From Trotzkopf's Marriage

Wildhagen, Else, 1861-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 315K words
Chapters: 32

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Aus Trotzkopf's Ehe by Else WildhagenAuthor: Wildhagen, Else, 1861-1944,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Apr 2, 2012

Editor's review

This book is Else Wildhagen's sequel to the classic girls' novel Trotzkopf. Originally published in German as Aus Trotzkopf's Ehe, it shifts the narrative focus from adolescence to married life. For readers familiar with the original, it offers a natural extension of the characters' fates and brings late nineteenth-century German bourgeois family life, gender roles, and attitudes toward marriage into view through popular narrative. As a free Project Gutenberg e-book, it is easily accessible and suitable as German reading material or as a supplementary text for researchers of children's literature and women's writing. Note that the book is in German and bears clear marks of its era; readers should understand it within its social context rather than judge it by contemporary standards. Reading it alongside the original is worthwhile, with attention to how the sequel handles the narrative shift from growing up to marriage.

Who it's for

A good fit for

German-speaking readers who have read the original Trotzkopf and want to know what happens next
Intermediate and advanced German learners seeking accessible fiction to build reading volume
Students researching late nineteenth-century German children's literature and women's writing
General readers interested in sequels to classic girls' novels and the fates of their characters

Not a good fit for

Readers who do not read German and are looking only for a Chinese translation
Readers expecting a stand-alone story that can be understood without the original
Readers alienated by nineteenth-century bourgeois views of marriage and likely to react with distaste

Reading tips

Read the original Trotzkopf first, then this book, to understand the character relationships and the narrative continuity.
German learners can read one or two chapters a day, noting period-specific vocabulary about family and marriage.
Pay attention to the narrator's attitude toward marriage and women's roles, and keep brief reading notes.
Read alongside sources on late nineteenth-century German social history rather than judging the book in isolation by contemporary standards.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can this book be read on its own without the original?

It can, but the experience will be diminished. This is a sequel to Trotzkopf, and the character relationships and personalities are built on the original; without it, readers may find character motivations and emotional threads abrupt. It is best to at least know the plot of the original before starting this book.

Is the German in this book suitable for beginners?

Not really for absolute beginners or elementary learners. The book was written in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, and its sentence structures and vocabulary bear the marks of the period; the narrative pace is also slow. Readers with intermediate German or above who are used to classic fiction will find it smoother.

What should readers keep in mind when reading this public-domain e-book?

This book comes from Project Gutenberg and is a free public-domain e-book; the layout is text-based and usually has no modern annotations. Keep a German dictionary at hand, and be mindful of the period attitudes reflected in the book, treating it as a historical text rather than a guide to contemporary life.

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About the author

Wildhagen, Else, 1861-1944 Author · German · 1861–1944

Else Wildhagen (1861–1944) was a German translator. Public information about her is limited, and few details of her life survive. The two works held here, Trotzkopf's Brautzeit and Aus Trotzkopf's Ehe, show that her writing was closely tied to the popular "Trotzkopf" world of characters, continuing its narrative tradition of a young girl's growth, family life and emotional experience, with an intimate style attentive to everyday detail and character psychology. At the same time, her main identity was that of a translator, long devoted to bringing English and American literature to German-speaking readers and thus serving as a bridge for literature across languages. Her writing and translation illuminate each other, giving German readers access to literary works from the English-speaking world while extending the girlhood stories she knew so well.