Of reason and love

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach was the foremost woman writer of the Realist period in German letters in the second half of the nineteenth century and one of the period's most widely respected and honored literary figures. She can still be considered the grande dame of Austrian literature today. It is an uncanny historical coincidence that her life span, extending from 1830 to 1916, equalled that of Franz Joseph I, the last prominent Austrian emperor. However, she did not reflect the attitudes and sentiments of the moribund Austrian aristocracy, of which she was a leading member. Although she disagreed with many aims and tenets of literary Naturalism, she opened her heart and mind to the world and the people around her and dealt with the underlying social and political currents of the era. Most significantly, perhaps, she approached and presented the multifaceted cultural and political difficulties confronting her age from the woman's point of view.