Blaine Evanson and Dr. Michelle Stott James, German and Slavic languages
I was first introduced to Sophie in September 2001 in my German Cultural History class. Dr. McFarland announced that there was some grant money left over and that some students who were interested in the research would be invited to work a few hours each week helping prepare texts to be published on the website. I immediately recognized the opportunity to get research experience and knew both how important and beneficial such an opportunity would be, as I was planning on applying the following year for graduate school.
I began working as a researcher, inputting the texts and proofreading them and then glossing them so that they were ready to be published on the Internet. I enjoyed the research even though as an Information Systems major I was not especially gifted with research about women’s literature. I do, however, speak German and enjoyed using that skill in the research. I learned to read the old German script and learned a lot about the older German language—how different it could be and how hard it often was to decipher.
During Fall Semester of 2001, I worked on the text from Theresa von Bacheracht, Novellen, 1. und 2. Theil. I struggled with this text partly because I was in charge of only a piece of the massive text, which left me without the big picture of the story. My section of the story told of a man named Oran, an aristocrat, who meets a less than noble woman and falls instantly in love. He goes to much effort to create a past and heritage for this woman so that it will be respectable for him to marry her. He feels always distant from her, knowing that she has loved someone else and insists that she will never be able to love another, but he pursues her after receiving permission both from her and from her mother. In correspondence between the man and his estate, one of his servants, Müller learns of his master’s new wife and that she is his long lost love. He struggles with what to do. As his master Oran arrives with his new wife, Müller leaves a note and departs. The text is a wonderful story of irony and love.
Inputting the text was far from easy in the old German script where the “s” and the “f” look practically identical. It was a slow process becoming comfortable typing the text at a reasonable rate. But the text became easier to read and by the time I was proofreading, I was able to read it quite comfortably.
Glossing this first text is where I learned the most about real research. I went through the text and looked at every word or name or place that I thought an undergraduate researcher would not recognize. I say it was “real” research because I could not take my list of words into Dr. James and ask her to translate them. These words were not normally used, were not in the regular modern dictionary, and they required considerable research to decipher. I often spent several hours looking for the definition and use of a single word. I then wrote the definition and use of the word in a concise, one-sentence definition to be published with the text on the Sophie Library website.
The next text I worked on was entitled “Dulden” Aus der Lebensbeschreibung einer Armen (“Enduring” Out of the Biography of a Poor Person) by Dr. Hedwig Bleuler-Wafer. The text is a story about the life of a poor girl named Kathrin from the industrial working class and the struggles she has growing up in an environment with an abusive and alcohol-ridden father. We learn about Kathrin’s experience in school and working in the local factory. She and her sister struggle with their father, finding their only relief in the arms of their mother. When she dies, the sisters leave the father to work in another town’s factory. There, Kathrin gets pregnant only to give birth to a lifeless child. We read about her pain trying to keep the pregnancy and birth quiet for fear of resentment from her neighbors and friends.
Kathrin continues to struggle with abusive boyfriends until she gets married to a man who resembles her father. He does, however, quit drinking at Kathrin’s insistence. The overarching theme and lesson from the story are summed up by the author in the epilogue, „Wenn der Vater gewesen wäre wie die Mutter, so wäre es nie soweit gekommen mit mir, das ist so wahr, als ein Gott im Himmel ist.“ (If the father had been like the mother, it would have never come this far for me; that is as true as there is a God in heaven.)
Dulden provides incredible insight into the life of women during the industrial revolution and the hardships they faced. It is unclear as to who the author is, but most suspect that Dr. Bleuler- Wafer wrote it as an autobiography. This story is a perfect example of the value of these writings of female authors that show insight in ways that male-authored literature cannot.
During this time I also worked on two bibliographies for the project. I researched the topic of Women and the French Revolution. I searched for books and references on how the revolution affected women at the time and how it has since been a catalyst to movements of feminism and social reform. My second topic was attitudes towards gender, which was far broader. This bibliography has references to books about more abstract topics concerning the roles that society has historically given to men and women. I found some very interesting material on the idea of gender as a cultural creation rather than a biological classification. Gender has been different during different eras of history and there has been quite a bit written on the topic.
The work with bibliographies taught me much about research and how to use the library. I looked up several books in the Lee Library and perused them to gather the general idea of the book and scope of the topic. I then looked through the books’ bibliography and did the same with the references listed. It was fascinating to find the overlap in use from the different authors and thereby determine what the most quintessential works were on the different topics.
At some point during my time with Sophie, I brought up issues of search engine optimization and other problems with the website, which I had seen and knew I could learn how to fix. First, the website contained many broken hyperlinks that needed to be fixed. I did a huge overhaul on the website, checking every link and fixing those that were broken. Since the overhaul on the website, I worked closely with Doctors James and McFarland on the development of the new projects and additions to the website. My role became less and less involved with the inputting and researching of the texts and more on the macro level, where I helped with the more broad development of the project. I continued to do research, working on a text by Luise Le Beau entitled “Lebenserinnerungen einer Komponistin” and a creation drama by Inge von Holtzendorff, but my biggest contributions were my development of the website.
As the Sophie Library has become better known, particularly at BYU, researchers and professors in other disciplines have become increasingly interested in how to incorporate more aspects of Women’s Studies into the library. With the help of Doctor Ruth Christensen, we launched Sophie’s Daughters: A Digital Library of German Women’s Music; we added a section on female Journalists and Feuilletonists; we began Sophie: Stage and Screen—a study of female dramatists and screenwriters. We are especially excited about the Sophie Journal, for which a peer review team has been assembled and will begin preparing articles. With these new areas that have been added to the website and the growth that we experienced, the project took in numerous areas of women’s research and is growing to become one of the leading resources of German women’s literature on the internet.