The pleasant sinner, at Wilhelm's side,
In the narrowness and seriousness
Of a bourgeois life,
Which he chooses at the end.
While for Philine the theatre is only
A means to an end,
Namely her profession that secures her livelihood,
For Wilhelm it means much more.
He seeks absolute identification with his role,
The theatre is for him a means
By which he wants to achieve his goal,
The shaping of his character.
In the end, however, he has to realise
That he has no talent as an actor
And chooses a bourgeois life at Natalie's side.
The desire that Wilhelm undoubtedly
Has for Philine remains largely unexpressed.
As far as Wilhelm is able,
He denies the feelings he has for her.
They are only acted out
When the initiative comes from Philine
And when she deceives him.
For example, she disguises Friedrich
And makes Wilhelm believe he is Mariane.
Just like the night of love they share,
Philine only gains Wilhelm's favour
By means of deception
And not with the help of true feelings.

At the same time, Wilhelm does not manage

To recognise Philine's loyalty.
He does not see that she stays with him
After the raid by the drama society
And that she cares for him.
For Wilhelm, only the encounter
With the Amazon counts.
Nor does he realise that she wants him
To share in the advantages
She has through her acquaintances with men,
Such as when she gets him a room
At the Countess's better lodgings,
Which he refuses.
Or that she puts him in a good light
With the countess he fancies
And allows him to meet her.

The turning point for Wilhelm

Is the robbery of the drama society
During which he meets the Amazon.
From then on, Wilhelm pursues his goal again:
He did not want to continue
A strolling life haphazardly,
But purposeful steps were to mark
His course in the future.
That Philine is part of the ambling life
Is shown by the fact that he asks her
To leave him alone
When he recovers from the wound of the attack
And later is not pleased to meet her again at Serlo.

A relationship between Wilhelm and Philine

Seems unthinkable,
As they are simply too different.
Even in his childhood, he knows
That he wants a woman
Who has more inwardness to offer than Philine.
I was particularly captivated
By Chlorinde with all her doings.
The manly femininity,
Tthe calm fullness of her existence
Had more effect on the spirit
That was beginning to develop
Than the made charms of Armida,
Although I did not despise her garden.

For Wilhelm, Philine possesses

The charms of Armida,
But it is Chlorinde who captivates him.

As an actress, Philine lives a free,

Self-determined and largely independent life,
Which is otherwise difficult to achieve
For a woman of her time.

She can deal with the fact

That she does not find recognition
In the bourgeois world.
When she earns disdain
Because she behaves in public
In a way that is not proper,
She responds by cutting faces in the back.
She only seeks recognition and conformity
When it is to her advantage.

She can also accept that men reduce her

To her sensual side.
She virtually challenges them,
For example by putting her slippers
In front of Serlo
And thus deepening the conversation
About the cuteness of her feet.

Philine uses her success with men

To secure her livelihood.
She has no connection with a man
From whose acquaintance she derives no advantage.
However, she leads this life by choice,
As there were few opportunities
For women of the time
To lead independent and self-reliant lives,
And acting was one of them.

Philine is the controversial figure

To Wilhelm's strictly moral approach to life.
In the course of his apprenticeship years,
She confronts Wilhelm with the sensual,
Easy-going side of life.
She acts as a siren, so to speak, who tempts him.
But Wilhelm chooses Natalie as a woman
Who has more character development.
Wilhelm seeks access to women
Through the mind.
Thus, his adoration for the Countess
Takes place only through his imagination,
And the proposal of marriage
To Therese is made,
After careful consideration, by letter.
Wilhelm lacks passion and impulsiveness,
And a possible connection to a woman
Only takes place after careful consideration.
He regards the woman at his side
As property, possession and thing.
He demands absolute and unconditional
Love and fidelity,
Which he himself is also able to give.
However, Wilhelm lacks knowledge
Of human nature and empathy,
So that he tends to project his desires
And ideas onto people, thereby failing
To recognise themselve.

Philine also undergoes a change

In the course of the novel.
At the beginning of the novel, for example,
She is without a commitment
And is in search of a patron,
And therefore has many male acquaintances
At this time. At the end of the novel,
However, she finds herself in a state
That does not make her happy at all,
She is pregnant.
In complete contrast to the beginning of the novel,
She lives a secluded life,
Hides away and lives with a man.
So she is in exactly the situation
She did not aspire to.
Philine certainly does not experience
An educational path, in the sense
Of character development, in this novel.

Philine functions more as a negative example

For contemporary readers,
Because not only the hero of the novel,
But also the reader should be educated.
The readers are made aware
Of the consequences of a life without morals.

Since Wilhelm has not found his identification

Through the profession of actor,
He gives up the free life to marry
And lead a life with the Tower Society,
Which represents the reform aristocracy.
This nobility leads a life
That approaches the bourgeois
And he renounces a representative life.
Wilhelm thus chooses a life
Between the world of social indeterminacy
And bourgeois confinement.
A life in which Philine cannot find a place.