Poetic Realism as Social Critique: Class and Gender Representations in Theodor Storm's Immensee

Abstract

This study analyzes how the elements of poetic realism in Theodor Storm's novella Immensee (1849) function as instruments of social critique that represent class inequality and gender relations in 19th-century German society. The work emerged amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, which deepened class stratification and positioned lower-middle-class women as objects of economic exchange through the institution of marriage. This research employs a qualitative method with close reading and Miles and Huberman's (1994) interactive analysis model, using a sociology of literature approach that views literary works as representations of social structure. The findings reveal that the three elements of poetic realism—realism, poetic language, and emotional depth—do not function merely as aesthetic features but operate as mutually reinforcing media of social critique. The element of realism exposes marriage as an economic transaction that strips women of autonomy; poetic language, through the water lily metaphor, serves as a strategy of indirect critique against class norms; and restrained emotional depth reflects the repression of expression in the bourgeois society of the realist era. Thus, Immensee is not merely a melancholic love story, but Storm's subtle critique of the class and gender structures that destroy the possibility of authentic relationships across class lines.


Keywords: class, gender, poetic realism, social critique