Von ‚frechen Frauen‘ und ‚literarischen Fräuleinwundern‘ – Das pejorative Labeling zeitgenössischer Literatur von Frauen

Abstract

Every wave of the women’s movement seems to be accompanied by at least one wave of feminist ‘new women’s fiction’. Thus, the late 20th century daughters of the second-wavers were often associated with freche Frauen literature (cheeky women literature). Somewhat analogous to chick lit in the Anglo-American world, this genre supposedly became what third-wavers at the time wanted to write and read. At least that was what major publishers and bookstores suggested with their freche Frauen book series, bookshelves, and genre categorizations. In 1999, when the freche Frauen were just becoming more widely known, the literary critic Volker Hage coined the literarische Fräuleinwunder (literaryyoung miracle women), another gendered literary label. Among these Fräuleinwunders, he grouped authors such as Karen Duve, Judith Hermann, and Zoë Jenny, whom he considered more elaborate successors to the commercial women’s fiction of the time. In this article, I approach the two German literary labels freche Frauen and literarisches Fräuleinwunder terminologically and discursively. In a comparative analysis of secondary literature, reviews, and (archived) websites of publishers and booksellers, I highlight the pejorative connotations of both labels alongside their ostensibly empowering implications. My aim is to illustrate that the once emancipatory potential of so-called ‘new women’s fiction’ has all but faded in the gendered literary labeling of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In fact, the formerly feminist attempts to appropriate and renew the problematic label ‘women’s fiction’ have transformed into either a harmless neoliberal feminism or a paternalistic pseudo-elevation through which publishers, booksellers, or literary critics infantilize, sexualize, and devalue women and their literature.