The Angel in the Garden : Recovering Elizabeth von Arnim's The Pastor's Wife

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine Elizabeth von Arnim's The Pastor's Wife for two major purposes: 1) to work toward recovering von Arnim's work, which I believe to be important and worthy of critical attention, and 2) to examine the ways in which von Arnim criticizes gender conventions in western culture. In order to do this, my thesis is broken down into three chapters. Because this novel, like most of her novels, is heavily based on events in her life, I spend the first chapter examining relevant events in her life and her first book Elizabeth and her German Garden . In the second, I survey the critical work that has been done on von Arnim. In the final chapter, I closely examine how von Arnim uses dualistic relationships between men and women and humans and nature, and the structure of a modified Bildungsroman in order to create a story that is wholly critical of patriarchal culture.