Pulled to Pieces

Previous analyses of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novella “The Sandman” (1817) have typically focused on the diagnosis of the male protagonist, Nathanael. His behavior has been alternatively interpreted as evidence of a narcissistic complex, a failure of certain semiotic systems, or in the tradition of Sigmund Freud, as a fear of castration. When attention is focused on the supporting characters, such as the female automaton Olimpia, it commonly emphasizes their role in Nathanael’s fatal break with reality. The intent of this paper is instead to analyze Clara’s behavior toward Nathanael according to gender-specific norms that remain in currency to the present day, as evidenced by several contemporary psychological studies. The aesthetically-driven nature of Hoffmann’s text allows for the analysis of Clara’s character according to visually oriented studies that suggest women are more frequently perceived as objects rather than as persons and that this assessment compromises women’s status as rational and agentic beings. Furthermore, these studies demonstrate that women are expected to perform altruistic behaviors, i.e. emotional labor, as part of gender-specific in-role behavior, or face negative judgement. My paper will show how Hoffmann’s story “objectifies” its characters through a performance of textual dismemberment of the female body that demonstrates how the treatment of femininity as a spectacle, an enduring legacy of the eighteenth century reflected in Hoffmann’s text, is related to the ongoing reduction of female subjectivity today.

The visual nature of “The Sandman,” as emphasized in its numerous descriptions of eyes, optics, pregnant gazes, and light, has played an important role in the novella’s previous interpretations, whether as allegorical representatives of Enlightenment values of reason and intellect—as well as their subversion—or psychoanalytically loaded symbols related to loss of power and control. Another interpretation of these optical elements includes the increasing visibility of women in public spaces, and widespread appearance of clockwork automata. During the eighteenth century, women began participating more in public life, especially at institutions such as the theater (Park 47). In this setting, theatergoers pay not just to see a performance on stage but also to observe other members of the audience (Park 53). Female patrons became a type of secondary spectacle as they carefully performed their femininity according to strict social conventions that nevertheless subjected them to harsh criticism and even ridicule for their “mechanical” behavior. This notion of performed femininity becomes implicated in other ideas of women as objects and commodities, qualities shared with the sophisticated automata that were growing in popularity at the same time (Park 54). Julie Park remarks in her article “Unheimlich Maneuvers: Enlightenment Dolls and Repetitions in Freud”: “In short, the convergence of women and automata as new aspects of social life during the eighteenth century indicates where femininity began to represent the mechanical subjectivity and its technological production of knowledge inherent to modernity” (55). Femininity is thus related to both a reduction of authenticity and a diminishment of knowledge that is directly associated with the appearance of women’s bodies and their performance of gender. On an individual level, this unfavorable assessment translates into a lack of agency that is frequently attributed to women as their bodies become more visible and to the “redistribution of mind”¹ that denies them intellectual potential in favor of emotional character. Further, this assessment that refuses women their intellectual potential also denies them an essential part of their humanity. Miranda Fricker characterizes this type of denial as a form testimonial injustice that diminishes the subject’s capacity as a “knower” resulting in the “effect that the subject is less than fully human” (44). Thus, women become performatively, and essentially, automata bereft of free-will.

Clockwork automata like Jacques de Vaucanson’s The Flute Player (1737) or the Silver Swan (1773) by John Joseph Merlin and James Cox were pinnacles of technological achievement, putting man’s godlike mastery over natural forces on display. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, this mechanistic view of living bodies had already yielded to concepts of governing vital forces.² This turning point resulted in a shift in meaning of the term “automaton” when applied to human beings. The previous and positively connoted “automaton,” which was etymologically and conceptually related to independence or autonomy, now implied a person without free will or rational thought. While this paper will focus on the term’s particular application to women, it should be noted that this derision of character was applied across all social classes and genders, as Minsoo Kang explains:

In general, [automaton] was applied to four different types—the stupid, the oppressed (e.g. peasants), the conformist (especially aristocrats and other members of high society), and the tyrannical. But what did a mentally handicapped person, a peasant toiling in the field, a fashion-obsessed nobleman, and an absolute monarch have in common that they were all called automata? In the view of Enlightenment philosophies they were all machine-like beings who led lives devoid of the principle of freedom, whether due to mental deficiency, external oppression, or inner conformism. So the automaton concept came to denote a lack of autonomy. (148)

The performance of femininity, disparaged as mechanical in nineteenth century contexts, falls into the categories of both the conformist and the oppressed. The women performing their gender, according to outwardly imposed and inflexible social conventions, soon lose not only their autonomy but their identity as well, becoming objects that are interchangeable with any other. Hoffmann’s text critiques and responds to this problematic condition through the exposure of Olimpia’s true nature as automaton. While this revelation will later prove catastrophic for Nathanael, it sends lesser—but not insignificant—shockwaves through the surrounding milieu: “Several lovers, in order to be convinced that they were not paying court to a wooden puppet, required that their mistress should sing and dance a little out of time, should … do something more than merely listen—that she should frequently speak in such a way as to really show that her words presupposed as a condition of some thinking and feeling” (Hoffmann 212). In Hoffmann’s story at least, the shock of “Olympia’s unveiling as an automaton accounts for the relaxation of social standards that once compelled women to emulate the artificial behavior of automata” (Park 57–58). This call by male lovers for their female partners to demonstrate some form of genuine understanding is more profound than it seems. It is not simply a wish to avoid appearing foolish, but a provocative call to push back against the social and educational institutions that reproduce the robot-like behavior and allow women to reclaim their humanity.

Finally, this convergence of femininity as performance, women as objects, and automata as human beings has a direct bearing on a canonical topic in The Sandman—the uncanny. The Sandman is at the heart of Freud’s essay on Das Unheimliche and the uncanny plays a frequent and essential role in subsequent interpretations of the text. Freud posited multiple forms of the uncanny, but the most universal form has to do with the distress caused by the reemergence of childhood fears which become ensnared in and indistinguishable from the subject’s present reality. At the center of this uneasiness is, in its most basic and unexamined form, a deeply held distrust of appearances. Entangled in this profound distrust are concepts relating to independent and objective subjectivity, artistic narcissism, and the injuries that occur when reality fails to fulfill certain normative expectations.³ The Sandman indicts the Enlightenment values of light and reason, suggesting a sinister duality: light may expose the truth but also has the potential to deceive (Park 45–47). The immediate effect of such a duality destabilizes any possibility of absolute truth or subjectivity. This type of problematic contradiction characterizes a penchant of German Romanticism for blurring the boundaries between opposites. Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), better known as Novalis, reflects that

The inner world is more mine, as it were, than the outer. It is so inward, so secret—one would like to live exclusively in it—it is so like a fatherland. It is a shame that it is so dreamlike, so uncertain. Must precisely the best, the truest look only like appearance—and the apparent look so true?/ What is outside me, is precisely within me, is mine—and vice versa. (110)

Hoffmann, however, indicts this viewpoint by allowing the protagonist Nathanael to self-destruct because he cannot reconcile his internal world, full of unfulfilled emotional longings and dark paranoid forebodings, with the external world dominated by bourgeois domesticity and commerce.⁴ Nathanael, who is also a poet, is ultimately undone by his narcissistic tendency to project himself onto the objects of his affection. Clara, his flesh-and-blood and sensibly minded fiancée, rejects his attempts to pull her deeper into his nightmarish fantasies. In doing so, as we will later see, she widens an already existing chasm between the separate realities that they occupy. The stoic and receptive Olimpia allows Nathanael to project the whole of his inner, imagined reality onto her. This intense investment of the self into another human being has devastating consequences when the actual nature of that being is determined to be false:

The constitution of Olimpia’s simulated body becomes obvious only upon its destruction. Ultimately, the automaton’s creators reverse their work by literally pulling the automaton apart in from of the enamored poet’s eyes, revealing its scientific origins in the process [ … ] Olimpia’s physical dissolution pushes Nathanael over the edge, both figuratively and literally: he goes mad, tumbles over the railing of a tower, and, like Olimpia, ends up in pieces—his head shattered on the sidewalk. (Bloom 295–96)

This disastrous end becomes unavoidable as the boundaries between the real and imagined, between Nathanael and Olimpia, dissolve—their fates must by necessity align.

Nathanael’s tragedy is that of a single, rather misinformed, individual. To integrate the reading of this text with more contemporary psychological discourses on the performance of emotional labor by women it is necessary to paint once again in broader strokes. The appearance of sophisticated automata and women in the public sphere beginning in the 18^th century and onward produced a simultaneous and undesirable correlation between the performance of femininity and perceived agency.⁵ This correlation is bound to both mechanistic Enlightenment notions of the body and behavior as well as the dissolution of formerly fixed boundaries by Romanticism. Such dissolutions included not just those of the internal and external worlds, but also boundaries between living and inanimate objects. This allowed a permeable mindset to develop that allowed the projection of the self onto non-living objects such as automata. While it may be a self-destructive practice for an individual to project their innermost desires onto a real object, it is even more detrimental when such methods are used to establish forms of control that subjugate entire genders and relegate them to positions of lesser subjectivity and autonomy:

That is, dolls and women-as-objects, with their lifeless simulations of humanness, mercilessly evoke lack, loss, and fears of self-disintegration. Freud’s equation between the penis and the eye depends on Enlightenment constructions of light and vision, and the instruments used to supplant them, as crucial tokens of an autonomous subjectivity. To create dolls, and to fashion women into dolls, was one strategy for maintaining one’s own enlightened subjectivity, and relegating emptiness to other subjects. (Park 63)

Nathanael’s romantic sensibilities as projected onto the object-women in his life may demonstrate individual narcissistic tendencies but in doing so they reveal an underlying self-deception rooted in the fear of loss and control of that self, which is only dispelled by the displacement of an essential emptiness onto others. This displacement manifests in behavior and attitudes towards women that reinforce and perpetuate their status as objects or emotional beings less capable of rational thought and agentic action.

Whether female-presenting characters are automata or actual persons, the text operates under an expectation that men are entitled to their attention and affection—forms of emotional labor—without any interrogation of practicality or common sense. Nathanael’s neurosis emerges from a fundamental incompatibility with what has been termed as the bourgeois life or domesticity and at the center of both these concepts is Clara. It follows that if women are supposed to be the default caregivers, Clara should have simply altered her behavior to suit Nathanael’s needs and by doing so could have “fixed” him. While this conclusion is both narratively and literally unrealistic, it is disturbingly widespread even in twentieth- and twenty-first century scholarship. William Crisman, rather than recognize the pragmatic sensibilities required of Clara’s position, attributes her responses to an “obtuseness and/or cruelty” and explains that the reader’s sympathetic view of her is produced by the narrator’s favoritism. Crisman later goes on to assert that “[t]he narrator’s praise has no objective basis and tends to bear out Nathanael’s portrayal of her in a way more convincing than stated blame.” Furthermore, Crisman bases his statements on the work of no less than three other—male—scholars (19). He goes as far as to blame Clara for Nathanael’s eventual suicide: “She is the character who drives him figuratively and literally over the brink, to which she had led him by her desire to climb the tower” (20). Per Crisman, it is because Clara wishes to climb the tower that Nathanael dies and not because he observes the long absent Coppelius from the tower, triggering a final break with reality. Clara’s repeated refusals to simply acquiesce to Nathanael’s demands for attention are laden with her frustration and outright contempt towards his inability to fulfill his part of the proposed marital contract. To put it in contemporary and rather blunt terms:

Women have been fed up with listening to, comforting, and nurturing the men in their lives probably for as long as they have been expected to do it for free—which is to say, since time immemorial. In consciousness-raising groups in the sixties, feminists famously traced the disproportionate amount of caring performed by women back to sexist notions of women as natural caregivers. The expectation that the “fairer sex” constantly radiate sugar and spice while men could be moody or taciturn without recrimination, they argued, was a pernicious double standard. (Pan 70)

The state of the relationship between Nathanael and Clara is just another example in a very long history of sexist expectations that place the sole burden of emotional labor onto women—expectations that are mutually enforcing and shaping between cultural history and literary representations. While Crisman and other scholars lay the blame for Nathanael’s fate at Clara’s feet, recent archeological work suggests the gender binary that faults it is as much a creation of early modern European discourse as Olimipia herself. For example, recent anthropological discoveries in Peru suggest that in early societies anywhere from thirty to fifty percent of big game hunters were female. Such findings disrupt the deeply embedded notion of a essentialized gender binary regarding the division of labor and the idea of women as “natural” caregivers (Wei-Haas). In Hoffmann, however, the assignment of emotional labor and the reduction of intellectual agency begins with ascribing object-like attributes to women to diminish their humanity, which takes place from the beginning of the story.

The Sandman commences (in media res) with a series of letters between Nathanael, Clara, and her brother, Lothar. The content of these letters serves to establish the mood and background against which the remainder of the story takes place. The first letter, which Nathanael addresses to Lothar—his childhood friend and, ostensibly, his future brother-in-law—begins with a reminiscence on Clara. Nathanael, who has been away at university, apologizes for his recent lapse in communication by assuring Lothar that Clara his, “sweet angel, whose image is so deeply engraved upon my heart and mind” (Hoffmann 183, emphasis mine), has never been far from his thoughts.⁶ Nathanael adds that even in his sleep, “my lovely Clara’s form comes to gladden me in my dreams, and smiles upon me with her bright eyes” (Hoffmann 183, emphasis mine). These initial descriptions define the text as an optically driven narrative and, in particular, suggest the visually centered manner in which it handles female characters. There is little specific detail regarding Clara, she is referred to instead as an “image” [Bild] or “form” [Gestalt]. Such signifiers indicate an aesthetically oriented terminology that focuses on physical appearances, namely the contour of a body. Additionally, although a face is implied in Nathanael’s recollection of Clara’s smile, he chooses to emphasize her eyes while ignoring any other features. This emphasis supports the visual nature of the text by acknowledging the physical organs of sight but also begins the process of physical dissolution of the female figure by isolating a single, specific body part.⁷ If this analysis seems to so far concentrate on seemingly innocuous descriptions, consider how the emphasis changes when the previous citations are altered to omit these visual cues: “my sweet angel, who is so deeply engraved upon my heart and mind” and “my lovely Clara comes to gladden me in my dreams, and smiles upon me.”⁸ Qualifiers having to do with an image, form, or the eyes shift the focus of the text away from that of a whole person to something of a likeness of person that reduces Clara’s personhood and attributions of autonomy in the process.

The visual focus of Nathanael’s descriptions continues in the third and final letter to Lothar, in which he actually responds to an earlier letter from Clara. In this letter, Clara had attempted to soothe Nathanael regarding disturbing childhood events that had recently resurfaced. He had detailed this experience in his previous letter to her brother but accidentally addressed it to her instead. Clara responds sympathetically but also sensibly and in doing so, meets with Nathanael’s reproach. He writes to Lothar, “In very truth one can hardly believe that the mind which so often sparkles in those bright, beautifully smiling, childlike eyes of hers like a sweet lovely dream could draw such subtle and scholastic distinctions” (Hoffmann 193). In these lines, the effects of Clara’s diminished status become clear. Nathanael continues to fixate upon her eyes in which some form of mind seems to flicker, evanescent and dreamlike—that it might be scholarly defies belief. The possibility of an intellectual competence comparable to his own is foreclosed by his perception of Clara as foremost a body—or simply, a “form” with “smiling eyes.” The focus on Clara’s body changes the kind of mind and moral status that Nathanael ascribes to her. This “redistribution of mind,” particularly as it applies to the female body, is supported by contemporary social psychological research conducted by Kurt Gray and his colleagues that indicates, “Evaluating people with a ‘physical’ body-focused mindset makes them seem relatively less agentic and more experiential” (3). In other words, the type of mind ascribed to Clara is not an intellectual one, but an emotional one. Although the research and text are separated by nearly 200 years, it is clear that the hypothesis suggested by Gray’s team regarding the so-called redistribution of mind has a long literary history of men deciding how women should be, such as Ovid’s Pygmalion and Galatea. Nathanael first expresses a degree of surprise at Clara’s “deep philosophical letter,” attributing her “scholastic” insight to her brother’s lectures through which “she shifts and refines everything so acutely” (Hoffmann 193). An agentic attribution indicates the presence of a rational mind capable of the scholastic thought that Nathanael believes Clara lacks (or at the very least cannot believe her to have). An experiential mind is rather associated with feelings, whether physical or emotional, as it is the body that senses and feels its way through the world. The moral status has to do with the ability to cause harm or assign blame, the agentic mind being more responsible for its actions. Perceived to have an experiential mind, Clara cannot have intended to cause harm by her sensible explanation.

To contrast the presentation of Clara as an object, it is helpful to examine the ways in which the male characters are depicted. The male characters can be divided into two categories: friends and antagonists. Lothar and Siegmund are Nathanael’s friends, whose physical appearances are never described. Particularly noteworthy is Siegmund, described as a “correction of Clara,” who is just as confrontational about his friend’s emotional excesses as his fiancée but expresses his concern without earning Nathanael’s reproach, according to Crisman: “[H]e is sensitive to Nathanael’s moods and accommodates them without making them worse through inflexible resistance” (20). The suggestion that the role of a female character can be corrected and simply recast is problematic, as Siegmund does not have the same relationship to Nathanael, nor bear the same domestic obligations to him, as Clara does as Nathanael’s fiancée. Furthermore, Clara and Siegmund are both described as “cold” (Hoffmann 199, 208), but Nathanael’s reaction to Siegmund’s pragmatism is “reconciliatory” (Crisman 20) rather than reproachful which strongly suggests the negative attitude toward Clara may be inflamed by her gender.

Spalanzani and Coppola/Coppelius are the antagonists, whose faces and manners of dress are depicted in, at times, monstrously vivid detail that differs distinctly from those of the women. As for Spalanzani, Nathanael writes that he “is a little fat man, with prominent cheekbones, thin nose, projecting lips, and small piercing eyes” (Hoffmann 194). Here, Nathanael attempts to convey a more holistic picture of the professor by including details about not just one, but several facial features.⁹ Allusions to a generic “form” or “figure” are wholly absent. He continues, “You cannot get a better picture of him than by turning over one of the Berlin pocket almanacs and looking at Cagliostro’s portrait engraved by Chodowiecki; Spalanzani looks just like him” (Hoffmann 194). While this account remains decidedly visually oriented, the attempt is made to portray the professor as an individual both by associating him with another well-known individual, although of dubious reputation, and providing multiple details from which an actual person emerges.¹⁰ The description of Coppelius, as indelibly burned into the mind of young Nathanael, is the most intense and garish of any character. Coppelius is an immense figure in the child’s memory with broad shoulders, hairy hands, and a bulky misshapen head upon which his exaggerated and animal-like facial features rest. His cat-like eyes glitter over a snout-like nose and hissing sounds escape from between his teeth. These inhuman features portend a brutish behavior to match. Both his cruel behavior toward the children at the dinner table, as well as Nathanael’s feverish recollection of activities in his father’s study, where Coppelius allegedly tries to the blind the young Nathanael, suggest a phantasm borne out of a fairy tale rather than a human being. This depiction is so monstrous that Coppelius is sometimes regarded as being Nathanael’s own “creation,” an amalgam of real-world repugnant behavior and nightmarish fantasy.¹¹ Coppelius’ double, Coppola, is described more concisely: “Then Coppola came right into the room, and said in a hoarse voice, screwing up his wide mouth into a hideous smile, while his little eyes flashed keenly from beneath his long gray eyelashes” (Hoffmann 202). Nathanael detects in Coppola a grotesque resemblance to Coppelius. His actions also inspire the same deep terror with its fixation on eyes when Coppola lays out his selection of spectacles as these “[t]housands of eyes were looking and blinking convulsively and staring up at Nathanael” (Hoffmann 202). The similarity of visage, and in optics, nearly causes Nathanael to break at this moment.

Another useful point of comparison is the automaton, Olimpia. In many ways she, like Coppelius, is a projection of Nathanael’s inner self. Olimpia is described in the same manner as Clara: “In the room I saw a female, tall, very slender, but of perfect proportions, and splendidly dressed, sitting at a little table, on which she had placed both her arms, her hands being folded together. She sat opposite the door, so that I could see her angelically beautiful face” (Hoffmann 194). Once again, his focus is on the overall contours of her body. Nathanael emphasizes her flawless proportions, manner of dress, and posture as if he were a painter planning a composition. He does not include specific details, neither in quality nor quantity, about her facial features as he did for Spalanzani or Coppelius favoring instead more generic descriptors. Nathanael does note that unlike Clara, with her smiling eyes, Olimpia has “a strangely fixed look about her eyes. I might almost say they appeared as if they had no power of vision” (Hoffmann 194). Ironically, her inability to return his gaze is at first a source of discomfort to Nathanael and he retreats. This peculiar inconsistency regarding her eyes is a central component of discourses that focus on Freudian elements of The Sandman, including Nathanael’s narcissistic complex. Olimpia’s eyes appear lifeless because Nathanael has not yet viewed her through the phallic apparatus of the perspective, which he is yet to purchase from Coppola. The portrayals of the women so far emphasize the overall form of their bodies, which diminishes their personhood and thereby attributions of agency. The focus on eyes serves as the beginning of a textual dismemberment of the female body, which supports both the previously mentioned Freudian interpretation of the text as well as a more contemporary interpretation regarding the objectification of women and the assignment of emotional labor. Further descriptions of Olimpia shift the emphasis from a passive observation of bodily form to a direct invitation to gaze upon a peculiar kind of performance by a female-presenting automaton.

Later, Nathanael excitedly receives an invitation to Spalanzani’s home for a ball and concert where Olimpia will finally be presented to the outside world. Over the evening, Olimpia plays the piano, sings, and dances. The musical nature of her performance is notable because at the time musical education for women was designed to attract potential suitors and to make “the performer the object of spectatorial gaze that rarely puts men in its sights” (Goss 114–15). Olimpia is being put on deliberate display by her “father” in hopes of attracting a husband, which will put her at odds with Clara for Nathanael’s attention. The clockwork nature of her musical performance draws attention to her figure but not without a degree of unease among the other guests, who notice that something is amiss. The narrator notes that “there was something stiff and measured in her gait and bearing that made an unfavourable impression upon many,” but this first impression is initially dismissed as a byproduct of the audience’s expectations (Hoffmann 205). Her face, however, remains ambiguous. Even as she sings with a voice that is “almost too brilliant, but clear as glass bells” (Hoffmann 207), Nathanael is blinded to her features by bright lights. It is not until he observes her through the spyglass that her eyes, and only her eyes, become once again animated and a point of artistic self-realization. Olimpia’s eyes are the mirrors for Nathanael’s projection of himself. Her eyes help him articulate his own emotional life and his poetic craft (Gendolla 175). If Olimpia is a projection of Nathanael’s inner, and perhaps ideal, self then it is only appropriate that she engages in artistic activities like music and dancing rather than the domestic distractions that Clara is often engaged in when he is speaking and which he clearly resents. In Olimpia, Nathanael recognizes kindred spirit who is capable of the understanding that Clara lacks.

After the ball, Nathanael visits Spalanzani’s home frequently to read Olimpia all manner of his poetic creations, during time which he becomes convinced of the presence of a superior intellect behind her unflinching gaze. Olimpia is a far more patient listener than Clara, not prone to busying herself with domestic chores as she listens but, “in short, she sat hour after hour with her eyes bent unchangeably upon her lover’s face, without moving or altering her position, and her gaze grew more ardent and more ardent still. And it was only when at last Nathanael rose and kissed her lips or her hand that she said, ‘Ah! Ah!’ and then ‘Goodnight, dear’” (Hoffmann 209). From Nathanael’s viewpoint, the most acceptable form of affirmation, enhancement, and celebration of his well-being involves the obedient silence and tacit agreement of the receptive listening female.¹² Since Olimpia has excelled at performing this expected emotional labor, Nathanael’s judgement of her is distinctly more positive. He also attributes a higher intellectual potential to her due to the perceived meeting of the minds. This assignment of agentic qualities to Olimpia must have to do with Nathanael projecting himself onto her rather than any action or utterance on her part. In fact, of her limited speech Nathanael remarks, “‘What are words—but words?’ The glance of her heavenly eyes says more than any tongue. And anyway, how can a child of heaven accustom herself to the narrow circle which the exigencies of a wretched mundane life demand?’” (Hoffmann 209). Clara, unlike Olimpia, does not fail to rebuke Nathanael when she believes it to be in his best interests. The second letter, in which she responds to Nathanael’s growing unease, outlines the ways in which his fears may be explained by realistic phenomena and not the dark powers he suspects to be at work. Clara is careful in her phrasing not to offend Nathanael. She writes: “Now I know you will be angry at your Clara, and will say, ‘Of the mysterious which often clasps man in its invisible arms there’s not a ray that can find its way into her cold heart. She sees only the varied surface of the things of the world and, like a little child, is pleased with the glittering fruit, at the kernel of which lies the fatal poison’” (Hoffmann 192). There is a curious disconnect between the cold, unfeminine rationality that she is often accused of possessing and the child-like demeanor to which Nathanael has assigned her. This disparity hints at the tensions between Enlightenment and Romanticism that are at work in the text. Enlightenment values assert that the observable world may be ordered and understood by sensible means, while Romanticism proclaims that there is no boundary between the outer physical world and the rich inner world of the observer, especially the poet or artist. Clara offers explanations for the uncanny phenomena of Nathanael’s childhood account by drawing connections between events that seemed to him, as a child, unrelated. For example, Clara points out that the connection between advocate Coppelius and the Sandman may be explained both by the former’s real dislike of children, as demonstrated by his behavior and appearance, and the latter’s cotemporaneous presence in a nursemaid’s ghastly fairy tale. The link between them was forged by his mother’s appellation for Coppelius as the “Sandman.” Clara writes, “Naturally enough, the gruesome Sand-man of the old nurse’s story was associated in your childish mind with old Coppelius, who even though you had not believed in the Sand-man, would have been to you a ghostly bugbear, especially dangerous to children” (Hoffmann 192). She goes on further to explain that Coppelius and Nathanael’s father were likely engaged in alchemical experiments, one of which could have led to an explosion that caused his father’s death—this much she has verified with her neighbor, an experienced chemist. There were no supernatural forces at work at the time of his father’s death but rather it was simply an accident. To a Romantic such as Nathanael, Clara’s rational explanation appears superficial and unsophisticated, regardless of how pragmatic it seems to the reader.

Clara is also savvy enough to try and engage Nathanael from a Romantic viewpoint by offering yet another explanation for why the discomfort arising from these events has resurfaced:

It is also certain, Lothar adds, that if we have once voluntarily given ourselves up to this dark power, it often reproduces within us the strange forms which the outer world throws in our way, so that thus it is we ourselves who engender within ourselves the spirit which by some remarkable delusion we imagine to speak in that outer form. It is the phantom of our own self whose intimate relationship with, and whose powerful influence upon our soul either plunges us into hell or elevates us to heaven. (Hoffmann 192)

She explains that since he, as a child, had once believed in these supernatural forces, he may be predisposed to remain in their control but that it is still within his power to reject them and choose another fate. It is for this suggestion that she earns his reproach, even though she is careful to invoke her brother’s name to mitigate its impact. In devising these alternative explanations, Clara attempts to perform the emotional duties ascribed to her by virtue of her gender. A study by Julie Chen and Madeline Heilman indicates, “Being a helper is central to female gender type prescriptions, which dictates that women be nurturing and socially oriented (communal) rather than competitive and achievement oriented (agentic)” (431).¹³ Their study of workplace behavior indicates that women face negative judgements when they fail to perform the expected emotional labor or do so poorly, especially in comparison to male colleagues. This form of socialization starts early and is associated to the overall diminished status of women in the workplace. Arlie Hochschild maintains that because women have been historically dependent on men for support, they have learned to compensate for their “shortcomings” in other ways, one of which is the management of emotions that “affirms, enhances, and celebrates the well-being of others” (Hochschild 165). Nathanael’s perception of Clara as a cold and rational being demonstrates that she is either incapable of performing this form of labor or just simply refuses to capitulate to such anticipations, this letter serving as just one example. In the likely event that Clara once again rejects Nathanael’s expectations of emotional succor she risks losing both his potential future support as a husband, as well as any ascription of femininity (Hochschild 165–66). In terms of the feminine performance, Clara is inclined to domestic activities that benefit her immediate family directly, including Nathanael, rather than any sort of artistic performance designed to attract suitors (Goss 114). Clara has been nurturing, but in the wrong way. Her household duties, such as cooking and knitting, become sites of rebellion towards Nathanael. It is during these activities that Nathanael attempts to usurp Clara’s attention in the name of his art and continued belief in dark forces. In one instance over breakfast as he is attempting to read to her from his “mystic books” she confronts him directly: “For if I do as you wish, and let things go their own way, and look into your eyes while you read, the coffee will boil over into the fire, and you will none of you get any breakfast” (Hoffmann 198). Later, Nathanael takes up his position again and Clara takes up her knitting in defense. This time as he reads his poem, he does earn Clara’s attention but not in the manner he intended. Instead of a loving gaze, she “sat with her eyes fixed in a set stare upon Nathanael’s face” (Hoffmann 200). In both these instances, Clara clearly and directly rejects Nathanael’s expectations of emotional labor through deliberate actions and specific language. Because she is a woman who helps rationally, refusing to give in to his whims, she is neither helping nor rational nor feminine. In the first case, he simply retreats. In the second case, he insults Clara, “You damned lifeless automaton!” (Hoffmann 200) which nearly leads to duel with her brother, who feels compelled to defend her honor. This tense situation is ultimately defused by Clara herself, but it demonstrates that Nathanael’s predilection for silent and obedient women may result in harm or even death when his expectations are not met. This incident should be read as a kind of foreshadowing, among numerous other elements, to the fatal event that defines the end of the novella, in which Nathanael first attempts to throw Clara from a tower before leaping to his own death.

Although the end of the novella seems not only to suggest a relaxation of outwardly imposed social norms governing the performance of femininity but also the apparent triumph of reason over dark and irrational forces as, seemingly, outwardly demonstrated by Clara’s happily-ever-after, in which she is observed holding hands with her husband while their children play in front of them—things are not as they appear. And while a charming relaxation of norms regarding the “perfect” performance of femininity seems to have taken place among the men in the novella as they begin to demand authentically imperfect behavior from their female companions, lest they be mistaken for automata, it also implies that men are categorically unable to distinguish women from automata unless they fulfill some type of arbitrary male expectations. There is also the underlying assumption that Clara’s marriage translates into a type of success that any woman would desire, especially after overcoming the hardships of an abusive relationship with an unreliable partner. In each case, women are still relegated to producing a “non-deceptive” femininity that feels comfortable for men. Additionally, they are responsible for maintaining a non-public domestic sphere in which the production of family can take place safely and without external interference—also for the benefit of men.¹⁴ These conclusions, read alongside the textual focus solely on the feminine form, suggest that women should at least be read as individuals, (although continually in the service of men) despite objectifying depictions otherwise.

The textual reduction of women into a series of forms, body parts, and actions in “The Sandman” reduce their standing as individuals with agency while attempting to assign a more emotional and subservient role to them. Clara’s status as an individual and as a woman is called into question by her continued refusal to provide the emotional succor of the type that Nathanael demands and to which he has been conditioned to believe he is entitled. This belief is most clearly articulated, not without irony, when he accuses her of being an automaton. While Clara’s rejection of social conventions regarding her behavior appears to go against her best interests according to the standards of the time in which it was written, and even those of the present day, it can also be interpreted as demonstrating a type of emotional cunning. Rather than being either emotional or rational beings, women (Clara) are instead rational about their emotions. Women deploy their emotions as a means to desired end, which may make them appear outwardly more emotional, but it is rather men who are unable to control their emotions. Nathanael is the one who cannot reconcile his inner emotional life with the reality that his ideal woman was not real at all. He is unable to recover from his passions, but Clara moves on. Hochshild explains that psychological “researchers have found men to have a more ‘romantic’ orientation to love, women a more ‘realistic’ orientation. That is, males may find cultural support for a passive construction of love, for seeing themselves as ‘falling head over heels,’ or ‘walking on air’” (Hochschild 166; Kephart 473). Despite the narrative attempts to render Clara as emotive and passive supporting character, she instead acts in her own best interests with an emotional shrewdness that her male counterpart decidedly lacks.