The Re-formation of Gender: Infanticide, Natalism, and Form in Goethe's Botanical Metamorphoses

In his work on botanical metamorphosis Goethe attempts to retain gender-normative ideas that even in his time were regressive. He deploys a natalist logic that prescribes for women the role of mother. Beyond asserting conservative principles, his writing on plant metamorphosis retains these principles within a framework still amenable to the liberalizing transformations at the end of his time. Goethe's thinking developed during revolutions in embryology and genre theory and was affected by his own involvement in an infanticide trial. Accordingly, he differentiates biological ontogeny from phylogeny, ensuring an array of possibilities for the former but constraining the latter to a natalist principle of reproduction. His interests in this formula go beyond biology and are reflected in his social and aesthetic projects, including the justification for punishing women whose actions challenge the limits of his natalism. This essay retraces Goethe's conceptualization of living form, addresses its ambiguities, and proposes a counter-model that allows for more dynamic and reparative feminist readings of Goethe's oeuvre.