All this reminds me that one angle we haven't looked on yet is that she's writing the memoirs not just simultanously to the Fritz fallout but to her husband's affair with Marwitz, i.e. both her two main relationships now look to her as if the men don't love her anymore and have traded her in for other people. In addition to therapy animals, the memoirs themselves are also therapy (hence that one Fritz biographer ungraciously though not inaccurately referring to them as "Wilhelmine getting all the gall out of her system"; it's certainly her way of venting all the resentment and yes, absolutely, sibling jealousy. (Mainly in terms of Fritz - as in that outburst about him and Friedrike Luise - , but not exclusively. If you recall, in the memoirs she claims that she used to be FW's favourite daughter early on. Whereas the 20th century biographers, with full access to the preserved Hohenzollern letters and to the envoy correspondances, don't think she ever was once she wasn't the only daughter in talking age anymore, because while Charlotte, Ulrike and early on Friedrike ("Ike", as FW calls her) Luise take turns in the envoy reports as to who's the favourite daughter, it never is Wilhelmine, and there are tender FW letters to Charlotte and Friedrike Luise which just don't exist from FW to Wilhelmine. (Though he could be sentimental about her, too, see Stratemann's reports, if she cried and submitted enough, and pleased if she did things like arrange a smoking room for him during his Bayreuth visit, but that's not on the same level.)
So the Wilhelmine writing her memoirs in the 1740s is one whose sense of self worth has been thoroughly shattered: the lady-in-waiting whom she thought was her best friend has an affair with her husband, the same husband whom her mother blamed and ridiculed her for marrying, with Wilhelmine's counter argument having been "he may not be a future King, but at least he truly loves me"). And the first and foremost affectionate relationship of her life, the one with Fritz, now looks ended or at least so changed she can no longer draw from it the love and confidence she used to.
=> presto Wilhelmine the memoir writer lashing out in jealousy, whether it's sister Friederike Luise or for that matter Katte and Keith, and clinging extra hard on her social standing as the one thing still intact to be proud of
Wilhelmine's other method of self therapy was of course opera composing, and it's worth pointing out that in Argenore, you don't just have
Argenore: tyrannical king who in final scene commits suicide after realising he's destroyed his son and daughter Palmida: his daughter, is supposed to marry Leonida but loves Ormodo Ormodo: his long-lost son, whose true identity however is only uncovered to everyone, including himself, in the last act
but also
Leonida: Palmida's fiance, who secretly has a love affair with Martesia: Palmida's best friend, believed to be Ormodo's sister through most of the opera. Also the sole survivor of this opera (everyone else is dead by the final note).
Wiki points out Martesia is possibly the most interesting role, since the composer gives her the same amount of arias as Palmira has, including the final arias of the second and third act, and the final aria of the overall opera. She is the one who calls the titular character, King Argenore, a "monstrous father" and clears up who's related to whom and what happened in the end. She also isn't a villainess, since she gives up her love for Leonida so he can marry Palmida, and is the only one not killing anyone else. Her guilt is that she holds back on the document that reveals Ormodo is really not her brother but Palmida's, so she's not innocent, either.
...and then of course, the opera has such plot points as King Argenore, wishing to force his daughter Palmida to marry Leonida and forget about Ormodo, wants first to force her to kill Ormodo , and then, when that doesn't work out and he thinks he's got Ormodo killed (but in reality, Ormodo has managed to escape and kill the executor instead, trading clothes with him), wants to force Palmida to look at her lover's dead body.
Meaning: it's not like one opera character completely corresponds to one in Wilhelmine's life, but that the autobiographical points are all intermingled, remixed and given to several characters. The final kicker, btw, is that this opera premiered on the Margrave's birthday, it was officially Wilhelmine's birthday present for him. (Just like her next opera, the opera version of Voltaire's Semiramis, aka the one that ends in matricide, was staged as a birthday present to SD.)
Mind you, all of which is still less harmful a way to work through your trauma than roleplay with your younger siblings or go to war, but then Wilhelmine didn't have the option to do either.
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Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough
Date: 2020-10-15 05:31 am (UTC)So the Wilhelmine writing her memoirs in the 1740s is one whose sense of self worth has been thoroughly shattered: the lady-in-waiting whom she thought was her best friend has an affair with her husband, the same husband whom her mother blamed and ridiculed her for marrying, with Wilhelmine's counter argument having been "he may not be a future King, but at least he truly loves me"). And the first and foremost affectionate relationship of her life, the one with Fritz, now looks ended or at least so changed she can no longer draw from it the love and confidence she used to.
=> presto Wilhelmine the memoir writer lashing out in jealousy, whether it's sister Friederike Luise or for that matter Katte and Keith, and clinging extra hard on her social standing as the one thing still intact to be proud of
Wilhelmine's other method of self therapy was of course opera composing, and it's worth pointing out that in Argenore, you don't just have
Argenore: tyrannical king who in final scene commits suicide after realising he's destroyed his son and daughter
Palmida: his daughter, is supposed to marry Leonida but loves Ormodo
Ormodo: his long-lost son, whose true identity however is only uncovered to everyone, including himself, in the last act
but also
Leonida: Palmida's fiance, who secretly has a love affair with
Martesia: Palmida's best friend, believed to be Ormodo's sister through most of the opera. Also the sole survivor of this opera (everyone else is dead by the final note).
Wiki points out Martesia is possibly the most interesting role, since the composer gives her the same amount of arias as Palmira has, including the final arias of the second and third act, and the final aria of the overall opera. She is the one who calls the titular character, King Argenore, a "monstrous father" and clears up who's related to whom and what happened in the end. She also isn't a villainess, since she gives up her love for Leonida so he can marry Palmida, and is the only one not killing anyone else. Her guilt is that she holds back on the document that reveals Ormodo is really not her brother but Palmida's, so she's not innocent, either.
...and then of course, the opera has such plot points as King Argenore, wishing to force his daughter Palmida to marry Leonida and forget about Ormodo, wants first to force her to kill Ormodo , and then, when that doesn't work out and he thinks he's got Ormodo killed (but in reality, Ormodo has managed to escape and kill the executor instead, trading clothes with him), wants to force Palmida to look at her lover's dead body.
Meaning: it's not like one opera character completely corresponds to one in Wilhelmine's life, but that the autobiographical points are all intermingled, remixed and given to several characters. The final kicker, btw, is that this opera premiered on the Margrave's birthday, it was officially Wilhelmine's birthday present for him. (Just like her next opera, the opera version of Voltaire's Semiramis, aka the one that ends in matricide, was staged as a birthday present to SD.)
Mind you, all of which is still less harmful a way to work through your trauma than roleplay with your younger siblings or go to war, but then Wilhelmine didn't have the option to do either.